Taxation and the Formation of the Late Roman Social Contract
Level 4 - case-series / case-control
Level 4 by design analogy (historical documentary and papyrological case series analysis).
What was done
The author analyzed late Roman imperial constitutions, literary polemics by Lactantius, and a corpus of 477 Egyptian papyri (including taxpayer petitions) to investigate how Diocletian's fiscal reforms structured state-society relations and the conceptualization of citizenship relative to the Principate.
What was found
The abstract reports that Diocletian's tax policies established a universal hierarchy of fiscal responsibility framed as fair, rational, and legal. Close reading of 477 Egyptian papyri revealed that petitioners accepted fiscal obligations matching census documents and utilized their status as compliant taxpayers to demand imperial legal protection and assert moral standing as ideal citizens. Literary analysis showed that contemporary critiques (such as Lactantius) also operated within this shared communicative framework. The abstract reports no statistical or numerical outcomes beyond the papyri count.
Why it matters
The study shifts the understanding of late Roman taxation from a purely extractive mechanism to an interactive ideological medium through which rulers and subjects actively negotiated civic rights and mutual obligations.
Limits
The documentary sample is geographically limited to Egypt, which may not generalize to the entire Roman Empire. Interpretations depend on the qualitative reading of surviving legal rhetoric and elite texts, which carry inherent survival and reporting biases.
Cited by
- supports Prior to Diocletian's reforms, Italy was exempt from taxation, after which Diocletian imposed regular taxation on Italy.