The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus - Coptic ...

184
EVAGRIUS
procured their living through providing services, 145 including prostitutes
who promiscuously purvey their bodily charms in attachment to brothels
in the hidden and unseen parts of the city, and what is more, indeed, on
catamites who outrage not only nature but also the state: thus the
income, instead of some law, cries out that such wickedness exists with
impunity for those who wish. Every fourth year those who collected this
in each place paid the unholy and accursed revenue gathered from this
to the ¢rst and highest of the o⁄cials, so that it constituted not the least
part of the o⁄ce and had its own scrinia, as they are called, and those
who assessed such matters, not obscure men but ones who considered
the matter an o⁄cial duty just indeed like the others. 146
When Anastasius learnt this, he placed it before the senate and,
rightly declaring the matter to be a de¢lement and a new-fangled
pollution, decreed that it should be abolished once and for all, and
consigned to the £ames the papers which explained the collection. And
in his desire to consecrate the matter to God completely, lest it might be
145 The translation is in line with that in BEL 377. Festugie're (349) translated rather
di¡erently: ‘This had been allowed to pass unnoticed ^ since when I cannot say . . . It
weighed on a great number of those who live grouped into associations with communal expenses.’
Festugie're interpreted this as an allusion to the guilds into which traders and artisans
were collected, but his version departs considerably from the Greek. Festugie're does
not fully translate tZ'n trofZ'n pori¤ zousi ‘procured their living’, and, although e ’¤ranoB is a
technical term for a group whose members might provide mutual ¢nancial support, it would
be odd to describe people as obtaining their living e ’xe ’ra¤ nou, from such a group; e ’¤ranoB is
also used to denote transactions which produced ¢nancial gain, and I have preferred this
more general sense.
146 The Chrysargyron, or collatio lustralis, was introduced by Constantine as a levy of
gold and silver (hence its Greek name) on the property of merchants, artisans and the professions;
it was originally levied every ¢ve years, being connected with the ¢nancing of imperial
donatives, but at some point in the ¢fth century this increased to every four years
(Evagrius is supported by Zosimus, ii.38.2, Joshua the Stylite ch. 31, and Cod. Iust. xi.1.1);
in practice it may have been collected by indiction year, in monthly instalments (Bagnall,
Egypt 154). The tax was collected city by city, with those eligible to pay being recorded on
a register and choosing from their own number the individuals responsible for the actual
collection; the monies were paid into the sacrae largitiones, where there may well have
been a separate unit (scrinium) devoted to its administration. See Jones, LRE 433^4, 871^
2; also Hendy, Studies 175^8.
Joshua records that at Edessa, which used to pay 140 pounds of gold every four years, the
news of the tax remission was greeted with a week of popular festivities. Anastasius made
good the loss of income to the sacrae largitiones by allocating to a special fund speci¢c
estates which generated the same revenue (though compensation did not halt the longterm
decline in the powers and prestige of this bureau, on which see Delmaire, ‘De¤ clin’).