Publicani (from Lat. publicum, 'that which is public or belongs to the state'), the name given by the Romans to those persons who farmed the public revenues (vectigalia). These revenues were put up to auction by the censors, and were 'sold' for a period of five years. They were derived chiefly from tolls, tithes, harbour-duties, the tax paid for the use of public pasture-lands, mining and salt duties; and from the special taxes they collected, publicani were classified as decumani, pecuarii or scriptuarii, and conductores portorium. As the state required them to give security for the sum at which they had purchased the collecting of the taxes, and as this sum was usually much greater than the wealth of any single individual, companies (societates) were formed, the members of which took each so many shares and were thus enabled to carry on conjointly undertakings far beyond the capabilities of the separate shareholders. Every societas had also a head-manager (magister), who resided at Rome, and transacted all foreign correspondence with the inferior officers who directly superintended the collection of the taxes. The publicani belonged to the order of equites, and formed from their immense profits a powerful capitalist class. Under the empire the land-tax and poll-tax came to be collected by officers of state—in senatorial provinces, the quaestor; in imperial provinces, an imperial procurator assistant to the governor; while in provinces like Judæa, administered by an eques, the governor was himself at the same time procurator. The customs, on the other hand, even in the days of the empire, were still commonly leased out to publicani, and so undoubtedly in Judæa. No doubt territorial princes like Herod Antipas also employed this method of collecting their taxes.
The lessees again had their subordinate officials, who would usually be chosen from the native population. But even the principal lessees in later times were not necessarily Romans. Zaccheus, the tax-gatherer of Jericho (Luke, xix. 1, 2), was a Jew. The tariffs were often very indefinite, opening a door to arbitrariness and rapacity. Hence in New Testament phraseology the terms publicans and sinners are synonymous, while in the rabbinical literature tax-gatherers appear in a still less favourable light.