Stone tablets recount a corruption case so widespread that it became a capital offense in 480 CE. Archaeologists in western Turkey recently discovered a detailed account of 1,600-year-old tax fraud so brazen that ancient Rome made it a deadly offense. Initially believed to be funerary ode inscriptions, the Late Antiquity stone tablets actually provide vital missing information in a notably widespread corruption case that spanned more than a decade—and even implicated the estate of Emperor Valentinian III’s daughter, Placidia.
Striving for a World without Capital Punishment