Las arcas del Imperio - Ep.4 (El Imperio Romano)

Sabemos mucho acerca de la Roma clásica. Sus cronistas, sus historiadores y sus literatos nos han transmitido ingentes datos que permiten reconstruir las facetas más íntimas de su vida. Pero entre ese torrente de información hay aspectos que siempre permanecieron oscuros, y uno de ellos fue el del manejo de la administración financiera del Imperio. Los romanos tuvieron que aprender a administrarse a marchas forzadas. Pasaron de una economía agrícola y tribal a controlar la riqueza generada en los seis millones de kilómetros cuadrados –12 veces la superficie de España– que llegaron a dominar en el Imperio. Tenían que organizar cosechas, minas, ganado, transacciones comerciales, transporte de mercancías y un sinfín de asuntos. Por supuesto, eso requería una estructura fiscal compleja. Y, además, estaban los gastos militares, un auténtico sumidero para las finanzas imperiales. Escucha la historia completa en el podcast. Déjanos tu comentario en Ivoox o Spotify, o escríbenos a [e-mail] Comparte nuestro podcast en tus redes sociales, puedes realizar una valoración de 5 estrellas en Apple Podcast o Spotify. Texto: Alberto Porlán Dirección, locución y producción: Iván Patxi Gómez Gallego Contacto de publicidad en podcast: [e-mail]

Episode Transcript

(00:21):
It gives great stories of great history. Presents the Roman Empire. Chapter four.

(00:41):
The Coffers of the Empire, atext by Alberto Porlan. We know
a lot about classical Rome. Hischroniclers, his historians and his writers have

(01:03):
transmitted to us enormous data that allowus to reconstruct the most intimate facets of
his life. But among that torrentof information there are aspects that have always
remained obscure, and one of themwas the management of the financial administration of

(01:27):
the Empire. The Romans had tolearn how to manage forging marches. They
went from an agricultural and tribal economyto controlling the wealth generated from the six
million square kilometers twelve times the areaof Spain that they came to dominate in
the Empire. They had to organizeharvests of mines, livestock, commercial transactions,

(01:51):
freight transport and endless business. Ofcourse, that required a complex fiscal
structure and, in addition, therewere military expenditures or a real sinkhole for
imperial finances. On the other hand, the Romans learned very soon to take

(02:24):
care of their hen from the goldeneggs discounted by too many occasions, certainly,
when the coffers of the State hadbeen exhausted for one cause or another,
they tried not to squeeze the peoplemore than reasonable, for they did
not ignore that of prosperous citizens theydried up more revenues than of those drowned

(02:50):
in misery. When the people,exacerbated by the pressures of the publishers or
tax collectors, mutined against neron inthe fifty- eighth year, the latter
made the decision to abolish all indirectones, but did not succeed in doing
so because their circle and their advisersmade him see that such a decision would
irretrievably cause the collapse of the Empire. The notion of a state budget was

(03:20):
not, as far as we know, part of the financial structure of the
Roman Empire. Instead, the emperorsand their advisor friends had a rationibus accounting
officer who was usually some freeman giftedfor calculation. The poet Publius Papinius Statius
wrote the funeral praise of one ofthese arrationibus, claiming that he had been

(03:44):
given full control of imperial riches.And with motives, then, according to
Statius, he calculated the moment theneeds of the Roman armies under any heaven.
What the tribes and temples needed,which cost the aqueducts, the roads,
the fortresses, sns. These protoeconomists, these geniuses of the calculation
upon which the prosperity of Rome depended, only published their accounts under the command

(04:09):
of three emperors, Augustus, Tiberiusand Caligula. Then that sound custom was
abolished and the accounts of the Statebecame what we would call today, a
matter reserved for all those who werenot part of the circle of imperial advisers.

(04:34):
The equivalent of the Central Bank ofRome was the Aerarium from which our
term comes. It was located ina temple, that of Saturn, which
had been erected in the year fourhundred and ninety- seven before Christ,
on the hill of the Capitol.In addition to the cash funds, the
Aerarium guarded the pins of currencies andstate documents and contracts. There they also

(04:59):
deposited the accounts that the provincial governorsreferred to Rome. At the end of
his term of office. It functionedas a deposit, only without its employees
having the least decisive power over theimperial financial approach, They adhered to their
own accounts and were limited to disbursingthe sums ordered at any time by the

(05:19):
emperor or the Senate. The crisisof the first century promoted the creation of
a series of five Senate committees thatanalyzed the situation of the Aerarium in an
attempt to heal state finances. Itspurpose was to contain the expenses and stimulate

(05:41):
the revenue of the treasury, butas far as is known, none of
them succeeded. Surely they met withprivate interests the corruption that in Rome reached
elephantiasic magnitudes and imperial political dictates aboutthe great movements of funds. We have

(06:08):
to admit, we don' tknow anything. These decisions were a private
matter for the emperor and his circle, Caesar, not only had all the
power, but also all the money, so that, when they acceded to
the imperial throne, unbalanced and besaneousindividuals. The Aerarium was the first to
be harmed. There were quite afew cases of this type, but none

(06:30):
like Caligula, world champion of wasteers. Everything was little for that nutcase who,
apart from his crimes and abuses,seasoned the delicacies of his banquets with

(06:51):
gold. He swallowed huge pearls dissolvedin vinegar, built marble palaces with furniture
and servants for his horse and builtfor himself recreational ships with bathrooms, gardens
and even vineyards. He also lovedfeeling superior to nature and demanded that public

(07:12):
works be carried out against it.In this way, he capriciously chose the
most difficult road maps, even ifthey were not the shortest. He commanded
to level mountains as if such athing or build dams in deep waters and
if the works were not carried outas quickly as he wished to carry out

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the responsible ones. He remained inpower for almost four years until he was
killed before the end of the firstyear. He had successfully culminated in the
feat. Not easy to dilapidate thefamous treasures of Tiberius, which amounted to
two thousand seven hundred million sestertz,an unimaginable sum for the time. From

(08:03):
then on he dedicated himself to squeezingcitizens on the basis of taxes. He
charged for the marriages, for thegroceries, for the litigation, took from
the cargo waiters and from the merchantsof swindled his friends and his family and
committed numerous crimes for money. Heselected the richest men in Gaul, killed

(08:24):
them and confiscated their goods in hisname. At the end of his short
life twenty- nine years, Suetoniusdescribed it this way. In recent times,
his passion for wealth had been touchedin a frenzy and he often walked
barefoot on huge piles of gold stackedin a vast hall, sometimes even seen

(08:50):
rolling between them. Fortunately, forRome, not all his Caesars were Caligula.
Tax conditions were generally harsh, butbearable for people. There lay one

(09:11):
of the keys to the social peaceof the empire in the face of the
permanent threat of riots and wars.Better or worse, roads were drawn,
bridges, aqueducts, theatres, monumentssanctuaries were made. The mail worked,
the troops ate and charged the lawswere respected. The fiscus was responsible for

(09:37):
managing taxes, fines, confiscations,successions and transactions of all kinds. Indirect
fees were the main collection instrument,of course. Most of the rates underwent
many changes over the years, althoughsome of them remained unchanged in centuries.

(09:58):
For example, the five percent thatthe masters of those slaves had to pay
for in one way or another thecapital needed to buy their freedom did not
vary over seven hundred years, fromthe beginning of the Republic to Caracalla,
which doubled it. But Macrino,who had been one of the caracall killers,

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again set him at five percent asone of his populist gestures to win
the favor of the people. Ihad it in august times. The fiscus
took one percent of all sales andfour percent if it was slaves. The

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freight tax for Torium, which inSpain was called faithfulato. He paid a
two- coma tariff five percent afortieth part of what was transported, but
everything was little for imperial needs.The expenses of the army, which were

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enormous in themselves, were further increasedby the imperial commitment to provide a dignified
retirement for veterans, a well-deserved reward given that these were guys who
had managed to survive twenty years offerocious campaigns under the Roman military regime.
They had always received land upon retirement, but augusto added a capital in charge

(11:30):
of the Erarium. This brought withit a new tax unknown until then in
Rome, which recorded the inheritances atfive percent, except transmissions between close relatives.

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But apart from the collections, therewere also corruptions. The direct taxes
were for two concepts, the personalgoods tributum capitis and the yield of the
Tributum Solis lands. The first affectedall free individuals, who were obliged to
pay one percent of their assets annuallyto the public treasury. There are only

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details of this tribute, just asit was collected in Syria, where men
had to pay it from the ageof fourteen to the age of sixty-
five, while women did from theage of twelve. Naturally, the essential
instrument for the collectors was the census, and this was not easy to do
in remote territories with languages and customsvery different from Roman ones. On the

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other hand, its inhabitants knew verywell that their wives, sons and daughters
were going to cost them one percentof their annual estate per head, so
it was normal to hide the familyor even make them pretend to be slaves.
When the census officer arrived, soas to conceal how much they had
of value so that their assets wereevaluated in the lowest possible amount. The

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tribute to the Tributum Solis soil waseven more difficult to collect. In addition
to the census, a cadastre wasneeded to assess the areas of agricultural yields
and a host of parameters. More. In the third century, the rules

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established that the name of the twoimmediate neighbours of each plot and the estimated
arable area over the next ten years, as well as the number of fruit
olive strains, pastures, livestock,forests, houses, etc. It was
too much for a body of inspectorsto move around the four corners of Europe

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on mule backs, so the responsibilityfor its collection was put into the hands
of local collectors who held the Romanofficials accountable and trembled at the idea of
an inspection. Corruptelas must have beenthe general rule. Even if the punishments
were exemplary in the Roman economic system, corruption was in its environment and the

(14:31):
higher the corrupt was, the moreprofitable it was. The private businesses and
secrets of senators, governors, consuls, pretors and others must have been enough
to frame them. One of themost scandalous cases was led by politicians and
military officers who allowed Hannibal to ravagenorthern Italy and then buy down those huge

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expanses and populate them with armies ofslaves who worked the land for their own
benefit. During the initial century ofthe Republic, the six before Christ,
the exchanges were carried out in livestockterms and the pigs of sheep or cows
were spoken of. The first coinswere ingots with these printed animals and were

(15:18):
known as Pecunia of the term pecuscattle. Then came the first circular coin,
elas and later the Denarius, commonorigin of our money and the Arabic
dinar. The denarius was silver andtwenty- five of them were equivalent to
an Aureus, the coveted gold coinand there was also the Sestercius, which

(15:43):
was worth a quarter of the Denarius. It was made of bronze and became
the most common currency. It wasused both to set prices and to calculate
large amounts of capital. The financialsystem of the State had its immediate impact

(16:03):
on the monetary system. At theend of the second century, Marco Aurelio
devalued the coin, reducing to aquarter of the amount of silver of the
Denarius and a few years later,Septimio Severo again did the same half century
later, the proportion of precious metalsin the coins barely reached five percent and

(16:23):
by the year two hundred and seventy, the brutal inflation ended up taking the
sestercius ahead, with which nothing couldreally be bought anymore. It was the
beginning of the end. Thank youso much for listening to the podcasts of

(16:53):
very history. We encourage you toleave your comment vox and in Spotify,
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