the Augustan and the Claudian arrangements were combined[1] in the provision that two ex-praetors should be appointed as praefects of the treasury, but that these should be named, generally for three years, by the Princeps.[2] The fact that the Princeps appointed the guardians of the public chest was by no means an assertion that he controlled its funds, and, although his indirect influence on the aerarium was unquestionably great, this treasury still remained in principle under the direction of the Senate alone. Even in the second century it voted a loan to Marcus Aurelius for carrying on a war.[3]
The Princeps was rendered financially independent of the Senate through the possession of his own treasury (fiscus or fiscus Caesaris),[4] into which flowed the revenues from his own provinces, certain dues owed by the public provinces, and some extraordinary revenues, such as the confiscated goods of condemned criminals or lapsed inheritances (bona damnatorum, bona vacantia), in the claim to which the fiscus finally replaced the aerarium. The Princeps was the owner of the fiscus, but was regarded as a trustee of the wealth which it contained. To sue the fiscus was to sue the Princeps; but, although he was the sole subject of rights in relation to this treasury, he did not regard the money which it contained as though it were his own private property. Even in the early Principate there is evidence of the existence of crown property (patrimonium or patrimonium privatum), the use of which for private purposes was vested in the Princeps.[5] The patrimonium doubtless commenced by being the strictly personal property of the first family of Caesars, and much of it was acquired by bequest;[6] but, when the Principate had ceased to be hereditary in the Julian line, it seems to have[Greek: tên boulên].]
- ↑ Momms. Staatsr. ii. p. 559.
- ↑ Tac. l.c.; Mommsen l.c.
- ↑ Dio Cass. lxxi. 33 [Greek: kai chrêmata ek tou dêmosiou êtêse
- ↑ For the meaning of the word—the great basket in which money was kept in the state treasuries—see Mommsen Staatsr. ii. p. 998 n. 1. At the beginning of the Principate there were, perhaps, fisci rather than a fiscus (cf. Suet. Aug. 101), although there must always have been a central controlling department.
- ↑ Tiberius in 23 B.C. says of Lucilius Capito, procurator of Asia, "non se jus nisi in servitia et pecunias familiares dedisse" (Tac. Ann. iv. 15). He was doubtless a "procurator patrimonii." Cf. Tac. Ann. xii. 60 ("cum Claudius libertos, quos rei familiari praefecerat, sibique et legibus adaequaverit"); xiii. 1 "P. Celer eques Romanus et Helius libertus, rei familiari principis in Asia inpositi."
- ↑ Marquardt Staatsverwaltung ii. p. 256.
