An old papyrus reveals how to evade taxes in ancient Rome

A manuscript discovered in the Judean desert contains trial notes on an intricate tax-evasion scheme that involved forgery, fiscal fraud and the false sale of slaves

- FRANZ LIDZ

It may not have been the tax-evasion trial of the century – the second century, that is – but it was of such gravity that the defendants faced charges of forgery, fiscal fraud and the sham sale of slaves. Tax dodging is as old as taxation itself, but these particular offenses were considered so serious under Roman law that penalties ranged from heavy fines and permanent exile to hard labour in the salt mines and, in the worst case, damnatio ad bestias, a public execution in which the condemned were devoured by wild animals.

The allegations are laid out in a papyrus that was discovered decades ago in the Judean desert but only recently analysed; it contains the prosecutor's prep sheet and the hastily drafted minutes from a judicial hearing. According to the ancient notes, the tax-evasion scheme involved the falsification of documents and the illicit sale and manumission, or freeing, of slaves – all to avoid paying duties in the far-flung Roman provinces of Judea and Arabia, a region roughly corresponding to present-day Israel and Jordan.