The opportunities presented to delators by the _fiscus Iudaicus_ consisted in the fact that anyone of Jewish origin, with the possible exception noted above, was liable to the tax, and that there must have been many who attempted to conceal their Jewish origin in order to evade it. In view of the wide extent of the spread of the Jewish propaganda, the delation was plausible from the beginning. Suetonius tells us at first-hand recollection of a case in which the charge of evading the tax was made and successfully established.[362] In a very large number of cases, however, the charge was not established, but in these cases it was often apparently the policy of prudence to buy off the accuser rather than risk the uncertainties of a judicial decision. It is upon people who act in just such a way that blackmailers, συκοφαντία, _calumniatores_, grew fat. And the charge of evading the Jewish tax was easily made, and disproved with difficulty, since all who followed Jewish customs were amenable to it, and many Jewish customs so closely resembled the practices of certain philosophic sects that confusion on the subject was perfectly natural. We have seen this in the case of Seneca some years before this (comp. above, p. 310). The emperor Nerva, in 96-98 C.E., removed the occasion of this abuse. Coins are extant with the legend _Fisci Iudaici calumnia sublata_, “To commemorate the suppression of blackmail arising from the Jewish tax.” The _fiscus Iudaicus_ itself continued into much later times, but blackmail by means of it was ended. How this was done we are not told. But an obvious and natural method would be to abolish the money reward which the delator or prosecuting witness received for every conviction. Plainly there would be no blackmail if there was no incentive thereto. But this reform of Nerva affected rather those who were not Jews than those who were, since in the case of actual Jews, whether by birth or conversion, the tax was enforceable and the accusation of evading it was not _calumnia_, but patriotic zeal. It is likely enough that the measure of Nerva discouraged prosecution, even where it was justified, but the losses which the imperial fiscus sustained by reason of the successful evasion of the tax on the part of some individuals cannot have been great, since the Jews not only publicly professed their faith, but openly and actively spread it. In the epitome of the sixty-eighth book of Cassius Dio (i. 2), we read that this measure of Nerva was one of general amnesty for the specific crime of “impiety,” or ἀσέβεια: “Nerva ordered the acquittal of those on trial for impiety, and recalled those exiled for that crime.... He permitted no one to bring charges of impiety or of Jewish method of living.”