Publican

In antiquity, publicans (Greek τελώνης telōnēs [singular]; Latin publicanus [singular]; publicani [plural]) were public contractors, who in their official capacity often supplied the Roman legions and military, managed the collection of port duties, and oversaw public building projects.

During the republican era, civil service, which was the size of modern middle-sized city governments[vague], dealt with organising public policy for nearly thirty million people.

Also, the exclusion of the publicani from the Senate opened up positions for them in the special courts, allowing them to weigh the limits and practices of government power.

They were accused of insurance fraud in delivering goods during the Punic wars, of excessive greed when collecting taxes in the provinces, of exceptionally cruel conduct towards slave labour working in the mines, and of fraudulent practices in trying to get rid of unprofitable public contracts.

The degradation of the role of private contracting coincided with the beginning of the rule of the emperors, during which the oligarchic power of the Senate had to give way for the autocratic rule of the Caesars, and a more centralised public civil service system replaced private contractors in implementing the most important parts of public policy.

[citation needed] With the rise of a much larger Imperial bureaucracy, this task of the publicans, as well as their overall importance, declined precipitously.

Knowledge of a tentative terminus post quem is taken from the histories of the 1st century AD Imperial historian Livy.