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Rome's wars delivered great wealth to the conquerors, but how did
this affect politics and society on the home front? In Power and
Public Finance at Rome, James Tan offers the first examination of
the Roman Republic from the perspective of fiscal sociology and
makes the case that no understanding of Roman history is complete
without an appreciation of the role of economics in defining
political interactions. Examining how imperial profits were
distributed, Tan explores how imperial riches turned Roman public
life on its head. Rome's lofty aristocrats had traditionally been
constrained by their dependence on taxpayer money. They relied on
the state to fund wars, and the state in turn relied on citizens'
taxes to fuel the war machine. This fiscal chain bound the elite to
taxpayer consent, but as the spoils of Empire flooded into Rome,
leaders found that they could fund any policy they chose without
relying on the support of the citizens who funded them. The influx
of wealth meant that taxation at home was ended and citizens
promptly lost what bargaining power they had enjoyed as a result of
the state's reliance on their fiscal contributions. With their
dependence on the taxpayers loosened, Rome's aristocratic leaders
were free to craft a fiscal system which prioritized the enrichment
of their own private estates and which devoted precious few
resources to the provision of public goods. In six chapters on the
nature of Rome's imperialist enrichment, on politics during the
Punic Wars and on the all-important tribunates of the Gracchi, Tan
offers new conceptions of Roman state creation, fiscal history,
civic participation, aristocratic pre-eminence, and the eventual
transition to autocracy.
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