Fiscus - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition fiscus

Definition :

Fiscus, a wicker basket, or pannier, in which the Romans were accustomed to keep and carry about large sums of money (Cic. 1 Verr. C. viii.; Ph'dr. Fab. Ii. 7), hence any treasure or money chest.

The treasury of a monarch (as the repository of forfeited property) a noble, or any private person, Black's Law Dictionary, 7th Edn., p. 650.

The importance of the imperial fiscus led to the appropriating the name to that property which the C'sar claimed as C'sar, and 'fiscus' without any adjunct, was so used (Juv. Sat. iv. 54). Ultimately the word came to signify, generally, the property of the State, the C'sar having concentrated in himself all the sovereign power; thus the word had finally the signification of 'rarium in the Republican period. It does not appear at what time the 'rarium was merged in the fiscus, though the distinction continued to the time of Hadrian. In the latter periods the words were used indiscriminately, to mean the imperial, which was the only public, chest, Smith's Dict. Antiq.