Ledger of taxpayers

Description

Five columns remain from what was once a much larger record -the collections of poll tax owed by taxpaying male peasants of the Fayum village of Philadelphia who were between the ages of 14 and 62 for the fourth regnal year of the emperor Gaius. The ledger was one of about 150 papyri that were assembled by the collector of catitation taxes in the Fayyum village of Philadelphia from late in the reign of Tiberius to the middle years of the reign of Nero. This year ledger was laid out by a "katandragraphos" (m. 1), a professional scribe whose specialty was to draft itemized tax records; he wrote out the names of the individual taxpayers together with patronymics and other pertinent information, such a profession (line 41) or current place orf residence (line 27). He positioned the entries so that less space was allotted to men labelled "apolysimoi" (e.g. col. ii, line 44), because their entries routinely consisted of a single line. These more privileged villagers collected poll tax amonng themselves and were not visited by the tax collector month after month; hence no record of instalments folloed under the names of apolysimoi and less space was left between an entry fo an apolysimos and the following entry.;The taxpayers mentioned in the surviving five columns of this year ledger for 39/40 have bames beginning with the letter alpha, and the year ledger folloed an alphabetical arrangement. After the "katandragraphos" laid out the ledger, he verified his work against his original list, drawing a short, thick stroke above the middle of each entry. Two other scribes (m. 2 and m. 3) then recorded the payments the individuals made in the course of the year 39/40. The two strokes extending toward and into the left margin below the taxpayers's name indicate that a taxpayer had paid in full for the year; seven of the taxpayers listed in col. ii had the strokes drawn in front of their names, while a single stroke was drawn in front of the name of the eighth, an apolysimos. The poll taxes whose payments are recorded in this roll are for syntaximon, the laographia paid at its highest rate of 44 drachmai; the instalments were invariably 4 dr. or multiples of 4 dr., showing that the goverment's issue of tetradrachms was the currency required for such payments. A small surcharge (6 chalkoi) was usually paid with the final instalment for syntaximon/laographia, together with pig tax ("uike") of one drachma and one obol.