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Blank Receipts Hid a 1,500-Year-Old Roman Tax Scandal in Western Anatolia
In AD 480, a Roman tax scandal in western Anatolia pushed one of the Eastern Roman Empire’s highest officials to threaten dishonest collectors with death. Before the year was over, he too had been sentenced to die. Newly identified inscription fragments from Stratonikeia are now filling gaps in the decree behind the affair. The text…
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New Inscriptions Reveal How Roman Businessmen Entered the Heart of Ancient Teos
Two inscriptions found in the Sanctuary of Dionysos show that Roman commercial power reached Teos not through conquest, but through markets, marble and civic life. Rome did not always enter Anatolia with armies. Sometimes it arrived through contracts, ships, market officials and businessmen who knew how to turn local connections into lasting influence. In the…