Fisc (Lat. fiscus), originally, a wicker basket in which money was carried about and kept. Under the Roman republic the state treasury was called cerarium. When the empire was established the name fiscus was given to the treasure which belonged to the emperor as such. The public treasure, properly speaking, the title to which was vested in the senate as the representative, of the old republic, continued to be called aerarium, and the private property of the emperor as an individual was termed res privata principis. Under the later emperors no such separate fund as the aera-rium was any longer in existence, and the distinction between a?rarium and fiscus was lost. The imperial treasury, having become the only treasury of the state, was designated by both terms. Some of the rights of a natural person were accorded to the fiscus, and hence by a fiction of law it was deemed a person, in the same manner as a corporation or the community of a city or village. In the civil law of modern Europe the fisc is the property of the state.

Such property having often been obtained to a large extent from fines and the possessions of condemned persons, the word confiscation, derived from fiscus, signifies the forfeiture of any species of property to the state.