Census
（
τίμημα). A register of persons and property, constituting
a claim to the rights of citizenship at Athens and at Rome.
1. At Athens
The census at Athens seems to date from the constitution of Solon. This legislator made
four classes (
τιμήματα, τέλη).
(a)
Pentacosiomedimni, or those who received 500 measures, dry or liquid, from their
lands.
(b) Knights (
ἵππεις), who had an
income of 300 measures.
(c) Zeugitae (
ζευγῖται), whose income was 150 measures.
(d) Thetes (
θῆτες), or
capite censi. The word
τίμημα, as used in the orators, means the valuation of the
property—i. e. not the capital itself, but the taxable capital. Now, if the
valuation of the income was that given in the distribution of the classes just mentioned, it
is not difficult to get at the valuation of the capital implied. Solon reckoned the dry
measure, or
medimnus, at a drachma. But it is probable that the income
was reckoned at a twelfth part of the value of the land, on the same principle which
originated the
unciarium foenus, or 8 1/3 per cent., at Rome; and if so,
the landed property of a
pentacosiomedimnus was reckoned at a talent,
or 12X500=6000 drachmas; that of a
knight at 12X300=3600 drachmas; and
that of a
zeugites at 12X150=1800 drachmas. In the first class, the
whole estate was considered as taxable capital; but in the second, only 5/6, or 3000
drachmas; and in the third, 5/9, or 1000 drachmas; to which Pollux alludes when he says, in
his clumsy way, that the first class expended one talent on the public account; the second,
30 minas; the third, 10 minas; and the
thetes, nothing.
In order to settle in what class a man should be entered on the register
(
ἀπογραφή), he returned a valuation of his property,
subject, perhaps, to the check of a counter-valuation (
ὑποτίμησις). The valuation was made very frequently; in some states, every year;
in others, every two or four years. The censors, who kept the register at Athens, were
probably at first the
naucrari; but afterwards the demarchs performed
the office of censor. Although this institution of Solon's seems particularly calculated for
the imposition of the property tax (
εἰσφορά), Thucydides
(i. 141), speaking of the year B.C. 428, says that it was then that the Athenians first
raised a property tax of 200 talents. It seems, however, that the amount of the tax
constituted its singularity; for certainly property-taxes were common not only in Athens, but
in the rest of Greece, before the Peloponnesian War, and Antipho expressly says that he
contributed to
many of them. In the archonship of Nausinicus (Olym.
100, 3; B.C. 378) a new valuation of property took place, and classes (
συμμορίαι) were introduced expressly for the property taxes. The nature of these
classes, our knowledge of which principally depends on a note of Ulpian, is involved in
considerable obscurity. Thus much, however, may be stated, that they consisted of 1200
individuals—120 from each of the ten tribes—who, by way of a sort of
liturgy, advanced the money for others liable to the tax, and got it from them by the
ordinary legal processes. In a similar manner classes were subsequently formed for the
discharge of another and more serious liturgy, the trierarchy; and the
strategi, who nominated the trierarchs, had also to form the
symmoriae for the property taxes. (See
Liturgia.) What we have here said of the census at Athens renders it unnecessary to
speak of the similar registrations in other states of Greece. When the constitution
essentially depended on this distribution according to property, it was called a timocracy,
or aristocracy of property (
τιμοκρατία, ἀπὸ τιμημάτων
πολιτεία).
After the establishment of the constitution of Servius Tullius, the number of Roman
citizens was ascertained every five years (though not always with perfect regularity), to
determine their legal liability to the payment of taxes and to military service. This process
was called
census. The census was originally taken by the kings; after
the expulsion of the kings, by the consuls; and after B.C. 444, by special officers called
censores. (See
Censor.) The
censors took the auspices on the night preceding the census; on the next day, their herald
summoned the people to the Campus Martius, where they had an official residence in the Villa
Publica. Each tribe appeared successively before them, and its citizens were summoned
individually according to the existing register. Each had to state on oath his age, his own
name, those of his father, his wife, his children, his abode, and the amount of his property.
The facts were embodied in lists by the censors' assistants. The census of the provinces was
sent in by the provincial governors. There was a special commission for numbering the armies
outside the Italian frontier. The censors, in putting up the new lists, took into
consideration not only a man's property, but his moral conduct. (See
Censor.) The census was concluded with the solemn ceremony of reviewing
the newly constituted army (
lustrum). (See
Lustrum.) The republican census continued to exist under the early
Empire, but the last
lustrum was held by Vespasian and Titus in A.D. 74.
The provincial census, introduced by Augustus and maintained during the whole imperial
period, had nothing to do with the Roman census, being only a means of ascertaining the
taxable capacities of the provinces.
