AS in most African societies, cattle were an early form of money and were used as such from between 9000 to 6000 BC onwards.
Both the animal and the manure produced were valuable. The earliest instances of trade with money where the effects needed for efficient and easy employment of energies were the easiest to evaluate for direct exchange.
Later, metals, where available, became favoured for use as proto-money over such commodities as cattle, cowry shells or salt, because metals are durable, portable and easily divisible.
The use of gold as proto-money has been traced back to the 4th millennium BC when the Egyptians used gold bars of a set weight as a medium of exchange, as had been done earlier in Mesopotamia with silver bars.
Likewise, the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt dominated their economies.
For the Roman State, wealth depended on the control of natural resources, especially land.
As more societies fell under the control of Rome, more territory was ultimately added to the Roman polity.
Much of this land was given out to Roman colonists, but the State kept far more and leased it to individuals.
Records show that the Roman republic collected rent of 10 percent on grain; five percent on vines and orchards, among others, as well as varying amounts for grazing land.
These rents formed a sizable part of income for the early republic.
Over the years, various taxes, paid by subject peoples, were added to these revenues. Provinces paid either a tithe on their production or a fixed amount.
Following the conquest of an area, these issues would be settled by a Senatorial Commission.
The Roman government also collected harbor dues and customs.
For roughly two and a half centuries, Rome, founded 753 BC, had been a small city-State in central Italy and ruled by kings.
The last Roman king was driven from the city in 509 BC when the Republic was imposed in his place.
By the end of the 1st Century BC, Rome ruled an empire that stretched from the Sahara in the south to the English Channel in the north, and from the Atlantic to the Rhine, Danube and Euphrates rivers.
They conquered and created a vast empire that included virtually every Centre of Western civilisation.
The Roman Republic established a government with popular assemblies, elected magistrates and a council of powerful and wealthy Romans, the Senate, which dominated the State.
For much of the Republic’s history, the Senate controlled, in particular, the public treasury which authorised payments for services and construction projects and the collection of taxes and tribute.
In order to meet the ever-growing financial needs of this expanding State, the Romans turned to private enterprise.
Natural resources, especially mines, which often had been under the control of previous governments, were taken over by the Roman government.
The mines of Macedonia alone produced for the Roman treasury an estimated one-to-two million denarii (between 166and 330 talents) a year; and those in North Africa, nine million denarii (1500 talents) annually.
By the end of the Roman Republic, the income of the State surpassed that of any previous Near Eastern empire or Hellenistic Kingdom.
In fact, as a direct result of the conquests, after 167 BC, Roman citizens were free from direct taxation.
Although Roman officials were in charge of the treasury, they seldom collected any of the money themselves. During the Republic, the republican Senate left virtually all economic activities to private individuals and companies, known collectively as the ‘publicani’.
Tax collection, supplying the army, providing for religious sacrifices and other ceremonies, construction and repairs and mining, among other economic activities, were all contracted out.
Records show that the company that obtained the mining contract in North Africa employed an estimated 40000 people in these mines alone.
Some of the construction contracts were worth 45 to 50 million denarii.
Tax collectors also served as wholesale traders. With taxes in kind, whatever the publicans collected over and above what they were contracted to deliver, they sold for profit.
Transport was also in the hands of private companies and these firms would carry other goods in addition to those under government contract.
Supplying police and fire protection were services also seen as strictly private affairs.
This created private enterprise and unleashed the unbridled desire for private wealth in a world where the poor as a whole are omnipresent.
Private enterprise went so far that there was even a contract for summoning the Assembly into session and one for feeding the geese that were sacred to the goddess Juno.
In 390 BC, these particular sacred geese had saved Rome from a nighttime assault by cackling and awakening the sleeping Roman soldiers in time to repel the attack.
By the end of the Republic, the publicans fulfilled virtually all of the State’s economic requirements.
Many businesses sustained themselves for long periods of time and their capital was such that they could bid on many contracts simultaneously.
Many who were partners in firms contracting for State services were also involved in commercial and financial operations.
These larger companies often were registered as legal entities.
They could own property and transact business as corporations.
However, the partners in a company did not have their liability limited to the company’s assets.
They were personally responsible.
In spite of the risks, the profits were exceptional.
One of the richest Romans in the 1st Century BC was worth 48 million denarii, or 8000talents; a common infantryman made 225 denariia year, while a day labourer earned 250.
As was typical with the very wealthy, he received income from diverse sources: from State and private building contracts, mining leases, large agricultural estates to rental properties within the city of Rome.
While many made legitimate fortunes, the system of employing the publicans for tax collection and State services was easily abused.
In the provinces, Roman governors, in league with the publicans, could exploit the provincials to the point of impoverishingthem.
Extortion in the provinces was made possible by the wide latitude granted to a governor who was in charge of the courts, the administration and law enforcement.
The most notorious example involved a governor of Sicily, one Gaius Verres.
Often, in the presence of others, he boasted his plans to rob the Sicilian people during his three-year term as governor. In the first year, he declared, he would take care of himself; in the second, his friends; and the third, he would devote to securing the funds to bribe his jurors in case he was ever brought to trial.
Verres made a deal with the tax farmers to collect 50 percent and not the 10 percent tax on production allowed by law.
The additional revenue was to be shared.
Sicilians who protested were threatened with flogging or were simply beaten on the spot.
At the end of Verres’ term, most of the cities of the province, acting collectively as plaintiff, sued him for the restitution of 100 million denarii.
Fortunately for the Sicilians, they found a politically ambitious and very able advocate, who, in spite of numerous legal obstacles put in his path by Verres’ many friends, prosecuted him in criminal court for extortion.
So overwhelming was the evidence that Verres went into voluntary exile in Marseilles.
The case was unusual in two respects – the level of corruption was extraordinary, and the wayward governor was successfully brought to trial, although he never made restitution, paying a fine of 750000 denarii only.
Dr Michelina Andreucci is a Zimbabwean-Italian researcher, industrial design consultant and a published author in her field.
For views and comments, email: linamanucci@gmail.com