The Romans called them delatores or "tale-bearers", = "snitches", "informants". Domitian was the worst and most assiduous at encouraging delatores. Under the Roman system, persons wanted by the State usually faced only two punishments: exile, or death. (Romans didn't have prisons or imprisonment as a punishment; incarceration was only a temporary holding-tank measure.) If the punishment was death, the State took the dead man's estate and the informant got a nice chunk. Under Domitian and the later emperors, this process was a major source of government revenue, as senators got better and better at shielding, hiding, or sheltering their incomes and assets from tax collectors (who also worked on commission). Lucius Annaeus Seneca, the senator, philosopher, and poet, was condemned by Nero, about 20 years before the accession of Domitian in 81. Seneca owned one estate in northern Italy whose annual wine production was worth 30,000 gold aurei annually (an aureus was about 7 grams of 99% pure gold). That's 210 kg of pure gold, or at recent prices around $1600/oz., about $11.8 million. Annually. Treason trials of millionaires were the major business of the Roman court system for the last 300 years of its existence.
Posts like this are the reason I have been lurking for a long long time. Very informative and much appreciated.
35 posted on 04/14/2013 8:45:44 PM PDT by 1553BC2RT