[SunkenCiv]

courtesy of the Tel Abel Beth Maacah excavations. Photo: Tal Rogovsky

[mairdie]

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..

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Were any ancient Palestinians found in the land ownership records or on the boundary stones?

[Red Badger]

Tax stones and death stones, that’s all they ever find.................

[pierrem15]

The closest contemporary analogy to Diocletian's "tax reforms" would be if the Federal government came in and seized control of all state & local taxes, including property taxes, and made your local officials personally responsible for the amount of taxes delivered to the Feds: any shortfall would come out of their hides.

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.