Contributions to the study of the history of financial law in Ancient Rome – The reign of Еmperor Diocletian

Roman law, as the legal system that was in force for nearly thirteen centuries in Ancient Rome, did not disappear with the fall of the Roman state. Rather, in a more or less modified form, it became positive law in contemporary European states. The reception of Roman law, especially the fundamental institutions of private law (private ownership, freedom of contract, and freedom of testamentary disposition), forms the legal foundation of modern private law. A part of the Roman legal system is also public law (ius publicum) which deals with general state interests (Ulpian, Digest 1,1,1, 2). The purpose and aim of this research is Roman financial law, and the subject of the paper is the fiscal system during the reign of Emperor Diocletian. Through a comparative method of available sources and texts from relevant authors of Diocletian’s time and the period immediately after him (a smaller number), as well as scientific studies from the modern era (referring to the past hundred or more years), it is concluded that the public-law acts of financial law from that period were, in some of their solutions, far ahead of their time and are partially applicable even today.