More on public and private Roman accounting history

Abstract

This narrative aims to provide an overview of public and private accounting of the ancient Roman empire, by covering a relatively unstudied period from the Roman Republic to the early Principate. Scattered references are accessed in essential Roman literary sources such as Cicero, Livy and others, supplemented by legal sources and contributions from eminent Roman historians such as Badian and Mommsen. The narrative for public accounting covers the organisation and role that scribae quaestori of the aerarium played in state accounting during the Republic. Specific attention is also given to the state fiscal administration reforms of Augustus that created a departmentalised civil service overseeing the imperial fiscus. The narrative for private accounting examines selected opinions on private law from Gaius Institutes and Digesta of Justinian to demonstrate the sophistication of Roman accounting practices, focusing on obligation by book entry. The narrative concludes with a detailed examination of the modern debate over the analysis that Columella provides for viticulture profitability.

Among other items, the will of the testator for the freedman states: ‘if he has done any business for me in his lifetime, I do not demand an accounting from him for this’. The question is whether the papers on which the accounts are recorded, as well as any sums remaining according to receipts and expenses, should be returned to the heirs. ¹ (Digesta 34.3.31.1 (530–533 CE))y

Introduction

Scholarly study of ancient accounting history faces numerous challenges. Perhaps the most daunting are critiques akin to Stevelinck (1985: 1) that ‘there is little of interest to the present-day accountant in the study of primitive and obsolete accounting practices’. Another challenge is the limited and ‘often so one-sided’ primary sources. For Roman history, reference to primary sources is typically a misnomer as almost all original Roman sources have not survived, leaving faded inscriptions, text fragments, and not completely legible, often corrupted, copies of copies of some original text. The impressive work of nineteenth-century philologists restoring the original Latin texts was often challenging due to the Roman and medieval habit of correcting an older source or copy, creating differences between available archetypes. In turn, the vast literature of German, English, French and Italian secondary sources is rife with disagreements between Latinists, philologists and Roman historians over context, interpretation and translation of texts that typically focus on Roman military and political events, providing relatively limited detail on activities relevant to accounting historians. ² Against this backdrop, this article aims to provide insight into public and private Roman accounting from the beginnings of the Republic to the early Principate, a period of ancient accounting history that has received little scholarly examination.

It is commonplace in accounting history to focus on financial records, accounting statements, journals, ledgers and the like to recreate and analyse accounting methods and practices associated with a previous era, event or specific accounting firm or accountant. Consequently, the limited supply of such evidence from the Romans, especially during the Kingdom and Republican periods, has resulted in a relative absence of attention by accounting historians to Roman accounting practices compared to Egyptian and Mesopotamian civilisations where primary sources are less limited, such as Carmona and Ezzamel (2007), Ezzamel (2002a, 2002b, 2009), Grier (1932), Keister (1963), Mattessich (1998), Mouck (2004), Nissen et al. (1993), Schmandt-Besserat (1992), Snell (1982) and Vollmers (2009). Despite the lack of conventional sources of historical evidence, inferences about the social status and organisation of accountants, as well as accounting method and practice, can be gleaned from alternative sources. The little that is known about the period from the early to middle Republic – based largely on literary contributions by Livy (59 BCE–17 CE), Dionysius of Halicarnassus (circa 60–7 BCE) and Polybius (circa 200–117 BCE) – provide useful context for exploring the more accessible accounting history of the middle to late Republic available in various offerings from the Cicero (106–143 BCE) corpus, supplemented by detail from Plutarch (circa 45–120 CE) about Cato the Younger (95–46 BCE), and evidence about the organisation of accountants (scribae) surveyed in Badian (1989).

The period from the late Republic to the Principate (circa 133 BCE–284 CE) is characterised by increasing availability of sources relevant to accounting method and practice sufficient to support a secondary, albeit modest, literature on Roman accounting during the Empire (27 BCE–476 CE). With one significant exception, this literature has focused on state accounting practices related to taxation and administrative control. In contrast, the following narrative also considers aspects of the essential legal texts – Institutiones (Institutes) of Gaius (circa mid-second century CE) and, especially, Digesta (Digest) of Justinian (530–533 CE) – to demonstrate sophistication in the method and practice of private Roman accounting. Specific attention is dedicated to accounting practice associated with litterarum obligatio [obligation by book-entry]. This narrative posits that private Roman accounting methods were sophisticated, seemingly at variance with various claims in the secondary literature that the form and content of primitive Roman private accounting led to economically irrational decisions. Many such claims arise from dissecting the analysis in Columella De Res Rustica [On Agriculture] (3.3.7–15) (translated by Ash 1948, 1960), demonstrating the profitability of viticulture. Closer inspection of this source reveals the importance of social critique to Columella, rather than demonstrating the rationality of decisions based on Roman private accounting for agricultural estates.

Reflections on Roman accounting history

Why study history, especially ancient history, if the present-day context is so different? The ‘irrelevance of ancient accounting’ critique of Stevelinck (1985), ten Have (1976) and others can be addressed in various ways. One approach is an appeal to the general perspective of Hobsbawm (1999), where ‘the purpose of history is to provide knowledge about patterns and mechanisms inherent in past societal changes and from which contemporary plans and actions can be contemplated’ (Lee, 2013: 142). Unfortunately, this is too general to have specific relevance to ancient accounting history. More helpful is Macve (2002: 453), where the role of accounting history is identified with ‘reflecting and shaping not only business and management practice, but also economic and social organization more generally’. For example, accounting method and practice is relevant to the primitivist versus modernist debate over whether there was a market economy in ancient times. Ancient history also provides insights into the role of accounting in the planning and control of commercial and state activities, as illustrated by Macve (1985), where tax accounting methods in the largely agrarian, pre-industrial Roman economy are explored.

A central concern in the evolution of ancient accounting is public finance: determining methods for assessing taxes; keeping track of state receipts and disbursements; and providing information needed to exercise administrative control. Significantly, Baker (2013) argues that accounting practices used in the administration of the Byzantine Empire during the fourth to sixth centuries CE were sufficiently well developed to serve the administrative needs of a vast empire extending over a territory throughout the Mediterranean world and most of southern Europe. This begs the question: how did state accounting practice during the later Empire differ from the Republic and early Principate? That there was a substantive evolution of state accounting practice from the Republic to the early Principate is well known. Due to the inability of the early first century CE Imperial Roman state to raise sufficient funds, the personal accounts of Augustus (27 BCE–14 CE) gradually became co-mingled with state funds leading to the emergence of the fiscus, meaning the imperial treasury (patrimonium), and a transition in the institutional role and importance of the personal accountant of the emperor – the a rationabus – responsible for the emperor's finances. This marked an essential turning point from the Republican period, where state funds were associated with the aerarium, and fiscus was an impersonal term referring to ‘a basket where money was kept’ (Brunt, 1966).

Oldroyd (1995) considers the role of accounting in financial planning for Roman public expenditure and the associated implications for the imperial monetary system during the first century CE. Similar to Baker (2013), Oldroyd (1995) finds sufficient grounds to infer ‘the scope of the accounting information at the emperor's disposal … suggests that its purpose encompassed planning and decision-making’ (Oldroyd, 1995: 124) with a rationabus in ‘control of the fiscal administration throughout the whole empire’ (Berger, 1953: 338). This positive perception of Roman public accounting during the early Principate (27 BCE–284 CE) seemingly stands in contrast to de Ste. Croix (1956, 1981: 114) and others who argue that the absence of a Roman income tax was due to the inadequacy of archaic Roman accounting to develop a method for determining income. ³ Imposing an income tax requires some methods of determining income to inform the legislation empowering the state to levy such a tax. As in modern tax accounting, where the treatment of depreciation, cost basis, realisation of capital gains, and the like are determined by the legalities of the tax code, this study investigates to what extent Roman public and private accounting was an artefact of the legal environment. Giving due attention to political and economic considerations, does closer inspection of essential Roman legal context lead to an interpretation of Roman accounting as both complex and sophisticated, albeit designed for a decidedly different set of social circumstances?

In comparison to contributions concerned with Roman accounting in the realm of state financial administration, the bulk of contributions related to accounting for private interests has been concerned with assessing whether the rudimentary character of Roman accounting impinged on the ability to make rational financial and commercial decisions (Carandini, 1983; Macve, 1985; Mickwitz, 1937). For example, Abatino et al. (2011: 385) accept the perception that Roman private accounting was ‘primitive’ but maintained the de facto partition between personal and business assets in slave-run businesses endowed in potestate with peculium (donation) that could function effectively ‘even without modern accounting techniques’. Such perceptions appear incongruent with substantive legal and literary evidence that accounting played a significant role in private affairs throughout Roman history. However, the task of assembling evidence from available sources for the Republic and early Principate to demonstrate the sophistication of Roman accounting practice and methods employed in private affairs has not been undertaken yet. The following narrative aims to provide some evidence on the complex and sophisticated accounting practices arising in private Roman activities during the Republic and early Principate.

Absence of accounting records

In 1915, there was the discovery in Egypt of a tomb containing over sixty thousand papyri dating from the mid-third century BCE, documenting the accounts of Zenon, a Carian Greek, manager (oeconome) for the estate of Apollonius, the financial minister of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, in the ancient city of Philadelphia (Grier, 1932). This discovery seems incongruent with the almost complete absence of any such accounting records from the Roman Republic. As numerous Roman literary, legal, archaeological and epigraphic sources indicate, accounts were kept for family estates, the duties of public officials, banking activities and the like. Failure of such accounts to have survived requires explanation. In addition to idiosyncrasies associated with Roman archiving practice, including responsibility for retaining records, the physical media for recording accounts, combined with the level of literacy and importance of oral communication, contributed to a situation detrimental to the survivability of records relevant to accounting history. In addition, where state records were concerned, great fires in 83 BCE and 69 CE on the Capitoline Hill destroyed many state documents, including epigraphs and other important documents, such as the property lists prepared by the censors at the census, leaving only Greek translations stored in Greek archives as the source of many surviving records of treaties (Culham, 1991: 122–123). For Vespasian (Lives: 8, translated by Thomson, 1889), Suetonius estimated 3,000 documents engraved in bronze were lost in the fire of 69 CE alone.

Perhaps, the easiest explanation for the failure of Roman accounting documents from the Republic to survive is the widespread use of wax writing tablets, effectively thick wooden tablets hollowed to admit wax on which writing was recorded using a metal stylus or, in some cases, ink. Such tablets could be bound together into a codex. In provinces where wood was plentiful, thinner wooden leaf tablets using ink writing were also commonly used, see Bowman and Thomas (1983). Though examples of such items have been obtained at archaeological digs, except in unusual cases the wax has long since disintegrated, leaving only the wooden frame. Occasionally, writing where the stylus penetrated the wax to leave a faint impression in the wood has survived. ⁴ The Sumerian, Assyrian and Babylonian practice of using a stylus on clay tablets and the Egyptian practice of using papyrus with ink resulted in more durable documents. Though papyrus, parchment such as vellum and ostraca were available to the Romans during the Republic, these media were substantially more expensive for most purposes of recording the accounts, see Harris (1989: 193–196). Following the Roman conquest of Egypt (30 BCE), the widespread use of papyrus in that region has provided details of state financial administration in Roman Egypt, see Bowman (1976), Macmullen (1962) and Rathbone (1993). Whatever the media, the practice of repurposing previous documents was both possible and common, further contributing to the lack of survivability.

Perhaps more significant than the media used to record the accounts was the Roman attitude toward archiving. Modern scholars often refer to the aerarium as an archive for state documents (tabulae publicae) and other records, such as the accounts consuls and other important personages were required to submit upon completion of duties. However,

There are no instances in which Romans of the Republic or early Empire used archium or some related Greek-based term to refer to any site in Rome, but the modern habit of referring to these structures as archives has led us to assume that modern archival practices such as deposition, retrieval, and consultation of documents were routine. (Culham, 1989: 101)

The physical dimensions of the aerarium appear to have been those of a small, boxy temple, incompatible with large-scale document storage, as was the case, say, for important Greek temple archives. If the aerarium did not function as the state archive in the modern sense, this implies that responsibility for retaining records relevant to accounting history lay elsewhere. ⁵ In a society characterised by oral communication, where literacy was largely the preserve of the elite, the keeping of records typically fell largely upon those responsible for preparation. As reflected in Digesta (34.3.31.1) and in other legal sources, this responsibility typically fell on the slave or freedman (dispensator, ratiocinator) tasked with running family estates, the scribae or tabularius at the aerarium, the actores of the rich noble moneylenders (Andreau, 2008) and the like. ⁶ Hence, responsibility for the preservation of accounts was often connected to those of lower social status, with limited incentive or ability to ensure preservation for future generations. ⁷

The census and Republican social order

Understanding the evolution of social order over the three conventionally identified periods of Roman history – the Kingdom (circa 753–circa 509 BCE), the Republic (circa 509–27 BCE) and the Empire (27 BCE–476 CE) – has some usefulness for accounting history. Available sources for the Kingdom – especially, Polybius Histories, Dionysius of Halicarnassus Antiquitates Romanae (Roman Antiquities), and Livy Ab Urbe Condita (From the founding of the city translations by Spillan (1849) and Spillan and Edmonds (1849)) – were authored by individuals who lived centuries after the Kingdom, making it difficult to separate myth from reality. With this in mind, the sources inferentially reveal the rudimentary character of state accounting based on an extension of household management by the monarch derived from the clan (gente) social structure and the central role of the pater familias (father). ⁸ Until the commencement of minting pre-denarius silver coinage circa 278–279 BCE, Roman money was a mixture of bronze weight, copper and, to a lesser extent, some mostly Greek foreign issues, indicating that accounting during the Kingdom and early Republic lacked substantive monetisation (Howgego, 1992; Poitras, 2021). This background is essential for interpreting an important, albeit neglected, event in Roman accounting history: the introduction of the census presumably during the reign (circa 578–535) of the sixth Roman king, Servius Tullius.

The census was an essential component of reforms that shifted political control from the legislative assembly – Comitia Curiata – held by the aristocratic patricians to the Comitia Centuriata based on a military structure that admitted voting by patricians and plebians. The initial census apparently featured Servius, the executive magistrate, as the censor, responsible for sorting male Roman citizens into classes based on status, age and wealth. Frank (1930) doubts census records from the regal period were accurately preserved, and Gauthier (2019: 287–278) observes: it is ‘likely that Livy and Dionysus actually projected a system existing at some time in the middle/late Republic back to the early days of Rome’. ⁹ In any event, the sources claim the census commenced in 508 BCE, the year following the end of the monarchy, when the king was supplanted by two consuls, elected by the Comitia Centuriata. The consuls served the role of censor until the censorship was created, possibly as early as 443 BCE or as late as 430 BCE (Cram, 1940). ¹⁰ ‘According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, every Roman had to take an oath once in five years before the censors that his bookkeeping was honest and accurate’ (Poste, 1904: 362). Consistent with the limited extent of literacy and numeracy during the Kingdom and early Republic, such oaths were based on verbal statements, not physical bookkeeping records (Harris, 1989: 150). Due to complications arising from the extension of Roman citizenship to other parts of Italy, and the civil conflicts of the late Republic, the census requirement had largely ‘broken down’ by the end of the Republic (Astin, 1990; Buckland, 1921: 74; Rathbone, 1993: 94). Though for different purposes, the census was revived and extended to the provinces under Augustus (Wiseman, 1969). ¹¹

The following census classifications applicable during the Republic are provided by Dionysius and Livy (Frank, 1930: 317):

18 centuries of knights (equites) [1800 men]

80 centuries, 1st class (8000), property, 100,000 asses (= 40,000 sestertii)

20 centuries, 2nd class (2000), property, 75,000 asses (= 30,000 sestertii)

20 centuries, 3rd class (2000), property, 50,000 asses (=20,000 sestertii)

20 centuries, 4th class (2000), property, 25,000 asses (=10,000 sestertii)

30 centuries, 5th class (3000), property, 12,500 asses (= 5,000 sestertii)

5 centuries of fabri, musicians, and supernumeraries.

Polybius affirms the census classifications for the first and fifth classes but is silent on the others. The monetary values are appropriate for the third century BCE (circa 268): sestertius (pl. sestertii) refers to a one-quarter of a denarius coin; the aes grave (pl. asses) was a heavy bronze cast coin from the same era; two and one-half asses equal one sestertius. Initially important for raising both the army and state revenues, the property requirement in the census classification played a key role in revising membership of the Senate (lectio senatus), eligibility for magistery positions and, especially, allocation to the voting centuries where citizens of the ‘first class had more centuries than all the rest of the citizenry that formed the great majority of the population’. In addition, the property classes established a basis for the tributum, an extraordinary tax imposed on the adsidui – those eligible for military service. Those Roman citizens with property less than the fifth class – the proletarii – lacked voting rights in the Centuriate assembly and were only subject to military duties in special circumstances. With the elimination of the tributum in 167 BCE, ‘the fiscal purpose of the census disappeared and with it much of the importance attached to the old census classes’ (Gauthier, 2019: 287, 294).

Methods used to assess the property classification played a key role in the social order and administration of the Roman state. During the early Republic, the property classification was essential to sustaining hoplite military tactics at a time when it was the duty of the adsidui to individually purchase armor, weapons and shields. Consistent with the tradition of noblemen to play ‘the most prominent part in battle’, seeking to assert ‘class-sense’ and earn distinction, Nilsson (1929: 6) determined ‘full hoplite-armor and weapons were prescribed for the first class’. Prior to monetisation: ‘what sums, reckoned in copper, cattle, or land, these figures actually represent’ are not known, though it is likely that ‘amounts of wheat will approximately represent the relative property qualifications of the five classes when the army was reformed’ (circa 444) (Frank, 1930: 319). This process of monetisation likely commenced with the Lex Aternia Tarpeia (454 BCE), ‘where a fixed relation between the value of cattle and a pound of copper was established’ (Latte, 1936: 32). However, it was not until the two-ounce bronze aes and the heavy silver denarius coinages were introduced, in 268/269, that monetisation of census classifications reached fulfilment.

Fiscal administration and the quaestor

The commencement of the Republican census in 508 BCE, when the consuls served as censors, coincides with the construction of the temple of Saturn in 497 BCE. Although the precise date is unknown, it is logical to locate at that point also the appointment of the quaestores aerarii (by the consuls), the magistrates responsible for the supervision of the Roman treasury and archives, the aerarium, located at the temple of Saturn. ¹² Tacitus Annales (11.22) (translation by Brodribb, 1942) reveals that two quaestores were regularly elected by the Tribal Assembly as early as 447 BCE, with the number increasing to four in 421 BCE according to Livy (Frank, 1930). During the Republic, quaestores were responsible for overseeing a range of important state functions including supervising agreements with the societates of contractors for public works (opera publica) and with the publicani involved in tax-farming. ¹³ Quaestores were also responsible for overseeing revenue collection and the disbursement of payments to higher level magistrates, especially the consuls. Though junior in the ranking of magistrate positions – quaestores did not qualify for imperium, the authority to conduct military campaigns associated with consuls and praetores – during the Republic, it was conventional for those aspiring to the highest offices to serve a term as quaestor.

It is generally accepted that four quaestores were in place from 421 BCE with plebeians gaining access through election ‘to the first regular magistry’ circa 409 BCE (Pina Polo and Fernandez, 2019: 24): two were consular – quaestores classici – and two were quaestores urbanii, or else quaestores aerarii located in Rome. To accommodate the demands of increasing territorial expansion during the middle Republic, the number of quaestores classici was increased starting in 267 BCE, likely by four, though the number and dating of the specific increase are unclear (Prag, 2014). An important function of consular quaestores classici involved accompanying army commanders on military expeditions to administer the finances of military units. During the middle Republic, the function of quaestores classici ‘expanded to being stationed in Italian towns to collect revenues and, possibly, performing administrative functions needed to support the Roman navy and, in the case of the quaestor stationed at Ostia, functions necessary to Rome's grain supply’ (Harris, 1976: 92). By 197 BCE, the number of quaestores was raised to ten and quaestores provinciales appear with responsibility to supervise financial administration in the provinces and assist the provincial governors. Some smaller provinces had quaestores for governors. Under Sulla (Roman general and statesman) in 81 BCE, the number of quaestores was raised to 20.

The sources provide various examples of quaestor duties relevant to accounting. For example, Polybius (Book X, 17) describes Roman practice in accounting for booty and prisoners, involving craftsmen seized following conquest of a city in Carthaginian Iberia: ‘The Roman commander told the craftsmen that they were for the present prisoners of Rome … He then bade them go get their names enrolled in the office of the Quaestor’. An essential source on the role of the quaestor is provided by Cicero, In Verrem II [Second Pleadings Against Verres] (Gardner (translation), 1958), describing some details of the state accounting process required for magistrates returning from the provinces. Elected as quaestor provincia, in 76 BCE and seconded to Sicily, Cicero would have been familiar with accounting practices related to oversight of financial administration in that region, an important supplier of grain for Rome. The Sicily connection provides essential context for the case that launched the career of Cicero as an orator at the law courts and produced, arguably, the most significant of the Cicero orations: In Verrem. This work is about the prosecution, in 70 BCE, of the propraetor (governor) of Sicily (73-71), Gaius Verres, on a range of misconduct charges, including pervasive extortion, bribery, witness intimidation, theft and corruption. In Verrem is a collection starting with the oration at trial that resulted in the exile of Verres. In addition, there are also five ‘second pleadings’ prepared for the case but not presented at trial, as the first oration was sufficient for Verres to accept defeat and go into voluntary exile.

The first of the second pleadings (Verrem II.1.38–9) has material relevant to Roman state accounting – a description of auditing practice for the quaestores provinciales. ¹⁴ Such magistrates were expected to render accounts to the aerarium upon completion of a term for comparison with other magistrates, such as the praetores or governors. Referring to Verres's service as governor of Sicily, Cicero states:

The accounts of his praetorship, which, according to the decree of the senate, he ought to have rendered immediately on leaving office, he has not rendered to this very day. He said that he was waiting for the quaestors to appear in the senate; just as if a praetor could not give in his accounts without the quaestor, in the same way as the quaestor does without the praetor … But now the quaestors have arrived some time. Why have you not rendered them now?

Cicero also references the accounting of Verres when serving as a quaestor (circa 80 BCE) under Dolabella, governor of Cilicia. Suspected of the crimes for which Dolabella was exiled, based on evidence given by Verres, Cicero proceeds ‘without any guide, article by article as we can’ to audit the accounts of the quaestor Verres. For example, ‘the sum which Dolabella entered to Verres as having been received from him, is less than the sum which Verres has entered as having been paid to him by four hundred and thirty-five thousand [sestertii]’. Cicero provides ample evidence where ‘you, most O incorruptible man, had quite a different entry in your account-books’. This seems to indicate that a form of litterarum obligatio was used, involving entry into both account books (nomina transcriptitia) for purposes of public accounting.

Who were the public accountants?

An operative question for accounting history associated with the quaestores aerarii is: who were the public accountants? The search for an answer to this question is severely hampered by the one-sided character of Roman sources that emphasise activities of the heroic honorific elite producing, as Purcell (1983: 126) observes, a perception of ‘Roman society … as a senatorial and equestrian upper-class, far below which comes the teeming mob of ingenui, peregrini, liberti, and servi’. Though plebians did increasingly gain access to magistery positions during the Republic, such elected positions were primarily the preserve of patricians. In this system, ‘offices were normally held for brief and irregular terms, and most officers held few posts in the course of their career’. In a classic text on the later Empire, Jones (1964: 383) concluded the administrative system ‘cannot have been efficient’. A similar assessment likely applies to the Republic and Principate following Augustus. Whether the Senate or the emperor made the appointment, the post of quaestor aerarium was normally regarded as a dignitas or honor, and only rarely administratio. Mommsen (1854) identifies 27 years as the minimum age for a pre-Sullan quaestor, subject to prior mandatory military service of 10 years. The minimum age was raised to 30 by Sulla. ¹⁵

With due recognition to the managers (dispensatores, vilici) of Roman estates and household bookkeepers managing family affairs or assembling evidence for census classification, the history of Roman accountants begins with the public accounting of scribae supervised by quaestores aerarii, responsible for overseeing a range of activities that required accounting skill. Plutarch Lives (Perrin (translation), 1959, Cato the Younger: XVI–XIX) provides a detailed description of quaestor aerarium duties (circa 69 BCE). Based on the experience of and process for selecting a quaestor aerarium it is dubious to presume those elected had the detailed accounting expertise required. As such, upon inauguration the quaestores aerarii were expected to ‘receive administrative orientation from treasury staff’ (Pina Polo and Fernandez, 2019). To facilitate this task, incoming quaestores were assigned scribae quaestori and other apparitores. ¹⁶ Though little is known about specific accounting practices at the aerarium during the Republic, the search for Roman public accountants leads to the scribae. Recognising ‘the careful division of scribae by magistracies’ (Badian, 1989: 597), these aerarium officials almost certainly became responsible, de facto, for the accounting functions of the aerarium. The scribae quaestori were organised in three decurae which served in annual rotation for the quaestor (Jones, 1949: 39; Millar, 1964: 34). In addition to the scribae, based on evidence from inscriptions, Millar (1964) identifies viatores (messengers), a tabularius (archivist) and a transcribendas as other apparitores of the aerarium. A quaestor would also be accompanied by a praecone (herald; auctioneer) and lictores (bodyguards). ¹⁷

Consistent with the one-sided character of Roman sources, the ‘scribae of the Roman Republic are not well documented and therefore, although a socially very interesting class, have been rather neglected in modern scholarship’ (Badian, 1989: 582). ¹⁸ The scribe appears in various guises in ancient history, including Sumerian scribes using styli to produce cuneiform tablets, Jewish scribes ‘copying and recopying’ Old Testament books, and literate Greek slaves or freedmen performing scribal duties such as bookkeeping, copying documents and producing letters for a Roman estate. An essential subtext in the eventual emergence of the scribae quaestori is the class struggle for the control of knowledge and social status between the largely illiterate plebians – the class from which the ordo scribarum emerged – and the educated and propertied senatorial and equestrian class of patricians. The first scriba to appear in the Roman sources to challenge ‘the aristocratic monopoly of knowledge’, such as religious figures, poetae (poets) or librarii (clerks), was the ‘plebian hero’ Annus Flavius (Purcell, 2001: 635–636), at the end of the fourth century.

Flavius begins an era where scribae became ‘paragons of the problematic’ for the patrician elite seeking to prevent the upward social mobility of the plebians and controlling information in the face of increasing literacy. Initially, scribae selection was down to the patronage of a magistrate, with appearance of an ordo with decuria taking form circa 181 BCE. The Republican Roman scribae, admitted to the ordo scribarum, rose to a unique elevated status (Badian, 1989: 589):

the spirit of the old collegium seems to have survived after the reorganization [of these scribae] into decuriae for each office. When the ordo is referred to, it is always as a unit. Yet the power of the ordo, which was clearly considerable – remarkably so, for a body of small size and consisting of men of humble origin – must have been due to the scribae quaestorii. It was they who, in fruitful collaboration with the magistrates and promagistrates to whom they were attached, could hope to advance to equestrian dignity – and who, in the absence of such collaboration, might hold their superior's fate in their hands.

With entry restricted to freeborn citizens, the highest class of the ordo – members of the decuriae of the scribae quaestori – aimed for patronage, sufficient to obtain the gold ring and entry to the ordo equester, based on service, to a magistrate patron.

In Lives (Perrin (translation), 1959: XVI–XIX) Plutarch provides a useful description of the relationship between the quaestor and the scribae quaestori. Unlike a typical quaestor, Cato the Younger ‘would not become a candidate … until he had read the laws relating to the quaestorship, learned all the details of the office from those who had had experience in it, and formed a general idea of its power and scope’. Plutarch observes that the scribae ‘received as their superior officers young men whose inexperience and ignorance made it really needful that others should teach and tutor them, they would not surrender any power to such superiors, but were superiors themselves’. Once appointed, Cato aggravated treasury staff by moving to make a ‘great change to the assistants and clerks’ in the aerarium despite the staff being ‘fully conversant with the public accounts and the laws relative thereto’. Though Plutarch maintains Cato uncovered corrupt dealings on the part of some scribae and, in 65 BCE, he acted to remove and (in one case) to prosecute those involved, this may also have been cover for patronage to scribae favoured by Cato. In recent scholarship, ‘scribae are portrayed as corrupt, professionally unfit owners of sinecures, who were mainly interested in the furthering of their own financial and social standing’ (Hartmann, 2020: 11). This interpretation supports the perception conveyed by Plutarch that Cato was justified in seeking removal. Interference with the annual decuriae rotation would surely have been aggravating to the ordo. Plutarch reveals that Cato, after his term as quaestor, continued to send slaves to copy financial documents at the aerarium.

The fiscal reforms of Augustus

Based on epigraphic and fragmentary literary sources, the transition from Roman Republic to Empire that commences with the so-called first settlement of 27 BCE benchmarks an ebbing of the role of quaestor, in general, and the quaestores aerarii, specifically. Dio (XLIII: 47, translated by Foster, 1905) reports that in 45 BCE Caesar appointed 40 quaestores to be sent to the provinces, but two aediles – the next highest rank of magistrate – were given responsibility for ‘management of the public treasuries’. Various sources report that, in 29 BCE, Octavian transitioned to two Praefecti of praetorian rank for the position, an arrangement maintained until 44 CE. ¹⁹ The interim covers the transition of the de facto state treasury, the aerarium, to include the fiscus of the emperor, as described by Frank (1933) and Oldroyd (1995) and enumerated in the Res Gestae (15, 17) of Augustus. However, while it is tempting to claim these developments resulted in the elevation of the emperor's personal accountant – the a rationabus – to control ‘the fiscal administration throughout the whole empire’ (Berger, 1953: 338), Brunt (1966) details a hybrid fiscal administration under Augustus where the Senate – previously the ultimate authority for fiscal administration due to oversight control of the aerarium – became a ‘co-ordinate authority’ with the emperor. ²⁰

The Roman civil service responsible for state accounting underwent dramatic, almost revolutionary, change under Augustus to accommodate the assumption of lucrative state assets and revenue streams by the emperor (Macmullen, 1962, 1959; Poitras and Geranio, 2016). The decentralisation of authority from Rome to the provincial governors by Augustus was accompanied by a gradual restructuring of the imperial civil service to be ‘made up of those who were below equestrian rank and who were almost entirely the emperor's freedmen and slaves – the Familia Caesaris’ (Weaver, 1972: 2). Starting with Augustus:

administrative staff … employed in a wide variety of departments [handled] all aspects of the receipt and payment of funds under the emperor's control, as well as many concerned with public services such as aqueducts, libraries, the post, roads, public works and buildings, and Imperial enterprises such as mines, marble quarries, and the mint. (Weaver, 1972: 7)

New categories of senior administrative staff responsible for state accounting functions were introduced. In the early Principate, below the a rationabus of the emperor were the procuratores responsible for administering ‘the emperor's estates, villas and other property in Italy and elsewhere throughout the empire [and serving] in the smaller departments in Rome as well as in all the main administrative centres in the provinces’. A procurator could be a sole head or, alternatively, serve with an eques. Promotion to procurator involved service as a senior tabularius, especially tabularius a rationabus or tabularius provincia. ²¹ Reliance on the slaves and freemen of the familia Caesaris to populate the civil service provided for continuity following the death of the emperor.

In contrast to the aerarium officials under the Republic, it was possible for Augustus to have general accounts for the state prepared, a process not practical during the Republic. Whether the preparation of aggregated state accounts intended for purposes of fiscal planning and decision-making was regular practice in the departmentalised Augustan civil service, as claimed by Oldroyd (1995), or not, is unknown. Partial inferences on this issue can be drawn from what Dio, Tacitus and Suetonius report about ‘several documents written by the emperor which were read September 14 CE in the Senate after his death’ – the Res Gestae Divi Augusti – that included a ‘breviary listing imperial revenues and military disposition’ (Ober, 1982: 306). Suetonius Divus Augustus (99 CE) describes the now lost breviary as:

a concise account of the state of the empire; the number of troops enrolled, what money there was in the treasury, the revenue, and arrears of taxes; to which were added the names of the freedmen and slaves from whom the several accounts might be taken.

Tacitus Annales (1.11) reports: ‘All these details Augustus had written with his own hand’. This vaguely suggests that the procedures of departmentalised state accounting did not typically result in aggregated accounts for purposes of the emperor exercising administrative control of planning and budgeting for imperial activities throughout the empire.

Further evidence of state accounting practice under the Empire is provided by one of the three, possibly four, documents provided to the Senate upon the death of Augustus. The Res Gestae Divi Augusti was an autobiographical text detailing the achievements of Augustus that was required to be inscribed on two columns at the Mausoleum of Augustus in Rome. Fortunately, Mommsen (1854) was able to assemble available inscription fragments sufficient to recreate the full epigraph. In addition to recounting military and political achievements, there is a detailed accounting of imperial expenditures, for example, Res Gestae (15 CE): ‘I gave to 320,000 of the city plebs 60 denarii apiece. In the colonies of my soldiers, as consul for the fifth time, I gave 1,000 [sestertii] to each man from the spoils of war; about 120,000 men in the colonies received this triumphal largesse’. In combination with literary evidence about imperial revenues detailed in the breviary, it is difficult to conclude more than an ex post revenue and expenditure accounting process under Augustus. Use of accounting data for ex ante fiscal administration control is speculative, at best. The bountiful combination of accumulated booty with revenue windfall from the assumption of state assets plus other revenue streams likely facilitated magnanimous imperial expenditures. The upshot was fiscal control deficiencies of subsequent emperors during the Principate, leading to currency debasement under Nero and, ultimately, to the Crisis of the Third Century. ²²

Private accounting: Legal and literary sources

Much of what is known about Roman private accounting practices originates from legal and literary sources. The two most important legal sources – Institutiones (Institutes) (Gordon and Robinson (translation), 1988) of Gaius (circa mid-second century CE) and, especially, Digesta (Digest) (Watson (translation), 1985) of Justinian (530–533 CE) – appear well after the death of Augustus. However, this dating does not mean that accounting-related legal practices and opinions detailed in these sources did not apply earlier. ²³ Absent a transformational political revolution, change in legal practice for commercial and other private activities is invariably gradual. The influence on the Digesta of opinions by earlier jurists, such as Labeo (circa 50 BCE–circa 10 CE) is sometimes explicit, such as Digest (50.16.9) on contracts and (2.14.2) on agreements. Similarly, Institutes (3.133) refers to the important early Principate jurist Sabinus (c. first half of the first century CE). ²⁴ About 40 per cent of the Digesta is from works by Ulpian (c. 170–228 CE), mostly from the early third century CE. The relevance of accounting stretches to the beginnings of Roman law. In addition to possible bookkeeping requirements associated with the census, the third tablet of the Twelve Tables (circa 449 BCE?) – the foundation of Roman law that merged older patrician and plebian codes – imposed potentially severe penalties for failure to repay a debt, indicating that some form of accounting was conducted to establish the debt details such as principal amount, payments and the like, though the precise methods are unknown. ²⁵ In addition to formal legal opinions, there is also scattered reference to accounting practice in literary sources from the late Republic and early Principate, especially the Cicero corpus, Columella De Re Rustica (On Agriculture) (Ash, 1948, 1960) and Tacitus Annales.

With some exceptions, the Roman legal context relevant to accounting is concerned with the private law. ²⁶ Though this is well known, the implications are often underdeveloped. It is an oddity that whereas earlier Roman accounting historians viewed ‘the Romans, [as] a nation of bookkeepers’ (Roby, 1902: 279) with ‘an elaborate system of keeping accounts’ (Murray, 1930: 125) possessed with ‘the genius of administration as well as of jurisprudence’ (Boyd, 1905: 29), more recent historians find ‘Roman landowners’ who had ‘a primitive and inadequate accounting system’ that inhibited ‘economic rationality’, see de Ste. Croix (1956), Finley (1999: 110–1) and Macve (1985: 240). The fascination of accounting historians with the origins of double entry, ‘one of the great evolutionary advances in the history of accounting’ (Williams, 1978: 29), and the accumulation of inferences that the practice was not known to the Romans, reinforces the view that Roman accounting was ‘archaic and rudimentary’. However, careful interpretation of the relationship of private law requirements with Roman accounting practice reveals a situation possibly closer to the perceptions of the earlier historians.

Perception of Roman accounting practice reflects another ‘so one-sided’ aspect of the sources. Private law, legal opinions from the Digest and Institutes, the literary court pleadings in Cicero For Quintus Roscius the Actor and For Marcus Fonteius touch on situations where accounting, in some form, was required, but the central concerns are legal. The opaqueness of Roman accounting practices is illustrated in the classic text by Buckland (1921) on Roman law, discussing the contract Litterarum Obligatio (Obligation by book entry) given in Institutes (3.128–130) ²⁷ :

[T]he actual mechanism of the contract [is] obscure. What was the nature of the transscriptio? In what account book did the entry appear? That there were two entries and that one was based on the other appears from the name and the fact that a single transaction consists of nomina in the plural. Romans kept a daybook or adversaria, on which the day's dealings were noted, and these were, it seems, copied into the codex accepti et depensi from time to time. It has been conjectured that transscriptio means transfer from the daybook to the other, but it is clear that both entries were in the same book or, at any rate, made at the same time. It has been conjectured that this book was a special one kept for this purpose, and also that it was a ledger, containing a statement of debts incurred and rights acquired, but both these views are without evidence. The view most generally accepted is that it was the ordinary cashbook, codex accepti et depensi the statement of moneys paid out and in. (Buckland, 1921: 457)

As a Latin legal scholar, Buckland (1921) correctly recognises that the precise accounting method for recording transactions under a nomina transcriptitia contract cannot be fully ascertained from the text provided in Institutes (3.128–130). Essential legal context is provided by Institutes (3.92–93) on stipulatio involving the process of question by the stipulator and answer by promittor required to bind a verbal contract. The Roman roots of this contract likely predate the census and connect to the ancient ius civile Quiritium. Instead of a verbal contract, obligation by book entry is a binding contract created by an agreed entry, the nomina transcriptitia, literally ‘recording of names’. There is some evidence that this practice is also connected with public reporting requirements for magistrates returning from the provinces.

Based on literary sources such as Cicero Pro Roscio, Buckland (1921) claims that conventional commercial accounting did use a daybook (adverseria) that recorded daily income and expenditure items. Periodically, the items from the daybook were transferred to a permanent book recording debits and credits (codex accepti et depensi) that may, or may not, have been in rudimentary ledger format. ²⁸ Whether the codex was a rudimentary ledger or not, there is no reference to a journal or trial balance in the accounting method. Following sections in the Institutes dealing with stipulatio, it is natural to conclude that entry into the account books agreed to by both parties is another method of creating a binding contract. There is no requirement that monies have been paid, goods received, or whatever, only that both parties (nomina) have agreed that the transcribed entry into the account book is a binding contract. Presumably, whether the entry is made into the adverseria or the codex would depend on the type of transaction involved. It is possible that nomina refer to both parties making entries in separate books, accepti for the stipulator and depensi for the promittor but this interpretation is speculative. In practice, the use of litterarum obligatio contracts has clear disadvantages compared to written signed contracts (chirographa, syngraphae).

One activity with potential to reveal Roman accounting practice is identified in an early literary source, Curculio (III.1) by Plautus (254–184 BCE), where the banker Lyco states: ‘I've struck my balance, how much money I have, and how much I owe. I'm rich, if I don't pay those to whom I'm in debt. If I do pay those to whom I'm in debt, my debts are the greatest’ (translated by Riley, 1913). In addition to indicating accounting based on debits and credits, this also provides an alternative Latin for ‘balance of account’: subduxi ratiunculam. This source has added importance for indicating the accounting practice of bankers during the Middle Republic (c. 264 BCE–133 BCE), a period for which there is a scarcity of literary sources detailing commercial activities. Further insight into accounting for Roman bankers is provided by references to accounts scattered throughout the Digest, such as the requirement that accounts be produced. Digest (2.13.4) requires bankers to provide depositors with an accounting for accounts in which they earn interest, but there is no indication about the form of this accounting. Digest (2.13.6.3) goes further, quoting Labeo that an account kept by a banker provides ‘a statement of all mutual payments, receipts, credits and debts of the parties’ which seems to indicate a ledger was kept. This inference is further supported in Digest (2.13.6.6) that refers to the date on different pages of the account. Digest (2.13.9) indicates that others than bankers and money-brokers were also required to produce accounts, such as those involved in contracts, though, being in a business of a public nature, the requirement for bankers to produce accounts is stricter (Digest, 2.13.10). ²⁹

It is not surprising that bankers and those involved in commercial contracts would be required to keep accounts, possibly in ledger format. Less obvious is accounting in the wider context of a society of Roman citizens – patricians, plebians and freedmen – sustained by a slave economy. The importance of large landed agricultural estates controlled by wealthy families typically headed by a pater familias (father) provided a central role for laws associated with inheritance and manumission. The will of a pater familias could cover both actions by providing conditions for manumitting a slave responsible for keeping the accounts. For example, Digest (40.7.40.3) is an opinion about estate accounting done by a slave when the pater familias, responsible for signing that the accounts were accurate, is unable to sign due to ill health, and the will provides for manumission if the estate accounts are satisfactorily rendered to the heir. Digest (35.1.82) provides specifics on what ‘renders his accounts’ to the heir requires. There is also reference to a testator – presumably the pater familias – being ‘certainly not accustomed’ to signing accounts. Rather, the slave responsible for the accounts would regularly present the accounts to the pater familias to be read, scrutinised, and, where appropriate, exceptions would be noted.

Cicero: Roscio and Fonteius

The works of Cicero are both a blessing and a curse for Roman historians. The vast volume of material from this prominent Roman of the late Republic provides a wealth of useful information. However, much of the information is one-sided as it is concerned with the activities and viewpoint of a Roman elite member. For the history of Roman private accounting, Cicero provides at least two significant contributions. Pro Q. Roscio Comodeo (For Quintus Roscius the actor) provides insight into the methods of recording binding contracts for private accounting purposes relevant to interpreting litterarum obligatio. Pro Fonteio (For Marcus Fonteius) contains a statement that nineteenth-century philologists interpreted, seemingly incorrectly based on the limited detail, as evidence that Roman accounting in the late Republic had evolved rudiments of double-entry bookkeeping.

Some years prior to achieving prominence in the Verres prosecution, Cicero was at the bar to plead the case for his friend, Quintus Roscius, the comic actor. The private action involves the distribution of a settlement between Roscius and the killer of a slave to whom Roscius was engaged to teach acting by his owner. Both Roscius and the slave owner, Fannius Chaerea, pursued separate actions against the killer and received judgments. At stake is the distribution of the settlement received by Roscius and the key role of entries into ‘accounts’ (Long (translation), 1856, Pro Q. Roscio Comodeo Oration II-III):

if [Chaerea] produces his accounts, Roscius will also produce his … words will appear in the books of the one, but not in those of the other. Why should you trust one rather than the other? … would he ever have written it if he had not borne this expense by his authority? … would he not have written it if he had given the authority? For just as it is discreditable to put down what is not owed, so it is dishonest not to put down what you do owe. For his accounts are just as much condemned who omits to make an entry of the truth, as his who puts down what is false.

What follows is an essential discussion about the method of preparing accounts:

[Chaerea] confesses that he has not this sum entered in his book of money received and expended; but he asserts that it does occur in his memoranda. Are you then, so fond of your self, have you such a magnificent opinion of yourself, as to ask for money from us on the strength, not of your account books, but of your memoranda? To read one's account-books instead of producing witnesses, is a piece of arrogance; but is it not insanity to produce mere notes of writings and scraps of paper? If memoranda have the same force and authority, and are arranged with the same care as accounts, where is the need of making an account-book? Of making out careful lists? Of keeping a regular order? Of making a permanent record of old writings.

There is also a reference to the time frame for entering memoranda into the account books: ‘How is it that, when everyone else who makes up account-books transfers his accounts every month almost into his books, you allow this sum to remain among your memoranda more than three years?’ Though the usual difficulties of others translating from the Latin appear, for instance, ‘mere notes of writings and scraps of paper’ (within the above quote) is not a literal translation, so it is not possible to infer that ‘paper’ was the media used to record memoranda. However, the forensic importance of account books and the process of creating the accounts from memoranda is evident and was seemingly a source used by Buckland (1921) and others to characterise Roman accounting practice during the late Republic.

It is part of the received canon of accounting history that double-entry bookkeeping originated in Italy during the fourteenth century, possibly as early as the thirteenth century, reaching fruition in the 1494 Summa of Fra Luca Pacioli. However, there are claims in the nineteenth century that ‘the system of bookkeeping by double-entries, so far from being an invention of the Lombards, is as old as the time of the Romans’ (Niebuhr, 1851: 602). These claims were supported by the important philologist Barthold Niebuhr (1851), the Roman accounting historian L.C. Purser (1887), and others, but have faded into obscurity. Possible confusion about whether some form of double-entry was developed by the Romans appears in reference to a ‘balance’ of the accounts in several legal opinions. For example, Digest (40.7.6.7) observes that ‘rendering an account’ (rationum autem reddendarum condicio) implies the calculation of a balance (quod ad reliqua quidem attinet) and references payment of money (in danda pecunia consistit). While such a reference to ‘balance’ does not seem to connect with the ‘trial balance’ of double-entry, resolution is stifled by difficulties of Latin translation. For example, Murray (1930: 130) provides a different, literal translation of ‘balance’ as ratio est par and the idiom ‘compare debits and credits’ as dispungere est confere accepta et data. Latin is a subtle, complex language, as any Latinist would support. Situations involving accounting are often obscured by a modern lens, making it difficult to determine accurate translation. Though the personalised commercial activities of the Roman ‘economy of friends’ (Verboven, 2002) suggest less need for double-entry compared to more impersonal fourteenth-century Renaissance commerce, typically identified with the emergence of double-entry, can it be cautiously stated from entries in the Digest that no definitive evidence for some Roman accountants using double-entry has survived?

This is not the place to explore in detail arguments of nineteenth century scholars about the possibility that some Roman accounting was consistent with rudimentary double-entry bookkeeping, if only because requirements for what constitutes ‘double-entry’ have evolved over time. In turn, the reverence to Fra Luca Pacioli is so engrained in the modern canon of accounting history that a brief discussion would be insufficient. Taking the view that ‘Double entry differs from single entry chiefly in making cash, stock, goods and so on, parties, as well as persons, and in making a debtor and creditor account in every transaction’ (Purser, 1887), consider the following from Cicero Pro Fonteio (Long (translation), 1856, For Marcus Fonteius, 2.3):

the facts of the case itself, the consideration of the documents, and the composition of the account-books, have this force, that from them, when they are once given in and received, everything that is forged, or stolen, or that has disappeared, is detected. All those men made entries of sums of money having been received for the use of the Roman people; if they immediately either paid or gave to others equally large sums, so that what was received for the Roman people was paid to some one or other, at all events nothing can have been embezzled.

Unfortunately, the text is a fragment that is corrupted at the end of the quote, with Niebuhr (1851) and Mommsen (1854) differing on the expected inclusion. With due allowance for difficulties of Latin translation, it cannot be ignored that, besides being an eminent philologist and Roman historian, before pursuing this path Niebuhr (1851) served as Director of the National Debt and the Mint in Denmark and, consequently, with an impressive pedigree in financial matters, was sufficiently experienced to speculate the fragment identified what was double-entry bookkeeping by middle nineteenth century standards.

Columella and estate management

A feature lacking in Roman accounting history is attention to accounting for commercial planning and control. One notable exception is the set of studies on the calculation of viticulture profitability by Columella (Ash (translation), 1948, 1960, De Re Rustica, 3.3.7–15) (Carandini, 1983; de Ste. Croix, 1956; Duncan-Jones, 1982; Macve, 1985: 250–251; Mickwitz, 1937). Oddly, Columella (circa 4 CE–circa 70 CE) has attracted modern attention for a small section of his work, comparing viticulture profitability with the return on a 6 per cent perpetual annuity (in perpetuum usuram). Large scale wine production does involve a non-subsistence agricultural activity providing a potentially useful subject for investigation of the claims by Finley (1999; 1st edition 1973) and others ‘about the complete lack of economic ratiocination among ancient agriculturalists’ (Purcell, 1985: 2). Mickwitz (1937), Duncan-Jones (1982) and de Ste. Croix (1956) claim the numbers provided by Columella, supporting profitability of viticulture, demonstrate ancient accounting methods, by ignoring essential costs such as depreciation and various current expenses, so then lead to irrational business decisions. In contrast, Carandini maintains ‘Columella's calculation, far from misleading him, does in fact express properly the relevant factors that it was rational for him to consider, given the structure of the ancient economy’ (Macve, 1985: 255).

There are several reasons why the attention given by accounting and economic historians to the calculation of viticulture profitability by Columella seems odd. What was the intention of Columella in providing an example about ‘whether viticulture will enrich the proprietor’? In seeking to demonstrate that ‘the return from vineyards is a very rich one’, Columella was addressing a perception advanced in important previous writings on Roman agriculture by Cato the Censor and Varro about ‘the perils of viticulture, the risks for which it has been well known since antiquity’ (Baldwin, 1963; Purcell, 1985: 3; Reitz, 2013). ‘Why, then, is viticulture in disrepute?’ asks Columella. After admonishing poor practices of those who ‘complain that their vineyards do not yield them a return’, Columella provides cost estimates: 8,000 sestertii for a slave vine-dresser; land of seven iugerum (0.25 hectare = 1 iugerum) at 1,000 sestertii per iugerum; and 2,000 sestertii per iugerum for stakes and withes to grow the vines. This total of 29,000 sestertii is grossed up by 6 per cent simple interest per year for 2 years to allow the vines time reach production resulting in an additional cost of 3,480 sestertii. ‘The sum total of principal and interest comes to 32,480 [sestertii]’. Even ‘assuming that the vineyards are of the very worst sort’, Columella observes that the annual return would be 2,100 sestertii compared to 1,950 sestertii if the 32,480 was invested at 6 per cent simple interest.

This brief example aimed at illustrating the potential profitability of viticulture is a small part of a detailed discussion covering two books of volume 1 of De Re Rustica, a three-volume work dedicated to virtually all aspects of agriculture on a large Roman estate – animal husbandry, gardening, farm buildings, ploughing and soil maintenance, poultry and other fowl, bees, grain cultivation, fruit trees and, especially, the proper procedures for growing vines. Perhaps confusion was raised by the translation of accountant given by Boyd (1905) to the Columella preamble in the following example: ‘like a careful accountant, he sees, when his calculations are made, that this kind of husbandry is of the greatest advantage to his estate’. Alternatively, diligens ratiocinator calculo posito videt id (as used in …) could be translated as: ‘a diligent bookkeeper having done the calculations’. Whether accountant or bookkeeper, who that would be, is not addressed. Book 11 on the duties of the steward (vilicus) of the landlord (dominus) is ignored by critiques despite providing useful context. ³⁰ Specifically, De Re Rustica (11.1.24) refers to the steward having to ‘balance accounts with his master’, which is ‘impossible’ if a ‘reckoning up with money’ is required because reckoning of accounts for the steward is done in goods and not money. An effective steward is to be a farmer, not a trader. ³¹

Carroll (1976: 786–787) provides useful social context needed to interpret the relevance of De Re Rustica for accounting history: ‘Columella saw [the] ideal and honourable way of agriculture being threatened and indeed being replaced by socially and politically minded people who cared not so much for the real values of agricultural life as for its economic or social advantages’. Despite being from the Roman elite, Columella objected to ‘the urbanised owner who wished to live only part of the year on his estate, dabbling in the intellectual and prestigious side of agriculture while leaving to the vilicus the mundane “earthy” matters such as finance and the actual implementation of the recommendations’. The urbanised dominus was ‘not always in the agriculture business for financial gain’ but for the ‘social status’ associated with creating ‘the impression of being both a wealthy landowner and a knowledgeable down-to-earth person in the true tradition of the ueteres Romani’. As such, De Re Rustica was more than ‘a treatise on agricultural methods, but also as an indictment of all the falsity and anomalies of the prevailing agricultural system’ (Carroll, 1976: 790; Puyou and Quattrone, 2018). In this system, the vilicus seems to be the lynchpin providing accounts, presumably prepared by another slave responsible for that duty, to the dominus for approval.

The social context provided by Carroll (1976) dovetails with the economic context provided by Purcell (1985). ³² As reflected in the writings of Cato the Elder (234–149 BCE), Roman interest in viticulture reflects a wider societal transition from subsistence production of staple crops to non-staples impacting land holding, distribution systems, monetisation of exchange, wealth accumulation and the like, that was well underway by the third century BCE. Despite the focus on accounting limitations in the modern debate over the musings of Columella on viticulture profitability, the review of Roman wine production by Purcell reveals: ‘viticulture is an extremely uncertain and risky, almost marginal, agricultural activity among the various options of non-staple crops possible in the Mediterranean. This is because of the highly irregular labour regime required for cultivating wines, and their temperamental response to seasonal weather conditions’. Books 3 and 4 of De Re Rustica make it amply clear that Columella had expert knowledge of viticulture. The crude revenue estimate of 2,100 sestertii for ‘vineyards of the worst sort’ disguises the quality/quantity trade-off in wine production that Columella would almost certainly have known. Production of high-quality wine from ‘vineyards of the best sort’ would, over time, likely produce revenue many times the multiple of 2,100 sestertii if weather and markets permitted. In effect, focusing on the accounting aspects of viticulture profitability provided by Columella inadequately fails to recognise the social critique: an ‘indictment of all the falsity and anomalies of the prevailing agricultural system’.

Conclusion

Having considered the sources touching Roman accounting from the early Republic to the reforms of Augustus, what conclusions can be drawn and what remains a mystery? First, these sources are meagre and often one-sided, calling for more in-depth research on Roman accounting history. Second, the search for identification, social status and organisation of public accountants during the Republic leads to the analysis of the scribae quaestori in the aerarium. As reflected in the deference paid to the scribae by Cicero, the free born citizens of the ordo scribarum had become ‘a powerful and respected force’ in the late Republic responsible, de facto, for executing state accounting functions (Badian, 1989: 600). However, while some inferences from Cicero In Verrem and Pro Fontieus are possible regarding public accounting procedures, details are lacking. With the reforms of Augustus, oversight for the bulk of state revenue and expenditure, accounting began shifting from the civil servants of the aerarium to freedmen and slaves of the familia Caesaris, populating newly created departments connected to the fiscus of the emperor. This shift witnessed the emergence of a reorganised senior civil service headed by the a rationabus of the emperor, supported by procoratores and tabularii, responsible for overseeing accounting practice in the central departments and the imperial provinces. Based on inferences drawn from the breviary of the Res Gestae delivered to the Senate following the death of Augustus (14 CE), claims that detailed accounting for imperial revenue and expenditure was used for ex ante state fiscal planning seem speculative, at best.

As reflected in the literary and legal sources, details of accounting practice are somewhat clearer for private than public accounting. Cicero Pro Roscio provides details about the transfer of items from a daybook to a more permanent codex accepti et depensi – book of debits and credits – used by Buckland (1921) to interpret aspects of the litterarum obligatio (obligation by book-entry) given in Institutes (3.128–130). Developing middle Republic literary evidence from Plautus, legal opinions from the Digest suggest that bankers and possibly others involved in commercial activities were required to maintain a ledger, though this conclusion is not definitive. Aimed at making inferences about primitive accounting for a first-century CE agricultural Roman estate, the modern debate over the brief analysis of viticulture profitability presented in Columella De Re Rustica is found to be inadequate. Rather, the primary objective of the brief profitability analysis seems to be more concerned with providing support for a social critique of ‘the falsity and anomalies of the prevailing agricultural system’, not to provide an accurate representation of managerial accounting for a Roman agricultural estate.

On balance, the search for definitive conclusions from the faded inscriptions, text fragments and not completely legible, often corrupted, copies of copies of some original Roman text that have survived from ancient Rome needs to resist the temptation to ‘stir the musty history into fascinating activity’ (Frank, 1910: 99). This cautionary advice provided by the eminent Roman economic historian Tenny Frank over a century ago is accompanied by the insight: ‘historians often reflect the spirit of their own epoch in the interpretation of past ages … efforts at writing the history of Rome would itself furnish a picture of the changing Zeitgeist in the countries of the writers’ (Frank, 1910: 99). This insight provides a veiled answer to the question: what can be learned about contemporary accounting from non-accounting sources touching on Roman accounting during the Republic and early Principate? The past provides a reflection of the present, benchmarking the current state-of-affairs and, hopefully, pointing to a path for future progress. Evidence, however meagre, on the scribae quaestori reflects on the social status and organisation of contemporary accountants. Similarly, the brief profitability analysis of viticulture by Columella benchmarks the status of contemporary managerial accounting. Such are the type of contributions that scholarly study of ancient history can provide to the critiques of Stevelinck (1985), ten Have (1976) and others.