Antiquity
Legal Persecution
72·Empire romain
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
the didrachm paid to the Temple becomes the *fiscus judaicus*, collected from all Jews of the Empire for the benefit of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus
Before the war, every adult Jew in the Roman Empire paid annually to the Temple in Jerusalem a half-shekel, which the Romans counted as a didrachm; the communities of the diaspora conveyed this collection to Judea, and Rome had guaranteed its transport.
The sanctuary destroyed, Vespasian did not abolish the contribution: he diverted it. It was henceforth levied for the benefit of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, which the fire on the Capitoline Hill had ruined and which needed to be rebuilt. The tax also changed in scope — it fell upon women, upon the youngest and upon the elderly, upon slaves as well as freedmen, whereas the Temple tax had targeted only adult men.
A dedicated administration, the *fiscus judaicus*, maintained its register. Its collection made belonging to Judaism a fiscal category of the Empire, enumerated and verifiable: this is the first time a Roman authority treated Jews as an taxable group as such. It survived until the fourth century.
- Period :
- Antiquity
- Type :
- Persecution
- Region :
- Western Europe
- Country :
- Empire romain
Flavius Josèphe, Guerre des Juifs ; Suétone, Vie de Domitien ; Dion Cassius, Histoire romaine.