In the Roman Empire’s heyday, legal disputes and fiscal controversies were commonplace. While emperors paraded in marble-clad splendor and senators debated the fate of the empire, the wheels of Rome’s vast bureaucracy ground away, ever-vigilant against the true villains of civilization — tax evaders.
A papyrus discovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls Laboratory provides a fascinating glimpse into the judicial system of the Roman Near East. The papyrus tells a gripping tale of two defendants accused of falsifying documents in the sale of slaves — a crime the Roman Empire took very seriously.
Our story begins in the sun-scorched provinces of Iudaea and Arabia, roughly around today’s Israel and Jordan. The defendants, Gadalias and Saulos, were accused of developing a scheme aimed to bypass tax obligations regarding the sale and manumission (freeing) of slaves.
The scheme appeared to be pretty creative, involving several forged documents and it appears to have been an important and exciting case. The Roman legal system operated through a system where governors traveled to different locations to hear cases. If the governor was at your trial, it was an important one. Had it been televised, the case would have made a lot of headlines.
The papyrus was apparently written to help prosecutors remember their arguments. It’s essentially a prosecutor’s note, written by someone with trained and with a high degree of technical familiarity with Roman law. It had written instructions carefully laying out counterarguments against every possible defense.
A serious crime
Roman law at the time was very strict regarding the fiscal implications of freeing slaves. It was legal to do it, but you needed to pay a tax. Gadalias and Saulos were accused of fabricating sale records to disguise true ownership and then staging fraudulent manumissions (freeing of slaves).
Yet this remarkable papyrus was almost discovered by accident.
“I volunteered to organize documentary papyri in the Israel Antiquities Authority’s scrolls laboratory, and when I saw it, marked ‘Nabataean,’ I exclaimed, ‘It’s Greek to me!'” recalls Prof. Cotton Paltiel. In recognition of her discovery, the papyrus has been named P. Cotton, in line with papyrological conventions.
This kind of deception was considered a serious offense in the Roman legal system, as it directly undermined the imperial treasury. The legal terminology in the papyrus aligns with Roman laws against forgery (lex Cornelia testamentaria nummaria) and tax fraud (fraus fisci). The presence of formal legal terms suggests that provincial administration followed Roman judicial protocols closely.
How (not) to scam the Roman Empire
Gadalias and Saulos were, at first glance, respectable provincial citizens. Gadalias was the son of a chreophylax — an archival official responsible for legal records, a sort of notary of the Roman days. Along with his friend Saulos and a couple of accomplices, they had an idea: if owning slaves meant paying taxes, why not simply forge a few documents and make those taxes disappear?
Well, that is the allegation, at least. We can’t know for sure if Gadalias and Saulos actually did it or if they were innocent.
But according to the prosecutors, their scheme had three main steps:
- Falsified Slave Sales – They forged documents to make it look like they had sold their slaves to an associate (e.g., Chaereas or Diocles), even though they still retained control. This allowed them to avoid taxes on ownership.
- Fake Manumission – The “new owner” would pretend to free the slave, bypassing the required manumission tax. In reality, the slave remained under their control, but legally appeared to be freed without paying the treasury.
- Cover-up & Bribery – When the fraud was discovered, the accused tried to seek protection from a city council (boule), possibly through bribes or by claiming status that might reduce their punishment.
Thus, they would continue to have control of their slaves without having to pay any taxes on them.
The trial was held before a governor—almost certainly Tineius Rufus, the very same man who would go on trigger and crush the jewish Bar Kokhba Revolt a few years later. But before he was busy with rebels, he had more pressing concerns: tax-dodgers.
How the trial went
We don’t have a full record of the trial, we only get to see the prosecution’s side of things.
The prosecution seemed to have everything they needed. They even had a snitch, someone who denounced the scheme to the authorities. Informants played a crucial role in Roman tax enforcement, and their testimony was often rewarded.
To make matters even more damning, the courtroom minutes tell us that a witness named Primus was put under questioning, and soon after, another key figure, a slave named Abaskantos, was giving testimony as well. Considering Roman judicial practices, one can imagine their words were not exactly voluntary, and were most likely accusatory for the defendants.
Gadalias and Saulos did their best to escape trouble. The prosecutors expected them to claim that the error was simply a mistake. The papyrus also seems to indicate that Gadalias, despite being the son of a bureaucrat, claimed to be too poor to pay taxes, which seems unlikely to have worked. Overall, it doesn’t seem like the two defendants had too much in the way of actual defense.
We can’t know for sure how the trial ended, but if the two were found guilty, they were in big trouble. Had this been a minor tax dispute, our defendants might have walked away with a hefty fine. But the combined weight of forgery, fraud, and interference in official records made this a serious matter. Fines and confiscation of property were almost guaranteed, and they could have been exiled if the governor was feeling merciful. If he was not feeling merciful, forced labor (or even worse) were possible outcomes)
A glimpse into an ancient judicial system
Beyond its delicious details, the P. Cotton papyrus provides an unprecedented look at provincial justice in the Roman Empire. The system worked. Even this far from, Rome the judicial system seemed to be a well-oiled machine that functioned as intended.
“This document shows that core Roman institutions documented in Egypt were also implemented throughout the empire,” notes co-author Fritz Mitthof of the University of Vienna.
The papyrus also suggests that the system was harsh. Rome did not tolerate financial mischief, and those caught attempting to cheat the system faced swift retribution. Local elites, like one of the defendants, were not spared.
“This papyrus is extraordinary because it provides direct insight into trial preparations in this part of the Roman Empire,” says Dr. Anna Dolganov of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Avner Ecker of Hebrew University adds: “This is the best-documented Roman court case from Iudaea apart from the trial of Jesus.”
The trial also foreshadows greater tensions between the Jewish population and Rome. While this case wasn’t political in nature, the frustrations of provincial citizens with Roman rule was apparent. They had to endure its taxes, its laws, and its harsh justice, which would soon manifest in outright rebellion. Just a few years later, the province erupted into the Bar Kokhba Revolt. The armed uprising saw widespread devastation but was crushed by the Romans. It’s possible that the two defendants may have also been involved in the revolt.
“Whether they were indeed involved in rebellion remains an open question, but the insinuation speaks to the charged atmosphere of the time,” notes Dr. Dolganov.
Journal Reference: Forgery and Fiscal Fraud in Iudaea and Arabia on the Eve of the Bar Kokhba Revolt: Memorandum and Minutes of a Trial before a Roman Official (P.Cotton), Tyche (2025). DOI: 10.25365/tyche-2023-38-5. tyche.univie.ac.at/index.php/t … he/article/view/9224
