Home › Timeline › The Witnesses and the Turn › Hadrian burns the arrears
On reaching Rome as emperor, Hadrian cancelled arrears owed to the treasury for about fifteen years (AD 104–118), 900 million sesterces by the inscription the Senate and People set up in Trajan's Forum, and the Historia Augusta says the records were burned in that forum. The next recorded cancellation of arrears came in AD 178, when Marcus Aurelius wrote off the preceding forty-five years.
The mechanism
RELEASE
How it was checked
- EvidenceT5 INDEPENDENT SECULAR; Status: ADDED 2026-09-19
- Letter eraTHE WITNESSES AND THE TURN 44 to 312 AD
- SourcesRECORD — Hadrian's cancellation of tax-arrears (CIL VI 967), Judaism and Rome project; Cassius Dio 69.8.1 with the Loeb note on AD 178 (trans. E. Cary), LacusCurtius; Historia Augusta, Life of Hadrian 7.6 (trans. D. Magie), LacusCurtius · checked 19 September: Cassius Dio 69.8.1 with Loeb note (trans. Cary), LacusCurtius; Judaism and Rome project, 'Hadrian's cancellation of tax-arrears (CIL VI 967)' (read in a browser); Historia Augusta, Hadrian 7.6 with Magie's note 66, LacusCurtius
The whole timelineThe Witnesses and the TurnThe historical recordAll eras