Ancient Roman accounting tablets suggest public officials were involved in a range of expenses fiddles 2,000 years ago to equal - and surpass - the current MPs House of Conman’s scandals.
Writing tablets of wood and hide uncovered near Hadrian's Wall - built across northern England to keep out the Caledonian wild men in skirts - detail hundreds of expenses claimed by Roman officials.
More than four hundred tablets were discovered at the site and are some of the earliest examples of business and personal expenses being fiddled in Britain by government officials.
One of the translated tablets contains incriminating details of ‘entertainment’ claims at the Roman camp of Vindolanda. The items expensed include balcony tickets for a fight to the death contest between nude female gladiators – 10 denari each – including cloakroom charges, a haunch of roast swan and a free mug of mead.
The wooden writing tablets - which date from the 2nd Century AD – include expenses for arrowheads, Hibernian catamites, haggis traps, chariot wheels, ears of grain, hobnails for boots, dog oil, bread, cereals, lead ore, scourges, knicker elastic, leather hides and hump-backed pigs.
Professor Ghengis McScrunt, who translated the tablets from the classical Latin, states they detail hundreds of expense claims and "lavish parties" held for the upper ranks with gold denari being spent freely on woad-painted whores of Briton and Celt tribal stock.
"Officers were paid very well - they could purchase goods duty free so they would often fiddle expenses by buying properties at a cut price then selling them on and not declaring capital gains tax – a bit like Hazel Blears."
The wooden tablets, which are preserved at Jack’s Car Boot & Pikey Emporium in Smegmadale, depict a business letter written by a money-lending entrepreneur referred to as “Mithias that scrounging Jew” who was supplying goods to a Roman general named as Barclayus Bankus.
It reads: "As to the 100 pounds of pig’s foreskins from Morocco - I will settle up this account when you send me the 5 aureus and 7 sisteri owed as payment.”
"I have written to you several times that I will need denari up front for further transactions as I have the bailiffs knocking on my cave door every day now.”
“If you do not pay your bill forthwith I will have to file for Chapter 11 and declare bankruptcy.”
Candida Muffitch, Senior Lobotomist at Hadrian's Wall Heritage, told a reporter from the Cormorant Stranglers Gazette "The tablets show desperate pleas by money lenders and chandlers officials so I think the Roman legions were quite tight with their money – unless spending it on personal pleasures."
“However, with the case in question, certain supplementary notes and references suggest that Mithias the Jew had been put on a payments stop list for supplying "dodgy" goods – quite possibly the shipment of pig’s foreskins.”
She said punishment against officials caught fiddling their expenses was a "matter of luck as accountants and auditors were spread pretty thin across the empire."
"If you were ranked highly you might just get sent off to exile somewhere nasty – like Ireland - but if you were poorer, or further down the ranks, you might get the chop – or assigned to crucifixion duty in Judea.”
