ABSTRACT
Here is an area in which the management of individuals makes a perceptible difference, by maximizing and managing revenue, but also by affecting confidence. Vespasian asserted (perhaps in announcing tax rises) that 4,000m HS were needed to put the state on its feet. Suetonius’ MS reads 40,000m, ‘the largest sum mentioned in antiquity’. If we accept the emendation, which provides a figure within Roman ken, and the estimate of K. Hopkins that annual revenue from taxation was about 800m HS, Vespasian would be claiming that the Empire needed five years’ revenue to restore it, a period that was sometimes allowed for tax remission after earthquake damage. The interpretation that while Nero restored one city (Lugdunum after the fire) he was restoring a thousand is not warranted. Vespasian’s immediate straits are suggested by the small sum – 100 HS each – distributed to troops on the fall of Rome. Even with the tip he added on arrival from Egypt, the total came nowhere near the gross sum promised legionaries by Nymphidius Sabinus on behalf of Galba eighteen months previously: 1,250 HS each, with six times that for the Praetorian Guard. Already in July 69, Vitellius, hard put to find anything for his victorious legions, had devised a special tax on the freedmen of leading Romans. Vespasian’s financial needs were a prime factor in his principate, and that is reflected in the sources: for they provided a prime grievance to the disaffected, however generously he spent on the proper commitments of a Princeps. Monuments set up to two distinguished generals in the reign mentioned that they had brought in more revenue.1
