Census : the censuses in the provinces of the Roman Empire from Augustus to Diocletian ; Census : les recensements dans l'empire romain d'Auguste à Diocletien
The provincial census is a key institution of the Roman Empire. Instituted by the first Princeps, Augustus, it was aimed at estimating the human and material resources of the territories which were under Roman control, and thus proved to be a cornerstone of the Roman fiscal system. Nevertheless, it remains mostly unknown to this date, which can be explained by the lack of sources and by their nature: apart from Egypt, provincial censuses are mostly attested through inscriptions dedicated to senators and knights who took part in these operations. In this dissertation, we chose to tackle the subject from novel perspectives and not to limit ourselves to the prosopographic approach that remains so far the most frequently adopted one. Despite its relevance given the nature of the sources, it restricts the study to the provinces in which census officials are known, and fails to give a comprehensive idea of the institution and of the methods through which information was collected. Our goal was not only to write a fiscal and political history of the census, but also to describe its process and identify its agents. To this end were included into our corpus all the literary, papyrological and juridical sources that might improve our understanding of this institution. Firstly, we focused on the two main provincial taxes, i.e. tributum soli and tributum capitis, in order to describe the fiscal system at work in the provinces and to identify the criteria on which these tributa were imposed. Secondly, we studied the way information was collected during the census. Our goal was to unravel the levels (local, provincial) through which data transited, their interactions, and the documents each one of them produced. At the same time, we wanted to emphasize the differences that existed between provinces, and to explain them. Finally, we addressed the institutional and political aspects of the provincial census: to what extent was this institution representative of the new regime that appeared with Augustus, and an opportunity for ...