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There he had found old acquaintances to protect and shield him. I was presumed to be dead and any fellow-slave would help him in his situation, he being presumed to be legally a slave of the fiscus.
Would you consider it a reward, would you consider it the fulfillment of your wish to be transferred from our town ergastulum, where you were as an Imperial slave rented out to our city, to such an Imperial estate, where you will be directly under the employees of the fiscus?" "I certainly should feel rewarded," I said, "by such a transfer."
"If," said I, "I must remain a slave and, remaining the property of Caesar, must be employed as the administration of the fiscus direct, at least try to arrange that I be employed out of doors far from any town, on a slave farm, or at herding or wood-cutting or charcoal-burning. I have heard that many of Caesar's slave-gangs are busy afield, on farms, or pasture-lands or in the forests."
The same thing happened when an account was given in to the Fiscus of the guardianship, although I acknowledge my guardians were men of probity. One of them was eight years in possession, and when he gave it up to my brothers he did not account with them for a single shilling.
Looking me full in the eyes he said: "You have been passing as an art-amateur of Greek ancestry, under the name of Phorbas, with the status of a slave. Before that you were among the helpers at the Choragium, held as a slave belonging to the fiscus, by the name of Festus. It seems to me that you are no Greek, nor of Greek blood, even to the smallest degree, I take you for a full-blooded Roman.
And should the Fiscus only restore me the price for which it then sold, it would commit a manifest injustice, since all estates in the province of Prussia have, since 1746, tripled and quadrupled their value.
In default of all, or any of these, the Fiscus, on the death of the purchaser, takes possession, repaying the summa emptitia, or purchase- money, together within what can be shown to have been laid out in improvements, or the summa inscriptitia, the sum at which it stands rated in the fiscal register.
They were made responsible for the taxes, which were levied in a gross amount upon the town. The fiscus, or financial administration of the empire, was so managed that the civil offices became an intolerable burden to those who held them. Yet it was a burden from which there was no escape.
Such is the present state of the business. How the monarch shall think proper to decide, will be seen hereafter. I have demanded of the Fiscus that it shall make a fair valuation of Great Sharlack, reimburse my brother, and restore it to me. My brother has other estates. These he will dispose of by testament, according to his good pleasure.
Later the fiscus Judaicus, to which every Jew and proselyte had to pay, became an instrument of oppression, but in the reigns of Vespasian and Titus it was not harshly administered.
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