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Ancient Roman Tax Evasion Trial Unveiled Through Newly Analyzed Papyrus
While perhaps not the most prominent fiscal malfeasance case from antiquity, the severity of this newly examined legal proceeding in Roman Judea is striking. Defendants faced accusations of falsification, financial fraud, and the deceptive sale of enslaved people. Tax avoidance is a practice as ancient as taxation itself, but these particular transgressions were deemed so grave under Roman law that punishments spanned from hefty fines and permanent exile to strenuous labor in salt mines, and in extreme situations, damnatio ad bestias, a public execution involving consumption by wild beasts.
The indictments are detailed in a papyrus scroll, unearthed decades prior in the Judean desert but only recently scrutinized. This document features the prosecutor’s preparation notes and the quickly recorded minutes from a court hearing. According to these antique records, the tax evasion plot involved the fabrication of documents and the unlawful trading and liberation, or freeing, of slaves—all in an attempt to circumvent levies in the far-reaching Roman provinces of Judea and Arabia, a territory roughly encompassing modern-day Israel and Jordan.
Both individuals implicated in tax avoidance were male. One, named Gadalias, was the impoverished offspring of a notary with connections to the local administrative elite. Beyond convictions for extortion and counterfeiting, his record of offenses included banditry, sedition, and repeated failures to attend jury duty at the Roman governor’s court. Gadalias’s accomplice in the scheme was a Saulos, identified as his “friend and collaborator” and believed to be the mastermind behind the operation. Though the ethnicity of the accused is not explicitly mentioned, their Jewish identities are inferred based on their biblical names, Gedaliah and Saul.
This ancient legal drama unfolded during the reign of Hadrian, after the emperor’s visit to the region around 130 A.D. and presumably before 132 A.D. In that year, Simon bar Kochba, a messianic rebel leader, instigated a widespread revolt—the third and final conflict between the Jewish populace and the empire. The uprising was violently suppressed, resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths and the expulsion of most of the remaining Jewish inhabitants from Judea, which Hadrian subsequently renamed Syria Palaestina.
Insights from the Deciphered Scroll
“The papyrus reflects the suspicion with which Roman authorities regarded their Jewish subjects,” stated Anna Dolganov, a historian of the Roman Empire at the Austrian Archaeological Institute, who deciphered the scroll. She pointed out that archaeological evidence suggests coordinated planning for the Bar Kochba revolt. “It is plausible that tax evaders such as Gadalias and Saulos, who demonstrated disregard for Roman order, were involved in these preparations,” Dr. Dolganov suggested.
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In the current edition of Tyche, an antiquity journal published by the University of Vienna, Dr. Dolganov and three Austrian and Israeli colleagues present the court proceedings as a case study. Their paper illuminates how Roman institutions and imperial law could influence the administration of justice in a provincial setting where Roman citizenship was not universally held.
“The document provides scarce and remarkably interesting evidence for the slave trade in this region of the empire,” commented Dennis P. Kehoe, a classicist at Tulane University, who was not part of the study, “as well as the conditions under which Jews may have possessed slaves.”
Following the Papyrus Trail
The circumstances of the papyrus’s discovery remain uncertain, but Dr. Dolganov suggests it was likely found in the 1950s by Bedouin antiquities traders. She speculates the discovery site was Nahal Hever, a steep canyon west of the Dead Sea’s deep fissure. This location is where some Bar Kochba rebels sought refuge from the Romans, hiding in natural caves within the limestone cliffs. In 1960, archaeologists unearthed documents from that era in one of these Jewish hideaways, and further discoveries have been made since.
Unraveling the Ancient Text
Initially misclassified, the fragmented 133-line scroll remained unnoticed in the Israel Antiquities Authority archives until 2014. Hannah Cotton Paltiel, a classicist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, recognized it was written in ancient Greek. Given the document’s complexity and considerable length, a team of scholars was assembled to conduct a comprehensive physical examination and cross-reference names and locations with other historical sources.
Deciphering the papyrus and reconstructing its intricate narrative presented significant obstacles for Dr. Dolganov. “The letters are minute and densely packed, and the Greek employed is highly rhetorical and replete with technical legal terminology,” she explained. Unlike documents such as contracts, there were no standard phrases to facilitate translation. “The fact that we possess only the latter portion, or less, of the original document certainly complicates matters,” Dr. Dolganov added.
Reconstructing the Tax Evasion Scheme
The researchers deduced the tax scheme was designed for secrecy, necessitating meticulous investigative work to piece together the events. “I had to adopt the perspective of the Roman fiscal administration to comprehend the text’s meaning,” she stated. Dr. Dolganov also considered the evasion from the perspective of the accused: To perpetrate tax fraud using the slave trade in the Roman world’s most remote area, what actions would be necessary, and what would render the effort profitable?
This ancient scheme still resonates with contemporary tax law experts. A German lawyer informed Dr. Dolganov that the deceptive practices of Gadalias and Saulos are not dissimilar to common modern tax fraud methods—asset shifting and fictitious transactions. Roman interrogation methods also bear resemblance to Untersuchungshaft—investigative detention—for financial offenses, which involves intimidation and frequently harsh questioning.
Rebels With a Cause?
“Dr. Dolganov has achieved remarkable scholarly feats in deciphering the text’s meaning and its significance for the history of the region and the empire,” noted Brent Shaw, a classicist at Princeton University, unconnected to the project.
Informant’s Role in the Legal Case
The case against Gadalias and Saulos was strengthened by information from an informant who alerted Roman authorities. The text even implies this informant might have been Saulos himself, who betrayed his associate Chaereas to safeguard himself in an impending financial inquiry. Dr. Dolganov suggests the most probable scenario is that Saulos, residing in Judea, orchestrated the false sale of several slaves to Chaereas, who lived in neighboring Arabia.
By selling the slaves across the provincial boundary, they would effectively vanish from Saulos’s recorded assets in Judea. However, as they physically remained with Saulos, the supposed buyer, Chaereas, could choose not to declare them in Arabia. “Thus, on paper, the slaves disappeared in Judea but never arrived in Arabia, becoming invisible to Roman administrators,” Dr. Dolganov explained. “Consequently, all taxes on these slaves could be evaded.”
Tracking Slave Ownership
The empire possessed sophisticated systems for monitoring slave ownership and collecting various taxes, including 4 percent on slave sales and 5 percent on manumissions. “To liberate a slave in the empire, one had to present documentary proof of the slave’s current and previous ownership, which required official registration,” Dr. Dolganov detailed. “Any missing or suspicious documents would prompt investigation by Roman administrators.”
Motives and Trial Outcome
To conceal Saulos’s deceit, Gadalias, the notary’s son, apparently forged the bills of sale and other legal documents. When authorities became aware of the situation, the defendants purportedly made payments to a local city council for protection. At the trial, Gadalias attributed the forgeries to his deceased father, and Saulos blamed the manumission on Chaereas. The papyrus offers no clarity on their motives. “Why the men risked freeing a slave without proper paperwork remains unclear,” Dr. Dolganov stated.
One possibility is that by faking the sale of slaves and then freeing them, Gadalias and Saulos were adhering to a Jewish biblical obligation to liberate enslaved individuals. Alternatively, there might have been profit in capturing individuals—possibly even willing—from beyond the empire’s borders, bringing them in, and then releasing them from “slavery” to become free Romans. Another possibility is that Gadalias and Saulos were simply human traffickers. Dr. Dolganov stressed these alternative storylines are purely speculative, lacking textual support.
She expressed surprise at the prosecutors’ professionalism during the trial. They employed refined rhetorical strategies comparable to Cicero and Quintilian and demonstrated exceptional command of Roman legal terms and concepts in Greek. “This is the Roman Empire’s periphery, and yet we encounter legal practitioners of high caliber proficient in Roman law,” Dr. Dolganov remarked.
The papyrus does not disclose the final verdict. “If the Roman judge concluded they were hardened criminals deserving execution, Gadalias, as a member of the local civic elite, might have received a more lenient death by decapitation,” Dr. Dolganov suggested. “Regardless, almost any fate is preferable to being devoured by leopards.”