Just to follow up:

According to a number of sources I've studied, the census returns (tabulae censoriae) would be stored at the specialised archive located in the Temple of The Nymphs in Rome.

Here is what Wikipedia has regarding that Temple's fate:

The temple was founded in the 3rd century BC or the early 2nd century BC. It was damaged by a fire in the mid 1st century BC and probably also affected by the citywide fire in 80 AD. This temple was on the Campus Martius. If still in use by the 4th-century, the temple would have been closed during the persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire, when the Christian Emperors issued edicts prohibiting all non-Christian worship and sanctuaries.

So the temple was closed, but what happened to the priceless archive that was located there remains unclear.

Amen.

Thanks for your post, cb.

One question: - in what organised system would a government expect whole countries to be in a turmoil merely in order for people to go to the place they had been born in in order for a census to take place? What would happen to your own country if they suddenly decided, one year, to do this?

The Romans were probably the most organised rulers the world has had: why would they suddenly decide to do it this way: people having to leave their jobs and their homes & businesses ;and splitting up of husbands, wives, children in order to travel - in a time when travel was both incredibly slow and expensive - to the place where they had just happened to have been born??

There is nothing - not a single word - in any document yet found, which sets out such a ridiculous plan- let alone any of the information thus gathered. We have thousands of documents from the Romans from every census they ever took, in every place around the world where they ruled.

Of course no-one had to return home. The Roman army alone had troops from Africa, Asia, Europe...there would have been no troops left if they all took off on the months-long journey to any of these places which such a mixture of people called home?

Such an impossible mission would have been a HUGE topic of conversation, dissension, rebellion, and sheer stupidity, that the entire ancient world would have been discussing it - in private letters, in government documents, in stories and poetry - because every country would have been in total disarray.And not one person in the whole wide world EVER mentioned it?

How on earth do you think such a massive world movement would have taken place in the days before technology??

But did ordinary people move much?
Soldiers, yes - but you could age the equivalent of a postal vote. Merchants, yes, but again maybe there we ways and means, proxies. But for the poor working sod - maybe he would have to. And maybe just the Jews, at that. A troublesome lot, so a bit of a show of Roman power wouldn't go amiss.

Like the poor laws, where the only parish that had to look after you was your home parish, or maybe your apprenticed or married one. Still doesn't aid mobility.

Good point, though. I didn't know if wasnt in the histories. I guess I had assumed it was fact because it would be so evident in the official histories of the time, and problematic teaching it as an event that happened, if it weren't in the records.