The Economic History of Byzantium - Dumbarton Oaks

998 NICOLAS OIKONOMIDES
and one-half in synone for the zeugaratos, 1 ⁄2 of a nomisma in kapnikon for the boidatos,
and 1 ⁄4 of a nomisma in kapnikon for the aktemon. This personal tax tended to vary from
place to place. 61
Finally, mention must be made of the kaniskion, a contribution in kind whose purpose
was to provide foodstuffs for the tax collector (dioiketes) and his entourage and fodder
for their animals. We have information about this for the eleventh century: for each
small landowner (whose basic tax might be, say, between 1 ⁄2 and 3 nomismata), the
kaniskion amounted to one loaf of bread, one chicken, half a metron of wine (approximately
4 liters), and one modios of barley (about 12 kg). For a large landowner (paying,
for instance, 43 nomismata), this contribution would be tripled.
There were also regular taxes on domestic animals that produced income. The ennomion
62 was a regular charge on such animals and took the form of the payment of
money in return for grazing rights on land belonging to the state or the community.
For sheep (and, I assume, for goats) the ennomion amounted to one nomisma per 100
head of animals in the tenth and eleventh centuries, and to 1 ⁄3 (or 1 ⁄12) ofanomisma
per head for oxen and buffaloes. In some texts, the ennomion is called a dekateia (meaning
“rent for the use of grazing land”), and sometimes a distinction was made between
the summer and winter dekateia, which were charged on all domestic animals apart
from plowing oxen and were collected by the state representatives or by the owner of the
grazing land. Over time, however, the ennomion became more and more a tax on domestic
animals, being charged even on bees (the melissoennomion, first mentioned in 1152).
Anumber of supplementary taxes existed in connection with those described above,
and although they are best known to us after the eleventh century, they seem to have
been introduced somewhat before that time. 63 The aerikon originally depended on the
basic land tax, was charged on animals, and was paid either in cash or in kind; 64 later
the term aerikon and, in particular, aer, took on quite a different significance and came
to mean a type of fine. 65 The oikomodion was a tax that seems to have been introduced
from conquered Bulgaria after 1018 and to have consisted of a regular payment to the
state of a set quantity of grain on the part of each owner of land. Tenant farmers paid,
according to their financial circumstances, the paroikiatikon, the aktemonitikion, or the
zeugaratikion (a tax on paroikoi who were zeugaratoi), or the zeugologion (a tax on the pairs
of oxen belonging to paroikoi), both of which were regular levies on their working animals.
These new regular taxes, which were accepted without any particular protest, and
61 Documents from the monastery of Iveron (Actes d’Iviron, ed. J. Lefort, N. Oikonomides, and D.
Papachryssanthou, Archives de l’Athos, 4 vols. [Paris, 1985–95], 1: no. 30 and 2: no. 48) refer to
zeugaratoi who paid 43 ⁄48 of a nomisma, to voidatoi who paid between 22 ⁄48 and 26 ⁄48, and to aktemones
who paid between 4 ⁄48 and 7 ⁄48.
62 Oikonomides, Fiscalité, 72ff.
63 Ibid., 80ff.
64 For adifferent etymology and interpretation, see J. Haldon, “Aerikon/aerika: A Reinterpretation,”
JÖB 44 (1994): 135–42.
65 See below, 1038.