page_title: Accounting
section_title: Accounting in the Roman Empire
hierarchical_section_title: Accounting / History / Accounting in the Roman Empire
caption_attribution_description: Part of the Res gestae Divi Augusti from the Monumentum Ancyranum.
context_page_description: Accounting or accountancy is the job of sharing financial information about a business to managers and shareholders. Accounting is often called the "language of business". Accountants are people who do accounting, and also carry out the auditing or checking of a company's books and records. In Britain, this auditing is often carried out by a qualified person called a "chartered accountant". In the United States, the professional designation is Certified Public Accountant or "CPA".
  When accountants do accounting work, they write in the books of account that belong to a company. Every time money is spent or earned, it is written in the ledger. The information in the ledger is used to prepare the company accounts monthly, quarterly and annually. These annual accounts show what money the company has taken in over time and what it has spent money on. It also shows if the company made a profit in the year, who owes the company money, who the company owes money to, and any big expensive items the company has bought which they expect to use for many years. Lenders, managers, investors, tax authorities and other decision-makers look at these annual accounts.
context_section_description: The Res Gestae Divi Augusti (Latin: "The Deeds of the Divine Augustus") is a remarkable account to the Roman people of the Emperor Augustus' stewardship. It listed and quantified his public expenditure, which encompassed distributions to the people, grants of land or money to army veterans, subsidies to the aerarium (treasury), building of temples, religious offerings, and expenditures on theatrical shows and gladiatorial games. It was not an account of state revenue and expenditure, but was designed to demonstrate Augustus' munificence. The significance of the Res Gestae Divi Augusti from an accounting perspective lies in the fact that it illustrates that the executive authority had access to detailed financial information, covering a period of some forty years, which was still retrievable after the event. The scope of the accounting information at the emperor's disposal suggests that its purpose encompassed planning and decision-making.
  
  The Roman historians Suetonius and Cassius Dio record that in 23 BC, Augustus  prepared a rationarium (account) which listed public revenues, the amounts of cash in the aerarium (treasury), in the provincial fisci (tax officials), and in the hands of the publicani (public contractors); and that it included the names of the freedmen and slaves from whom a detailed account could be obtained.  The closeness of this information to the executive authority of the emperor is attested by Tacitus' statement that it was written out by Augustus himself. 
  Records of cash, commodities, and transactions were kept scrupulously by military personnel of the Roman army. An account of small cash sums received over a few days at the fort of Vindolanda circa 110 CE shows that the fort could compute revenues in cash on a daily basis, perhaps from sales of surplus supplies or goods manufactured in the camp, items dispensed to slaves such as cervesa (beer) and clavi caligares (nails for boots), as well as commodities bought by individual soldiers. The basic needs of the fort were met by a mixture of direct production, purchase and requisition; in one letter, a request for money to buy 5,000 modii (measures) of braces (a cereal used in brewing) shows that the fort bought provisions for a considerable number of people.
  The Heroninos Archive is the name given to a huge collection of papyrus documents, mostly letters, but also including a fair number of accounts, which come from Roman Egypt in 3rd century CE. The bulk of the documents relate to the running of a large, private estate is named after Heroninos because he was phrontistes (Koine Greek: manager) of the estate which had a complex and standarised system of accounting which was followed by all its local farm managers. Each administrator on each sub-division of the estate drew up his own little accounts, for the day-to-day running of the estate, payment of the workforce, production of crops, the sale of produce, the use of animals, and general expenditure on the staff. This information was then summarized as pieces of papyrus scroll into one big yearly account for each particular sub—division of the estate. Entries were arranged by sector, with cash expenses and gains extrapolated from all the different sectors. Accounts of this kind gave the owner the opportunity to take better economic decisions because the information was purposefully selected and arranged.
caption: Part of the Res Gestae Divi Augusti from the Monumentum Ancyranum (Temple of Augustus and Rome) at Ancyra, built between 25 BCE - 20 BCE.
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