Antiquity
Persecution of Domitian
95-96·Rome
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
brutal levying of the *fiscus judaicus*, execution of consul Flavius Clemens and exile of Flavia Domitilla for « atheism »
Domitian had the *fiscus judaicus* collected with a harshness that Suetonius says he witnessed in his youth: an old man was examined before the procurator and a large assembly to establish whether he was circumcised. The tax now struck two categories that the law did not clearly define — those who lived as Jews without declaring it, and those who concealed their origin.
In the final year of his reign, the emperor had his cousin, the consul Flavius Clemens, executed, and banished his wife Flavia Domitilla to an island, on the charge of "atheism" — the grievance leveled, according to Dion Cassius, at those who drifted toward Jewish customs. Several others suffered the same charge.
After Domitian was assassinated in Rome, Nerva had coins struck bearing the mention of the abolition of the malice of the *fiscus judaicus*: the tax remained, the denunciations ceased. It is the only Roman coinage that commemorates the end of a persecution.
- Period :
- Antiquity
- Type :
- Persecution
- Region :
- Western Europe
- Country :
- Italie
Suétone, Vie de Domitien ; Dion Cassius, Histoire romaine.