The explanation of the evidence even highlights an informant working for the Roman authorities.
If one undercover Roman informant from around 130 A.D. is to be believed, defendants Gadalis and Saulos engaged in a range of forgeries and fraud all designed to circumvent the paying of Roman taxes.
A new discovery from the Roman empire outlines a juicy case of second-century crime. Containing an extraordinary 133 lines of text, an ancient piece of papyrus shows how even Roman government had to deal with fraudsters every now and then, according to a study published in the journal Tyche.
Scholars from the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the University of Vienna, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem worked in tandem to showcase this papyrus, which had been in possession of the Israel Antiquities Authority. The ancient canvas highlighted a forgery case in ancient Rome.
The document itself -- which went unnoticed for decades, until a professor realized that it had been misclassified -- is written in a complex style that linked it to Roman legal proceedings. The papyrus features a prosecutors' notes for a trial before Roman authorities, including transcripts of an actual judicial hearing. One unnamed prosecutor highlights the power of evidence, and helps create a strategy to handle objections from the opposing side.
"This papyrus is extraordinary because it provides direct insight into trial preparations in this part of the Roman Empire," Anna Dolganov, professor at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, said in a statement.
The defendants, Gadalias and Saulos, were accused of corruption -- the case includes forgery, tax evasion, and the fraudulent sale and release of slaves in the Roman provinces of Judaea and Arabia, roughly modern-day Israel and Jordan. "The identity of the prosecutors remains unknown, but they seem likely to have been functionaries of the Roman fiscal administration," the study authors wrote.
Avner Ecker, professor at Hebrew University, said this is a nearly unprecedented look into legal proceedings from this era of Roman rule. "This is the best-documented Roman court case from Judaea apart from the trial of Jesus," he said.
Gadalis -- the son of a notary and possibly a Roman citizen himself -- had his own long criminal history that was far more intense than the crimes in question on the papyrus, according to the document. His rap sheet included violence, extortion, counterfeiting, and even inciting rebellion. His co-conspirator in the alleged crime, Saulos, apparently orchestrated the fake sale and release of slaves, all without paying the required Roman taxes. The pair forged documents in order to hide the dealings.
"Forgery and tax fraud carried severe penalties under Roman law," Dolganov said, "including hard labor or even capital punishment."
Much of the information in the case against the two defendants came from an informant who gave them up to Roman authorities.
The prosecutors name both Gadalias and Saulos as players in rebellious activities undertaken during Emperor Hadrian's visit to the region around 130 A.D. The papyrus lists Tineius Rufus as the governor of Judaea, meaning that the trial likely occurred sometime between 130 and 132 A.D. -- right at the beginning of a large-scale Jewish upheaval against Roman rule known as the Bar Kokhba revolt.
"This document offers a unique glimpse of local civic institutions and the workings of Roman provincial administration and jurisdiction in the Near East," the study authors wrote. "It also sheds light on the elusive question of slave trade and ownership among Jews. At the same time, the papyrus provides insight into a cultural and intellectual environment in which Roman law, Greek rhetoric, and Jewish life meet."
The authors believe the study of the papyrus is "far from exhausted." Even if we don't know the final fate of Gadalis, Saulos, the unnamed prosecutors, or even the informant, there's still much left for us to learn.