because it was usually used to avoid some other legislative dispositions. State's assets incomes: national mines’ incomes and leasing of public lands (tributum soli). Incomes from the sale of war's treasuries. Incomes from the discovery of treasuries, the half of the treasure found in the imperial provinces had to be delivered to the fiscus. Incomes from fines. The goods of the convicted (bona damnatorum), i.e. all the good of people sentenced to deprivation of life or freedom or citizenry right, had to be delivered to the fiscus. Nature of the fiscus There are three different theories about the nature of the fiscus.The first theory takes the fiscus as the private capital of the emperor. The second theory states that the fiscus was a public capital entrusted to the emperor to maintain public order. It should have been used only for public welfare aims. Supporting this thesis there are the facts that some emperors, like Augustus, made its accounting public, that the emperor could leave as inheritance the fiscus only to his heir to the throne, and that Pertinax defined the fiscus as public. According to the third theory the fiscus was owned neither by the emperor nor by the people, but it was essentially a legal person. The emperors could use it only for public interest reasons. As a legal person it could be creditor or debtor, plaintiff and defendant. In support of this thesis it's showed that there was a proper legal structure around it. Nerva established one specific magistrate (praetor) designed to judge over the legal cases between private individuals and fiscus. The legal agents of the fiscus were the rationalis (and the procurator fisci from the Flavian dynasty ages), nevertheless the judicial actions themselves were made by the advocatus fisci, role created by Hadrian. They were appointed to defend its reasons in trial. According to this evidence the emperor never appeared in trial nor was he judged. Reforms and developments From its very introduction the fiscus started a continuous process of enforcement with respect to the aerarium, until the word aerarium ended up representing only the municipal chest of Rome. With Diocletian came a series of massive reforms, and total control over the finances of the empire fell to the new stronger central government. With these reforms the distinction between aerarium and fiscus was definitely abolished, even though some historians believes this union was already realized under