Archeologists have uncovered a set of court documents for an ancient Roman tax fraud and forgery case in the then-province of Judea connected to sham transactions involving the sale and manumission of slaves. 

More specifically, they discovered and translated a Greek papyrus that was found to be a memorandum for a judicial hearing before a Roman official during the reign of Hadrian, after the emperor’s visit to the region in 129/130 CE and before the outbreak of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 132, said the paper. It was found in a cave in the Judaean Desert.

The archeologists note that the condition of the scroll means many details remain unknown, such as the precise location of the trial or the citizenship status of the defendants. One thing they do know, however, is that the case had two main defendants: one man named Gadalias and another named Saulos, who both stood accused of corrupt dealings. 

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Gadalias was the son of a notary and archival official “and therefore presumably belonged to the officeholding class of his community.” The scroll characterized him as a corrupt individual who was known to the authorities as having a history of violence, extortion, counterfeiting, and inciting rebellion. For instance, the text mentions a previous hearing before a Roman official named Postumus during which a document presented by Gadalias was found to have been forged or manipulated. 

Meanwhile, Saulos was named as a friend of Gadalias and his partner-in-crime, though it seems little else about his background was mentioned. However, he is believed to have been the prime instigator of the scheme. While Gadalias is better known, the authors believe “his role in the events seems to have been limited to facilitating the manipulation of documents by virtue of his position as the son of the local chreophylax” (a kind of financial official).

The scheme

The archeologists, once again noting that many details are missing, said their best interpretation of the accusation is that Saulos approached an associate named Chaereas, who owed him money. Saulos apparently directed him to engage in a sham transaction where Chaereas paid to “buy” several of his slaves while retaining possession himself. Afterwards, the document says, Saulos and his father then freed these slaves in Chaereas’ name without paying the required taxes. 

The scholars aren’t entirely clear on what fee was evaded. They theorize it could have been a 4% tax on direct slave sales, a 5% tax on manumission by Roman citizens, a poll tax that slave owners were obligated to pay on behalf of their slaves (ownership of slaves was a matter of official record and entered into census counts), a toll on imported slaves (up to 25% depending on province), or birth registration fees for houseborn slaves. 

They’re also not entirely clear on why the scheme was enacted. The most likely explanation, they said, was that Saulos wanted to conceal his assets from the Roman government by nominally alienating his own slaves to Chaereas. By pretending to sell off his slaves or buying them without using his own name, Saulos may have sought to lower his recorded wealth in order to diminish his tax burden and evade the costly and time-consuming public service obligations imposed by the Roman state on persons above a certain wealth threshold. He may also have tried to avoid paying existing or expected debts or penalties to the state. The document itself describes similar types of schemes where individuals cheat their property assessment by, say, deliberately cutting down vines and trees or avoiding the registration of slaves in the census. 

The authors believe Saulos may have been nominally selling off young slaves (who had never been entered into the census) before they entered the age of tax liability. The undeclared status of these slaves might explain how they got caught, as the registration of the sale could have been the first time ever a particular slave was reported to the provincial administration — this was at a time when it was customary to provide registered documentation of the slave’s previous ownership, as well as birth declarations and census returns demonstrating they had been properly declared with all taxes paid. 

“If any documentation was missing or appeared dubious, this could have sparked an inquest by Roman fiscal officials that resulted in desperate attempts to manipulate or forge the necessary documents by Saulos and his collaborators,” said the paper. 

The authors do offer another possible motive: Saulos was Jewish, which meant he had religious obligations regarding the treatment of slaves. He could have freed the slaves that were “bought” in order to possibly take advantage of a provision outlined in Leviticus (25:47–54) which states a Jewish slave sold to a non-Jewish owner must be redeemed by a fellow Jew, who then becomes his master; or because he simply wanted to free Jewish slaves but did not want to pay taxes on doing so. On this latter motivation, the authors said this could be because of obligations of Jews at the time to free Jewish slaves after seven years of service, or simply because they wanted to. However, the actual ethnicity of the slaves in question is not confirmed.

And what of the accused forger, Gadalias? The prosecutor expected he would say he knew nothing of the forgery, and that if the documents had been falsified, that was because of his father, who conveniently enough was already dead. However, even if that were the case, he would still be liable for simply presenting the false documents, as well as for the financial damage that resulted from the forgery. Despite his protestations of good faith, he was also accused of deliberately withholding documents from Roman authorities in the course of the investigation (essentially, obstruction). 

“Ultimately, even if Gadalias could persuade the judge that he was acting in good faith and the dubious document was drafted under his father, financial damages due to the fiscus as a result of the fraud were still heritable by him on his father’s behalf,” said the paper. 

Prosecutors apparently argued that the pair had been convicted previously for counterfeiting coins, which established both their history of criminal activity as well as the fact that, despite the attempted blame-shifting, they work together. They also mentioned Gadalias’ many other crimes. 

The specific outcome of the hearing is unknown. However, the authors believe that the very fact that the document’s existence — as well as its discovery in a desert cave — indicates that the case was not closed. 

“It may be argued that the very survival of [the papyrus] indicates that the case was not yet closed at the end of the hearing. It is remarkable that this record, which was per se of an ephemeral nature, was not only retained but also brought by its possessor to the caves of the Judaean desert during the Bar Kokhba rebellion. This testifies to the enduring importance of the document, and may be a sign that the case had not reached its conclusion,” said the paper.