courtesy of the Tel Abel Beth Maacah excavations. Photo: Tal Rogovsky
Posted on 01/26/2025 10:43:51 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Archaeologists have uncovered a rare Tetrarchic boundary stone at the site of Abel Beth Maacah in northern Israel. Originally marking land borders under Roman Emperor Diocletian's tax reforms, the stone provides insight into ancient land ownership, local settlement patterns, and imperial administrative practices. The discovery also introduces two previously unknown place names, expanding our understanding of the region's historical geography and socio-economic landscape...
The inscription revealed two previously unknown village names, Tirthas and Golgol, which may correspond to ancient sites identified in the 19th-century Survey of Western Palestine. The slab also mentions an imperial surveyor, or "censitor," whose name is attested here for the first time. These markers reflect the sweeping tax reforms initiated by Diocletian in the late third century CE, emphasizing the role of land ownership and settlement structures in the economic landscape of the Roman Near East...
This discovery adds to a unique corpus of over 20 boundary stones concentrated in the northern Hula Valley and surrounding areas. The stones mark a period of heightened administrative control aimed at standardizing taxation and clarifying land ownership. Remarkably, this specific find highlights the interconnectedness of historical geography, economic policies, and local settlement patterns. Scholars believe the abundance of boundary stones in this region underscores the high concentration of small landholders who operated independently of major urban centers. Interestingly, a contemporaneous rabbinic tradition mentions a burden imposed by the emperor Diocletian on this specific area, and apparently also reflects the hardships the tax reform drew on the local population.
(Excerpt) Read more at eurekalert.org ...
I wonder what their tax rates where, and what their “irs” acted like. Probably very similar. It seems humans never change.
Correction for above comment: “were”. Stupid autocorrect is really annoying, even fighting me with this correction.
Bet the original condition of that stone made it hard to recognize as a boundary stone. Kudos to the person who found it and recognized it..
Were any ancient Palestinians found in the land ownership records or on the boundary stones?
From time immemorial, right?
I wonder what their tax rates where, and what their “irs” acted like. Probably very similar. It seems humans never change.
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A. High
B. The Roman Army
Tax stones and death stones, that’s all they ever find.................
I wholeheartedly agree.
Diocletian effectively destroyed the last remnants of the local self-government characteristic of ancient Mediterranean city-states. Any local monumental building stopped and even maintenance as tax revenues were siphoned off to pay the Roman Army.
And the army itself was now divided into two different components: the limitanei who were given land in exchange for military service in frontier garrisons and the "presential" army (the "Army in the Emperor's Presence") who had more cavalry and were kept under the watchful eye of the emperor lest they revolt. This change was mainly driven by the political threat caused by constant army revolts and forced the Roman Empire into a "defense in depth" strategy where any large outside incursion that got past the frontiers would be met by the presential army. If that army were destroyed, however, the Empire was screwed by not having enough mobile forces. This is essentially what happened at Adrianople in 378.
During its run, the Empire generally relied on hired guns to collect taxes, who were, uh, very thorough, because they got a cut, rather than have a bunch of undermotivated lifetime corrupt bureaucrats.
Diocletian ended the empire's Crisis of the 3rd Century, required supplicants to conduct their audience face down with their arms straight over the direction of their heads (this is where the Popes picked up that practice afaik), divided the empire into four parts, set up the first system of succession, then put it to the test by retiring and compelling his eastern colleague into stepping down at the same time.
Lapses into seeing internal rivalries as the more important threat, at bad moments when the external threats were much more serious, turned out to be the biggest problem faced during all of Roman history.
Marius' reforms, while creating an even better professional army, effectively destroyed that deep reserve and imposed an enormous burden on the state in terms of pay. The Emperors, through various confiscations, had acquired enormous properties throughout Italy and the Empire whose revenues (along with booty) were sufficient to pay the army in the early Imperial period.
Creating new legions and paying them became a problem already by Marcus Aurelius' reign when it took 20 years to beat back the Marcomanni. Returning to a citizen army was too much of a threat, as the Senatorial class would then have soldiers to challenge the Emperor. Caracalla made all free men citizens, which eased the recruiting shortage but not the problem of payment. In the end, the old Senatorial government was too unstable to govern a vast Empire but so was the Imperial government, at least not without reducing the effectiveness of the mass of the army on the frontiers, which left the Empire prey to foreign adversaries. It was an even worse problem in the West because it was lower in both population and wealth.
After the defeat of Antony, Augustus cut the Roman army from 56 legions down to 28 (some had been understrength anyway), created the Praetorian Guard for city police force duties and imperial bodyguard work, and created 28 auxiliary legions from among the conquered people.
There was already the issue of a basically fixed Roman population (even after bringing in the ethnic groups of Italy) having to occupy, police, and protect provincial populations and borders, so by Marcus Aurelius’ time the regular legions were drawn from non-Roman groups who (mostly) spoke Latin (or could get by).
The Empire was also struck by a plague. An analogous scourge (probably the same bug) hit China. Unless the barbarians were the carriers and had already worked up a tolerance for it, the plague probably saved the Empire. It emerged subsequent to the earlier war with Parthia, which lost, and was probably struck by the plague at or just before that time.
The border problems probably stemmed from a periodic pulse of Central Asian ethnic groups who spread out in at least three directions on a regular basis, centuries apart, corresponding to natural climate variation. After the Romans’ defeat of the Sarmatians, their equestrian culture resulted in a handy source of auxiliary cavalry, which was moved to Roman Britain. The locals didn’t like them, leaving them beholden to their Roman supervisors. That’s an old tactic, common in ancient empires.
An unintended consequence of Trajan’s long war of conquest of Dacia was the absence of what could have been a buffer state between the Empire and the wild wooly wilderness filled with who knows who. Trajan’s last conquest extended Roman rule to the shores of the Persian gulf. Hadrian was no warrior, and he wanted to kick back and knock off young boys. Roman military decline began with him.
The other problem is that the connection with Roman trade and Roman arms by working as auxiliaries turned smaller, disorganized tribal groups into bigger, more unified tribal kingdoms. The Romans found these useful as allies against enemies further afield and as auxiliaries, but they were also more potent adversaries for the Romans as well.
My point was that the Imperial system developed as a response to the inability of the Senatorial system to govern the Empire without civil war because any one Senator aiming for supremacy would be countered by the remaining Senatorial class. The creation of a professional standing army created a delicate tripod in the governance of the Empire: the Senatorial class, the Emperors, and the Army. Additional military pressure made that tripod unstable and Rome degenerated into a corrupt military dictatorship.
Let's just hope we don't follow the same progression.
The Senate wasn't an elected body, and the reason for two simultaneous (and term-limited) consuls was to give factions veto power over each other. That was the fake republic, and it was rotten to the core (and wasn't great to the infantry).
Had Rome not been repeatedly attacked by various furriners (the Gauls invaded Italy and burned Rome; the Carthaginians encroached, had a large threatening fulltime navy, eventually invaded Italy) it probably wouldn't have evolved an effective military.
A standing army didn't become a reality until after the second triumvirat broke down (Lepidus was a real weasel by the way) and the resulting civil war ended.
Having a permanent supreme chief executive was a necessity for a former city-state that came to control a large territory. Paying attention to the earlier form -- two consuls, one who was imperator with the real power, the other appointed by the imperator -- worked out quite well. Rome's first conquest was Ostia about 500 BC, and the Empire effectively ended with the Turkish conquest of Constantinope in 1453 -- 39 short years before Columbus sailed off.
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