The Economic History of Byzantium - Dumbarton Oaks

982 NICOLAS OIKONOMIDES
p. 997). The kapnikon was indeed collected many years before the reign of Empress
Irene, who was deposed in 802. 19 It would appear, then, that the tax was devised by
the Isaurian emperors.
The compilation of a cadaster was, of course, a much more complex task. The Roman
Empire had drawn up summary land registers, in which broad geographical areas
were shown with an indication of the number of estates located in each. It is not certain
whether Justinian attempted to compile a detailed land register. Even ifsuch a fiscal
instrument had been prepared, it would surely have been unable to survive the turmoil
of the late sixth and seventh centuries. Nor would it appear that the land register was
complete at the end of the reign of Irene (802), since Theodore of Stoudios refers to
the continued use of an oath as a means of proving taxable assets. Nikephoros I, Irene’s
successor, ordered a general revision of the land register. After that time, and to the
eleventh century, the Byzantine system of land taxation was based on a land register
that was systematically updated, thus drastically reducing disputes over taxation between
civil servants and taxpayers. 20
Ownership of land also became the basis for financing part of the individual’s obligation
of military service to the state. The service appears to have been an obligation in
the nature of a tax; this becomes comprehensible in the light of what we know about
the system of the strateia from the ninth to the eleventh century. 21
In two texts from the mid-eighth century—a paragraph in the Ecloga of the Isaurians
and a court decision attributed to Leo III or Constantine V—we find references to
soldiers who were owners or joint owners of land, who bought and maintained their
armament from the money produced by their land, and who contributed the salary
(roga) they earned when on campaign to the family budget. 22 In other words, these
were soldiers from rural areas who relied on their landholdings to maintain themselves,
presumably because their status as soldiers secured them certain privileges to
which wehave notestimony for the period in question but which are known to us in
later times.
Soldiers who were simultaneously owners of land are also mentioned by Theophanes,
in reference to the year 810. 23 Theodore of Stoudios wrote in 801 about the
widows of soldiers who were obliged to pay “a wretched and inhuman demand” (ejleeinh`n
kaì ajpánqrwpon ejxapaíthsin) because of the death of their husbands—in other
19 Theophanes, 487; Theophanes Continuatus, ed. I. Bekker (Bonn, 1838), 54.
20 Theodori Studitae Epistulae, ed. G. Fatouros, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1992), vol. 1, no. 7, lines 35–41 (hereafter
Theodore of Stoudios); Theophanes, 486.
21 Ihave studied the texts that follow in “Middle Byzantine Provincial Recruits: Salary and Armament,”
in Gonimos: Neoplatonic and Byzantine Studies Presented to Leendert G. Westerink at 75, ed. J. Duffy
and J. Peradotto (Buffalo, N.Y., 1988), 121–36. For a different view of the matter, see J. Haldon,
“Military Service, Military Lands and the Status of Soldiers: Current Problems and Interpretations,”
DOP 47 (1993): 1–67.
22 Ecloga, ed. L. Burgmann (Frankfurt, 1983), 220–22; D. Simon, “Byzantinische Hausgemeinschaftsverträge,”
in Beiträge zur europäischen Rechtsgeschichte und zum geltenden Zivilrecht, Festgabe für Johannes
Sontis, ed. F. Baur, K. Larenz, and F. Wieacker (Munich, 1977), 94.
23 Theophanes, 486.