State Finance in the Middle Roman Republic: A Reevaluation

This article reconstructs the state finances of the Roman Republic from the years 200–157 b.c.e., reevaluating a similar project undertaken by Tenney Frank in the early 1930s. It confirms the basic order of magnitude of Frank's estimates, although it makes substantial modifications to his reconstruction of both expenditures and revenues, suggesting that Frank significantly understated the importance of tributum, the war-tax collected from Roman citizens, and underestimated expenditures on public works, which represented the largest nonmilitary expense undertaken by the Middle Republican state. I conclude with a discussion of finance and state power in the Republic, noting in particular that during the second century b.c.e. warfare was overall a money-losing proposition for the Roman treasury, and that the Roman fiscal apparatus still lagged behind other Hellenistic powers, even as Roman arms achieved hegemony over the entirety of the Mediterranean.