Centesima

Centesima namely pars, or the hundredth part, also called vectigal rerum venalium, or centesima rerum venalium, was a tax of one per cent. levied upon all goods that were exposed for public sale, probably not only at Rome and in Italy, but throughout the empire. This tax, as Tacitus (Tac. Ann. 1.78) says, was introduced after the civil wars, and its produce assigned to the aerarium militare. Tiberius reduced the tax to one-half per cent. (ducentesima), after he had changed Cappadocia into a province (A.D. 17), and had thereby increased the revenue of the empire (Tac. Ann. 2.42), but apparently raised it to one per cent. again after the fall of Sejanus (D. C. 58.16). Caligula in the beginning of his reign abolished the tax altogether for Italy, as is attested by Suetonius (Calig. 16) and also by a coin of Caligula of A.D. 39, on which we find R. CC. (i.e. ducentesima remissa), and by Dio Cassius (59.9). Suetonius, in speaking of this remission, calls the tax ducentesima, probably ignoring the restoration by Tiberius to the original amount. It seems to have been soon re-imposed, probably by Caligula, for we find it exacted at a later date. (Dig. 50, 16, 7; Cod. Just. 12.19, 4. Cf. Marquardt, Röm. Staatsverw. 2.269.)

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