Wright Hassall at 175: echoes in time - by Kevin Hall

This year marks the 175th anniversary of Wright Hassall. We have come a long way since 1846 when we were formed, operating from a small premises at 6 Wellington Street in Leamington. Through the years we have grown substantially and have much to be proud of.

To celebrate our 175th anniversary, I thought I would look 175 decades into the past to see what was happening then. What has always struck me is not how different the modern and ancient worlds are, but how similar.?People are still driven by the same hopes and fears, the ancients had hydraulic systems, temple doors which opened when someone stepped on the ground in front of them, earthquake prediction machines and, yes, import VAT.

Pandemics, economic crisis, geo-political instability

Massive walls were built, the terrorist threat was neutralised, the pandemic ended under his rule and he dealt decisively with the mire of financial crime that had dogged the economy for years.?It was a turbulent few years, but the country was much better for his strong leadership.?

No, this is not a “fake news” summary of overstated modern achievements. It’s a snapshot of how the same issues were successfully dealt with in the classical world exactly 1,750 years ago.?

Wright Hassall celebrates its 175th anniversary in 2021 and I wondered what was happening 175 decades before, in ancient Rome. It’s an eye-opening account. ?

Chapter 1: background

The year was 271 and the empire was in crisis. Decades of increasing pressures had brought Rome to its knees and almost witnessed the fall of western civilisation. A concatenation of calamitous events had created, in modern parlance, the perfect storm that the Romans only just managed to withstand.

People were dying of pestilence; the threat of war simmered at the borders, periodically erupting into monstrous clashes; the economy was in crisis; and internal protests and uprisings disturbed the civic peace.

Edward Gibbon, the pre-eminent 18th century historian, was moved to comment: “During that calamitous period … every instant of time was marked, every province of the Roman world was afflicted by barbarous invaders and military tyrants, and the ruined empire seemed to approach the last and fatal moment of its dissolution”.

An empire the size of Rome’s was difficult to govern at the best of times. The Senate, army and the general populace fought, both literally and figuratively, to dominate the imperial succession. If one party’s man won the tussle, the chances were that he would be stabbed in the back (literally) by a rival faction anxious to put their man in place. This unstable method of electing a leader had reached a climax in 193 when five prospective emperors jostled for top spot, resulting in an outbreak of civil war. Again. The year of five emperors.

Never again, people said. And yet, with the inevitability of human nature, it all repeated itself in 238. The year of six emperors.

Chapter 2: the emperor

By 271, the emperor was Aurelian.?

Chapter 3: geo-political unrest

• Battle of Placentia—Emperor Aurelian is defeated by the Alemanni forces invading Italy
• Battle of Fano—Aurelian defeats the Alemanni, who begin to retreat from Italy
• Battle of Pavia—Aurelian destroys the retreating Alemanni army

Since the winter of 270, the Roman army had been occupied with repulsing an invasion at the Danube frontier by a Germanic tribe called the Vandals. The incursion was successfully repulsed by Aurelian, but the emperor’s absence from the rest of the Italian peninsular was noticed by one of the “Alemanni”, the confederation of Germanic tribes [word fact: Germany is still called “allemagne” in modern French]. The Juthungi, from the region now known as Bavaria, invaded Italy.?

Emperor Aurelian was still by the Danube at the time, in a northerly Roman province roughly in the region of modern Hungary, Austria and the Balkan countries. Aurelian promptly left the province of Pannonia [word fact: from the Proto-Indo-European language *pen-, "swamp, water, wet"] and moved into Italy. He issued a demand to the Juthungi for their surrender. The response was that if Aurelian wanted to challenge them, they would show him how a free people could fight. The Juthungi promptly defeated the Romans at the Battle of Placentia (modern Piacenza).?

This was a dangerous time for the Roman empire, as the Juthungi advanced quickly south on a defenceless Rome.?

Somehow the Roman army rallied. They pursued and engaged the Juthungi on the Metaurus river near Fano (Italian east coast, 40 miles from San Marino). Word historians will be interested to know that Fano was at that time known as Fanum Fortunae, named after a temple (Latin “fanum”) located there which was dedicated to Fortuna. Caesar Augustus had established a “colonia” on this spot, building a town wall and an arch in 2AD, which was still there in 271 and whose remains still exist today.?

The Romans pinned the Juthungi against the river Fano where many fell in and drowned. The Juthungi sued for peace, requesting safe passage, but Aurelian wanted to restore his damaged reputation after the defeat at Placentia and the threat to Rome. The Juthungi attempted to return home north along the Via Aemilia, but Aurelian pursued them. He attacked while they were entering the open plains near Ticinum (Pavia) and destroyed their entire force, except for a column that escaped through the Alps only to be caught later.

Aurelian gloried in the title Germanicus Maximus, but the Roman people had been shocked at how close they had come to a full invasion after the defeat at Placentia. Massive new defensive walls were constructed to encircle Rome. These can still be seen today as the “Aurelian Walls”.?

Chapter 4: financial crime

Among the tasks performed by a Roman public accountant or “rationalis” [word fact: derived from the Latin reor, “to calculate”] were "the collection of all normal taxes and duties, the control of currency and the administration of mines and mints". Workers at the mint in Rome had been engaged in falsifying the coinage and, from the coins that survive from this time, this seems to have been happening for many years.?

It seems likely that the Roman emperors had been debasing their currency to fund the army and bribe barbarian chieftains menacing their borders. The inflationary effects not only affected day to day living costs for ordinary folk, combined with the danger posed by marauding barbarians; it also contributed to massive disruption of the sophisticated trading network of the ancient world, adding more fuel to the economic meltdown.

The chief of the Roman state treasury in 271 was a man called Felicissimus [ironic word fact: Latin for “luckiest, happiest”]. He was held responsible and executed. An uprising followed, but many were killed, including senators who were presumably complicit.

Chapter 5: pandemic

The Plague of Cyprian was named after a bishop in Carthage (in modern Tunisia) who had described the symptoms of a plague which began in 250. At its height, it is thought to have killed 5,000 people a day in Rome alone. Described as one of the worst plagues in history, it circulated for over 20 years.?

The good news in 271 is, this was the year the pandemic ended.?

Conclusion

It might not have been one of those years containing a battle that reverberates through history or telling an epic tale which influences Hollywood films, but 271 was far from uneventful. An empire almost fell, financial crime was addressed and there was good news for a pandemic.?

During Aurelian’s brief, but successful, reign, he also started the biggest infrastructure project the Roman world had ever seen: the building of the Aurelian walls around Rome. Its construction has been interpreted as a barrier against threats both external and internal (including import tax fraud).

Sadly, this oasis of relative calm was not to last. Assassinated (such is the lot of a Roman emperor) in 275, Aurelian’s order returned to disorder until the elevation of Diocletian in 284.

So, can we learn anything from 1,750 years ago? Well yes. Pandemics, financial crimes and foreign threats: although the world changes, it somehow stays the same. And that goes for laws and taxes too.?

By Kevin Hall, VAT Partner, Wright Hassall LLP

Most people know me only as a VAT specialist, but in 1991 my degree was in Classics.?I was unaware that studying Latin and ancient Greek was a skill I could transfer to reading VAT legislation: in both cases nobody actually speaks like that, and yet someone has to read, understand and communicate its meaning.??