Roman finance
Senators were not allowed to engage in trade, so it fell to the knights (equites) to bid on these contracts issued by the censors every five years.
[7] Ancient Roman banks operated under private law, which did not have clear guidance on how to decide cases concerning financial matters.
[10][11] Informal methods of maintaining records of loans made and received existed, as well as formal incarnations adopted by frequent lenders.
These serial lenders used a kalendarium to document the loans that they issued to assist in tabulating interest accrued at the beginning of each month (Kalends).
Roman peasants who needed money to pay their taxes used an inverted form of this process, by selling the right to a portion of their harvest in the future, in exchange for cash in the present.
It was found impossible to protect the public property from being plundered by private individuals, and the feeling of powerlessness resulted in reckless indifference.
[16]The aerarium (state treasury) was supervised by members of the government rising in power and prestige, the quaestors, praetors, and eventually the prefects.
Initially, this process of distribution seemed to work, although the legal technicality did not disguise the supremacy of the emperor or his often used right to transfer funds back and forth regularly from the aerarium to the fiscus.
The fiscus was retained to handle actual government revenue, while a patrimonium was created to hold the private fortune, which was inherited by the Emperors successor.
There is a considerable question as to the exact nature of this evaluation, involving possibly a res privata so common in the Late Empire.
The head of the fiscus in the first years was the rationalis, originally a freedman due to Augustus' desire to place the office in the hands of a servant free of the class demands of the traditional society.
Under Constantine the Great, this aggrandizement continued with the emergence of an appointed minister of finance, the comes sacrarum largitionum ("Count of the Sacred Largesses").
He was responsible for all money taxes, examined banks, ran the mints and mines everywhere, weaving mills and dye works, paid the salaries and expenses of many departments of the state, the upkeep of imperial palaces and other public buildings, supplied the Courts with clothing and other items.
Before Constantine's reforms they were directly responsible for the supply of the army, the annona militaris, which was a separate tax form the time of Diocletian in place of arbitrary requisitions.
The magister officiorum ("Master of Offices"), who was a kind of Minister of the Interior and State Security and the comes rerum privatarum ("Count of the Private Fortune") could counter the political the comes sacrarum largitionum.
The magister officiorum made all the major decisions concerning intelligence matters was not a fiscal officer and could not interfere with the operation of the sacrae largitiones and the res privata.
