In the Republican period the publicant had been, of course, subject to the jurisdiction of the pro- consul or other governor of the province. But their situation, subject to the governor of a year, —who had no knowledge from his previous train- ing of the facts and methods of tax-collecting, and was therefore quite unable to understand the real character of many of the complicated questions
* Schiirer does not admit this, Gesch. d. jiid. Volkes%, i. p.
478; and sets aside Wieseler, Beitr. z. richt. Wiirdigung d. Evangelien, 1869, p. 78f., who had seen rightly.
—— 396 ROADS AND TRAVEL (IN NT)
ROADS AND TRAVEL (IN NT)
connected with the vast business - organization, whose correct working he was supposed to keep an eye upon,—was very different from the situation of the contractors under the Empire, who were watched over by an Imperial procurator, trained to the duty, selected by the Emperor, as a rule, on account of his familiarity with the duty, remain- ing for years in the same office, and commanding all the collected information that was stored up in the Imperial bureau. It was necessary under the Empire for the contractors to be very much more careful, when the regular methods of overseeing had gradually established fixed and minute rules of procedure, than under the Republican régime when there were only vague and general principles laid down as to the conduct of the collectors, and it was rarely difficult, and usually extremely easy, to hoodwink even a just and strict governor. The publicant of the Republic had been the masters, tyrants, and scourges of the provinces, able to seize, torture, and ill-treat as they pleased any provincial whom they declared to be in arrears— permitted by the governors of provinces (who were almost all ignorant and either feeble or cor- rupt) to exact what they wanted in any way they pleased—gaining great wealth with little or no responsibility in practice. The tax - contractors (telonat) of the Imperial time, or even the pubii- cant where they continued in that period to exist, were far more closely and efficiently superseded : the amount which they could collect legally was much better known through the tariff: the telonai had not such a direct interest (though they had some interest) in collecting too much, and had no power to collect arrears at all, but could merely denounce the defaulter to the proper Imperial officials. It is probably the case that, if a telones failed to prove his case against a defaulter, he had to forfeit a penalty (possibly fourfold the sum claimed, for Zacchzeus’s obscure and unexplained statement in Lk 19° was perhaps founded on legal usage). *
The ¢elonai collected taxes paid in money, not tithes or other dues paid in kind. The Jews re- garded it as a fundamental principle of their re- ligion that they should pay no money except to the temple and the priests. But the ¢elona, ex- acting the many various kinds of taxes, intruded unpleasantly into the life of the people at every turn, and were a constant reminder of their sub- jection. Moreover, the fact that they were Jews, who made themselves the agents of the oppressor, and acquired money by exacting it from their own brethren, made them even more despised than if they had been Romans or slaves of Romans, like the agents of.the old publican.
So far as we can judge from the Gospels, the method of tax-collecting was, generally speaking, the same in the procuratorial province of Palestine and in Herod Antipas’s kingdom of Galilee and Perea. Small contractors for a single tax in a district performed the work of collecting both in the province and in the kingdom, The superin- tendence of these contractors lay with the supreme taxing authority. In the province the authority was, of course, the Imperial government. In the kingdom the authority is not quite certain. While it is possible that Antipas was permitted to
* touzogévryoe in that passage is commonly misunderstood and mistranslated: it does not mean ‘exacted’: the passage means ‘if I have accused any defaulter before the government and had him condemned to pay up arrears.’ It is possible that, in mentioning this detail, Zacchwus was replying to the unspoken accusation of unfair conduct levelled at all his class, and that he meant ‘as to this accusation, my reply is that when I have made an unfair claim for arrears, I forfeit as a penalty four times the sum claimed : this makes it practically impossible for us to act so unfairly and extortionately as we are accused of doing.’ But the first part of his statement would still remain as obscure as it is on the ordinary interpretations,
collect the taxes for the Romans in his kingdom, as his father Herod had done, it seems more probable that he was not so honourably treated as Herod the Great had been, and that Roman officials supervised the ¢elonai in his kingdom as in the province.
Ill. MEANS AND POPULARITY OF TRAVEL. —i. TRAVEL AS PICTURED IN THE CLASSICAL LITERATURE.—To judge from many expressions used by the leading men of letters and philosophic moralists in classical times, travelling might seem not to have been popular. Those writers often speak as if travelling, especially by sea, were con- fined to traders who risked their life to make money, and as if the dangers were so great that none but the reckless and greedy would incur them ; and the opinion is often expressed, especially by poets, that to adventure oneself on the sea 1s an impious and unnatural act. The well-known words of Horace (Od. i. 3) are typical of that point of view.