In this volume, Sofia Piacentin surveys the ‘confiscation and sale of the property of convicted individuals and fines imposed by public authority’ (4) under the Republic. Her first chapter examines consecration as well as confiscation in Livy's early books. Although she acknowledges the doubtful historicity of these accounts, she argues that they reflect later authors’ expectations about how such procedures would operate. Her key point here is that consecration and confiscation were separate and distinct; the latter did not, as some have held, develop out of the former. Instead, consecration of someone's property to a divinity was a response to threats to plebeian magistrates, while would-be tyrants suffered confiscation and demolition of their houses.
The following two chapters treat run-of-the-mill fines, those imposed by aediles and then those attested epigraphically in Italy. Tables in each chapter helpfully list the relevant data. P. sees the monuments aediles built and the objects they dedicated out of the fines they levied as a means of self-promotion in preparation for seeking further political office. Intriguingly, in several cases aediles built temples or porticos out of fines they imposed on graziers. That contemporary generals were doing the same with their war booty must reveal something about the economics of pasturage and transhumance. P. acknowledges the context, and one hopes she will pursue the connection further in future research. She makes a start in the following chapter by connecting some of the Italian inscriptions to the cult of Hercules, a divinity associated with cattle and transhumance. More generally, she suggests that income from fines for agricultural or pastoral offences contributed significantly to the extraordinary wealth of some temples.
Chs 4 and 5 cover a rather mixed bag of fines and confiscations. The former examines those occurring in a military context. P. argues, following Brunt, that confiscation of property, flogging and even sale into slavery for evading the draft or failing to register for the census reflect the need to coerce conscripts to come forward, although here one might have wished for more attention to the military context in which such means had to be employed. Recruits were eager to join up when a war in prospect offered the promise of an easy victory and plentiful booty. The chapter continues with an examination of four generals who suffered financial penalties after they lost battles. While she notes correctly that very few generals were similarly mulcted, more might have been offered to explain why these four were exceptions.
The chapter that follows focuses on various fines levied in a political context. Some the Pontifex Maximus imposed on other priests to secure their performance of religious duties. Others resulted from charges against generals of misappropriation of booty, particularly during the great eastern conquests in the second century. The prosecution of Lucius Scipio, she argues, did not destroy his political career even if a fine was imposed on him, despite the sources’ moralising. Next, the evidence for fines levied for res repetundae is examined along with the question of whether exile enabled those convicted to preserve their property, to which P. answers in the affirmative. Finally, she tabulates all extant figures for fines levied and concludes that their amounts corresponded to multiples of the census of the first class and were intended to ‘downgrade the status of the convicted and the related opportunities to run for office and canvass for votes’ (112).
The last four chapters treat confiscations during the political violence of the late Republic, beginning with those occurring after the deaths of Gaius Gracchus and Fulvius Flaccus in 121 and Saturninus in 100. She suggests that the Senatus consulta ultima passed against them came in response to their aspirations to regnum, connecting the confiscations of their property to the confiscations in the cases of the early republican would-be tyrants discussed in the first chapter. Ch. 7 looks at the hostis declarations against Marius, Sulpicius and Sulla and argues that the senate's rejection in 63 of Caesar's proposal to imprison the Catilinarian conspirators but acceptance of his proposal to confiscate their property shows that the latter was not at this point the invariable consequence of a capital charge. There follows a discussion of confiscations during Sulla's proscriptions. She suggests that the declaration of his enemies as hostes justified him in treating their property as spolia to be seized and disposed of through auctions and other means. The consequences of so much property coming onto the market all at once, she argues, must have depressed prices while clouded titles made buying and selling problematic, further weakening the value of land. P. interestingly suggests that these undesirable results shed important light on the motives of the triumvirs in proscribing their enemies in 43: ‘profitability was not a crucial aim … [but instead] the immediate need to eliminate political enemies …’ (152). Thus, families developed various strategies to preserve their property in the face of confiscations in order to avoid ruin. The last chapter, as one might expect, discusses Clodius’ confiscation, consecration, and auction of Cicero's property through an extended analysis of the De domo suo. She concludes that not all of his property was expropriated.
Overall, P.'s careful, thorough and judicious work reveals that the fines and confiscations most prominent in our sources — those levied on the political elite — were comparatively rare until Sulla, while fines on ordinary Romans and Italians were probably far more common than their limited appearance in our evidence would suggest.
