quieren ere a eae barn aS 5 eer TES : warty pepe T Ran ee oe LS SEE ee ec EES no Se ee ee SSS SS Ee Brest Rapa 2S Se ee ee ee Ses rate oui = Rae Te a Return this book on or before the Latest Date stamped below. Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons for disciplinary action and may result in dismissal from the University. University of Illinois Library MAR2 2 1972 APR 20 \976 ay 10 87 NOV.2 6 19 FEB 4x 4 aa “<> ai | x fe 1 b y a ) y oF L161— O-1096 ISD CS74r : I925a & STUDIES IN HISTORY, ECONOMICS AND PUBLIC LAW EDITED BY THE FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE . OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Volume CXVII] [Number 1 Whole Number 260 fHE ROMAN COLONATE The Theories of its Origin BY ROTH CLAUSING, Pu.D. Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Rochester Sometime Garth Fellow, Columbia University WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY VLADIMIR G. SIMKHOVITCH Professor of Economic History, Columbia University New Dork COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SELLING AGENTS New York: LONGMANS, GREEN & Co. Lonpon: P. S. Kinc & SON, ITD. 1925 Columbia Untuersity | FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENC] Nicholas Murray Butler, LL.D., President. Frederick J. E. Woodbridge, LL.I Professor of Philosophy and Dean. Edwin R. A. Seligman, LL.D., Professor Political Economy. Franklin H. Giddings, LL.D., Professor of Sociology and the H tory of Civilization. Henry R. Seager, Ph.D., Professor of Political Economy, Henry. Moore, Ph. D., Professor of Political Economy. William R. Shepherd, Ph.D., Profess of History. James T. Shotwell, Ph.D., Professor of History. Vladimir G. Simkh vitch, Ph.D., Professor of Economic History, Henry Johnson, A. M., Professor of H tory in Teachers College. Samuel McCune Lindsay, LL.D., Professor of Social Leg: lation. Carlton J. H. Hayes, LL.D., Professor of History, Alvan A, Tenney, Ph.I Assistant Professor of Sociology. Robert L. Schuyler, Ph.D., Professor of Histo: Robert E. Chaddock, Ph.D., Professor of Statistics. David S. Muzzey, Ph,D., Profess of History, Thomas Reed Powell, Ph.D., Professor of Constitutional Law. Willia Walker Rockwell, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Church History in Union Theologi Seminary. Howard Lee McBain, Ph.D., Professor of Municipal Science and Admin: tration. Charles D. Hazen, Litt.D., Professor of History. Roswell Cheney McCre Ph,D., Professor of Economics. Henry Parker Willis, Ph.D., Professor of Bankin Thomas I. Parkinson, Ph.D., Professor of Legislation. Dixon Ryan Fox, Ph.I Associate Professor of History, Frederick John Foakes Jackson, D.D., Professor Christian Institutions in Union Theological Seminary. William F. Ogburn, Ph.I Professor of Sociology. Austin P. Evans, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Histo: Parker Thomas Moon, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of History. Lindsay Roger Ph.D., Associate Professor of Government and Secretary of the Faculty. Wesley Cla Mitchell, Ph.D., Professor of Economics. Joseph P. Chamberlain, Ph.D., Profess of Public Law. Evarts B. Greene, Ph.D., Professor of History. William Lir Westermann, Ph.D., Professor of History, Hessel E. Yntema, Ph.D., Associate Pr fessor of Roman Law and Comparative Jurisprudence, Lynn Thorndike, Ph.L Professor of History. Frank A, Ross, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Sociolog SCHEME OF INSTRUCTION Courses are offered under the following departments: (1) History, (2) Public La and Comparative Jurisprudence, (3) Economics, (4) Social Science. GENERAL COURSES General courses involve on the part of the student work outside of the classroon but no such course involves extensive investigation to be presented in essay or other forr RESEARCH COURSES Research courses vary widely in method and content; but every such course inv oly on the part of the student extensive work outside the classroom. The degrees of A.M. and Ph.D. are given to students who fulfill the requirements pr scribed. (For particulars, see Columbia University Bulletins of Information, F aculty Political Science.) Any person not a candidate for a degree may attend any of the cours at any time by payment ofa proportional fee. Ten or more Cutting fellowships of $10 each or more, four University fellowships of $750 each, two or three Gilder felloy ships of $650-$800 each, the Schiff fellowship of $600, the Curtis fellowship of $6c the Garth fellowship of $650 and a number of University scholarships of $240 each a awarded to applicants who give evidence of special fitness to pursue advanced studi. Several prizes of from $50 to $250 are awarded. ‘The library contains over 800,0 volumes and students have access to other great collections in the city. Ney , ey ale wae Ai ; i STUDIES IN HISTORY, ECONOMICS AND PUBLIC LAW EDITED BY THE FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE OF COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Volume CXVII] | [Number 1 Whole Number 260 THE ROMAN COLONATE The Theories of its Origin BY ROTH CLAUSING, Px.D. Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Rochester Sometime Garth Fellow, Columbia University WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY VLADIMIR G. SIMKHOVITCH Professor of Economic History, Columbia University New Dork COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SELLING AGENTS New YorkK: LONGMANS, GREEN & Co, LonpoN: P.S. Kinc & Son, LTD. 1925 Vans ut Ae eet aw FY ED PERI : tines SAAS Ss 4 hay * rh Be ie ie iy 8) - Copyricet, 1 Mg A ny | it ¢ we &; Mi) Ua eS ROTH CL AN ‘ ah Via ‘, KF = eA OT-7 1949 ~ > ~~, Aes 4. 4 ow » 3233 ' Cur Se ae : ee me CS/ty % jan & &. bois : ) ‘ INTRODUCTION ¢ ; THE work of Professor Clausing was undertaken at my ik suggestion five or six years ago, and now that it is finished «1 cannot help feeling that an important task has been ac- ty complished. It is, to begin with, the only comprehensive ~..and up-to-date treatise on the colonate; it reviews all the i theories of the colonate for the last hundred years and critically examines the sources upon which they are based; and finally in the last two chapters, Professor Clausing pre- sents effectively the material that led him to share my view on the subject. All the old theories had their day in court, and learned criticism is likely to be centered, and rightly so, upon the theory that Professor Clausing and myself share in common. In the Digest, the tenant farmer or the colonus was free to move. In the Codes he is adscribed and bound to the soil. What was the object of such drastic abbreviation of the _ tenant’s civil liberties? He was obviously bound to the soil because he would not stay on the soil if not bound. Other attempts had been made before to retain an agricultural population, and only after all other attempts had failed, was adscription to the soil resorted to. Of the fact that the agricultural population was abandoning the land, we have ample, indeed, conclusive evidence. Ii the land was aban- doned in such wholesale fashion, does the idea not suggest itself that the people were leaving because agriculture was - not profitable? Had cultivation been profitable, there would have been no need of emphyteutic legislation, nor would it have been necessary to bind the tenant to the soil. The diminishing agricultural production and with it the dwindling of the agricultural population troubled the Roman admin- 5] 5 Zz a fete ual a Z for >. MAL 6 INTRODUCTION [6 istration very seriously. This the laws and the literature of the time make clear. Take the Constitutio de Scyris, discovered in 1824, which later led Savigny to accept the theory of Zumpt that the origin of the colonate is to be found in the settlement of barbarians. This very document gives the reason for that particular settlement—“ Licet .. . pro rei frumen(tari)ae angustiis”’. . . —the decrease in agricultural production. Is the progressive exploitation and final exhaustion of the fields of Italy and later on of the provinces a mere theory? What do the ancient agricultural writers tell us? Will not the critic admit that those agricultural writers knew as much as was to be known about the agricultural and agrarian con- ditions of their times? It would be insane to disregard their consensus of opinion. Most of the agricultural writ- ers are of course lost now; but what does Columella, for instance, tell us about the prevailing opinion? He begins the first chapter of the second book with the following lines: “You ask me, Publius Silvinus—and I hasten to reply to you—why I began my former book by refuting the ancient opinion of nearly all agricultural writers, and by rejecting as false their idea that the soil, worn out by long cultivation and exhausted, is suffering from old age.” The critic will observe that I cannot claim credit for an exhaustion-of-soil theory; but that this so-called theory was considered a fact by nearly all ancient writers. : Now Columella tells us that he differs from his predeces- sors; but in what respect? He says that the soil is not suffering from old age, but that if treated properly it would respond and improve. Something that we of course know perfectly well. However, when Columella is considering’ not the possible productivity of Italian soil under skilful treatment, but actual productivity, he tells us in Chapter IIT of the third Book, that no one can remember when the soil produced four-fold in Italy. “ Nam frumenta majore qui- 7] INTRODUCTION 7 dem parte Italiae quando cum quarto responderint, vim memimisse possumus.”’ The same tale we hear from all writers, whether they are of the first or of the fourth cen- tury. One letter of Symmachus is particularly interesting. He frankly admits that he does not expect to make his farm profitable, and that he can keep it up only by constant ex- penditure; “for,” he says, “it has come to be the rule in our age that land which once fed us now must itself be fed.” Under such conditions, one does not have to look very far for the reason and origin of the colonate. The reader will perhaps concede that it is not a theory or a construction which Professor Clausing and I are maintaining, but a frank admission of the facts that confront us. The freeman is bound to the soil for precisely the same reasons that led to the improvement in the condition of the agricultural slave. The agricultural slave too is bound to the soil in the hope of maintaining agricultural production and tillage. That this production is unprofitable and that great is the tempta- tion to sell the agricultural slaves off the land, leads the ad- ministration to drastic legislation. Here is a law that re- fers to the originarii and censitt. It absolutely forbids that they be sold off the land. “ Nor by tricky misconstruction shall the law be so evaded, as has repeatedly been done in the case of origimarii, that an entire estate shall be deprived of tillage by transferring a small portion thereof to the pur- chaser of the slaves.” * It is the question of tillage, the preservation of agricul- tural production, that looms largest, and to maintain agri- cultural productivity force was required. Thus the agri- cultural slave as well as the free tenant farmer was bound to the impoverished soil—and this is the solution of the colonate problem offered in this work, a solution which | trust will stand the test of time. VLADIMIR G, SIMKHOVITCH EGerdan Sin deer AUTHOR’S PREFACE THERE are few subjects in economic history of greater importance than the development of the institution of the Roman colonate. The legal attachment of the tenantry of the Roman Empire to the soil serves as the connecting link between the agrarian life of antiquity and that of medieval Europe. The colonate was intimately connected with the decline of ancient civilization; and it ushered in a form of agrarian organization which was to persist through most of. the Middle Ages. Yet, important as the transition to the colonate was in the economic life of the Roman Empire, it attracted singularly little attention from contemporaneous writers, at least from those whose works have been pre- served. The writers whose books became known in Rome and the other great cities of the Empire wrote of wars and barbarian invasions, of corruption and court intrigues, of the persecution and triumph of Christianity. The residents of a city are seldom interested in the troubles of the farmers; and in an age when the literate population was almost alto- gether metropolitan a change in the eines of the rural classes received little notice. Yet there is no doubt that there was a great transforma- tion in LEE rch ESPN MIT LTE hier MME Roman : and fourth centuries. Scanty as the sources are in sa to the life of the peasantry, writers of the late Republic and the early Empire offer unmistakable evidence that the cultivators of the soil at that time were c osed_ emen, who were either tenant farmers or small proprietors, and slaves. The great jurists, whose decisions were collected in the 9] 9 ite) AUTHOR’S PREFACE [10 Digest of Justinian, show that this condition continued to the third century; and the jurists are more explicit than any of the preceding writers in describing the condition of the tenant farmers or coloni of their times. The coloni to whom the Digest referred were unquestionably freemen in every respect. They culfivated their land according to the terms of a five-year lease and paid a money rent. They were perfectly free to give up their holdings at the expira- tion of their leases and go any place they desired. Pro- prietors were forbidden to make any attempt to retain them on their estates against their will. But a century later the Theodosian and Justinian Codes present a picture of a colonus of a wholly different character. The colonus appears there as a tenant attached to the estate of his landlord iri perpetual and hereditary bonds. It is true that he had retained certain characteristics of a freeman. ~ He could contract a legal marriage, he might become a soldier or a priest with the consent of the proprietor, and he was permitted to resort to the courts of law, even against his landlord, under certain contingencies. But under no circumstances was he allowed to sever the bonds which held chim tg the estate on which he was born. If he tried to escape he was brought back in chains and punished like a runaway slaye. Anyone who sheltered him as a fugitive was heavily fined. And all the force of the administration was bent toward restoring him to his native fields, even though he had succeeded in escaping detection and estab- lishing himself elsewhere for thirty years or more. The mystery of the origin of the serf-coldnate, as baffling as it_is important, has called forth the best efforts of many of the leading scholars in economic and legal history of the past_hundred_ years. “Nulle question peut-étre,” says a noted French savant,* “ ni historique ni juridique, n’ a fait * Beaudouin in the Nouvelle revue historique de droit francais, vol. xxi (1897), p. 697. 11] | AUTHOR’S PREFACE II naitre plus de systémes ni écrire plus de pages.’”’ Classical works have been scanned with the most meticulous care in order to discover any information which might throw some light on the subject. Epigraphical expeditions have been organized in the hope of discovering new inscriptions which might be able to fill the gaps which the extant writings of antiquity have left. Fairly consistent accounts have been given by many writers of the gradual deterioration in the condition of the tenant farmer preceding their legal attach- ment to the soil. But the cause of the adscriptio glebae remains as much an enigma as ever. Explanations of all sorts have been offered to account for the origin of the colonate, but the theories which have re- ceived the most attention fall into two main types. One } group of scholars has searched assiduously for a prototype ra tis of the colonate; while the other group has sought to. connect 2 the colonate legislation with the administration of taxation after the reforms of Diocletian. The colonate has been re- lated by the first group to dependent relationships which existed in early Italy and Greece, in Egypt, Asia Minor, Germany, and Gaul; and it has been ascribed to the sup- posed semi-servile status of barbarian settlements in the northern provinces of the Empire in the second and third centuries of our era. Yet even if these earlier dependent classes could be shown to be far more similar to the coloni of the Codes than the meagre information which is available concerning them seems to warrant, it would still remain to be proved that the colonate was formed in direct imitation of an earlier type of servile tenure, and not due to causes and conditions of the time. And supposing that this could be done, the problem would not yet be solved, but merely be removed one step further back; for it would then be neces- sary to explain the raison d’étre of the earlier servile status. The theory that the colonate arose out of the necessities o te, - Z ~ ig : iy AUTHOR'S PREFACE | [12 of tax administration, while it contains certain elements of plausibility, fails to be completely satisfactory in account- ing for such a revolutionary change as the transformation of the free tenantry into a semi-servile class bound to the soil. "® large | and reliable revenue was indeed absolutely necessary to meet the cost of maintaining the reatest wey the world has ever known. Yet for centuries the admi tration had found the tribute sufficient to meet its a without proving an insupportablé burden to the tax-payers. The theorist who would prove that the coloni were attached to the soil to facilitate the collection of taxes will not have established an acceptable theory simply by showing that an intimate relation existed between the adscription of the coloni and the administration of taxation; for he still has the more important task of explaining why taxation fweighed so heawily upon the citizens of the late Roman Empire that the old system of tax-coltection proved inadequate and that it was necessary to resort to methods a altogether out of har- mony ny with the whole character of Roman institutions; and if he would follow this to its logical conclusion he would be brought face to face with the problem of the decay of Roman civilization itself. It seems to the writer that the adscriveee of the tenantry to the soil can only be properly understood when it is con- sidered in close ction with the causes which led to the decline of the Roman Empire. Previous types of servile tenure may have had some influence in moulding the exact form which the colonate assumed. The exigencies of tax- ation may have been the actual occasion which led a worried emperor to take the drastic step of binding the coloni to the soil. But had the Empire been in a vigorous con- dition no such measure would ever have been considered. No nation has ever had greater respect for law and custom GPa eats Romans, and the arbitrary creation of a serf class 13 | AUTHOR’S PREFACE wk would have been unthinkable except to meet_a cx emergency. And this supreme emergency, in the opinion of: the eee. was no less a crisis than the threatened débacle axle 1 of ancient civilization itself. bie Wig? In the following pages, after a brief account of the con- ==> dition of the coloni as they are described by the Codes, the writer will present in some detail the various theories which have been advanced in explanation of the origin of the colonate and the classical and epigraphical texts upon which these theories are based. Such a review of the theories of the colonate has not been made since Heisterbergk’s Entste- hung des Colonats* in 1876; and as much new material has been discovered in Africa and Egypt in the past two genera- tions modern scholars have been able to deal with the prob- lem of the origin of the colonate Scaeitons more ad- eq uately than Heisterbergk and hi is_predecessors. In the last two chapters the writer will trace the history of the Roman tenantry and show how their condition was affected aR ESN in the course of time by what appears to_ have. been a a decline in the fertility of the soil, first in Italy and later in the provinces. Finally attention will be called to the sources which seem to point to the fact that the soil of the Empire was becoming completely exhausted in many districts; and the thesis will be presented that the coloni were bound to the soil to enforce the cultivation of the fields which did not yield a large enough product to induce cultivation for the sake of individual profit and which would otherwise have been deserted—a disaster of such serious consequences that it threatened the continued existence of the Roman Empire. Grateful acknowledgment must be made of the writer’s indebtedness to Professor Simkhovitch, at whose suggestion this study was made, and whose teachings have been the source of many of the writer’s ideas. He has shown an 1Pp. 1-62. 14 AUTHOR’S PREFACE [14 unflagging interest in the work and has been most generous in giving his time in advice and criticism. Professor Donald MacFayden of Washington University has read several chapters of the manuscript and has made many valu- able suggestions. The author is also indebted to Professor Harrison R. Steeves and Dr. Emery E. Neff of the English Department of Columbia University, to Professor Steeves for coining the word “ adscription” and to Dr. Neff for helpful suggestions. ROTH CLAUSING CONTENTS ee RETO gh ead ah Call clo k a Ae lide LoVe cbaetete By Vladimir G. Simkhovitch. ERE CACTNES OO teh tir eee ile, ebime et et viel ale vatety le. CHAPTER I ME ECTIRIEEMRT ENG COUEG iio v's. .c) ae 60) oie, w/e este ke wie) aoe ee. CHAPTER II MURMUR CREE SU cL tis toe esa ha* eG, ess Sctatieds. u-/erw le ae elk CHAPTER III Perecmgeuiian ane tatty PHeOrieS s/s 6) ek ee ei ee ee CHAPTER IV The Theory of Administrative Pressure ..........e0.- CHAPTER V The African Inscriptions and the Colonate: CHAPTER VI The African Inscriptions and the Colonate: CHAPTER VII | EE ECR CTE Fh AST, ol.) 6.0/0.) of co dea Wea Se TR pales eel ee CHAPTER VIII PENCE OU INE REDUDLICY oo eyed isi nfo spd ale wile Ree se ta is 15] I. 1879-1890... . 11. :1862-1007 2) a: 138 171 16 CONTENTS [16 PAGE CHAPTER IX TheAdsceription to the Soul.) 4ce 5 «anes une g + glee oe 262 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY + « .) 4 ¢(s)\s 00!) «5 le ellen 318 CEA OTe THE COLONI OF THE CODES THE most definite information which is to be found con- cerning the colonate is contained in the Roman Codes. But even there, although the coloni are mentioned in almost one hundred and thirty imperial constitutions,’ the information concerning their condition is neither as ample nor as precise as we should desire. The first certain reference in the Codes to coloni bound to the soil was in a rescript of Constantine of 332 A. D.? This constitution, however, is not the orig- inal law which established the colonate but merely a regula- tion which provided that coloni who had fled from the land to which they were attached should be returned and pun- ished.~The-law which first created the colonate, if indeed it Was included in the Codes, at any rate has not been pre- served. Nor do the Codes, as they have come down to us, contain a general law which fixed with precision the legal status of the coloni and stated definitely what rights the coloni enjoyed and what obligations they owed to their land- lords and to the state. Most of the constitutions in which the coloni are mentioned were not directly concerned with the coloni as such. The maintenance of agriculture and the uninterrupted collection of the imperial taxes were the prin- cipal objects of these imperial rescripts. The coloni, for the most part, were only mentioned incidently.* 1For the complete list of texts see Bolkestein, De Colonatu Romano ejusque Origine, pp. 181-187. 2 Cod. Theod., xi, 17,1. Ed. Mommsen and Meyer (Berlin, 1905). 3 Coloni was the most common designation used in the Codes for agri- 17] 17 18 THE ROMAN COLONATE [1s However, the information contained in the Codes is suffi- cient to offer a fairly adequate understanding of the legal status of the coloni from the time of Constantine to the time of Justinian.” The colonus occupied a position in society which was legally not. thal 6a slave, HOC TREDE a freeman, but was an intermediate condition between the two which posseosed cons Cianrefeisics ot each. Coloni (adscrip- ticu.) were placed in opposition both to freemen ees) and slaves (servt) in a rescript of Justinian of 530.2 A law of Theodosius I, Arcadius, and Honorius declared that coloni “should be regarded as freemen in their personal condition yet they should be held as slaves of the land itself on which they were born.” * The law of Constantine of 332, which is our first certain reference to serf-coloni, stated that “those coloni, who are planning flight, should be re- duced by bonds to a slave's status, so that they may be com- pelled by virtue of a slave’s condemnation to perform tasks which are befitting free persons.” * Again, in 409, in settling a tribe of the Huns within the Empire the Emperors Hon- orius and Theodosius II decreed that they should be dis- cultural tenants bound to the soil. But we also find the terms adcripticiu, tributarti, inquilini, originarii, originales, censiti, censibus adscripti, censibus obnoxti, and other appellations which were used as practically synonymous to coloni. For references see Bolkestein, op. cit., p. 36. 1 For more complete accounts of the legal status of the coloni than that contained in this work see Savigny, “ Ueber den R6mischen Colonat,” in Vermischte Schriften (Berlin, 1850), vol. ii, pp. 1-40; Fustel de Coulanges, “Le colonat romain,” in Recherches sur quelques problémes @histoire (Paris, 1884), pp. 87-137. Terrat, Du colonat en droit romain (Versailles, 1872), pp. 17-84; Bolkestein, De Colonatu Romano ejusque Origine (Amsterdam, 1906), pp. 1-82. 2 Cod. Just., xi, 48,21. Ed. Krueger and Mommsen (Berlin, 1904-1906). 3 Cod. Just., xi, 52, 1. “...licet condicione videantur ingenui, servi tamen terrae ipsius cui nati sunt aestimentur.” * Cod. Theod., v, 17, 1. “Ipsos etiam colonos, qui fugam meditantur, in servilem condicionem ferro ligari conveniet, ut officia, quae liberis. congruunt, merito servilis condemnationis compellantur inplere.” 19 | THE COLONI OF THE CODES 19 tributed to landlords as coloni. ‘‘ Moreover,” continued the rescript, ‘‘ the landlords shall see to it that their services are those of freemen , . . and no one shall be permitted to drag them into slavery.” * The services of freemen which were required of the coloni, were certain specified kinds of farm work (ruralia obsequia) * and not the wholly arbitrary duties which a master could require of his slaves. The colonus possessed certain rights which the slave did _not enjoy. He could contract a legal marriage * which was | not possible for a_slave.* He could become a priest ® or a soldier,® both of which occupations were closed to slaves.” However, it was not possible for the colonus to enter either of these vocations.of his own free will, but he was obliged to obtain the consent of the landlord in each instance; ® and, in case the colonus wished to become a priest, it was neces- sary for him in addition to secure another peasant to take up his plot of land.® ‘Consequently the freedom of the coloni to enter the army or priesthood was decidedly limited in practice, for ordinarily the proprietors would strenuously: object to allowing their tenants to leave. One of the obli- gations of the proprietors was to furnish recruits,° but Vegetius complained that they continually offered the army men of poor quality,** whom no doubt they had found useless for agriculture. 1 Cod. Theod., v, 6, 3. “ Opera autem eorum terrarum domini libera (utantur) ...nullique liceat...eos in servitutem trahere.” 2 Cod. Just., 1, 3, 16. 8 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 24; xi, 69, 1, etc. Cf. Bolkestein, op. cit., pp. 34-35. 4 Dig., xlviii, 20, 5, 1; Nov., 22, 10. PC.OUd.«) test. 1) 3,36, pr. 6 Cod. Theod., vii, 13, 6; Nov. Val., vi, 1, I. 1 Cod. Just., i, 3, 36, 1; Cod. Theod., vii, 13, 8. Se pas Just. 1,-3,°16; xii, 33, 3: COU. J sts, 1,.3, 16. 10 Cod. Theod., vii, 13, 7. Cf. Karlowa, Rémische Rechtsgeschichté (Leipzig, 1885), vol. i, p. 921. 1 Vegetius, De Re Militari, i, 7. 20 THE ROMAN COLONATE [20 The coloni could acquire personal property, which like the personal property of a slave was called peculium.* But while the peculium of the slave was legally under the owner- ship of his master * the peculium of the colonus was his own legal property and could not be taken away from him by the landlord. However, the colonus was not permitted to alienate any part of his peculium without the consent of the landlord,*? a measure which was found necessary no doubt to prevent any diminution in the productive equipment of the estate.* Besides personal property it was even possible for a colonus to acquire property in land in addition to the land which he held as a colonus.° Ordinarily, of course, the plots of land which the coloni acquired were very small,’ but occasionally we read of coloni possessing in their own name farms of more than twenty-five jugera.’ In case a colonus possessed a farm the land was registered in the tax- rolls under his own name and he paid the land tax directly and not through his landlord.* The colonus also possessed greater rights than a slave before the courts of law. Under the Republic the slave was almost wholly at the mercy of his master but under the Em- pire the slave was protected by the law against most crimes against his person.” However, in addition to protecting the colonus from injuries against his person or that of his family,*® the law permitted the colonus to appeal to the courts 1 Cod. Theod., v, 19, 1; Cod. Just., xi, 48, 19; xi, 48, 23, 5. 2 Cf. Buckland, The Roman Law of Slavery (Cambridge, 1908), p. 187 for references. 5 Cod. Theod., v, 19, 1; Cod. Just., xi, 50, 2, 3. 4 Cf. Savigny, op. cit., pp. 19, 28-29; Terrat, op. cit., pp. 62-64. 5 Nov., 128, 14. Cod. Just., xi, 48, 4. ® Cod. Just., xi, 48, 4, “...quantulacumque possessio.” 7 Cod. Theod., xii, 1, 33, “...quicumque ultra xxv iugera privato dominio possidens...” ® Cod. Just., xi, 48, 4; xi, 48, 20, 3. ®° Cf. Buckland, op. cit., pp. 36-38. 10 Cod. Just., xi, 50, 2. 21] THE COLONI OF THE CODES 21 in any question affecting his status asa tenant. If the land- lord arbitrarily raised the rent the colonus was given a right of action against him, first by Constantine,’ and later by Arcadius and Honorius.” In case a peasant denied that he was rightfully the colonus of a certain proprietor the de- termination of his condition was left to the jurisdiction of the courts. Finally, if a landlord had taken possession of land which a colonus claimed as a part of his tenancy the colonus was allowed to bring suit against the landlord to re- cover his holding.* The coloni thus possessed a number of rights which dis- tinguished them clearly from slaves. Yet in many respects their condition was very similar to that of the slaves. “ It is almost as though they (the coloni) were surrendered in a kind of servitude to those to whom they are subject for their annual dues and the obligations of their condition,” said a law of Arcadius and Honorius.’ ‘“ For what differ- ence can be found between slaves and coloni (adscripticit) ,” asked Justinian, “ since.each is placed under the power of his lord?” * Lik€ the slaves the coloni were subject to corporal punishments.’ If they deserted their holdings they were pursued as though they were servi fugitivi® But above all, they were chained to the soil with indissoluble and perpetual bonds.° They were “ slaves of the land on which 1 Cod. Just., Xi, 50, I. * Code Justis eo: BC Od. 1 heod., iv, 23, I. 4 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 20, pr. esp ast, Xi. 50, 2,0’... his, quibus annuis functionibus et debito condicionis obnoxii sunt, paene est ut quadam servitute dediti videantur.” ® Cod. Just., xi, 48, 21. “ Quae etenim differentia inter servos et adscrip- ticios intellegetur, cum uterque in domini sui positus est potestate? ” ™ Cod. Theod., xvi, 5, 52, 4; xvi, 5, 54, 8. Justinian decreed that the chastisement of the coloni be moderate. Cod. Just., xi, 48, 24, “...talem hominem (colonum) castigatione moderata corrigere.” ® Cod. Theod., v, 17, I. 9 Cod. Just., xi, 51, 1. “...colonos quodam aeternitatis iure detineat, ita ut illis non liceat ex his locis quorum fructu relevantur abscedere nec ea deserere.” 22 THE ROMAN COLONATE [22 they were born.” * “ We decree that they are attached so completely to the soil,’ said the Emperors Honorius and Theodosius II, “ that they must not be removed for a single instant.” * The Codes contained numerous constitutions regarding the flight of the coloni. The matter was held to be so important that the governors of the provinces were made responsible to see that the coloni were returned, not to their masters, but “to their homes where they are inscribed in the census and where they were born and brought up.”* If the runaway colonus was captured he was put in chains and severely punished,” and possibly reduced to slavery.” In the time of ‘Constantine the landlord who received the fugitive colonus was compelled to return him to his rightful owners and in addition pay his back taxes.° Later fines were levied on proprietors harboring refugee coloni which increased in severity in the course of time. In 386 A. D. the fine was a half pound of gold for receiving a runaway colonus from a private estate and a pound of gold for receiving a colonus from an imperial domain.’ During the reign of Arcadius “e 1 Cod. Just., xi, 52,1. “‘...servi tamen terrae ipsius cui nati sunt.” *Cod. Just., xi, 48, 15. ‘‘...quos ita glebis inhaerere praecipimus, ut ne puncto quidem temporis debeant amoveri.” 3 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 6. “ Omnes omnino fugitivos adscripticios colonos vel inquilinos sine ullo sexus muneris condicionisque discrimine ad antiquos penates, ubi censiti atque educati natique sunt, provinciis praesidentes redire compellant.” * Cod. Just., xi, 53, 1. “...revocati vinculis poenisque subdantur.” 5 This is not stated in the Codes. But in the interpretatio to the edict of Constantine of 332 (Cod. Theod., v, 17, 1) it says, “Ipse vero (colonus) qui noluit esse quod natus est, in servitium redigatur.” The interpretatio to the Theodosian Code was prepared about seventy years after the publication of the Code in 438 (Fustel de Coulanges, op. cit., p. 103) and consequently nearly two centuries after the edict of Con- stantine, when the punishment for flight of the coloni had become more severe and the difference between slaves and coloni very slight. ® Cod. Theod., v, 17, I. ™ Cod. Theod., v, 17, 2. 23] THE COLONI OF THE CODES 23 and Honorius (395-408) the landlord who kept a fugitive colonus on his estate was compelled to pay a fine to the Treasury of twelve pounds of silver, while, in addition, he was required to give a colonus of equal value to the former landlord of the colonus besides restoring the fugitive to him.’ During the same reign the fine was two pounds of gold for receiving a runaway colonus in Thrace.? In the next century, when patronage developed in the Roman Em- pire and coloni who were discontented with their landlords found a refuge by escaping to powerful patrons, fines as high as one hundred pounds of gold were levied against those who could pay such a sum, while those who could not were punished-with the complete confiscation of their prop- erty: But if the colonus was not allowed to leave the estate to which he had been attached, no more could his landlord separate-him-from-his plot of land. In case an estate was sold the coloni and agricultural slaves went with itt The sale of an estate without the coloni was of no effect. Al purchaser of an estate was not allowed to bring in new coloni to replace those already cultivating the land nor could he use slaves for this purpose.® Thus the colonus is revealed by the Codes as a small tenant whose most noticeable characteristic was his legal attachment to the soil. He cultivated his own land and re- ceived the product of his fields * which he marketed himself.* As a payment for the use of the land he owed a yearly rental 1 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 12. 2 Cod. Just., xi, 52, I. 8 Cod. Just., xi, 54, 1 (468 A. D.). * Cod. Just., xi, 48, 7. 5 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 2. * Cod. Just., xi, 63, 3. ™ Cod. Just., xi, 51, 1. “...quorum fructu relevantur.” ® Cod. Theod., xiii, 1, 3; 8; 10. 24 THE ROMAN COLONATE [24 to the landlord which was usually called reditus.* The nature and amount of the rent was fixed by custom. The rent was ordinarily paid in kind unless a money payment had become customary.” Likewise the amount of the rent was fixed by custom*® and the important consequence fol- lowed from this that it could not be raised. If the landlord attempted to force the coloni to increase their payments the rights of the coloni to the customary rent could be defended in the courts.* In the words of a rescript of Justinian: Let the proprietors take care that they inflict no innovation nor violence upon the coloni. For if the proprietors are guilty of any such action, the moderator of the province himself shall take complete charge of the matter; and he shall see that the coloni are recompensed for any injury which they have received, and that the old customary rent is observed. This law applies not only to the actual coloni but to their posterity of whatever age or sex ; and we decree that the offspring of the coloni once born on the estate shall always remain in possession under exactly the same conditions which we have defined for their ancestors on the estates of others.® Whether the coloni owed customary work on the land- lord’s estate in addition to their rent is unfortunately one of the questions concerning which we have almost no infor- 1 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 20, passim; xi, 48, 23, 2; Cod. Theod., x, 1, 11. 2 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 5. ® Cod. Just., xi, 48, 20, I. 4 Cod. Just., xi, 50, 1 and 2. ® Cod. Just., xi, 48, 23, 2. “‘Caveant autem possessionum domini...~ aliquam innovationem vel violentiam eis inferre. Si enim... aliquid tale fuerit perpetratum, ipse provinciae moderator omnimodo provideat et laesionem, si qua subsecuta est, eis resarcire et veterem consuetudinem in reditibus praestandis eis observare...et hoc tam in ipsis colonis quam in subole eorum qualiscumque sexus vel aetatis sancimus, ut et ipsa semel in fundo nata remaneat in possessione sub isdem modis isdemque condicionibus, sub quibus etiam genitores eius manere in alienis fundis definivimus.” 25] THE COLONI OF THE CODES 25 mation. Services of the coloni (operae) are mentioned only once in the Codes. ‘A constitution of Valentinian I, Valens, and Gratian of 371 said that a proprietor who had received a fugitive colonus on his land owed the original landlord of the colonus among other things compensation for the ser- vices of the colonus and for the loss which his absence en- tailed on his home estate.* It seems somewhat hazardous to infer from this one passage that the coloni_were accus- tomed to furnish services to their landlords. Yet A’frican inscriptions of the second century show that the tenants on the great African domains were required to work from six to twelve days a year on the demesne land,’ while peasants _- on municipal lands were held accountable for certain annual hand and team services;* and the polyptyques drawn up under Charlemagne show that the coloni as well as the serfs owed services on the demesne.* Besides their payments to the proprietor the coloni owed taxes ‘and services- tothe state. Their principal fiscal obli- gation was the payment of the poll tax ° (capitatio humana or plebeia), It was on this account that they were in- scribed in the census and were BCT reDEs in the As a ae ee "3 script? _ The ¢ tax SpHad any to aria hadied srt work: ing on the estate, as children and old people were exempt,’ and women were assessed at a lower rate than men, some- 1 Cod. Just., xi, 53, 1, I. “...maneatque eos poena, qui alienum et incognitum recipiendum esse duxerint, tam in redhibitione operarum et damni, quod locis, quae deseruerant factum est...” 2 Cf. fra, pp. 139-140, 143. 3 Cf. the lex coloniae Genitivae in Mommsen, “ Decret des Commodus,” Hermes, vol. xv, p. 406. Ephém. épigraph., vol. ii, p. 110. 4¥For references see Fustel de Coulanges op. cit., pp. 179-183. 5 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 4; xi, 48, 23, pr.; xi, 55, I ® Cf. Savigny, op. cit., pp. 33-34 for references. ™ Cod. Theod., xiii, 10, 4 and 6; Dig., L, 15, 3; Lactantius, De Mort. Persecut., 23. 26 THE ROMAN COLONATE [26 times at one-half and sometimes three-fourths.* Colont who had been drafted into the army received immunity from the poll tax not only for themselves but after a certain period of services for their wives as well.” The tax was ordinarily advanced by the landlord * who could himself recover it from the colonus, unless the custom of the estate prescribed that the colonus pay the tax directly.* In addition to the poll tax the coloni were obligated to the government for certain annual services called sordida_munera, _publicae functiones, or annuae functiones.© These included a varied assortment of duties such as carrying services with wagons-and oxen or packhorses on the public roads; the preparation.of flour, the making of bread, and services in the bakehouse; the supply of building materials, the construction and repair of public and sacred buildings; the maintenance of roads and bridges, id or : There were four ways in which a person might become a colonus, by birth, by. ‘prescription, by Voluntary agreement, or by | governmental constraint. The ordinary source of the supply of coloni was birth. From this the names originarit, originales, and colom origimarit were derived, which were very common designations of the coloni in the Codes.’ If both parents were coloni the children continued “to belong to the land which once their fathers undertook to cultivate.” ° Even if the son of a colonus had entered the 1 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 10. 2 Cod. Theod., vii, 13, 6. 3 Cod. Theod., xi, 1, 14 and 26; Cod. Just., xi, 48, 4; xi, 48, 20, 5. * Cod. Just., xi, 48, 20, 5. 5 Cod. Theod., xi, 16, 18; Cod. Just., xi, 48, 20, 5; xi, 48, 23, 5; xi, 50, 2 ® Cod. Theod., xi, 16, 18. Cf. Seebohm, English Village Com aaety (London, 1905), pp. 296-299. 7 Cf. Cod. Just., xi, 48, 4; 7; 11; xi, 68, 1; Cod. Theod., v, 18, 1; et passim. 8 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 23, 1. “... terrae inhaereant, quam semel colendam patres eorum susceperunt.” 27] THE COLONI OF THE CODES 27 army at an early age (parvulus)* or had been absent from the estate for forty years or more,” he could still be recalled by the landlord on the occasion of the death or incapacity of his father. Marriages between coloni on the same estate were the only ones not frowned upon by the proprietors and the state. But frequently children were born of parents not of the same legal status and it was necessary for the legislator to deter- mine their condition. The offspring of the union of a slave and a colonus were held to be slaves or coloni according to the status of their mother.* If the father were a freeman and the mother a colona, the children, following the same law, became coloni.* The opposite case, however, when the father was a colonus and the mother free, caused the legis- lators some difficulty as there was a conflict between the law of the contuberma, in which the child followed the condi- tion of its mother, and economic necessity of keeping a sufficient number of cultivators on the estates. Cons- equently the law underwent several changes. Before Jus- tinian the child of such a marriage became a colonus like his father.” Justinian, however, wishing to revive the old law, declared that the child should follow the condition of its mother and become free; but he gave the landlord of the colonus the right of compelling his tenant to separate from his wife.® Later Justinian attempted to prevent such unions altogether,” but, failing in this, he returned to the policy of his predecessors and declared that the child, although free, 1 Cod. Just., Xi, 64, II. Ged, Just, xi, 40,22, 3. 3 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 21,1. “...matris suae ventrem sequatur et talis sit condicionis, qualis et genetrix fuit, sive ancilla sive adscripticia.” 4 Cod. Theod., v, 18, 1, 4. 5 Nov., 54, pr. 6 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 24. ™ Nov., 22, 17. 28 THE ROMAN COLONATE [28 should be attached in perpetuity to the estate which his father cultivated as a colonus.* “}—-A second way in which a man might become a colonus / was by prescription. If a peasant lived on the same estate as a tenant for thirty years, at the end of that period he -became_a colonus.*_ He obtained hereditary rights over his tenement but at ie same time he was legally attached to the soil. However, he was free to leave the estate at any time before the expiration of the prescription period; and ap- parently the colonate was considered a desirable condition in certain districts for this law states that entrance into the colonate was as advantageous to the landlord as to the peas- ants.° The children of free tenants who entered the colonate It was Sey indeed, to baeoniey a colonus voluntarily without waiting the thirty-year period of prescription. It was ordained by Valentinian III that a stranger (advena) might enter_the colonate by marrying a colona and by de- claring in _court his desire to become a colonus.® Also a constitution of Justinian, evidently drawn wp to prevent persons from being brought into the colonate by force, decreed that two proofs were necessary to signify desire to enter the colonate, a declaration in court and a personal statement in which the applicant was required to state his desire to become a colonus without being “ constrained by 1 Nov., 162, 2, Likewise the children born from the marriage of coloni of different estates were the cause of considerable difficulty to the legis- lators. After several changes the law finally declared that the children of such unions should be divided equally between the two estates, and if there should be an uneven number of children the odd child should go to the landlord of the mother. (Nov., 156, 1; 162, 3.) 2 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 19. STbid. “...hoc autem tam domino quam agricolis expedit.” 4 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 23. 5 Nov. Val., xxx, 1, 5 and 6. 29] THE COLONI OF THE CODES 29 force or necessity.”’* And in the troubled times of the late Empire, Salvian, although he admitted that the colonate was an “abject yoke,” * virtually advised small proprietors to give up their lands, heavily overburdened with taxes, and become coloni of the rich.® Finally, persons might be brought into the colonate through special governmental constraint. A law of Gratian, Valentinian II, and Theodosius I of 382 declared that beggars and vagabonds who were young and able-bodied shoiild | become the perpetual coloni of proprietors. who in-. formed _against.them;* and in 409 a constitution of Hon- orius and Theodosius II provided that a whole barbarian tribe shouldbe distributed among variousproprietors as coloni.® — Was it possible for a man once a colonus to be freed from that condition? “Arslave could be manumitted by the will of his master, but we have record of no law which gave a landlord the right to~free-his-colonus. “No personal ex- ceptions, no official decision, no authority of the census can free coloni by birth from their obligations,” declared a re- script of Arcadius and Honorius.* According to a law of Justinian, “a lord is able to free.a_slave with his peculium., 1 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 22, 2. “Sin autem et scriptura et post scripturam confessio seu depositio, sine vi et necessitate tamen, intervenerit...tunc ex utroque genere obligationis, id est tam scripturae quam confessionis vel depositionis, talem eum esse credendum, qualem et 5 aed et inter acta deposuit.”’ 2Salvianus, De Gubernat. Det, v, 8, 44. 8 Tbid., v, 8, 43. “Itaque nonnulli eorum de quibus loquimur qui aut consultiores sunt aut quos consultos necessitas fecit...fundos maiorum expetunt et coloni divitum fiunt.” 4Cod. Theod., xiv, 18, 1; Cod. Just., xi, 26, I. 5 Cod. Theod., v, 6, 3. Cf. infra, pp. 34-35. ® Cod. Just., xi, 48, 11. “ Originarios colonos nullis privilegiis, nulla dignitate, nulla census auctoritate excusari praecipimus.” “ ,.jugo inquilinae abjectionis.” 30 THE ROMAN COLONATE [30 and expel a colonus from his control with the land.”* This evidently implied, as Savigny has said, that a landlord could not expel his colonus_except with the plot of land which he was accustomed to cultivaté>—It was possible, indeed, in the fifth century for-coloni to be freed by prescription of thirty or forty years from the obligations of one estate by becom- ing coloni in another,* or by becoming subject to the obliga- tions of municipal collegia.* But this was abolished by Justinian who decreed that no period of prescription was sufficient to free a colonus from his native estate.” In fact under Justinian the only method by which a man born in the colonate could free himself was to become a priest, after he had furnished a substitute to occupy his tenement,°® and then to rise to the rank of bishop,‘ a circumstance which of course must have been exceedingly rare. Thus the Codes are able to present a fairly adequate pic- ture of the coloni of the late Empire. They were tenants on the estates either of the great proprietors or of the crown who, although legally freemen, were attached in perpetual bonds to the soil. It was a condition so utterly dissimilar to the coloni as des¢ribed in the Digest by the great jurists of the second and third centuries that scholars in the fields of Roman law and ancient history from the time of Cujacius and Gothofredus have felt it necessary to offer some ex- planation of the origin of the coloni of the Codes. Our next task, therefore, is to examine the theories of the colo- nate presented by these writers. 1 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 21, 1. “...et possit (dominus) servum cum peculio manumittere et adscripticium cum terra suo dominio expellere.” 2 Savigny, op. cit., pp. 35-36. 3 Cod. Theod., v, 18, 1; Nov. Val., 26, 4 and 6; 30, pr. 4 Cod. Theod., xii, 19, 2. 5 Cod. Just., Xi; 48, 23,3} 43 5. ® Cod. Just., i, 3, 16; Nov., 123, 17. 7 Nov., 123, 4. CHAPTER II EARLY THEORIES THE first explanation of the origin of the colonate ap- peared in the works of the early Latin commentators on Roman law, Cujacius and Jacobus Gothofredus. In 1577, Cujacius, in his commentary on the Digest of Justinian, found it necessary to explain the earns of the word inguilinus—asit was used in the passage, “if anyone has bequeathed. inguilini without the estates to which they are ‘united, t —isonull and void:’*~ The imquilint, ujacius explained, were peasants united forever to their estates together with their children.* An hereditary class of serf-peasants, he maintained, existed in Italy from early times to late, but under different names. They were known as operartt (laborers) during the Republic, as inquilint or colom at the time of the jurists of the Digest and of the earlier constitutions of the Codes, and as adscriptici, those inscribed in the register of an estate, in the later laws of the Codes. The serf-colonate of the Codes in the opinion of Cujacius, therefore, was not a new condition peculiar to the late Empire, but one which had always existed in Italy. Gothofredus, on the other hand, in his commentary on the Theodosian Code in 1665, traced the origin of the colo- nate to the barbarian dedititis who surrendered themselves to the Romans and who were set to the work of cultivating 1 Dig., xxx, I, 112, pr. “Si quis inquilinos, sine praediis quibus ad- haerent, legaverit: inutile est legatum.” 2 Cujacius, Opera (edition of Paris, 1658), vol. iv, part i, p. 1145. “Hi (inquilini) praediis perpetuo adhaerebant cum progenie sua.” 31] 31 32 THE ROMAN COLONATE [32 land within the Empire “under the fixed laws of the census and the capitation tax.” * He derived his theory from the use of the expression “ dediti” in a passage of the Justinian Code, “ paene est ut (coloni) quadam servitute dediti vide- antur,’ * and these coloni “ who seem to have surrendered themselves in a kind of servitude,” he identified with the many known cases of barbarian dedititw. The first comprehensive treatment of the colonate as a legal and economic institution was undertaken by Savigny in his essay, Ueber den Romischen Colonat, in 1822.* After an exposition of thelegal status of.the.colonus as revealed by the constitutions of the Codes, which has never since been surpassed, Savigny proceeded to discuss the various ways the colonate may _ have arisen. The opinion of Gotho- fredus, that the colonate grew out of the custom of receiving’ conquered barbarians in the Empire as dedititu, Savigny cast aside as untenable; for he believed that there was no evidence extant which would warrant identifying the serf- coloni of the Codes with the barbarian dedititu.* Neither did Savigny hold that the conjecture of Cujacius was more acceptable, that colonus was merely another designation for the earlier servile operarius; for again evidence is completely lacking to show that the operarius was an hereditary serf.° Two types of earlier semi-servile relationships, considerably more like the colonate than the operaru of the Republic, 1 Gothofredus, Codex Theodosianus cum Perpetuis Commentarus, v, 9, I (edition of Lyons, 1665), vol. i, p. 455. “‘ Mens ea mihi colonos ..fuisse ‘dedititios’...qui scilicet cum sese ex barbaris nationibus dededissent, alienis fundis colendis operam suam addixerant sub certa census et capitationis lege.” 2 Cod. Just., xi, 50, 2. 3 Abhandlungen der historisch-philologischen Klasse der komglichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, 1822, pp. 1-26. * Tbid., p. 24. 5 Ibid., p. 22. 33] EARLY THEORIES 33 were the ancient Roman clients and the German tenant- slaves described by Tacitus.* But while there was a certain degree of general resemblance (allgemeine Aehnlichkeit) between these earlier institutions and the late Roman colo- nate, Savigny failed to see any historical connection between them.’ There were, however, in Savigny’s opinion, two possible W oy Gast might have originated. Frree- the colon colorate of their own-volitiony or-coloni- may have been recruited from slaves by a limited manumission. Yet, Savigny saw risny saw such cogent objections to the acceptance of either of these explanations that he hesitated to advocate the one or the other as a well-grounded theory. The only definite historical text in regard to the entrance into the colonate, which was known at the time Savigny wrote his essay, seemed to favor the first hypothesis. Salvian, writ- ing in the fifth century after Christ, complained that small landholde lers-were-so burdened with the taxes that they found it preferable to ave up their land altogether and become caro coloni of the rich. Whether this was a common practice ee, affecting a ole class of the population and not merely isolated individuals Savigny felt that it was impossible to 1 Tbid., pp. 22, 25. Tacitus described these tenant-slaves as follows: “Their other slaves they do not employ in our fashion as an organized staff of domestics. Each has a lodging and home of his own. The lord requires of him a share of grain, or of live stock, or of clothing, as from a tenant (colonus) ; but the slave renders no service beyond this.” Germania 25. “ Ceteris servis, non in nostrum morem descriptis per familiam ministeriis, utuntur. Suam quisque sedem, suos penatos regit. Frumenti modum dominus, aut pecoris, aut vestis, ut colono, injungit: et servus hactenus paret.” 3 Savigny, op. cit., p. 25. .. aber eine historische Verbindung zwischen denselben anzunehmen, scheint mir durchaus kein Grund vorhanden.” $ Ibid., p. 23. Cf. Salvian., De Gubernatione Dei, v, 8, 43. “...fundos majorum expetunt et coloni divitum fiunt.” sé ° - Cs 34 THE ROMAN COLONATE [34 decide from the evidence of this one reference. The Jus- tinian Code indicated that entrance into the colonate by free- men, while permitted, was-considerably lim limited,’ and volun- tary entrance into a dependent condition was certainly con- trary to the general principles of the earlier Roman law. The other possible explanation of the origin of the colo- nate, according to Savigny, was to trace the condition of the coloni to a manumission of slaves, which was limited in such a way that while the slave was allowed personal free- dom he was at the same time bound forever to the soil. The fact that the landlord of the colonus and the master. of the slave were both spoken of as patronus lent a certain degree of support to this view. Yet the limited manumission of a slave was-as contrary to the fixed principles of Roman law as the voluntary entrance of a freeman into a semi-servile statis: ~~ Lacking the evidence of any statutory enactment, Savigtiy believed that neither hypothesis could be definitely maintained.* Not long after the publication of Savigny’s treatise, two important documents of antiquity were discovered, both of which contained precious information in regard to the colo- nate. The first of these finds was the Coustitutio de Scyris discovered in 1824. It was a decree of the Emperors Honorius and Theodosius II of the year 4og A. D., regu- lating the settlement of a barbarian tribe, the Scyrae, on Roman land. The edict reads as follows: We have subjugated the Scyrae, a barbarian tribe of the Huns. Wherefore we grant to all (proprietors) the opportunity of stocking their fields with men from the above mentioned tribe, so that all may know that these barbarians are to be incorpor- ated on their estates (apud se) in no other legal condition than that of the colonate. When once the coloni have been assigned 1Cf. supra, pp. 28-20. * Savigny, op. cit., p. 24. 35] EARLY THEORIES 35 to any proprietor no one will be permitted to coax any one (of them) away fraudulently (from his estate), nor to receive a fugitive, under the (same) penalties which have been prescribed in regard to those receiving coloni inscribed in the census of other districts, or (in receiving) any coloni not their own. Moreover the landlords are to employ them (the Scyrae) only in the work of free men. No one will be permitted to make slaves of them or to set them at work in cities. On account of the scarcity of grain, it will be permitted to keep them in the Transmarine provinces and to attach them to estates for- ever. ... The furnishing of recruits also will be remitted for twenty years.* This law was introduced into Wenck’s edition of the Theo- dosian Code, with the comment? that the whole class of coloni originated by barbarians being settled in Roman territory in this fashion, a theory which renewed on a more substantial foundation the hypothesis originally set forth by Gothofredus. The other important find was the discovery of an edict of a prefect of Egypt, Tiberius Julius Alexander, in 68 A. D., which was published along with a commentary by Rudorff in 1828.* The edict was an answer to complaints which the property holders of Alexandria had made against 1 Cod. Theod., v, 6(4), 3. “ Scyras, barbaram nationem... (Hun)norum ...subegimus. Ideoque damus omnibus copiam ex praedicto genere hominum agros proprios frequentandi, ita ut omnes (scia)nt suscepios non alio iure quam colonatus apud se futu(ros): nullique licere ex hoc genere colonorum ab eo cui semel adtributi fuerint, vel fraude aliquem abducere vel fugientem suscipere, poena proposita, quae recipientes alienis censibus adscribtos vel non proprios colonos in(seq)uitur. Opera autem eorum terrarum domini libera (utantur):...ac nulli liceat...eos... (in se)rvitutum trahere urbanisve obsequiis addicere. Licet...pro rei frumen(tari)ae angustiis in provinciis transmarinis...eos retinere et postea in sedes perpetuas (conl)ocare...Iuniorum quoque intra... vigint: an(nos p)raebitione cessante...” ? Book v, title 4, constitution 3, p. 286, note x. 3 Rheinische Museum fiir Philologie, ii (1828), pp. 64-84; 133-190. 36 THE ROMAN COLONATE [36 certain illegal exactions of the provincial government of Egypt under Nero; and Tiberius Julius Alexander, the pre- fect of the Emperor Galba, promised a rectification of their wrongs. “ For it is unjust,” he said, “ that those who have purchased property and paid the price for it, should be re- quired to pay rents in kind (éxdopea ) for their own estates like state peasants (Sypudoror yewpyot).* Who were these state peasants? Rudorff believed that they were a dependent class in the same economic condition asthe hereditary tenantry (-yewpyot) tentioned by Herodo- tus eiedene in their descriptions of ancient Egypt and of which some traces are to be found in the Egypt of the Ptolemies.* Also he held that their_condition was similar to that of the late Roman.coloni, who existed in Egypt as. . in Other-parts of the Empire. This similarity led him to suggest the hypothesis that there _was-a- continuous. historical development from the yewpyot . of Herodotus to the coloni of the late Roman Empire; that this development in Egypt was typical of the development in other lands; and that the coloni of the late Empire stood in an historical connection (in geschictlichem Zusammenhange) with earlier servile tenures.* In support of his thesis Rudorff called attention to a passage of Varro’s Rerum Rusticarum which dealt with the operarit, whom Cujacius had already described as the ser- vile predecessors of the coloni. “ All fields,’ said Varro, in the first century B. C., “are cultivated by slaves or free- men _or-beth:Among the freemen are those who cultivate the | lands themselves, paid laborers, and those whom our ancestors called operart, many of whom even 1 now are to 1Jbid., p. 149. LI. 31-32. ‘* adixov ydp Eéore tod¢g wvycapuévoue KThuara Kai Tide aut@v arodévrac ac Snuootouc yeapyove Exddpia aratreiabat Tov tdiwy édagay,”’ 7 Rudorff, op. cit., p. 179. 3 Rudorff, loc. cit. 37] EARLY THEORIES 37 be found in Asia, Egypt, and Illyria.” * The operariz in Egypt, Rudorff believed, were identical to the semi-servile yewpyot, Thus, he said, these Egyptian peasants may have formed ithe original-sources of the colonate;in_ relation to “Swhich- the—other_sources of coloni were but “ “secondary imitations’ (secundare ‘Nachbildungen) 2 1 ong caer age ~- In the second edition of his essay on the colonate, which appeared in 1828,° Savigny took into account the theories of Rudorff and Wenck. Rudorff’s hypothesis that a semi- servile peasantry had existed in the provinces from the earliest times, Savigny regarded as the simplest and most natural way of accounting for the serf-colonate of the Codes. Yet in view of the meager historical evidence, he felt that such a theory could only be regarded “as a mere conjecture and not a positive assertion.” * Wenck’s theory of barbarian settlements, Savigny regarded as somewhat more satisfactory. The Constitutio de Scyris of 409 A. D. plainly stated that the tribe of Scyrae were distributed throughout the Empire as “ colon,’ and Savigny admitted that it would not be unlikely that the whole class of coloni might have originated by earlier barbarian settlements, similar to that of the Scyrae. Yet, he warned that such a conclusion did not by any means necessarily follow; for the colonate might have developed earlier from totally different 1 Varro, R. R., i, 17, 2. “Omnes agri coluntur hominibus servis aut liberis aut utrisque: liberis, aut cum ipsi colunt...aut mercenariis... iique quos operarios nostri vocitarunt, ut etiam nunc sunt in Asia, et Aegypto et in Illyrico complures.” Most manuscripts have obaerarios or obaeratos (debtors) in place of operarios (laborers). Cf. ed. Goetz, Pp. 33- 2 Rudorff, op. cit., p. 179. 3 Zeitschrift fiir geschichtlichen Rechtswissenschaft, vi, 3, pp. 273-320. Also published in his Vermischte Schriften, 11, pp. 1-53. 4Vermischte Schriften, ii, p. 48, “als blosse Vermuthung nicht als bestimmte Behauptung.” 9 a) 3 THE ROMAN COLONATE [38 sources, and Honorius and Theodosius II may merely have incorporated the barbarian Scyrae into a class of society which had already long existed.* In 1830 the theory of Rudorff received the powerful sup- port of the great historian Guizot, then premier of France.” “TI see but three ways,” said Guizot, “of explaining the for mation, in 1 the heart ieee re ae such a class as a) a pa seal ee een conquest and force. T Che NC peas- antry may have been bound to the soil and forced to share t roducts of their labor with the conquerors. Or, secondly, the agricultural population, originally free, may havé-gradually lost its liber se Abaaibitn Ibid., pp. 439-440. THE ROMAN COLONATE [50 éen in Gaul. The clients mentioned by Caesar later were converted into coloni, as is evidenced by the Roman and Frankish Codes. Salvian, in the fifth century after Christ, described the process by which poverty-stricken freemen in his day commended themselves to rich patrons and became coloni.* It was precisely similar, said Laferriére, to the way poor men had become clients and coloni during the Republic. And this ancient practice reached such proportions m the late Empire that the government, fearing that the patrons would become too powerful, strove to check it by repeated legislation.” A more eclectic theory was presented by Charles Giraud,* who attempted to combine several earlier theories into a not altogether homogeneous whole. ‘The colonate, he said, was not “a spontaneous production, an accidental or isolated fact,’ but the result of a long historical evolution of the agricultural classes of Italy and Greece.* The Greeks differed from the early Romans in that they despised manual labor and regarded agriculture as unworthy of a freeman; while the Romans on the other hand held agriculture as an occupation to be practiced with honor by a consul or a dic- tator. But in the course of time two influences caused the Greek concept to prevail over that of the ancient Romans. The first was the effect of a career of conquest on the Romans themselves. With the_growth of Roman territory in Italy, there developed a great concentration of wealth and property. The smalfproprietor almost disappeared and the ® Salvian, De Gubernatione Dei, v, 8, 43. ® Laferriére, op. cit., pp. 441-442. 3 Essai sur histoire du droit francais au moyen age (Paris, 1846), vol. i, pp. 148-183. * Tbid., p. 149. “A mes yeux le colonat romain n’est point une pro- duction spontanée, un fait accidentel ou isolé; il se rattache a l’histoire plus ancienne des populations agricoles de I’Italie et de la Gréce.” ST] EARLY THEORIES =I land of the wealthy lords came to be cultivated by humble freemen and slaves." In the second place, Rome was sub- jected to the direct influence of Greek customs, which took effect as soon as Rome™tarie in contact with the Hellenic civilization of South Italy and Sicily. Among the Greeks, in addition to the freemen and slaves, there was an inter- mediate class which was attached in perpetuity to the soil. Such an intermediate class was also to be found in the Greek colonies of Italy and Sicily. And it was the influence of the previously existing Hellenic serfdom which caused a similar class to develop among the Romans, as soon as the land commenced to be deserted and the need for more culti- vators to be felt.’ This class of peasants, half-free and half-servile, devel- oped in Ytaly about the beginning of the Empire, Giraud maintained It was recruited both from free peasantg ruined by pover. , —whom the general liberal tendencies of the Augustan Age caused to be partially emancipated. In the early Empire this semi- servilé Status was not codified into law but was simply a matter of custom and contract. It developed rather on the great latifundia than in the districts close to Rome, and for that reason was not specifically treated by Cato, Varro, and Columella in their works on agriculture.* But the mention of the coloni liberi by Columella ° seems to imply that colon: who were not liberi did exist. Likewise the colom et pastores with which Caesar reported that Domitius Aheno- barbus had manned a whole fleet ° could hardly have referred 1 Tbid., pp. 152-153. 2 Thid., pp. 159-160. $ [bid., p. 157. * Ibid., p. 162. Ue ROR: 1,:7- * Bel. Civ., i, 343 56. U, OF iLL. LIB, 52 THE ROMAN COLONATE [52 to freemen. For, said Giraud, both the considerable num- bers of the coloni and their union with the servile shepherds * strongly indicated their dependent condition in relation to Ahenobarbus. And finally the analogy’ which Tacitus drew ” between the German serf and the colonus showed beyond question that the colonus to whom he referred was not the free tenant of Columella and the Digest, but a peasant of a much more servile character.® From the time of Marcus Aurelius the colonate received numerous accretions from barbarians settled in the Empire. Yet when Diocletian became emperor, although he himself settled thousands of barbarians on the land in different parts of the realm, the stretches of agri deserti continued to in- crease with menacing regularity. In early antiquity the general serfdom_of the peasantry hadted-to prosperity by _ keeping the land in cultivation. By returning to such a system it was thought that the ancient prosperity might be restored. Hence arose the legislation of Diocletian and his successors which attached all the peasantry of the Empire to the soil in perpetuity.* “ The dominating and permanent thought in this regard was always to put the abandoned and deserted land back into cultivation. The colonate had be- come, by the effect of extraordinary circumstances, a ques- tion of the public’order and the greatest interest of the Empire. . . . To cultivate and repopulate the fields was the first necessity of the State; everything yielded to it.” ® 1 Caes., op. cit., i, 57. “‘ Pastores indomiti, spe libertatis excitate...” 7 Germ., 25. 3 Giraud, op. cit., p. 165. 4 Tbid., p. 170. 5 Tbid., p. 171. “La pensée dominante et permanente a cet égard fut toujours de remettre en culture la terre abandonnée et déserte...Le colonat était devenu, par l’effet de circonstances extraordinaires, une ques- tion d’ordre public, et le plus grand intérét de l’empire... Faire cultiver, repeupler les compagnes était la premiére nécessité de l'état; tout s’est plié devant elle.” 53 | EARLY THEORIES 53 Prior to 1847 three types of theory had been offered as explanations of the origin of the colonate. The colonate had been related to previous servile tenures either in Italy or in the provinces; it had been associated with barbarian settlements; and it had been regarded as the outcome of a modified manumission of slaves. In 1847 a new theory was formulated simultaneously and apparently independently by Carl Hegel in Germany * and Wallon in France.* The two explanations differed considerably in detail and method of approach; but they both regarded the colonate as primarily formed of free Roman citizens, who had been bound to the soil by the Roman administration for fiscal reasons, in pre- cisely the same way that the decurion (city senator) was bound to his curia and the craftsman to his gild, According to Hegel the late Empire was characterized by universal_poverty in economic li _thorough-going des- potism in the government. In order to check the process of decay which was proceeding rapidly in all parts of society, and in order to insure the continued payment of taxes, the government decreed that all ll classes of society should become fixed and permanent. *From the decuriones, members of a distinguished city aristocracy, to the soldiers, city plebeians, and coloni, a general caste system_was organized from which no one could escape. The decuriones in the cities and the landlords in the country were held responsible for certain taxes and liturgies which must be rendered to the state. These included land and capitation taxes, specified pay- ments in produce, the furnishing of recruits for the army, and carrying services of all kinds for the court, the army, 1 Geschichte der Stadteverfassung von Italien (Leipzig, 1847), vol. 3, pp. 84-88. "Histoire de l’esclavage dans lantiquité (Paris, 1847), vol. 111, pp. 262-313, et passim. 5 Op. cit., p. 86. 4 THE ROMAN COLONATE [54 ti and traveling officials. The decuriones could in no way avoid these payments to the state. If the taxes collected were less than the assessed amount, they were forced to make up the loss out of their own property. And since the ability of the decuriones to pay the taxes rested upon con- tinued cultivation of their lands, it was only right and fair that they be assured of their cultivators. Hence the law attaching the coloni to their estates.’ Wallon, whose Histoire de lesclavage dans lantiquté appeared in the same year, based his theory of the colonate on a suggestion which had been made some years before by Guizot. Guizot had stated that there were three possible explanations of the origin of the colonate. It was either (1) the result of conquest in which the peasantry of the con- quered nation was forced to till the soil as serfs of the victors; or (2) it was derived from an agricultural popula- tion originally free but which had lost its freedom through the encroachments of the rich and the pressure of an aristo- cratic administration; or finally (3) it was genetically re- lated to previous servile conditions, especially in Gaul. Guizot had selected the third alternative as the most prob- able origin of the colonate.* But Wallon felt that Gallic serfdom formed too narrow a base to be the origin of an institution which existed not only in Gaul but in every province of the Empire. “ The universality of this custom evidently demands a general cause which acted uniformly everywhere,” he said. The first alternative he likewise re- garded as unsatisfactory, for if the colonate had been es- tablished at the time Rome conquered the provinces it would have been mentioned as frequently in the laws of the ! Tbid., p. 87. 2 Cf. supra, p. 38; Wallon, of. cit., vol. iii, pp. 280-281. SJbid., p. 281. “ L’universalité de cette coutume réclame evidemment une cause générale, qui ait agi uniformément partout.” 55] EARLY THEORIES 55 Digest of the second and third century as it was in the Codes of the fourth and later centuries. But Guizot’s second hypothesis appeared to Wallon as the true explanation of the origin of the colonate. ‘‘ The colonate was derived not from conquest but from administration,” he maintained.* In the early Republic the object of Roman administration had been to develop a numerous and brave population. But under the Empire its sole anxiety was to obtain sufficient revenue. With the proceeds from the taxes it could support a standing army and maintain a comprehensive administra- tion. “L’impot, voila sa force.’ ? In the poverty of the late Empire, however, taxes were obtained with-trereasing difficulty and consequently a universal immobilization of functions became necessary. The craftsman was heredi- tarily bound to his trade, every citizen was bound with his posterity to his college or corporation, and the member of the city curia was held forever in his office.* And in pre- cisely the same manner and under the same influences the country peasant was attached to the soil as a serf.* This administrative adscription, however, was not a sudden transformation but merely legalized a condition which had long since appeared on the land. The develop- ment of the slave-worked latifundia during the Republic had ruined the small peasantry of Rome, and when, at the beginning of the Empire, the supply of slaves commenced to fall short, the large landed proprietors experienced the ereatest difficulty in finding sufficient labor to keep their lands in cultivation. Every means possible, legal or illegal, was utilized to obtain agricultural labor. In the time of ‘Tbid., p. 281. “Le colonat dérive non de la conquéte mais de l’admin- istration.” * [bid., p. 268. * [bid., pp. 264-265. * [bid., p. 282. 56 THE ROMAN COLONATE [56 Augustus freemen were seized as slaves in an organized brigandage. Notwithstanding attempts to destroy this prac- tice, brigandage existed everywhere, and the forcible seizure of free men (le rapt de Vhomme libre) continued unabated.* In addition the poor were crushed by the tyrannical usury charged by the rich. The taxes which a corrupt administra- tion allowed the upper classes - de through bribery fell the more ily on the poor. Constantly™ easants were hatderedaen al oaneaniere and corvées of all kinds. The judges of the courts and even the governors of the provinces were sometimes the accomplices of the rich and sometimes the principal authors of these fraudulent im- positions. The civil wars of the third century increased the misery of the poor with their devastations and the ruin which followed in their wake.” The invasions of the barbarians forced the peasants who had lived on the border to seek safety within the Empire as homeless fugitives. But in- stead of finding a refuge, they were seized as vagabonds by the rich in their heartless rapacity and sett a as serfs.° The Roman administration in the provinces was that of a government of conquest. The proprietors were made re- sponsible for the taxes and allowed to take any means they pleased to squeeze out payments from the peasantry. The proprietor was in a difficult position himself, and, unless he was able to force the coloni in his estates to furnish the requisitions allotted to him, he himself was ruined and. joined the pauper multitude. Sometimes the exactions proved so severe that the coloni revolted in desperation, as in the case of the rebellion of the Bagaudes in Gaul during Tbid., p. 283. * Tbid., 285-286. 3 Tbid., pp. 2903 and 208. 57] EARLY THEORIES 37 the reign of Diocletian, a new type of servile war against the common enemy, the treasury.* The final legal adscription of the coloni, as it appeared in the Codes, took place as the result of two causes. The influence, of Christianity, which had already alleviated the harsh Gsteer OF SGvSS = [el the Cieiciicn emperors of the fourth century to regulate the-condition of the colonus in such a way as to safeguard for him the name and prin- cipal rights of freedom.* Otherwise the cupidity of the proprietors might have forced the miserable peasantry into actual slavery. Secondly, the legal adscription of the colo- nus assured the administration of a regular payment of taxes. If the coloni deserted their holdings, either the proprietor was ruined by the taxes or else the treasury suffered. Consequently the legal recognition of the colonate saved the peasantry from further encroachments on their liberty on the part of the proprietors, while at the same time it provided the administration with a permanent and reliable source of taxation. In the same year (1847), Huschke published his Ueber den Census und die Steuerverfassung der frithern romischen Kaisergeit,’ in which he made an ingenious attempt to com- bine the theory of barbarian settlements with the theory of previous servile tenures. “The regular and true source of origin of the colonate,’* he said, were the barbarian dedititui, whom the Romans had settled within the Empire. The clearest text indicating this was the famous constitution 1Tbid., p. 287. “...Vennemi commun, le fisc.” 3 Ibid., p. 313. 3 Ibid., p. 208. 4 Tbid., p. 301. ° Cf., DP. 145-175. SJbid., p. 151. “Der regelmassige und eigentliche Entstehungsgrund des Colonats.” 58 THE ROMAN COLONATE [58 of Honorius and Theodosius II in 409 A. D. in regard to the Scyrae.* But, as Zumpt had jhown, this was merely the last of a long series of barbarian settlements of similar nature. The settlements of Gratian, Valentinian II, Con- stantius II, Constantine, and Constantius I showed that the barbarian colonate existed in the beginning of the fourth century, while the settlements of -Diocletian, Maximian, Probus, and Claudius II carried it back to the middle of the third century. The colonate did not appear conspicuously in the writings of the third century jurists in the Digest for the reason that, like emphyteusis, which was similarly neglected, the colonate was a matter of provincial adminis- tration and not of civil law.* Yet there are certain rare references to coloni and mquilini in the Digest which can only be interpreted as referring to a peasantry in substan- tially the same economic and legal condition as the colon of the Codes. The inquilint could not be bequeathed with- out the estates to which they were attached.” The pro- prietor of an estate must declare his imqwilimt and coloni in the census under penalty of law.* Coloni were mentioned as being particularly numerous on imperial estates,” where it was most likely the barbarian dedititiz were settled. And finally a law of Alexander Severus in 225 showed that the proprietor had as great rights over the child of a female colorfie_(adscripticia) as of a slave. 1 Cod. Theod., v, 6 (4). 3. Cf. supra, pp. 34-35. * Huschke, op. cit., p. 158. *Dig.. xxx, 1, 112, pr. “Si quis inquilinos sine praediis, quibus adhaerent, legaverit: inutile est legatum.” *Dig., L, 15, 4, 8. “Si quis inquilinum vel colonum non fuerit pro- fessus, vinculis censualibus tenetur.’ RT RS CMC RE Bad Dig ORLY Goan Dull cif y * Huschke, op. ctt., p. 157. * Cod. Just. viii, 52, 1. “Si invito vel ignorante te partus ancillae vel adscripticiae tuae expositus sit, repetere eum non prohiberis.” 59] EARLY THEORIES | 59 Zumpt had traced the colonate as far back as the settle- ments of Marcus Aurelius in the latter part of the second century. But Huschke believed that the evidences of the colonate in the first century were equally convincing. ron- tinus, during the reign of Domitian (81-96 A. D.), men- tioned a “numerous plebeian population” which provincial magnates in Africa possessed on their estates.. In 69 A. D. the edict of Tiberius Julius Alexander called attention to the inferior class of dyéo10. yewpyss whom Huschke regarded as serf-coloni.* During the reign of Nero (54-68 A. D.) Tiberius ‘Plautius, the legate of Moesia, settled 100,000 people from across the Danube as tributaru.* Columella in 60 A. D. spoke of estates being cultivated by citizens “ held in the bonds of their debts ” as well as slaves.* And finally Augustus himself settled numerous barbarian tribes in the Empire. Strabo said of the Vardaei that “the Romans compelled them to cultivate the land,’ ° while the Alpine Triumpilini, who were settled in Italy, were described by Pliny as a “ people who are to be sold with their fields.” ° “That is,” said Huschke, “they became coloni in the later sense of the word.” ‘ But Huschke was not satished with tracing settlements of dedititi to the beginnings of the Empire. He was con- vinced that similar treatment of conquered peoples went ! Frontinus, in Gromatict Veteres, ed. Lachmann, p. 53. “ Habent ptivati in saltibus non exiguum populum plebeium.” _ * Huschke, of. cit., pp. 160, 167. * Orelli, Inscr. lat. No. 750. “...ad praestanda tributa.” “De R. R., i, 3, 12. “...occupatos nexu civium et ergastulis tenent.” SStrabo, vii, 5, 6. ‘‘avrode . .. ‘Pwuaior . . . yvayKacav (trHv uecdyasov) yewpyeiv,’’ * Pliny, NV. H., iii, 24. “...venalis cum agris suis populus.” *Op. cit., p. 162. “...d. h. Colonen im spatern Sinne des Worts wurden.” 60 THE ROMAN COLONATE [60 back to the beginning of the Republic if not to the founda- tion of Rome itself. In all probability, he said, this was the origin of clientage.* Certainly the Italian allies of Hannibal, the Campanians and their neighbors,” the Brut- tians,® the Picentians,* and the Lucanians°® were settled in a dependent condition with certain financial: and agrarian obligations. In addition Huschke held that the obaerati mentioned by Varro in Italy ° and by Caesar in Gaul * were a semi-servile class, like the next and clientes, bound to their patron by a permanent hereditary relationship.* Somewhat freer, yet still in a condition of more or less dependence, were the coloni whom Catiline enlisted along with his freed- men in his troops,? and Ahenobarbus with his slaves, freed- men, and shepherds.” In fact, Huschke concluded, conditions of serfdom were general all throughout the ancient world. In the Greek settlements in Italy the Bruttians in Lucania, the yatwvoa of Heracleia, and the yaewva of Sicily were the servile peasantry of the ruling nations. In Greece proper the Spartan Helots were the best known of numerous servile races cultivating the land, while traces of serfdom were also to be found in Egypt, Illyria, Asia, Syria, and Gaul. The general cause of all these types of serfdom was the subjection of a foreign race by a stronger nation. The barbarian colonate of the 1 Ibid., p. 163. A eV. * Appian, De Bel. Hannib., 61. 4 Strabo, v, 4, 13. 5 Strabo, vi, 1, 2 and 3. Pay rg ‘Bet, Gal., 1,42 vi, 13. ® Huschke, op. cit., p. 167. “...ein dauerndes erbliches Verhaltniss.’ * Sallust, Catil., 59. 10 Caesar, Bel. Civ., i, 343 1, 56. 61] EARLY THEORIES 61 Roman empire was merely a repetition of a very ancient fact.” | When Augustus organized the Roman Empire, he found the land of Italy and the provinces cultivated by peasants in all kinds and degrees of dependence. To standardize these heterogeneous servile relationships and to bind the peasants forever to the soil and thus check the desertion of the fields which had already increased to menacing propor- tions, was a work of first importance to the tax administra- tion. The great imperial census of Augustus, Huschke be- lieved, was the occasion of putting this general regulation into force. This law of Augustus he maintained was the lex a majoribus constituta mentioned in the Justinian Code.” It did not contain the detailed regulations regarding the colonate which appear in the Codes, it is true. This was the work of the legislators of the late Empire. But the general features of the colonate, such as the permanent adscription to the soil, were contained in the census regulations of Augustus; and it was in this general relationship that the barbarians were settled by Augustus and his successors. In 1850 Savigny published the third edition of the essay on the colonate which had inaugurated these many theories.* To his original treatises he added a supplement written in 1849 in which he discussed the development in the theories of the colonate which had taken place since the last edition of his essay. The theories of Giraud and Puchta he re- garded as incompatible with the principles of Roman law, while the attempt of Huschke to relate the colonate both to barbarian settlements and previous servile conditions he felt was “an uncritical intermixture of essentially different re- lations.”* But the cautious old scholar who had looked 1 Huschke, of. cit., p. 168. 2 Cod. Just., xi, 51,1. Cf. Huschke, of. cit., p. 160. *Vermischte Schriften, ii, 1-66. ‘Thid., p. 56. “...so finde ich darin eine unkritische Vermischung _ wesentlich verschiedenartige Verhaltnisse.” 62 THE ROMAN COLONATE [62 askance at so many previous oxpenatione of the colonate in the earlier editions of his treatise, finally declared himself unreservedly in favor of the theory of barbarian settlements as developed by Zumpt. “It is,” he said, “an explanation of the colonate, which not only is very simple and natural in itself, but also finds its confirmation in the fact that in a case of the fifth century the conquered Scyrae were expressly subjected to the colonate by an imperial law.” * 1 Jbid., p. 55. “Es liegt darin eine Herleitung des Colonats, die nicht nur an sich hochst einfach und nattirlich ist, sondern auch darin ihre Bestitigung findet, dass in einem Fall des fiinften Jahrhunderts die be- siegten Scyren durch ein Kaisergesetz ausdriicklich dem Colonat unter- worfen wurden.” CHAPTER III ANALYSIS OF THE EARLY THEORIES AN analysis of the theories of the colonate advanced by writers mentioned in the previous chapter shows that there were five different types of explanation of the origin of the colonate. The colonate was derived from (1) voluntary enlistment of freemen oppressed by taxes and debts, (2) limited manumission of slaves which bound the freedman to the soil, (3) pre-Roman servile tenures in the provinces and pre-imperial dependent relationships in Italy, (4) bar- barian captives settled in the Empire as serfs instead of slaves, and (5) administrative pressure largely actuated by fiscal considerations. Some writers held that one of these explanations was sufficient to bring about the adscription of the colonus to the soil; while others combined two or more of them. Our next task, then, is to examine the texts upon which these theories were based and to judge the adequacy of each as an acceptable theory. The theory that the colonate was formed by a voluntary entrance into a ea tr weer aes by any write {plete explanation of the colonate. It was mentioned by Savigny in the first edition of his essay as a possible explanation,’ later by Laferriére in connection with his client theory ° and finally by Giraud.* The theory depends almost altogether on a passage in Salvian’s De 1 Savigny, Abhand. der Akad. der Wiss. zu Berlin, 1822, p. 23. ? Laferricre, Histoire du dr. civ. de Rome, ii, p. 441. ® Giraud, Histoire du dr. francais, p. 157. 63] 63 64 THE ROMAN COLONATE [64 Gubernatione Dei. Salvian was describing the severe bur- dens of taxation which weighed heavily upon the small peasant proprietor. To evade the taxes the peasants fre- quently entered into the patronage of the rich. But the advantage gained was only a-temporary one, for the patrons were often more grasping than the government and soon not only held the peasant-clients themselves wholly in their power but their children as well. “ Wherefore,’ said Salvian, “some of those of whom we speak who are more prudent, or whom necessity has made prudent, seek the es- tates of the powerful and become coloni of the rich.” * Salvian wrote in about 495 A. D., more than a century and a half after the first laws in the Codes which regulated the condition of the coloni. It is easy to see how the small peasant proprietor who had become a client of an avaricious patron might better his condition by abandoning his land altogether and_ becoming a colonus of a great lord. For in the former condition he was at the mercy of his patron, while in the latter, although a serf, he was protected by the law ia@this rights.andiette amount of his obligations. The numerous laws in the Codes which regulated the entrance of freemen into the colonate show that the colonate received frequent accessions from the free peasantry who no longer found their condition tolerable.? The passage from Salvian quoted above is valuable in showing one of the causes which brought about an increase in the number of the coloni after the colonate had once been established; but it offers no clue which would help to explain how or why the colonate was originally organized. Laferriére regarded the colonate as an outgrowth of the 1Salvian, De Gubernat. Dei, v, 8, 43. “Itaque, nonnulli eorum de quibus loquimur, qui aut consultiores sunt, aut quos consultos necessitas fecit...fundos majorum expetunt, et coloni divitum fiunt.” * Cy. Coa, Just., Xi, 48, 19; 223722, 1: 65] ANALYSIS OF THE EARLY THEORIES 65 old system of clientage, and the tendency of peasants to enter under the patronage of influential men, as reported by Salvian, he felt was a characteristic of all periods of Roman history. Aside from the fact that there are no records of clientage in the Empire earlier than the fifth century, it must be remembered that the peasant who was the client of a great patron was entirely different from a colonus. The client-peasant held the land which he had commended to his patron in precarious tenure, that is, wholly at the pleasure of his lord, while the colonus held his land in perpetuity and could not be removed from it in any way by the proprietor. In fact patronage was a movement away from the colonate and the welcome which powerful patrons gave to runaway coloni threatened in m S to destroy the adscrip- tion of fee iontia tortie acl ain the Codes tied SO carefully to maintain." The passage in Salvian, which Laferriere cited, plainly shows the difference between the peasant-clients and the coloni. Peasant proprietors despair- ing of meeting their taxes first commended themselves as clients to great lords. Then when they found that they were in an even worse condition than they had been before they gave up their lands altogether and became serf-tenants or coloni on the estates of rich landlords. But patronage itself had nothing to do with the formation of the colonate. The second theory, that the colonate can be derived from a conditional manumission of slaves, had been first suggested by Savigny and later advocated by Puchta. Slave culture was proving unprofitable, it was said, so landowners found it advantageous to free their slaves on the condition that the freedmen and their descendants should remain as permanent serf-tenants on their Jands. (Since private arrangements which slave-owners might make with their slaves would have no effect on their legal status, Puchta supposed that new ' Cf., De Zulueta, De Patrociniits Vicorum (Oxford, 1909), pp. 26, 50. 6 THE ROMAN COLONATE [66 legislation in regard to emancipation of slaves was passed between the first and fourth centuries which permitted the freeing of slaves on the condition that the treedman be attached to the soil. The theory of Puchta, however, remains a mere con- jecture in the absence of any text relating to the supposed legislation. This is especially remarkable in the light of the full details which are given in the Justitutes of Gaius and Justinian in regard to revisions of the manumission laws during the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius.” As Zumpt * and Savigny * have said, if legislation of such im- portance as this had been passed, it could not possibly have escaped the notice of the compilers of Justinian’s Corpus Juris Civilts. So this theory died an early death. The theories of voluntary enlistment of freemen and limited manumission of slaves never received very serious consideration, but the third theory, that the colonate was derived from earlier servile conditions, was more widely accepted than any other in the period before 1850. Cujacius regarded the coloni as the lineal heirs of the early operarit in Italy, while Schultz and Laferriére held that the colonate Was an outgrowth of clientage. Rudorff related the coloni to the Egyptian yewpyés, Guizot to the Gallic client, while Dureau de la Malle and Giraud found in early Greek serf- dom the prototype of the colonate. : Before the theory of early servile tenures can be regarded as a valid explanation of the origin of the colonate it is necessary to prove three things. First, it must be shown that the earlier servile condition was essentially similar to the condition of the colonate; second, that there was a Gaius, Institutes, i, 12-15; ili, 56-62, 70-76. Justinian, Institutes, acres * Rhein. Mus., iii (1845), p. 9. *Vermischte Schriften, ii, pp. 60-61. 67] ANALYSIS OF THE EARLY THEORIES 67 continuous development from the earlier serfdom to the colonate as it was legalized in the Codes; and, in the third place, that the previous servile relationships were widely enough extended throughout the Empire to serve as the basis of the colonate. But in most of the examples cited by writers advocating this hypothesis there was little which resembled the condition of the later colonate. In Italy, the operarius mentioned by Cujacius was a humble day-laborer,* but no reference has ever been discovered which even re- motely indicates that he might have been a serf. The clients, mentioned by Schultz and Laferriére, it is true were persons in a condition of distinct dependence to their patrons ; and no doubt they usually were used by their patrons as agricultural tenants on their estates. But the clients held the land wholly at the pleasure of their patrons and could be withdrawn from the land any time their patrons wished,* which was a condition diametrically opposed to that of the coloni. The clients were in a condition of personal depen- dence towards their patrons and were in no sense attached to. the soil like the coloni. The assumption of Laferriere that when the patricians’ tenure of the ager publicus changed from a precarious lease to permanent ownership, the clients at the same time changed from precarious to permanent tenants, is wholly without the support of any text. Like the limited manumission of slaves, which Puchta imagined, a change of such importance could not have failed to have left some record in contemporaneous literature or in the body of the law. Rudorff believed that the colonate could be traced to previous servile conditions like that of the Sypéoror yewpyoi of Egypt. Yet the references which he cited merely show 1 Cf., Cato, De Agric., x, 1; Cicero, Tuscul, Disput., v, 36, 104. 2Cf. Dig., xliii, 26, 1, pr. “ Praecarium est, quod precibus petenta utendum conceditur tandiu, quandiu is qui concessit patitur.” 68 THE ROMAN COLONATE [68 that the yewpyot were state tenants paying a rent in kind (éxfdpov). The edict of Tiberius Julius Alexander in 68 A. D., in contrasting their position to that of the Alexandrian landlords does no more than imply that the yewpyol, were a distinctly inferior class;* and the references to Diodorus and Herodotus are no more definite. All we learn from Diodorus is that the yewpyot were one of the humbler classes of Egyptian society below the priests, nobles and soldiers, but above tradesmen and handicraftsmen; ? while Herodotus is even less explicit. Hence we may conclude with Savigny * that on such inadequate evidence the theory of Rudorff can only be regarded as a mere conjecture. Guizot maintained that the colonate was an outgrowth of the servile conditions in Gaul and other Celtic countries; and it is true that Caesar’s Commentaries offer superior evidence of dependent relationships than the references cited by Rudorff. Guizot quoted no texts, but the passages in Caesar’s De Bello Gallico in regard to Gallic clientage are well known.* There were two types of dependence in Gaul, that of the soldier who was bound never to desert his patron no matter how desperate his plight * and who might even be burnt on his lord’s funeral pyre,’ and that of the poor peas- ant burdened by taxes and debts and by the oppression of the rich who commended himself to a powerful protector.” 1Cf. supra, p. 36. = Ur t.s Diodoriis aed. aera > Cf. Herodot., ii, 164. *Vermischte Schriften, ii, p. 48. 5 Cf. Garsonnet, Locations perpétuelles (Paris, 1879), pp. 30-32; Fustel de Coulanges, Histoire des institutions politiques (Paris, 1888-1892), i, pp. 11-18. ® Caesar, Bel. Gal., vii, 40. * Tbid., vi, 19. 8 [bid., vi, 11; 13. Cf. Garsonnet, op. cit., p. 33; Fustel de Coulanges, op. cit., p. 16. 69 | ANALYSIS OF THE EARLY THEORIES 09 The former type of retainer, however, was a soldier, who was a member of the military body-guard of his chieftain; he was not a peasant at all, so there could have been no relationship between him and the later serf-colonus. What- ever connection which might be shown to have existed be- tween dependent conditions in Gaul and the colonate must have been with the Gallic peasant-client. Yet unfortunately the description of Caesar is too vague to give us much assistance. ‘‘ The plebeians,” said Caesar, “‘ are considered almost like slaves, since they have no power themselves and are represented in no council. ery many, when they are crushed by debt or taxes or by oppression of the powerful, give themselves up in servitude to the nobles. These latter have all the rights in regard to them which a master has over his slaves.” * In another chapter Caesar described the ancient institution of patronage “as designed so that no plebeian shall be in need of aid against a more powerful person; for each (patron) takes care to prevent his re- tainers from being oppressed or molested.” ” The exact nature of the relations of the peasant-clients to their patrons must remain a matter of conjecture, for outside of some passages referring to debtors and clients following chieftains like Orgetorix,? Dumnorix,* and Ver- cingetorix,”® the texts quoted above are our sole sources of 1:Caesar, Bel. Gal., vi, 13.. “ Plebs paene servorum habetur loco, quae nihil audet per se, nulli adhibetur consilio. Plerique, cum aut aere alieno aut magnitudine tributorum aut iniuria potentiorum premunter, sese in servitutem dicant nobilibus; in hos eadem omnia sunt iura, quae dominis in servos.” 2 [bid., vi, 11. “Idque eius rei causa antiquitus institutum videtur, ne quis ex plebe contra potentiorem auxilii egeret; suos enim quisque op- primi et circumveniri non patitur.” 3 Tbid., i, 4. 4 Tbid., i, 18. 3 Tbid., vii, 4. 70 THE ROMAN COLONATE [70 information. We can well imagine that the peasant-clients owed rents and services to their lord like the German slave- tenants described by Tacitus." But to suppose that they were attached to the soil in a way in which they could not be removed at the pleasure of their patrons seems altogether unlikely. It must be remembered that, like the Roman client, the Gallic retainer was in a position of personal dependence towards his patron and not of predial dependence in rela- tion to a lord’s estate,” and we must not lose sight of the fact that the Gallic tribes before the Roman conquest were hardly in a condition in which permanent relationships in _ property in land could develop, such as adscription to the soil in perpetuity. Therefore to regard the coloni as the lineal descendants of the Gallic peasant-clients is an inference absolutely unwarranted by the facts at our disposal. Dureau de la Malle and Giraud believed that the roots of the colonate could be found in various forms of early Greek serfdom. The sacred slaves attached to certain Greek temples, mentioned by Dureau de la Malle, were too utterly dissimilar to the coloni to have influenced the origin of the colonate in any way; but the several types of predial serfdom cited by Dureau de la Malle and Giraud at first glance seem to bear considerable resemblance to the colonate. When the Hellenes conquered Greece, in regions where the native inhabitants were not driven out or extirpated they appear to have been subjected to some form of serfdom. Traces of servile and semi-servile relationships have been found in Thessaly, Laconia, Argos, Crete, Macedon, Corinth, Attica and Boeotia, as well as in many parts of Magna Graecia.* But unfortunately most of the references to these servile 1 Germ., 25. * Cf. Terrat, Du Colonat en Droit Romain, pp. 92-93. * Cf. Garsonnet, Locations Perpétuelles, pp. 23-27; Paul Guiraud, art. “ Colonat,” in La Grande Encyclopedie, vol. xi, p. 1054. 71 | ANALYSIS OF THE EARLY THEORIES oa ~ tenures are brief and vague, and it is only in regard to the Penestes of Thessaly and the Helots of Laconia that any- thing like a definite description is to be obtained. The principal authority describing the Penestes is Athenaeus. “The Thessalians,’”’ he reported, “call those Penestes who were not born slaves but who have been taken prisoners ot war. ... They gave themselves up to the Thessalians by agreement to be their slaves on condition that they should not take them out of the country nor put them to death, but that they should cultivate the country for them and pay them a yearly revenue for it.”’* Dionysius said that they were subjected to servile chastisements * and Demosthenes re- ferred to a Thessalian noble being followed in battle by two hundred of his Penestes,*? which apparently indicates that, unlike slaves, they were capable of bearing arms. The Helots were frequently mentioned in Greek literature but most of the details in regard to their status are given by Strabo and Athenaeus. In describing the conquest of Laconia by the Spartans, Strabo said that the native in- habitants submitted and were required to pay tribute to Sparta. “But the Heleii, who occupied Helos, revolted and were made prisoners in the course of the war. They were adjudged to be slaves with the conditions that the owner should not be allowed to give them their liberty nor sell them beyond the boundaries of the country. This was called the war of the Helots (1090 B. C.). The system of Helot slavery . . . continued from that time to the es- tablishment of the dominion of the Romans. They were a kind of public slaves to whom the Lacedaemonians assigned habitations and required of them peculiar services.” * ‘Ath- ' Athenaeus, vi, 85. Trans. by Yonge. * Dionys., Antig., ii, 9. * Demosthenes, Hepi Zvvraséiwc, 23. * Strabo, viii, 5, 4. Trans. by Falconer. 72 THE ROMAN COLONATE [72 enaeus said of the Helots, “ They (the Spartans) impose every kind of insulting employment on the Helots such as brings with it the most extreme dishonor. . . . Every year they scourge them without any offence, in order to prevent their ever thinking of emancipating themselves from slavery. And besides all this, if any of them ever appear too hand- some, they impose death as a penalty, and their masters are also fined for not checking them in their growth and fine appearances. And they give them each a certain piece of land, and fix a portion which they shall invariably bring them from it.” * Pausanius* and Plutarch * likewise refer to the fixed rent which the Helots paid. They were state slaves* and while they could not be emancipated by the proprietor to whom 'they had been assigned, they apparently could be freed by the State, at least in times of stress. Plutarch, in his life of Kleomenes, told how Kleomenes, in attempting to obtain 500 talents, allowed the Helots to pur- chase their freedom at five minae apiece.” | Thus it is seen that the Penestes and Helots resembled the coloni in that they cultivated land in return for the pay- ment of fixed rents and services and in their liability to military service; but in other respects they differed from them considerably. The Penestes and Helots were descen- dants of conquered tribes and always were referred to as slaves (800A). They were regarded as slaves of the state and consequently could not be emancipated by their tempo- rary masters, but might be freed by the state. The coloni on the other hand were free in their personal status and ? Athenaeus, xiv, 74. Trans. by Yonge. Cf. ibid., vi, 87; 102. ne & Aah. Ae 3 Instituta Laconica, 32. * Pausanius, iii, 20, 6. ° Plutarch, Kleomenes, 23. 7o'| ANALYSIS OF THE EARLY THEORIES 73 were called “ liberi” or “ ingenut” in the Codes. They had to submit to servile chastisements in case they attempted to desert their holdings, but otherwise they could sue their landlords in court for any personal indignities. But in the case of the subject classes of Thessaly and Sparta a sys- tematic policy of terrorization was practiced.t The primary object of these institutions apparently was to keep the numerically superior servile race in subjection to their con- querers rather than to ensure the constant cultivation of the soil, the ratson d’étre of the colonate. The Penestes and the Helots could not be sold out of the country, but there is no record that they were permanently attached to any estate and had hereditary rights in a plot of land, the two essential characteristics of the coloni. Our information concerning the other types of Greek serfdom is so vague that we can come to no definite conclusions about them. Probably they resembled the Pen- estes and Helots in general.” But even if they were con- siderably more like the coloni than the Penestes and Helots were, it is difficult to see what possible connection there could have been between these various types of Greek serfdom and the Roman colonate. In the first place the causes of their origin were different. The origin of Greek serfdom was the conquest of native tribes. Whatever the origin of the Roman colonate may have been, it certainly did not arise in this way. It had never been the Roman policy even in the earliest historical times to subject a conquered people to serfdom; and the legislation in regard to the colonate came centuries after the Roman conquests had been completed. In the second place, there was an interval of many centuries between the end of Greek serfdom and the first authentic 1 Cf. Thucydides, iv, 80, which describes the assassination in cold blood of two thousand of the bravest of the Helots. 2 Cf. Athenaeus, vi, 84 and 86. 7A THE ROMAN COLONATE [74 records of the beginning of the colonate. Most of the ac- counts of Greek serfdom refer to early times. Only in regard to the Helots do the records show that serfdom lasted until the Roman conquest.* It was not until five centuries later that the legislation establishing the colonate appeared. During the intervening period there is not the slightest evi- dence that serfdom of any kind existed in Greece.* That the colonate in Greece should have finally developed from the influence of serfdom in early antiquity when the causes which had brought about the earlier servile tenures had ceased to operate and when the servile tenures themselves had been obsolete for centuries, is a conjecture utterly devoid of justification. As well might one relate modern Mexican peonage to conditions under Montezuma. The whole general theory of earlier servile conditions, as presented by writers from Cujacius to Giraud, is abso- lutely untenable as an explanation of the origin of the colonate. In no case was an earlier type of serfdom offered as a prototype of the colonate that resembled the latter in its essential characteristics. In no case was a continuous development of serfdom from an ancient status of depen- dence to the Roman colonate proved even in regard to a single country. And finally, no writer was able to show that servile conditions were general throughout the world, or that the types which did exist were similar enough to each other to form the basis of an institution which existed in every province of the Empire. The colonate entered too vitally into the economic and social organization of the late Empire to be merely the survival of an empty form. The next theory of the colonate to be considered is the theory of barbarian settlements. Suggested first by Goth- ° ofredus and connected with the Constitutio de Scyris by ' Strabo, loc. cit.; cf. Xenophon, Hell., i, 2, 18; vi, 5, 28; vii, 2, 2. 2 Cf. Seeck in Pauly-Wissowa’s Real Encyclopddie, vol. iv, p. 493. 75] ANALYSIS OF THE EARLY THEORIES 75 Wenck, it was elaborated in detail by Zumpt in 1845 in an essay which was beyond all question the leading explanation of the origin of the colonate in the period before 1850.” Even Savigny, who for a quarter of a century had retained an attitude of scepticism in regard to previous attempts to explain the origin of the colonate, declared himself com- pletely convinced by Zumpt’s arguments. Huschke in 1847 added new references which supported Zumpt’s theory and showed that the practice of settling barbarian dedititi on the land was of much earlier origin than Zumpt had sup- posed. But Huschke injured his case by attempting to correlate barbarian settlements with earlier relations of dependence in Italy and the provinces, which was, as Savigny had said, an intermixture of essentially different conditions. Likewise Huschke’s assumption that the census of Augustus unified the heterogeneous mass of servile and semi-servile conditions in the Empire and thus created the colonate is a stipposition without the slightest documentary foundation. Just as in the case of the legislation supposed by Puchta, a law of as fundamental importance as that which Huschke imagined could not have escaped all mention from contem- porary literature or the writings of the Roman jurists. However, notwithstanding these errors in his treatment, Huschke’s inclusion of references to barbarian settlements earlier than those given by Zumpt was a contribution of no tittle importance in the formation of a complete statement of the theory of barbarian settlements.” The principal source upon which the theory of barbarian 1 Savigny’s essay had almost exclusively concerned itself with the legal status of the coloni as set forth in the Codes. It is interesting to note in a recent work of the Italian historian Ferrero that Huschke’s theory of the relation of barbarian settlements to the colonate is definitely accepted. Short History of Rome (trans. by Chrystal, New York, 1919), vol. ii, p. 318 and note 1. 76 THE ROMAN COLONATE [76 settlements rests is the edict of Honorius and Theodosius of 409 A. D. regulating the settlement of the conquered Scyrae on Roman soil." The edict stated specifically that the Scyrae were settled as coloni.* The usual penalties in regard to the flight of coloni were applied to them and it was expressly provided that none of them were to be en- slaved.* Finally, like the regular coloni, they were subject to military service, although in this particular case the fur- nishing of recruits was remitted for twenty years.* This edict was published seventy-seven years after the date of the first extant constitution in the Codes regulating the condition of the serf-coloni.” Consequently its value in determining the origin of the colonate rests on the inference that barbarian settlements in earlier times were of similar nature. In this respect it corresponds to the excerpt from Salvian of 495 A. D. quoted above, which described the voluntary entrance into the colonate of small peasant pro- prietors who had been ruined by taxes and debts. Both of these texts in themselves merely show that the ranks of the serf-coloni were augmented in later years on the one side by conquered barbarians and on the other by free peasants in financial difficulties. But while the passage in Salvian is unique and can be'related to no earlier references describing a similar voluntary entrance into an infertor status, the con- stitution of Honorius and Theodosius II is the last of a long list of texts which refer to the settlement of the barbarian dedititii on Roman soil, most of which took place before the colonate was legally established in the Empire. If it could be shown, then, that the Comstitutio de Scyris was 1 Cod. Theod., v, 6 (4), 3. Cf. supra, pp. 34-35. 2“ Non alio iure quam colonatus apud se futuros.” > “Ac nulli liceat...eos...in servitutem trahere.” *“ Juniorum quoque intra... viginti annos praebitione cessante.” 5 Cod. Theod., v, 17 (9), 1 (332 A. D.). 77 | ANALYSIS OF THE EARLY THEORIES 77 typical of the previous settlements of barbarians, a strong case would be presented in favor of the theory that the bar- barian dedititii served as the prototype of the coloni of the Codes. In addition to the edict of Honorius and Theodosius II, Zumpt and Huschke offered forty-four references to forced settlements of barbarians in the Empire. But unfortunately none of these citations show definitely whether the condition of the barbarians was like that of the Scyrae or not. The later settlements seem to bear the closest resemblance to that of the Scyrae, while the farther back the barbarian settle- ments are traced the less conclusive the evidence appears. In the period between the establishment of the Scyrae in the Empire and the constitution of Constantine in 332 A. D., barbarian settlements were reported to have been made by Gratian, Valentinian [, Julian, Constantius II, and Con- stantine. Ammianus related that Gratian in 377, after he had conquered the Taefali, “ distributed all the living around Mutina, Regium and Parma, Italian towns, to cultivate the fields.’ * In 370, during the reign of Valentinian I, “ Theo- dosius, at that time commander of the cavalry, attacked the Alamanni, killed many, and took some prisoners, whom at the emperor’s command he sent to Italy, where some fertile districts around the Po were assigned to them, which they still inhabit as tributarii.’? Julian likewise made tributari paying a vectigal® out of the barbarian captives, while the Limigantes offered to surrender to Constantius II, saying 1 Ammian., xxxi, 9, 4, “ Vivos (Taefalorum) omnes circa Mutinam, Regiumque et Parmam, Italica oppida, rura culturos exterminavit.” * Ammian., xxviii, 5, 15. “Alamannos adgressus Theodosius (ea tem- pestate magister equitum) pluribus caesis, quoscumque cepit ad Italiam iussu principis misit, ubi fertilibus pagis acceptis, iam tributarii circum- colunt Padum.” “c 3 Ammian., xx, 4,1. “...a barbaris...quos tributarios ipse (Julianus) fecit et vectigales.” 78 _ THE ROMAN COLONATE [78 that “they were ready to take up distant lands within the Roman Empire and to submit to the duties and name of tributari.”* Finally Eusebius related in his Life of Con- stantine that in 344 A. D., after the emperor had subdued the Sarmatians, “ those who were capable of serving, Con- stantine incorporated in his own troops; to the rest he allotted lands to cultivate for their own support.” ” Three things are noteworthy in the passages quoted above: the barbarians were used for cultivating lands, they were enrolled as soldiers in the legions, and they were in three cases spoken of as tributarit. Both the coloni in general and the conquered Scyrae in particular were used to cultivate the land and were subject to military service, while tributarti was one of the common designations of the coloni in the Codes.* However, nothing precludes the possibility that the barbarians were settled under imperial supervision in special districts where they cultivated the land, furnished recruits for the army, and paid tribute. Tvributarii sometimes was used synonymously with coloni, it is true, but also it was the designation applied to all provincials paying the tributiwn solum. Specifically it referred to taxable persons on im- perial estates who paid the vectigal directly to the emperor as opposed to the stipendiarii who paid the tax to the aerarium of the people.* So the description of these settle- ments of Constantine and his successors by no means con- » Ammian., xix, 11, 6. ‘‘ Limigantes...parati intro spatia orbis Romani terras suscipere longe discretas ut... tributayiorum onera subirent et nomen.” ?Eusebius, Life of Constantine, iv, 6 (trans. by McGiffert). Cf. Excerpt Constant., 32. “ Sed servi Sarmatarum adversum omnes dominos rebellarunt; quos pulsos Constantinus libenter accepit et amplius trecenta millia hominum mistae aetatis et sexus per Thraciam, Scythiam, Mace- doniam, Italiamque divisit.” Cf: Cod: Theod,, x; 12,:2, 23 Cod. Sask, xi; AG, te 4 Gaius, Inst., 11, 21. Cf. Justinian, Just., ii, 1, 40. 79 ANALYSIS OF THE EARLY THEORIES 79 clusively shows that the barbarians other than the Scyrae became coloni. And as these settlements were all made after 332 A. D., when the legal colonate was known to have been in existence, they can give little help in determining the origin of that institution except by way of analogy. The proof of this must rest on the evidence of barbarian settle- ments prior to Constantine. Zumpt traced the policy of establishing barbarian culti- vators within the Empire back to Marcus Aurelius. Settle- ments are recorded under the reigns of Constantius I, (293- 306 A. D.), Diocletian and Maximian (284-305 A. D.), Probus (276-282 A. D.), Aurelian (270-275 A. D.), Claudius II (268-270 A. D.), and Marcus Aurelius (161- 180 A. D.). The objects of these settlements, as of the settlements after Constantine, was to cultivate the waste lands and to furnish recruits." The fullest description of the settlement of barbarians, and the one upon which Zumpt and Huschke place the most emphasis, is contained in the Panegyric to Constantius of Eumenius. The hiding places of the forests are not able to protect the barbarians from being forced to surrender to thy power and from going with their wives and children to places formerly deserted, so that the very places which perhaps they them- selves ravaged in their pillaging expeditions they now are forced to put under cultivation by servile labor (serviendo).* In the next chapter he continues : Now we see crowds of captive barbarians sitting in all the 1Eumenius, Paneg. Constantino, 6 (concerning Constantius), ‘ Franciae nationes...ut, in desertis Galliae regionibus collocatae, et pacem Romani imperii cultu iuvarent et arma dilectu.’ 7 Eumenius, Paneg. Constantio,&. “Nec... perfugia silvarum barbaros tegere potuerunt, quominus ditioni tuae omnes sese dedere cogerentur et cum conjugiis ac liberis ad loca olim deserta transirent ut, quae fortasse ipsi depraedando vastaverant, culta redderent serviendo.” Ro THE ROMAN COLONATE [80 porticoes of the cities . . . and all these have been assigned to thy provincials for their service (ad obsequium) until they are applied to their destined work of cultivating uninhabited places. The Chamavus and the Frisian, therefore, now plows for me and the former wanderer and pillager now gets dirty from his work and exercise . . . the barbarian cultivator lowers the price of grain. Nay even he is summoned to military service, he hastens forth and congratulates himself that he can serve as a soldier.* Later in the panegyric Eumenius says: So just as by thy order, Emperor Diocletian, Asia filled the de- serted districts of Thrace with its inhabitants transplanted (in those regions), just as by thy will, Emperor Maxim n, the Frank, restored to the realm and received back under our laws, cultivated the waste lands of the Nervii and Treveri; so now through thy victories, unconquerable Emperor Constantius, all the uninhabited land of the Ambiani, Bellovaci, Tricassini, and Lingonici is now at peace under the barbarian cultivator.’ The barbarian transplanted in the realm could be used as a soldier; therefore he was not a slave. He was forced to occupy lands assigned to him by the government, usually lands already deserted and lying waste, not those which he would be likely to choose for himself as a free settler. He 1 Eumenius, of. cit., 9. “Nunc vidimus...totis porticibus civitatum sedere captiva agmina barbarorum...atque hos omnes provincialibus | vestris ad obsequium distributos, donec ad destinatos sibi cultus solitu- dinum ducerentur. Arat ergo nunc mihi Chamavus et Frisius, et ille vagus ille depraedator exercitio squalidus operatus...et cultor barbarus laxat annonam. Quin etiam ad dilectum vocetur, accurrit...et servire se militiae nomine gratulatur.” 7 Eumenius, op. cit., 21. “Ita sicuti pridem tuo, Diocletiane Auguste, jussu implevit deserta Thraciae translatis incolis Asia, sicut postea tuo, Maximiane Auguste, nutu Nerviorum et Treviorum arva jacentia velut postliminio vestitutus et receptus in leges Francus excoluit; ita nunc per victorias tuas, Constanti Caesar invicte, quidquid infrequens Ambiano et Bellocavo et Tricassino solo Lingonicoque restabat, barbaro cultore requiescit.” 81] ANALYSIS OF THE EARLY THEORIES SI was compelled to put these lands under cultivation “ by servile labor”’ (serviendo). If there were no waste lands to be re- claimed at the time of the distribution of the dedititi, then the barbarian was assigned to provincial proprietors “ for their service” (ad obsequium) until recalled by the govern- ment to the work of reclamation. This description does not seem to fit a free man any more than the eligibility of the barbarian for military service fitted a slave; wherefore Zumpt concluded that the barbarians were settled in the intermediate status of the colonate.* However, this description does not seem any more ap- plicable to serf=co easant proprietors. The coloni were So aire aia eatin land from which they eotild not be moved. There is not the slightest hint in Se Cal eet planted barbarians were bound to the soil in this way. On the contrary they were apparently moved about at the pleas- ure of the government. When not needed in any reclama- tion project that the sovcenmehe WES CHTeTae, ther were temporarily assigned to proprietors in need of agricultural labor, only to be recalled later when the government desired their services. That they were in a condition of dependence somewhere between slavery and freedom we can readily agree; that it would have been very easy to transform per- sons in this intermediate status into serf-coloni, provided that the economic and social conditions demanded such a transformation, can also be accepted. But that the status itself of the transplanted barbarian was the prototype of the colonate or that it had any influence whatever on the economic and legal condition of the coloni is a hypothesis which certainly cannot be supported by the evidence from Eumenius. There are numerous texts describing barbarian settle- 1Zumpt, op. cti., p. 24. 82 THE ROMAN COLONATE [82 — ments before Constantius, but in none is the account so clear as in the passages of Eumenius quoted above. Dio- cletian and Maximian transplanted thousands of Carpi, Bastarnae, and Sarmatians within the Empire.* “ Ger- mans, Bastarnae, Gepidi, Gautunni, Burgundians, Vandals, and Franks were settled by the Emperor Probus.” “ Ger- many has been subdued throughout its whole extent,” said _ Vopiscus, ‘ All the barbarians plow and sow for you and fight for you against interior tribes.” ° ‘‘ The Bastarnae, a Scythian tribe” related Zosimus, “‘ which he (Probus) himself conquered, he admitted into Thrace, settling them on assigned fields. There they continued to live in accord- ance with the laws of the Romans. Likewise after the Franks had submitted to the emperor and obtained homes from him, a part of them revolted, procured a fleet of ships and harrassed all Greece. They even reached Sicily, broke into Syracuse and committed many murders there. At length they sailed to Africa, but were driven away from there by troops from Carthage. Nevertheless they were able to reach their homes without accident.” * The Vandals, Gepidi, and Gautunni likewise wandered away from the regions in which they had been settled by Probus and it took 1 Eutropius, ix, 25; Orosius, vii, 25; Eusebius, Chron. Canon., 2310 (p. 187, ed. Schoene); Ammian., xxviii, 1, 7; Eumenius, Poaseg. Constantio 5. ; * Vopiscus, Probus, 15; 18; Zosimus, 1, 68; 71. 3 Vopiscus, Probus, 15. “‘ Subacta est omnis qua tenditur late Germania ... Omnes jam barbari vobis arant, vobis jam serunt, et contra interiores gentes militant.” *Zosimus, i, 71. ‘‘ Baordpvac dé, SKvOiKdv ébvoc, imomecdvrag avr7q mpocé- Mevog xaTusktos Opaxiow ywpiow, Kai dlerédeoav Toie ‘Pwpaiwy Biotevovtec vdpo. kat &paykwv 7O@ Bacidet mpoceAGdv7ov Kat TvxXdSvTwY oiKZOEwC poipa TLC ATOCTaCa, TAoiwy svmopioaca, 7iv ‘EAAdda ouvetadpasev axacayv, Kat LineAia mpocoyxcvoa Kai TH Svpaxovoiav mpoouitaca woAvy nata Tavtyy eipyacato gdvov, 7dyH dé Kai AiBoy xpocoppicheica, Kar Groxpovobsioa duvauewc tx Kapynddvoc éxevex@eionc, ola Te péyovev arabic éeravedGeiv oixade,’’ 83 | ANALYSIS OF THE EARLY THEORIES &3 several pitched battles with the imperial forces before they were subdued again.” | As we get farther away from the legal adscription of the coloni in the fourth century, the barbarian settlements ap- .pear less and less like the distribution of the Scyrae as coloni among various proprietors. The settlements of Pro- bus seem to have been in military preserves, in several cases insufficiently guarded, so that the barbarians broke out and ravaged their way back to the home land. Probably their condition did not differ greatly from that of the natives in provinces incorporated in the Empire paying tribute to Rome, except in the closer supervision and higher rents paid on the imperial domains which caused some of the barbarians to revolt. But there is nothing in the evidence of the settle- ments of Probus which gives valid ground for believing that the status of the transplanted barbarian served as a proto- type for the colonate. Probus’ predecessors, Aurelian and Claudius IT both trans- planted barbarians within the realm, Aurelian in Etruria,’ and Claudius in Macedonia and Thrace.* Cod. Just., xi, 48, 6. for Lod. Just., xi, 48, 19; xi, 53, 13 xi, 60, I. 112 THE ROMAN COLONATE [rr a similar free status was not difficult to explain. The earliest source of free coloni, he held, was the emancipation of slave coloni already legally bound to the soil. Their emancipation did not affect their adscription to the soil, but merely their personal status. They obtained the rights of freemen in relation to their master, who now became merely their patron and landlord, but their obligation to the govern- ment to remain as cultivators of the land remained un- changed. In 382 A.D. beggars and vagabonds* and in 409 A. D. the conquered barbarian tribe of the Scyrae * were added to the class of free coloni. finally Anastasius (491- 518 A. D.) ruled that all slave-coloni who remained on the same estate for thirty years should become free coloni.* In this way, Rodbertus concluded, the free colonate, at- tached to the soil, developed after the model of the earlier slave colonate, which had previously been legally established.’ The theory of Rodbertus differed strikingly from all those that had gone before. Most of his predecessors be- lieved that the colonate had originated in the provinces, while Rodbertus found it in Italy; most of the earlier writers had 1 Rodbertus, op. cit., p. 258. 2 Cod. Theod., xiv, 18, I. > Cod. Theod., v, 6 (4), 3. * Cod. Just., xi, 48, 19. “Agricolarum alii adscripticii sunt, quorum peculia ad dominos pertinent, alii triginta annorum tempore coloni fiunt liberi tamen cum rebus suis manent.” Rodbertus’ explanation of this passage is extremely forced. (Rodbertus, of. cit., p. 262.) It rests on conceiving agricolae as slaves and in reading liberi with fiunt instead of manent which enables him to translate this passage as “others of the slave peasants through a prescription of thirty years are made free coloni.” But the word agricola has no connotation in regard to personal status and to read Jiberi with fiunt instead of manent not only makes the last clause meaningless but destroys the contrast which the law makes between the adscripticiit, whose peculia belong to their lords, and the coloni, who own their own property. For the generally accepted trans- lation of this law see above page 90. 5 Op. cit., p. 264. 113] THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 113 regarded the coloni as transformed freemen, while Rodbertus held that they were transformed slaves; and no one before had related the origin of the colonate to general laws of economic development. Despite its many errors and weak- nesses the theory of Rodbertus is remarkably well-rounded and plausible. The difficulty which Revillout and Serrigny had found in proving that there was a class of free peasants large enough to form the basis of the colonate, Rodbertus avoided by tracing the colonate to slaves, the enormous number of whom at the beginning of the Empire was attested by numerous records of undoubted authenticity, Puchta, like Rodbertus, had derived the colonate from an origin in slavery, but his theory had given way because of the lack of evidence of legislation permitting a manumission of slaves as coloni instead of ordinary freedmen who had rights of freedom of movement. But Rodbertus held such legis- lation unnecessary, as the colonate in his opinion was simply the adscription of the slave to the soil. Once bound to the soil the slave-colonus might indeed be freed to become a free colonus, but the old manumission laws were perfectly capable of legalizing such an emancipation. Finally, like his predecessors of the administrative pressure school, Rod- bertus believed that the legislation of the colonate came about through the exigencies of taxation and through the need of stabilization in an era of universal disintegration; and this arbitrary treatment of the agricultural population was made so much the easier by the fact that the peasants were slaves and not freemen. The economic historian has frequently been criticised for his neglect of historical texts in his search for broad his- torical generalizations; and this criticism is particularly ap- plicable to Rodbertus.* The theory of Rodbertus rests al- 1Cf, Westermann, “On the Sources and Methods of Research in Economic History,” Pol. Sci. Quart., xxxvii (1922), p. 70. 114 THE ROMAN COLONATE [114 together on two assumptions, first, that there was a change from large-scale to small-scale agriculture in Italy which caused the slave gang to be supplanted by the small tenant; and, secondly, that these small tenants, or “‘ colom” as they were called, were slaves. If these assumptions are false, the whole superstructure, which Rodbertus reared on them as a base, falls to the ground. ‘There can be no doubt that the second assumption is absolutely incorrect, for the word colonus from the earliest times to the age of Justinian was never used to indicate a slave. The jurists of the second and third centuries represented the colonus as a tenant who held a time lease and paid a money rent * and who was absolutely free to leave his leasehold at the expiration of his contract.’ Against the multitude of references which show that the colonus was a freeman, Rodbertus offered two texts which he claimed led to the opposite conclusion. Columella said that a proprietor should be more solicitous in requiring work than payments from his coloni,? and Pliny the Younger leased out his estate to coloni on share rent.* These refer- ences probably indicate that the condition of the tenant- colonus was not as independent in practice as the decisions in the Digest seem to imply. But it is ridiculous to deduce the conclusion that the colonus was a slave from these pas- sages in Columella and Pliny. Rodbertus, in addition, pointed out several decisions in the Digest which showed that slaves were used as tenants on the estates of their 1 Cf. Dig., xix, 2,14. ‘Qui ad certum tempus conducit ... colonus est.” Dig., xix, 2, 24, 2. “Si...fundus in quinquennium pensionibus locatus sit, potest dominus, si deseruerit... fundi culturam colonus, vel inquilinus cum eis statim agere.”’ Dig., xix, 2, 25,6. ‘“‘ Colonus, qui ad numeratam pecuniam conduxit.” 1 Dig., xix, 2, 25, 2. “‘ Quin liceat colono vel inquilino relinquere con- ductionem, nulla dubitatio est.” *Colum., De R. R., i, 7. “...avarius opus exigat, quam pensiones.” *Plin., Epist., ix, 37. “...si non nummo sed partibus locem.” TI5| THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 115 masters. Dio., xliii, 25. ‘‘ dey dAcyavOpwria,’’ ‘ Heisterbergk, of. cit., pp. 45-5I. 117] THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 117 Rodbertus, it is true, believed that the serf-coloni were derived from slaves rather than freemen; but there had been a similar decline in the slave population of Italy. The savage slave revolts in the last century of the Republic and the massacre of the captives which followed their suppres- sion caused the death of thousands of slaves. With the beginning of the Empire and the new laws permitting in- formal manumission, slaves were freed in such great num- bers that legislation had to be passed to check it.* At the same time the cessation of wars of conquest which came with the Empire caused a marked decline in the new supplies of slaves. Consequently instead of the increase of slaves which would have been necessary to have made possible the change from intensive cultivation to the Parcellen-und-Gar- tenwirtschaft, all records point to a steady diminution of the slave population of Italy.? The second objection which Heisterbergk raised against the theory of Rodbertus was the inclusion of all Italy as the garden-land in the central circle of Von Thunen. In reality on account of the mountains and the slowness of land trans- portation several of the provinces could market their prod- ucts in Rome more easily than distant parts of Italy. Fresh figs could be obtained from Africa,* which would have been impossible from certain regions of Italy. Another weak- ness of this assumption of Rodbertus lay in his extraordinary exaggeration of the consuming power of the population of Rome. No city, ancient or modern, has ever been large enough to require an intensively cultivated market-garden area the size of Italy. No doubt certain districts close to Rome were devoted to market-gardens, notwithstanding the 1Sueton., Octav., 40. ? Heisterbergk, op. cit.,. pp. 52-54. *Piin., N. H., xv, 20. c18 THE ROMAN COLONATE [1 18 known lack of fertility of Latium." But the population of this comparatively insignificant area devoted to market gardening was far too small to form the basis of the serf- colonate of the late Empire, at a time, too, when the capital was moved first to Nicomedia and later to Constantinople.’ But the principal weakness of the theory of Rodbertus lay in his failure to account for the development of the colonate in the provinces. The causes which Rodbertus be- fteved operated on the garden land in Italy to bring about small-scale agriculture and the colonate were not effective in the distant grain lands of the provinces, where extensive systems of agriculture were still maintained. Yet the Codes present direct and unmistakable evidence that the colonate existed in the provinces as well as in Italy. In fact, it 1s Heisterbergk’s central thesis that, contrary to the theory of Rodbertus, the colonate developed first in the provinces and only appeared in Italy when conditions there became similar to those in the provinces. Pliny’s often quoted statement, “ Jlatifundia perdidere [taliam,”’ was interpreted by Rodbertus to mean that the large-scale production of the latifundia had ruined Italy and resulted in a change from the extensive agriculture of slave gangs to the intensive agriculture of slave tenants.* But Heisterbergk claimed that what Pliny meant by his state- ment was not that the form of cultivation of the latifundia had ruined Italy, but rather that the latifundia were so large that they could not be cultivated by their owners and had been allowed to develop into enormous areas of deserted land. Columella complained of the same evil,* but the latifundia continued to develop as great pastures, hunting- 1 Cf. Seneca, Epist. Moral., 87, 7. * Heisterbergk, op. cit., pp. 56-61. * Rodbertus, op. cit., p. 208. “De Re Rust., i, 3. II9] THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 119 lands, and parks. The motive for the organization of the latifundia was not an economic one and the size of a man’s estate was not limited, as Columella advised, by considera- tions of profit and efficient utilization. It was the pride, atrogance, and reckless extravagance of the newly rich which caused the thoughtless heaping up of possessions, until single men “ possessed the territories of whole nations which they could not traverse on horseback (in a day).’”* The enormous incomes of these landlords were obtained from the spoils of war and provincial administration or from lucrative contracts for farming taxes. Their Italian estates were used merely as means of display or as hunting preserves which neither necessity nor inclination caused them to put in cultivation.” In the provinces, likewise, there was the same concentra- tion of lands in the hands of a few possessors. In fact the latifundia were even more extensive there than in Italy. “ Six lords possessed the half of Africa when Nero killed them,” said Pliny.* Yet there was a fundamental difference between the formation of the lJatifundia in Italy and the provinces, which caused the former to be of a wholly un- economic character and led to the decay and ruin of Italian agriculture, while, in the latter, it maintained or brought about small-scale cultivation on the latifundia and eventually the colonate. This fundamental difference—which is the keystone of the theory of Heisterbergk—was the taxability (Steuerpfichtigkeit) or non-taxability of the land." In Italy up until the time of the Gracchan movement the 1 fbid., loc. cit. “...possident fines gentium quos ne circumire equis quidem valent.” ? Yeisterbergk, op. cit., pp. 64-68. * Plin., N. H., xviii, 7. “...sex domini semissem Africae possidebant, cum eos interfecit Nero.” * Heisterbergk, op. cit., p. 68. “120 THE ROMAN COLONATE [120 greater part of the land was ager publicus. For the use of this land a vectigal was at least nominally paid. The Gracchan proposals provided that the vectigal should be paid by the new possessors, but the tribune of the aristocratic party, in order to draw support away from the reform movement, proposed that land should be granted to settlers free from the vectigal. After the fall of Caius and the complete victory of the aristocratic party, in order to remove the danger of future agrarian reforms the ager publicus was wholly relieved of the obligation to pay the vectigal* and the Roman public domain became the private property of its former lessees. As the tributum civium, a general prop- erty tax,” had been abolished in 167 B. C., the Italian land paid neither taxes nor rents to the state from the time of the failure of the Gracchan reform to the introduction of the tributum provinciale into Italy by Diocletian. The exemption of Italian lands from taxation was fol- lowed by consequences far more important in the agricultural development of Italy than the hypothetical laws of Von Thiinen.* It removed the necessity for. serious cultivation of the land and at the same time greatly favored the growth of latifundia. As military service in the constant wars was keeping the small possessors away from their lands, it was comparatively easy for wealthy and influential Romans to absorb enormous tracts of land into single estates; and these were used for parks, hunting, and pasturage while the place of the ousted free cultivator was taken by the slave-herds- man or caretaker. In the provinces, on the other hand, a different condition obtained. Since the owner of provincial estates must pay heavy taxes, he could not afford to use his lands as pleasure estates or hunting grounds, but was com- 1 Appian, Bel. Civ., i, 27. 7Cf. Seligman, Essays in Taxation, 9th ed., p. 35. 3 Heisterbergk, op. cit., pp. 71-72. ber THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE I2I pelled to keep the land in cultivation, at least to the extent of providing a product sufficient to pay the provincial tribute and to support the population of the estate.’ In Italy the population of the latifundia was largely com- posed of slaves, but it is doubtful whether there were many slaves working on the provincial estates. Slaves were al- Ways in great demand at Rome, and, as the capital controlled the slave market, few slaves found their way to the provinces. Furthermore, since the provincial tribute became due im- mediately after the conquest, the owners of the estates could not wait to import a sufficient slave personnel to cultivate their lands, but found it most practicable to utilize the native peasantry as their tenants. So, while the development of latifundia on the tax-free land of Italy had meant the ex- propriation of the small possessor, on the taxable lands of the provinces, on the other hand, the development of Jati- fundia was only possible through the retention of the in- digenous agricultural population on the land as small ten- ants.” ) The provincial tenant farmers cultivating the lands of a Roman overlord were probably in a condition of consider- able dependence. They were not coloni, indeed, in the later sense of the word, but it needed only the immobilization resulting from centuries of custom and hereditary trans- mission (Vererbung) to crystallize their condition within the hard and fast limits of the serf-colonate.* Columella said that the great estates were cultivated by two classes, coloni and slaves.* The slaves were most advantageously used close to Rome, where the personal supervision of the 1 Tbid., p. 79. 2 Ibid., p. 80. > Tbid., p. 81. 4Colum., De R. R., i, 7. “Hi vel coloni, vel servi sunt soluti aut vincti.” 122 THE ROMAN COLONATE [122 landlords was possible, while on distant grain lands—and here Heisterbergk believed that Columella was referring to the provinces—coloni were preferable.” In another place Columella again referred to the two classes who were to be found on the /atifundia as slaves and “ citizens in personal obligations”? (nexus civium).? These flatter must again have been the coloni in the provinces, Heisterbergk affirmed, and the word nevus (personal obligation) he believed showed that the coloni were in a condition of permanent dependence (ein dauerndes Abhangigkeitsverhaltmss).* The dependent condition of the peasants is shown in still another place in Columella, where the proprietor was advised to demand work more insistently than payments from his coloni, “ for this is both less offensive to them and in the long run is of greater advantage; for where the land is carefully cultivated it eenerally affords a profit and never a loss, so that the colonus does not dare to ask for an abatement of his rent.” * 1Colum., De R. R., i, 7. “In longinquis tamen fundis...quum omne genus agri tolerabilius sit sub liberis colonis, quam sub villicis servis habere, tum praecipue frumentarium.” Cf. Heisterbergk, of. cit., p. 85. *Colum., De R. R., i, 3. “...occupatos nexu civium et ergastulis tenent.” 3 Heisterbergk, of. cit., p. 82. Heisterbergk’s identification of those in the nexus civium with the provincial coloni is extremely questionable. If the provincial coloni were natives, as Heisterbergk assumes with reason, they were not cives in the time of Columella, a century and a half before Caracalla’s Edict, as indeed most of them would not be thereafter. Varro expressly defined the citizens in the nexus as debtors working out their debt. Cf. Varro, Lin. Lat., vii, 105. “ Liber qui suas operas in servitutem pro pectinia quam debet dat, dum solveret, nexus vocatur, ut ab aere obaeratus.” Both Columella and Varro were un- doubtedly referring to Italian conditions, and the very passage in Colu- mella (De Re Rust., i, 3) which Heisterbergk used here (p. 82) as a reference to conditions in the provinces he had cited earlier (p. 64) to illustrate the evils of the latifundia in Italy. *Colum., De R. R., i, 7. “Avarius opus exigat, quam pensiones, quoniam et minus id offendit et tamen in universum magis prodest; nam wubi sedulo colitur ager, plerumque compendium, nunquam detrimentum affert, eoque remissionem colonus petere non audet.” 123] THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 123 Heisterbergk held that this passage illustrates the very con- siderable amount of oversight and control exercised by the landlord over his coloni; if the provincial peasants did not prove industrious and faithful tenants to their Roman over- lords, they might be driven from their ancestral homes, just as had taken place in the case of their fellow peasants in Italy.* The taxability of provincial land was the general cause which insured the cultivation of the land in the provinces. The next question, then, which Heisterbergk raised was the kind of taxation which would force proprietors to cultivate the land in the most careful way. In some provinces taxes were paid in kind and in others in money.” In provinces where the tax was paid in money it would be possible for a proprietor to use his provincial possessions as summer pleas- ure estates and pay the taxes out of his other resources. But if the tax were payable only in kind he would be com- pelled to keep the land in cultivation in order to furnish his assigned requisition. In'the grain provinces, where the kind and quantity of the product were both previously determined by the government, the proprietor had small choice in the matter. However little he might be inclined to agriculture, he must at least provide for a thorough enough cultivation of the land to satisfy the demands of Rome and to support the agricultural population. Hence it was in the grain provinces, particularly in Africa, Egypt, and Spain, that Heisterbergk believed that the colo- nate first developed.* The amounts of grain which these ! Heisterbergk, op. cit., p. 85. ?Hyginus, De Limit. Const., p. 205, ed. Lachmann. “Agri vectigales multas habent constitutiones. In quibus provinciis fructus partem prae- stant certam, alii quintas, alii septimas, alii pecuniam, et hoc per soli aestimationem.” * Heisterbergk, op. cit., p. 99. 124 THE ROMAN COLONATE } 124 provinces furnished to Rome were enormous. Josephus said that Africa provided the city population of Rome with enough grain for eight months and Egypt with enough for four;* Aurelius Victor stated that Egypt during the reign of Augustus furnished yearly 20,000,000 modu of grain; ° while Strabo related that Spain exported almost as much wheat as Africa.* There was no appreciable number of slaves in these provinces and there are no records of bar- barian settlements; therefore Heisterbergk concluded that the land must have been cultivated by the native peasantry.* The land of Africa, Spain and Egypt was very fertile and was able to support a very large population in addition to providing for the requisitions of the capital. In Byzacium, a fertile district of Africa, grain yielded a hundred and fifty-fold in the time of Pliny, while Leontium in Sicily, Baetica in Spain, and Egypt produced a hundred-fold.° Rodbertus’ conjecture that Italy was the original home of the colonate Heisterbergk had held impossible because it lacked sufficient population to make possible the change to small-scale agriculture. But the grain provinces were densely populated. Egypt, exclusive of Alexandria, had a population of 7,500,000 ° and had a birth rate as great as its death rate, a phenomenon which appeared marvelous to Pliny.” Frontinus in the first century * and Herodian in ? Bel. Jud., ii, 16, 4. 2 Epit., i, 6. * Strabo; ii; 2,16. Cf. Justinus, axity. 11. * Heisterbergk, op. cit., p. 105. * Plin., NN. fi. yitt, 20, * Josephus, Bell. Jud., ii, 16, 4. 7 Pliny, N. H., vii, 33. Cf. Simkhovitch, Pol. Sci. Quart., xxxi (1916), DD.) eae. 233. 8 De Controv. Agror., p. 53, ed. Lachmann. ‘“ Habent autem in saltibus privati non exiguum populum plebeium, et vicos circa villam in modum munitionum.” 125 | THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 125 the third * both mention the large agricultural population of Africa. The peasants were spoken of as a populum plebeitwm who lived in villages around the lord’s villa, by Frontinus,” and a plebs rusticana by Julius Capitolinus,? expressions which indicate that they were a free tenantry dwelling on the enormous Jatifundia of the rich. “ But small-scale produc- tion on the latifundia, free condition, and actual strong dependence of the agricultural population applied to this work are the characteristics of the colonate.” * — The grain provinces were the real home of the colonate, but the colonate developed to a greater or less extent in all the provinces wherever the land was taxable. The taxability of the land was everywhere the fundamental cause creating the colonate, but the development of the colonate was con- siderably affected by the different treatment which different provinces received after the Roman conquest. In some provinces the Roman conquest made no important change in the economic condition of the peasantry, as Roman suzerainty meant little more than a change in the tax ad- ministration. In these provinces there was a continuity in the economic development of the province which was only slightly affected by the Roman conquest. In others, how- ever, the Roman conquest led to a complete change in owner- ship of the land, and, where the conquest was followed by a considerable Italian colonization, the condition of the agricultural population as well was materially modified; so that in these provinces there was a complete break between the earlier economic conditions and the later. Lvii, 4. ‘‘ dice: rodvavOpwroe obca f) AtBin woAdove eixe rove THY yi yewpyouvrac,”’ 2 Frontinus, Joc. ctt. > Gord., 7. 4 Heisterbergek, of. cit., p. 118. “ Kleinwirtschaftlicher Betrieb auf den Latifundien, freier Stand und thatsachliche strenge Abhangigkeit der zu diesem Betriebe verwendeten Landbevolkerung bilden aber die Merk- male des Colonats.” 126 THE ROMAN COLONATE [126 Egypt was an example of a province of the first type. The Roman conquest was merely a change of foreign over- lords, the Roman emperors, represented by the prefects, be- ing substituted for the Ptolemies. There were no Roman colonies, and economic conditions within the province were little affected by the change of masters. If the colonate existed in Egypt before the Roman conquest, as the refer- ences offered by Rudorff seem to imply, then it no doubt continued to exist after Egypt had become a Roman province. In this case the taxability of the Egyptian land, instead of creating the colonate, merely insured its continued existence.’ Africa, on the other hand, was an example of a province in which the economic conditions were fundamentally altered by the Roman conquest. Land was sold at auction or leased to contractors and numerous Roman colonies were established. The taxability of the African land in this case was the efficient cause which created the colonate, for even if a Carthaginian colonate had existed, it would have been al- together blotted out by the Roman conquest. Similar to Africa were Spain, Gaul, and Illyria, where numerous Roman colonies considerably altered earlier conditions on the land. The colonate here was a new creation after the conquest and not merely a survival of the previous condition of the peasantry. But in both types of provinces the taxa- bility of the land was “the permanent and indispensable condition’ (die feststehende und unerlassliche Bedingung) either for the maintenance of a previously existing semi- servile tenantry or else for the formation of a new class which finally developed into the colonate of the Codes.’ The actual adscription of the colonus to the soil came about through the legislation of the late Empire. During 1 Jbid., pp. 123, 136. 2 Tbid., p. 136. 127 | THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 127 the greater part of Roman history a strong distinction had been maintained between the Roman citizen and the provin- cial and between Italy and the provinces. But this distinc- tion was gradually weakened in the course of time by grants of citizenship to certain provincial districts and by the Edict of Caracalla in 212 A.D. The final equalization be- tween Italy and the provinces came with the introduction of the tributum provinciale into Italy by Diocletian. But the provincial colonate which had slowly evolved as a result of centuries of taxation in the provinces could not be created in Italy in a day merely by applying the provincial land tax. With the removal of the capital of the Empire to Constanti- nople, Egyptian grain was sent there instead of to Rome and African grain proved inadequate to supply the needs of Italy. It was necessary, therefore, that Italy develop her own agricultural population so that she might become as far as possible self-supporting. So the colonate legislation was formulated in order to create the colonate in Italy and to make the provincial colonate uniform throughout the Empire.” At the same time the enormously heavy taxation of the tetrarchy made such demands on the provinces that the tenant-colonate, which had been developed by the moderate taxation of the early Empire, threatened to break down through the wholesale desertion of the tenants. Hence it was necessary everywhere to tie the colonus to the soil and to enforce the adscription by repeated imperial edicts. In parts of the Empire where the land was still cultivated by slaves they were bound to the soil in exactly the same way as the coloni; and where the land had no cultivators at all, either slave or free, as in some parts of Italy where centuries of tax exemption had allowed the land to remain a waste or on the northern frontier constantly 1 Thid., p. 143. 128 _ THE ROMAN COLONATE [128 ravaged by border warfare, barbarians were brought in and settled in the same condition.* The earlier writers of the administrative pressure school had presented an explanation of considerable plausibility for the adscription of the coloni to the soil; but their treatment of the sources from which the coloni sprung was decidedly inadequate. Rodbertus had attempted to remedy this defect and offered a theory which gave an apparently satisfactory explanation both of the origin of the colonate in Italy and - of the source of the coloni. But the theory of Rodbertus was based on such inadequate documentary foundation that it found little favor; and while it offered a possible ex- planation of the colonate in Italy, it did not account for the origin of the colonate in the provinces. Heisterbergk, however, in his outline of the development of the colonate, suggested as the source of the coloni a class in the population of the Empire which undoubtedly was adequate to serve as the basis for the colonate in the provinces. The agricul- tural population of the conquered lands incorporated into the Roman Empire as provinces was very large and the fact that they were Roman tributaries made it extremely prob- able that they were in a condition of considerable dependence in relation to their Roman overlords. Unfortunately, at the time that Heisterbergk wrote his essay very little was known about the economic condition of the provincial peasantry. The Latin writers whose works are extant today had passed over them in almost complete silence. Aside from a few in- conclusive references, like the Edict of Tiberius Julius Alex- ander, the only really valuable text was the passage in Fron- tinus which said that “ private proprietors had on their es- tates a numerous plebeian population, and villages about the villa in the manner of fortifications.” > The conclusions of 1 Thid., p. 144. *Trontin., De Controv. Agror., p. 53, ed. Lachmann. “ Habent autem in saltibus privati non exiguum populum plebecium et vicos circa villam in modum munitionum.” . 129] THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 129 Heisterbergk in regard to the provincial peasantry, therefore, were rather of the nature of clever conjectures than the interpretation of adequate source material, and contempo- raries might well have called them top-heavy. Hence it is all the more remarkable that soon after the publication of Heisterbergk’s treatise a series of inscriptions and papyri were discovered in the two leading grain provinces, Africa and Egypt, which in the main bore out Heisterbergk’s as- sumptions in regard to the condition of the cultivators of the provincial latifundia. - Much credit is due to Heisterbergk for the keenness of his vision in regard to the provinces; but as much cannot be said about his treatment of Italy, nor in favor of the cause which he thought brought about a strong contrast between Italy and the provinces in the development of the colonate. His assumption that a numerous dependent agricultural population existed on provincial latifundia was fully borne out by source material subsequently discovered. But the cause which he believed brought about this condition, the taxability of provincial land, is open to serious question; and when he was logically led to deny the existence of a small peasantry in Italy, because of the exemption of Italian lands from taxation, his conclusion proved absolutely false. There is not the slightest vestige of a doubt that coloni, as small tenant-farmers, existed in Italy during the early Em- pire. Columella devoted a chapter to the treatment of coloni,’ and Columella was writing for Italians, not for provincials.* Pliny the Younger’s estates in northern Italy had no chained slaves on them* but were cultivated by coloni;* and the Digest is filled with references to colont.* ee orann e It. F., 1; -7. * Tbid., i, praef. $Plin., Episi., iii, 19. “1 id., 1x, 37; x, 8. 5 For the complete list of references to the coloni in Italy, see Bolkestein, De Colonatu Romano, pp. 96-111. 130 THE ROMAN COLONATE [130 Heisterbergk’s assertions that Italian latifundia were all pleasure estates is as much an overstatement as the assump- tion of Rodbertus that land in Italy was principally devoted to market-gardening. The exemption of the Italian land from taxation made it possible, indeed, for the wealthy classes to own large parks and hunting grounds, but it was also an inducement to thrifty landlords to make a profit out of land which did not have to pay out a large share of its prod- ucts as taxes. Such landlords were just as anxious to get tenants as the provincial magnates. The exemption from land taxes which Italy enjoyed had probably a considerably greater effect in favoring the growth of the small peasantry than preventing it, as Heisterbergk believed. The difference between the economic conditions in the Italian latifundia and those in the provinces was not nearly so great as Heisterbergk had maintained, and the taxability or non-taxability of the land was not the distinguishing characteristic; yet there is no doubt that a difference between the two did exist in the early Empire. It was not always easy to get tenants on the Italian lJatifundia, as Pliny the Younger had found,’ and vast stretches of Italian land lay” waste and deserted. The Italian population was steadily declining while in the grain provinces of Egypt and Africa the population held its own. The reason that it was more difficult to maintain a strong farmer class in Italy than in certain provinces was, as we shall see later, the fact that the land in Italy had become almost completely exhausted by the beginning of the Empire, while the provincial land still possessed a high degree of fertility. Rodbertus in his attempt to prove the market-garden character of Italian land made use of a statement of Columella which said that ““ we are scarcely able to remember when grain yielded four- 1 Epist., x, 8. 131 | THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 131 fold in the greater part of Italy.”* The conclusion that. Rodbertus drew from this statement was that only sterile land was used for grain, as all the better grades of land | were devoted to garden products.” But this observation of Columella, when interpreted in the light of numerous other contemporary references, shows rather that arable land m many parts of Italy had reached such a stage of exhaustion that it was becoming almost impossible to keep the Italian peasants on the soil.* Africa, Egypt, and Spain, however, were still unexhausted in the first century, and, although Pliny’s accounts of land yielding one hundred and one hun- dred and fifty-fold* were doubtless exaggerated, they indi- cate that at least as compared to Italy these provinces were very fertile and could keep their agricultural population on the land without difficulty. The difference between Italy and the provinces was a question of fertility, not of taxa- bility. Italian lands were deserted, despite the fact that they were tax-free, because they were too unproductive in many regions to enable a peasant to make a livelihood. The lands of the grain provinces, on the other hand, because of their fertility maintained a teeming population, even though they were compelled to ship to Rome a tribute amounting to one- tenth to one-fifth of their gross produce. The foundations of the theory of administrative pressure had been laid by Hegel and Wallon in 1847, and in the next thirty years it had been developed into a well-rounded theory by the writings of Revillout, Serrigny, Rodbertus, and Heisterbergk. In addition to these writers the theory was 1Colum., iii, 3. “ Nam frumenta majore quidem parte Italiae quando cum quarto responderint, vix meminisse possumus.” 2 Rodbertus, op. cit., p. 218. Cf. supra, p. 106. 3 Cf. Simkhovitch, “ Rome’s Fall Reconsidered,’ Pol. Sci. Quart., xxx3 (1916), pp. 211, 215. *Plin., N. H., xviii, 21. 132 THE ROMAN COLONATE [132 advocated in brief form by Kuhn and Garsonnet in the same period; and while no new material was presented in their writings, their statement of the theory is worthy of mention. To Kuhn * most of the discussion in regard to the origin of the colonate seemed beside the point. Many factors, he said, may have contributed to the historical development of the peasantry in the direction of serfdom in various parts of the realm, such as the settlement of barbarians in northern provinces. But for the Empire as a whole one factor alone was able to account for the origin of the serf-colonate as a universal institution, without the aid of any accessory con- ditions. That factor was the application of the total force of a despotic government to check the general disintegration which threatened all parts of the economic organization of society. Hence the universal immobilization of status, de- creed by Constantine and his successors, which affected the artisan in the city as much as the colonus in the country.” A few years later a splendid skeleton outline of a theory was presented by Garsonnet,’? but unfortunately he did not work it out in detail. In contrast to Kuhn’s belief that a single fact was adequate to explain the serf-colonate, Gar- sonnet held that three factors were necessary to understand it in regard to its origin and development. In the first place, it had always been the policy of the Empire to pro- vide for a regular and continuous cultivation of the land. In the second century the perpetual lease had been favored and in the late Empire great encouragements were given to the use of the emphyteutic lease, which was a contract pro- viding for the lease of land in perpetuity for a low rent with 1“ Die stidtische und biirgerliche Verfassung des rémischen Reichs” (Leipzig, 1864), vol. i, pp. 257-270. 2 Thid., p. 250. $ Histoire des locations perpétuelles (Paris, 1879), pp. 161-162, et passim. 133] THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 133 the obligation that the land be kept in constant cultivation.’ In the second place, the fact that serfdom had already once existed in many of the countries which Rome had conquered made the transition to the late Roman colonate an easy one in these provinces; while in other provinces the transplanta- tion of barbarians in a semi-servile condition served as an entering wedge for the colonate. Finally, and most im- portant, was the legislation of the late Empire, which formed the colonate as an administrative institution in the interests of agriculture, the treasury, and the army “ destined to as- sure cultivators to the land, taxpayers to the treasury, and soldiers to the army.” ° By preventing the desertion of the fields this legislation checked the decline of agriculture which was making the land tax unproductive, and by attaching the colonus to an estate it made it easy for each proprietor to furnish the government with his necessary contingent of recruits. The writers of the administrative pressure school from Hegel and Wallon to Garsonnet had assigned several reasons for the colonate legislation. Wallon believed that Chris- tianity had had a humanizing influence upon the Christian emperors and had induced them to form the colonate as a means of protection for the oppressed poor. Revillout, Rodbertus, and Heisterbergk regarded the colonate as pri- marily the result of the reorganization of the tax system by Diocletian and his successors, while Hegel and Wallon mention this as one of the essential factors bringing about the colonate legislation. Hegel, Serrigny, and Kuhn looked upon the colonate as a means of checking the inner decay and progressive disintegration which had become pronounced 1 Tbid., pp. 76, 161. 2 Tbid., p. 161. “...une institution administrative... destinée a assurer des cultivateurs 4 la terre, des contribuables au fisc et des soldats a larmée.” 134 THE ROMAN COLONATE [134 in all parts of society during the third century; and finally Garsonnet held that the colonate was the means established for the three-fold purpose of maintaining the cultivation of the land, the payment of taxes, and the conscription of re- cruits. | Of these various explanations of the colonate legislation, the first, that it was due to the influence of Christianity, can hardly be considered seriously. The colonate was not an institution primarily formed in the interests of the wel- fare of the peasantry, as the numerous laws which had to be passed to prevent the flight of the coloni attest; while the only one of the late emperors who might be suspected of humanitarian principles was Julian the Apostate! The hypothesis of Revillout and his followers, however, that the colonate legislation was due to the necessities of tax collec- tion, stands on a somewhat firmer foundation. Taxes under Diocletian and his successors were unquestionably higher and more rigorously collected than in the third century. The oppressive taxes caused an increase in the desertion of the land on the part of tenants, as Lactantius observed,* and this desertion very probably seriously inconvenienced the decuriones who were responsible to the state for the collec- tion of the taxes. The adscription of the colonus to the soil undoubtedly made it far easier for the tax administra- tion to collect the poll tax and the annona, the tax in kind, just as it increased the facility with which recruits were ob- tained for the legions. But it is most improbable that the necessities of the tax administration alone were capable of accounting for the colonate legislation. Various forms of serfdom had existed in the ancient world in earlier times, but they had been imposed on an alien and conquered race ‘Lactant, De Mort. Persecut., vii. “Ut enormitate indictionum con- sumptis viribus colonorum, desererentur agri et culturae verterentur in syivam.” 135 | THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 135 as a result of conquest. The Roman colonate legislation, however, made serfs out of free Roman citizens, in many cases the direct descendants of the Italian race which had conquered the world. It was a measure altogether out of harmony with the spirit of the Roman law, as it had been constructed through centuries of orderly development, and can only be adequately explained by being attributed to a cause which was sufficient to demand such a drastic remedy. Land was being deserted for centuries before the time of Diocletian; the higher taxes of the tetrarchy merely ac- celerated the tendency. At the close of the fourth century Arcadius and Honorius abolished the poll tax (capitatio humana) for the province of Thrace, but the coloni remained as before “servi tamen terrae cur nati sunt.’* In 371 A. D., Valentinian in decreeing that the Illyrian peasants should not leave the estates which they were cultivating said that “they should serve the land not in the bonds of the tribute but in the name and title of colom.”* Finally with the fall of the western Empire the Roman tax system ceased to exist altogether, yet the colonate continued to survive but little changed up to the time of Charlemagne.* ‘The fact that the increase of taxes in the late Empire resulted in an immediate acceleration in the tendency to desert the fields points far more eloquently to the decadent condition of agriculture than to the height of the taxes. Where the soil is fertile the peasant of every age in history has been noted for the tenacity with which he has clung to his holding despite the most oppressive of taxes. But where the land has lost its fertility, any of a number of causes may induce him to leave in hope of making an easier living elsewhere.* “Cod. Just., Xi, 52, 1. 2 Cod. Just., xi, 53, 1. “Inserviant terris non tributario nexu sed nomine et titulo colonorum.” >Fustel de Coulanges, Recherches sur quelques problémes d’lustoire, PP. 145 ef seq. * Cf. Simkhovitch, of. cit., p. 231. 136 THE ROMAN COLONATE [136 The thesis of Hegel, Serrigny, and Kuhn that the colonate, like the similar adscription of the industrial classes and administrative officials, was an attempt to check the general disintegration which was everywhere menacing Roman society, was far more satisfactory than the tax theory of Revillout and his followers. By conceiving that an intimate relation existed between the colonate legislation and the forces which were bringing about the decay and destruction of ancient civilization, this theory presented a cause which was fully adequate to account for even such an extreme measure as the transformation of the free Roman citizen into a serf. The only hope of a decaying world seemed to lie in a universal stratification of all classes of society. A choice had to be made between the continued life of the Empire and the ancient liberty of its citizens; and in such a choice liberty had to give way. But while Revillout, Rodbertus, and Heisterbergk had developed their theories in the fullest detail, the explanation of the colonate legisla- tion presented by Hegel, Serrigny, and Kuhn is little more than a bare statement. They do not discuss the causes which led to the decay of agriculture nor the way in which the colonate was bound up with them. Garsonnet offered a valuable suggestion in calling attention to the consistent policy of the Empire in maintaining the constant cultivation of the land by beneficiary legislation such as that favoring perpetual leases and emphyteusis.” But like the others, Garsonnet was primarily interested in other problems and did not carry his explanation of the origin of the colonate beyond the stage of a brief outline. The writers of the administrative pressure school were on the right path and were not far from offering a theory of the origin of the colonate which would not only account for the source of the coloni but would present an adequate 1 Cf. supra, pp. 132-133. 137 | THEORY OF ADMINISTRATIVE PRESSURE 137 explanation of the adscriptio glebae as well. But in 1879 the first of a series of extremely valuable epigraphical dis- coveries was made in Africa. Later, inscriptions and papyri of almost equal value were unearthed in Asia Minor and Egypt. The attention of scholars of the next two gen- erations who took up the problem of the colonate was natur- ally diverted from the explanation of the colonate legislation to the analysis of the significance of these documents in relation to the historical development of the colonate in Africa, Asia Minor, and Egypt. The explanation of the adscription of the coloni to the soil—the crucial question in the problem of the colonate—has been left, if not untouched, at least but slightly developed from the time of Heisterbergk and Garsonnet.* 1 Three other writers during this period offered explanations of the origin of the colonate. Terrat, in his Du colonat en droit romain (Versailles, 1872), criticized the theories of previous servile tenures, barbarian settlements, and limited manumission of slaves, and decided in favor of the theory of administrative pressure as developed by Revillout. (Terrat, op. cit., pp. 2-14, 84-103.) Marquardt, on the other hand, went back to the theory of barbarian settlements, and his dis- cussion of the origin of the colonate is little more than a condensation of the theory of Huschke, as he himself admitted. (Rémische Staats- verwaltung, Leipzig, 1876, ii, pp. 232-236.) His statement that “ ueber den Ursprung dieses Verhaltnisses (der Colonat) ...ist man nach mehr- fachen Irrthiimern zu folgender, jetzt anerkannter und als sicher zu betrachtender Ansicht gelangt” (7. e. the theory of Huschke, op. cit., p. 233), like John Stuart Mill’s similar assertion in regard to the theory of value, has frequently been quoted with great glee by later writers. The theory of barbarian settlements was likewise advocated by Arnold in his Roman System of Provincial Administration (London, 1879, pp. 160-64). CHAPTER V THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS AND THE COLONATE: I. 1879-1890 {n 1879 a long inscription and two fragments were dis- covered in Northern Africa not far from ancient Carthage. They all date from the time of Commodus in the latter part of the second century, a period in which our sources of the agricultural history of the Roman Empire are particularly scanty. Much had been learned about agricultural condi- tions of the first century from the works of Columella, Fron- tinus, and the elder and younger Pliny, while the Digest referred almost altogether to the third century. Conse- quently the importance of these discoveries was immediately recognized and studies were made of the inscriptions in 1880 by Mommsen?* and Esmein,? and in 1881 by Cagnat and Fernique,* and Mowat.* The inscription,® which was called the inscription of Souk-el-Khmis from the place of its discovery, was engraved on a large tablet in four columns, the first of which has almost completely been destroyed while the second is badly worn away. But enough remains to present an illuminating picture of the economic conditions 1“ Decret des Commodus,” Hermes, xv (1880), pp. 385-411; 478-480. 2“ Les colons du saltus Burunitanus,” Jounal des savants, 1880, pp. 686-705. 7“ La table de Souk-el-Khmis,” Revue archéologique, xli (1881), pp. 94-103; 139-151. *“ Determination du consulat qui date la table de Henchir-Dakhla (Souk-el-Khmis),” Revue archéologique, xli (1881), pp. 285-201. 5C. I. L., viii, 10570. 138 {138 I 139] AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 139 | on the saltus Burunitanus, one of the emperor’s estates in , Africa. } Mommsen and Mowat have placed the date of the in- scription between 180 and 183 A. D.* Three types of people were mentioned in the inscription, procuratores, con- ductores, and coloni or rustici. The procuratores were im- perial functionaries who had charge of the administration of the emperor’s estates, one of whom resided on the saltus Burunitanus while others of superior grade were in Carthage, the capital of the province. The lessee of the imperial domain was designated by the normal legal word for lessee, conductor. In Italy, where the tenant farmers were ordi- narily the lessees of quite small tracts, the words conductor and colonus were practically synonymous; but in Africa, in the inscription of Souk-el-Khmis as well as in the inscrip- tions discovered subsequently, conductor always referred to a capitalist who leased the whole of a large estate. Fre- quently and probably habitually the conductor sublet a part of his estate to sub-tenants, and these sub-tenants who cultivated the land themselves were known as colon or rustict. The second column of the inscription begins in the midst of a petition which the coloni were addressing to the em- peror praying that he would redress their grievances. The coloni of the salius Burunitanus were obliged to pay to the conductor rent in shares * and certain special services.* The amount of operae was limited to six days a year, two days’ 1 Column iv, 1-3 mentions “ (Imperator Ca)es(ar) M. Aurelius Com- modus An(toni)us Aug(ustus) Sarmat(icus) Germanicus Maximus.” Commodus became emperor in 180 A. D. and in the same year changed his first name from Lucius to Marcus. In 183 he assumed the title “ Pius” and in 184 “ Britannicus,” neither of which is contained in tl:e in- scription. Cf. Mommsen, of. cit., p. 391; Mowat, of. cit., pp. 285-289. C.J. L., viii, 10370, iii, 8, “. . . partes agrariae.” 3 Tbid., iii, 8-9, “. . . operarum praebitio iugorumve.” 140 THE ROMAN COLONATE [140 plowing, two days’ hoeing, and two days’ harvesting* in accordance with a chapter of a hitherto unknown lex Had- riana, which the petitioners say they have quoted above,” evidently in the first column which has been obliterated. However, notwithstanding these specific regulations and the lex Hadriana itself, a “ perpetua forma’ engraved in bronze * almost all the conductores for many years had encroached on the rights of the coloni and forced them to perform more services than the law required, “contrary to justice and to the detriment of thy interest,’ as the colons say in their petition to the emperor.* In recent years conditions had grown considerably worse, for the present conductor, Allius Maximus, had been par- ticularly oppressive. The coloni had appealed constantly to the procurator, their natural protector and the functionary whose duty it was to see that imperial regulations were enforced, but to no avail. Not only has he paid no attention to our petitions, during the many years we have begged and supplicated him, supporting ourselves on thy divine warrant (subscriptio) ; but he has made himself finally even the accomplice of this same Allius Maximus, a conductor who is most influential, to the point of sending soldiers to the saltus Burunitanus; some of us he has ordered to be seized and tortured, others to be imprisoned, and some, even though they were Roman citizens, he has ordered to be beaten with rods and cudgels; and certainly our only fault lay in the fact that, since these burdens fell so heavily upon our 1 Thid., iii, 11-13, ““. . . non amplius annuas quam binas aratorias, binas sartorias, binas messorias operas debea(mu)s.” * Ibid., ti, 4-5, “. . . kapite legis Hadrian(a)e, quod supra scriptum est.” 3 Ibid., iii, 16. *Ibid., ii, 3-4, “... contra fas atq(ue) in pernic(ie)m rationum tuarum.” 141] AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS TAI feeble strength (mediocritas), we had sent an indignant letter to thy majesty, imploring thy aid.t : Grant us thy assistance since we are only humble peasants who make our living by the toil of our hands, and are not at all a match for a conductor who is most popular by reason of his lavish gifts, and who besides is well known to the pro- curatores, for he has obtained the lease several times in suc- cession. Have pity on us and deign to prescribe by sacred re- script that we be required to furnish no more than what we owe according to the lex Hadriana and the letters of the procuratores, that is six days a year, in order that we, thy native peasants and the foster children of thy saltus be no longer kept from the bounty of thy majesty by the conductores of the imperial domain.? On this occasion the coloni did not commit the mistake which they had made before of sending their petition to the procurator at Carthage, where the only result was the visi- tation of military troops and severe punishment for the temerity of their request. But they submitted their petition to a Lurius Lucullus, evidently a man high in favor in Rome, who presented it to the emperor; and Commodus granted their request. 1 Tbid., ii, 5-20. “ Non solum cognoscere per tot retro annos, instantibus ac supplicantib(us) vestramq(ue) divinam subscriptionem adlegantibus nobis supersederit, v(e)rum etiam hoc eiusdem Alli Maximi (c)onduc- toris artibus gratiosissini (ul)timo in(dul)serit, ut missis militib(us in eun)dem saltum Burunitanum ali(os nos)trum adprehendi et vexari, ali(os vinc)iri, nonnullos cives etiam Ro(manos). .. virgis et fustibus effligi iusse(rit, scilic)et eo solo merito nostro, qu(od, venientes) in tam gravi pro modulo me(diocritati)s nostrae tamq(ue) manifesta (iniuria im)ploratum maiestatem tu(am, acerba e)pistula usi fuissemus.” 2 Tbid., iii, 18-31. “ Subvenias et cu(m ho)mines (r)us(ti)c{i t)en- (ue)s manum nostrar(um ope)ris victum tolerantes conductor(i) pro- fusis la(r) gitionib(us) gratiosis(si)mo impares aput proc(uratores) tuos simu(s), quib(us pe)r vices succession(is) per condicionem conductionis notus est, miser(eari)s ac sacro rescripto (non) amplius praestare nos, quam ex lege Hadriana et ex litteras proc(uratorum) tuor(um) debemus, id est ter binas operas, praecipere digneris, ut beneficio maiestatis tuae rustici tui vernulae et alumni saltum tuorum n(on) ultr(a) a conductori- b(us) agror(um) fiscalium... (prohibeamur).” 142 THE ROMAN COLONATE [142 The Emperor Caesar Marcus Aurelius Commodus Antoninus Augustus Sarmaticus Germanicus Maximus to Lurius Lucullus and to whom it may concern: The procuratores shall see that in conformity with the regulations and my decision that no more than six days services be required and that nothing be demanded from you contrary to the perpetual regulation.’ The first of the two fragments, the inscription of Ain Zaga* was written on a tablet considerably smaller than the tablet of Souk-el-Khmis and so far as it is decipherable it is identical with the first five lines of the fourth column of the longer inscription.» This tablet was found about nineteen miles from the spot where the inscription of Souk- el-Khmis had been placed, thus indicating either that the saltus Burumtanus was very large and copies of the decree of Commodus were located at various places in the domain, or that the emperor's rescript applied to a group of imperial domains where conditions similar to those on the salius Bur- _ umtanus obtained.* The other fragment, the inscription of Gazr-Mezuar,° is considerably longer than the inscription of Ain Zaga, but it is so badly mutilated that it offers only an occasional phrase which is intelligible. Like the other inscriptions, it belongs to the reign of Commodus, for it mentions the consuls of the year 181 A. D.° Like the inscription of Souk-el-Khmis, 1 Ibid., iv, 1-8. “(Imperator Ca)es(ar) M. Aurelius Commodus An- (toni)nus Aug(ustus) Sarmat(icus) Germanicus Maximus Lurio Lucullo et nomine aliorum. Proc(uratores) contemplatione discipulinae et insti- tuti mei ne plus quam ter binas operas curabunt, ne quit...contra per- petuam formam a vobis exigatur.” 7C. 1. L., viil, 14451. 3 Cf. supra. * Cf. Fustel de Coulanges, Recherches sur quelques problémes d'histoire, p. 36, note 3; Schulten, Hermes, xxix (1894), p. 206. $C. J. L., viii, 14428. 6 Ibid., A, 16, “ (datum Romae Imp. Caes. M. Aurelio Commodo III et L, An) tistio Burro cos.” Cf. Schulten, Hermes, xxix (1894), p. 204. 143] AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 143 this fragment seems to concern the appeal to the emperor of the coloni of another imperial saltws* and the answer of Commodus. The coloni are apparently so oppressed by the increased exactions of the conductor that they threaten to leave and return to their homes where they can live in free- dom ~* unless the emperor restores their rights? The latter part of the inscription is unquestionably the reply of the emperor.* The services of the coloni were limited to four days’ plowing, four days’ hoeing, and four days’ harvesting ° which it will be noted, is just twice the amount demanded from the coloni of the saltus Burunitanus. Shops for the use of the public were also mentioned, which possibly were to be provided by the conductor, if we can accept a restora- tion by Schmidt.° In another line the phrase “ straw in making bricks” * is intact and seems to imply that brick- making was one of the services required of the coloni.° Mommsen, the first writer to discuss these inscriptions, believed that they offered no clue to the solution of the prob- lem of the origin of the later serf-colonate,® but nevertheless he held that they were very valuable in correcting the as- sumptions of men like Rodbertus, “ who know too little of 1 Tbid., A, 11. “ (Ro)gamus, domine, per salutem tuam succurras nobis Si veitet 9 Ibid., A, 6, “ (domum re) vertamur, ubi libere movari possimus.” ® Cf. Seeck, Zeitschrift fiir Social und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, vi (1808), Pp. 330. 4 See the form of the verb in A, 15, “. . . .et totidem praestare debetis.” 5 [bid., A, 12, “. . . nt aratorias IIIJ, sartorias IIII, messicias IIL, et ot RT C.J. L. viii, 14428, A, 13-14, “... rum fructum, et tabernae, quae semper publicis usibus (inservivit .. . . vos praestare iubeo).’ 1 Ibid., A, 8, “. . . paleam in lateribus ducendis et m. . 8 Cf. Seeck, in Pauly-Wissowa’s Real Encyclopddie, iv, p. 490. * Mommsen, Hermes, xv (1880), p. 392. “‘ Von dem Leibeigenencolonat der spateren Zeit ist in unserer Urkunde, wie dies nach Zeit und Ort nicht anders zu erwarten war, keine Spur zu finden.” 144 THE ROMAN COLONATE [144 actual Roman conditions and too much of economic the- orems.”* The colonate, as a system of small tenants, he said, had always existed in Italy from the time of King Romulus to the time of King Humbert. The great devel- opment of slavery in the last centuries of the Republic dis- turbed the system, but there is no evidence that slavery caused a quantitative diminution of the tenant class either in Italy or in the provinces. The inscription of Souk-el- Khmis furnished unmistakable evidence of the existence in large numbers of free tenant-coloni on an imperial domain in Africa. How these tenant-coloni in Africa and Italy were trans- formed into serf-coloni is a problem concerning which Mommsen hesitated to express an opinion. “ There are few problems of equal difficulty,’ he said, “ for sources of gen- eral scope are altogether wanting, and the conclusions of induction are even more questionable in this sphere than elsewhere.” * The ranks of the tenant-coloni were con- stantly being augmented by the emancipation of the agri- cultural slaves and this must have increased somewhat the dependence of the relationship of the tenants to their land- lords. But, nevertheless, there was a wide gap between the condition of these client-tenants and the serf-coloni, bound forever to the soil. The latter condition was altogether un- Roman and may perhaps have been imported from without the Empire, as by the settlement of barbarian dedititit on Roman land.® Esmein, whose Colons du Saltus Burumtanus was pub- 1 Tbid., p. 408, “ die von den realen rdmischen Verhaltnissen zu wenig und von national6konomischen Theoremen zu viel wissen.” *Ibid., p. 410. “Es giebt...wenig Probleme von gleicher Schwier- igkeit; denn allgemeine Zeugnisse fehlen ganz und Inductionsschliisse sind gerade auf diesem Gebiet mehr als anderswo bedenklich.” ° Thid., pp. 410-411. 145] AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 145 lished soon after Mommsen’s essay,’ differed considerably from Mommsen in the significance which he attached to the inscription of Souk-el-Khmis in its bearing upon the histor- ical development of the serf-colonate. He agreed with Mommsen that slavery, although it reached very great pro- portions in Italy, never wholly succeeded in displacing the free peasant.” The small proprietors in many instances lost their holdings, but frequently they and their children be- came tenant-coloni of the owners of the great latifundia. By the time of Columella an hereditary tenant class was developing. Columella said that “that estate was most fortunate which had coloni who were native to the place and which always retained them by long familiarity even from their cradles, as though they had been born upon their own hereditary possession.” * ‘But the coloni here mentioned by Columella were undoubtedly free, for they were being re- tained on the estate by persuasion rather than by force.* However, Esmein argued, in certain parts of the Empire there were coloni of a considerably more humble status than those mentioned by Columella. He agreed with Heister- bergk that the home of the serf-colonate was to be found in the provinces, although he believed that factors more 1m- portant than the taxability of provincial land were the cause of its origin. The serf-colonate, he stated, first developed on the great provincial estates, called saltus, such as saltus Burunitanus of the inscription of Souk-el-Khmis. These saltus were enormous in size, frequently being as large or 1 Journal des savants, 1880, pp. 686-705. Also published in his Mélanges d’ histoire du droit romain (Paris, 1886), pp. 203-321. * Mélanges, p. 308. $Colum., De R. R.,i, 7. “ Felicissimum fundum esse, qui colonos indig- enas haberet, et tanquam in paterna possessione natos, jam inde a cuna- bulis longa familiaritate retineret.” *Esmein, op. ctt., p. 308. 146 THE ROMAN COLONATE [146 larger than the whole territories of municipalities.’ Each saltus was attached to the nearest city for the collection of its taxes, but in all other respects it was free from the authority of the city magistrates. The result of this con- dition was to make the will of the proprietors supreme on their domains.* The tribunals of the neighboring cities were not open to the cultivators of the saltus and in case they were treated unfairly their only recourse was to appeal to the governor of the province. But such appeals were of course exceedingly infrequent, for the peasants were only humble natives without influence, and Roman governors were not apt to pay much attention to their complaints. Like- wise, it must be remembered that in many Roman provinces the peasantry was already in a dependent condition when they were incorporated into the Roman Empire. In Egypt the state peasants, (Syudcir yewpyor) seemed to be in an ex- tremely low position like the modern Egyptian fellah; while it is not at all unlikely that the Carthaginians cultivated their estates by means of the indigenous peasantry attached to the soil as serfs.® If the inhabitants of the great private saltus were in a semi-servile condition it is probable, said Esmein, that the coloni of the imperial domains were still more dependent. The imperial procuratores represented the emperor on the estates and held the coloni very strictly under their control. One of the decisions in the Digest stated that “if the pro- curatores prohibit anyone from entering the imperial do- mains who might cause trouble or injury to the imperial coloni, that person must stay away; for so the Emperor Pius 2 Frontinus, De controv. agror, p. 53, ed. Lachmann. “In Africa, ubi saltus non minores habent privati, quam res publicae territoria; quin immo multis saltus longe majores sunt territoriis.” 2 Esmein, op. cit., pp. 309-310. >Esmein, op. cit., pp. 300, 309-312. 147] AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 147 decreed in a rescript to Julius.”* If the procurator had the power to prohibit the entrance of undesirable persons on the imperial domains, it is very probable, Esmein maintained, that he also had the power to prevent the coloni from leav- ing. Other decisions in the Digest show that the imperial coloni were freed from municipal burdens and corvées as these interfered with their work on the fiscal domains; ? however, some municipal services might be performed if, in the opinion of the procurator, it could be done without materially affecting the returns of the estate to the Heli treasury.® The inscription of Souk-el-Khmis was War iculaely val- uable, Esmein held, in illustrating how the law as stated in the Digest actually was applied in practice. The inscription showed that the procuratores were able to enforce their authority over the discontented coloni even to the extent of sending troops from Carthage and punishing the malcon- tents.* Esmein disagreed entirely with Mommsen in the latter's belief that the coloni of the saltus Burumtanus were simple free farmers. The expression “ thy peasants, home- born slaves, and foster children” *® which the coloni used in their appeal to the emperor was certainly not the way free farmers would speak of themselves. Likewise the con- trast between the conductor and the coloni does not agree with Mommsen’s opinion. ‘We are only humble peas- 1Dig., i, 19, 3, 1. “Si tamen, quasi tumultuosum vel injuriosum adversus colonos Caesaris prohibuerint (procuratores) in praedia Caesariana ac- cedere, abstinere debebit ; idque divus Pius Julio rescripsit.” 2 Dig., L, 6, 5, 11. “Coloni quoque Caesaris a muneribus municipalibus liberantur, ut idoniores praediis fiscalibus habeantur.” * Dig., L, 1, 38, 1. .“ Item (Impp. Antoninus et Verus) rescripserunt, colonos praediorum fisci, muneribus fungi sine damno fisci oportere. Idque excutere praesidem adhibito procuratore debere.” 4C. I. L., viii, 10570, ii, 11-16. 5 Ibid., iii, 28-29, “. . . rustici tui vernulae et alumni.” 148 THE ROMAN COLONATE [148 ants,” the coloni say, “ who make our living by the toil of our hands, and are not at all a match for a conductor who is most popular by reason of his lavish gifts.”’* The con- ductor held a temporary lease * while apparently the coloni were hereditary tenants. They owed corvées * and evidently, before the lea Hadriana had been issued, the procuratores had been able to augment their rents and services, which pre- cludes the idea that the coloni held a lease. But the most noteworthy characteristic of the coloni was the perpetual nature of their tenure. Their rents and services were reg- ulated by a chapter of the lex Hadriana, drawn up over a half-century before, which they designated as a perpetua forma. Although they had been subject to a long and con- tinued oppression on the part of the conductores they had not left the estate nor did they threaten to do so in their petition to the emperor. Their only resource seemed to be to call on the good offices of Commodus himself to restore the terms of the lex Hadriana.* Esmein held that all these particulars indicated strongly that the coloni of the inscription were already in the condi- tion of the serf-coloni of the late Empire. The fact that the law, to which the coloni referred as that governing their obligations, was known as the lex Hadriana, led Esmein to believe that this was the lex a mayoribus constituta men- tioned in a constitution of Valentinian’ as the law which 1 [bid., iii, 18-22. “ Homines rustici tenues manum nostrar(um ope)ris victum tolerantes conductor(i) profusis largitionib(us) gratiosis(si)mo impares .... simus.” 3 Tbid., iii, 22-23, “. . . (pe)r vices succession(is) per condicionem con- ductionis notus est.” 3 Tbid., iii, 8-9, “. . . operarum praebitionem iugorumve;” iii, II-13. “, . . binas aratorias, binas sartorias, binas messorias operas debeamus.” *Esmein, op. ctt., pp. 314-317. 5 Cod. Just., xi, 51, 1. 149 | AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 149 had originally established the serf-colonate.” Huschke had already attempted to identify the law mentioned in this con- stitution with the census law of Augustus;* but his con- jecture was supported by no evidence direct or indirect. Giraud, a year earlier had suggested as the lex a majoribus constituta the Edictum perpetuum, a collection of the edicts of praetors, aediles, and provincial governors drawn up by Salvius Julianus under Hadrian in 131 A. D.2 Giraud had regarded his suggestion merely in the light of a conjecture as there was no evidence to support it. But Esmein be- lieved that the inscription of Souk-el-Khmis furnished the desired evidence. The lex Hadriana of the inscription, like Hadrian’s Edictum perpetuum, was a long and systemati- cally drawn up edict, for it was divided into chapters.* Esmein concluded, therefore, that the lex Hadriana was a part of Hadrian’s great codification of praetor’s edicts, and likewise the initial law which established the serf-colonate.° Mommsen, whose word was law in the realm of Roman history in 1880, had been too cautious in stating that no relation whatever was to be found between the condition of the coloni of the salius Burumtanus and the later serf- coloni. But Esmein went too far. The coloni of the in- scription had many characteristics in common with the serf- coloni, yet the distinctive feature of the serf-colonate, the adscription to the soil, was lacking. The colonit may have been kept on the estate by custom, personal attachment, or the lack of an opportunity to establish themselves elsewhere, but there is no reference in the inscription to any legal ob- 1 Esmein, op. cit., p. 318. 2 Huschke, Ueber den Census, p. 169. Cf, supra, p. 61. * Giraud, Essai sur Vhistoire du droit francais, p. 166. eee Lo, Vill, 10570, iii, 4-5, “. . . kapite legis Hadrianae.” 5 Esmein, op. cit., pp. 319-320. 160 THE ROMAN COLONATE [150 ligation to remain on their holdings. In the contemporan- eous fragmentary inscription of Gazr-Mezuar the coloni threatened to return to their homes where they could dwell in freedom unless their request was granted,’ while, in African inscriptions discovered subsequently, mention was made of the desertion of land by coloni without any attempt on the part of the management of the estate to retain them by force.” The thesis of Esmein, then, that the lex Had- rtana was the lex a majoribus constituta which established the colonate cannot be accepted.* But the greater part of E'smein’s interpretation of the position of the coloni on the saltus Burunitanus has been adopted by his successors; and his theory that the colonate first developed on the great saltus, especially those belonging to the emperor, was re- ceived with considerable favor. In 1884 Le colonat romain of Fustel de Coulanges * was published which still remains today the most readable and comprehensive treatise on the colonate. Like Esmein, Fustel de Coulanges laid great stress on the inscription of Souk- ei-Khmis in the development of his theory; and by means of the new information now available in regard to the con- dition of the peasantry he felt that he could successfully challenge the theory that the colonate was an express crea- tion of the administration of the late Empire, a theory which 1C I. L., viii, 14428, A, 6. “...(domun re) vertamur, ubi libere morari possimu(s).” 2 Cf. infra, pp. 174, 181. *Esmein’s identification of the Jex Hadriana with the Edtctum perpetuwm likewise proved unacceptable. “ L’Edictum perpetuum n’est jamais ap- pele lex Hadriana, ni méme lex,” said Fustel de Coulanges. “ Ensuite PEdictum perpetuum, sur lequel nous avons tant de renseignements au Digeste, ne parait avoir rien contenu sur le colonat; s’il avait touche cette matiere, nous en aurions quelques trace au Digeste.” Recherches, p. 39, note I. * Recherches sur quelques problémes d'histoire, pp. 1-186. 1st] AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS ISI had been almost universally accepted since the time of Revillout, thirty years before. It is true, he said, that the serf-colonate as a legal institution appeared suddenly in a constitution of Constantine in 332 A. D.* But this con- stitution did not create the colonate but merely recognized its existence. No mention of a law which created the colo- nate has ever been found, nor do later texts ever attribute the establishment of the colonate to any emperor or legisla- tor. Instead, the documents of the fourth century refer to the colonate as a “very ancient” institution * “ established by our ancestors.” * Therefore, in order to trace the origin of the colonate, Fustel de Coulanges believed it was neces- sary to go to sources considerably earlier than the fourth century.* Coloni were frequently mentioned by the second and third century jurists of the Digest, but they were far different from the serf-coloni of the codes. Both colonus and the more technical term conductor (lessee) were used to indi- cate a tenant who held a short-term lease and paid a money rent. The coloni were under no obligation to remain on their tenancies after the expiration of their leases,° nor could they be retained by force.° However, in addition to these tenant-coloni holding a lease and paying a money rent, Fustel de Coulanges believed that at the time of the writers of the Digest another class of coloni was developing on the 1 Cod. Theod., v, 17, I. * Cod. Just., xi, 63, 3, (383 A.D.) “. . . antiquissimos colonos.” 3 Cod. Just., xi, 51,1. “ Cum lex a majoribus constituta colonos quodam aeternitatis jure detineat.” *Fustel de Coulanges, op. ctt., pp. 4-7. 5 Dig., xix, 2, 25, 2. “ Quin liceat colono vel inquilino relinquere con- ductionem, nulla dubitatio est.” ® Cod. Just., iv, 65, 11 (244 A.D.). “Invitos conductores seu heredes eorum post tempora locationis impleta non esse retinendos saepe rescriptum est.” 152 THE ROMAN COLONATE [ise great estates which was not in such a free condition. These coloni were the colont partiarw, tenants who paid rent in shares. They were almost ignored by jurists because they did not hold a contract. But notwithstanding the fact that they were only mentioned once in the Digest, Fustel de Coulanges maintained that they were a very numerous class. * How did the colont partiaru originate? The only ex- ample we have of a transformation of tenants paying money rent to tenants paying rent in shares is contained in one of the letters of the younger Pliny.” Pliny was complaining - in this letter that he had considerable difficulty in obtaining rent from his tenants. He had remitted the rent several times but the only result was to heap up the arrears of his tenants to a total sum which he knew they would never be able to pay. Even more serious was the fact that the coloni, despairing of paying their debts, consumed or spoiled the whole product of the estate. In order to get something out of his estates, therefore, Pliny changed his system of tenure from money rent to share rent and his coloni ceased to be conductores and became coloni partiaru. The con- dition of the tenantry described in this letter of Pliny was by no means an uncommon one, Fustel de Coulanges main- tained. Pliny also spoke of the coloni in arrears on an estate of one of his neighbors,* while the Digest contains many references to estates bequeathed cum reliquis colono- rum.* ‘Columella referred to debtors cultivating the lati- fundia along with slaves® while Caesar mentioned debtor tenants in Gaul,® and Varro in Illyria, Asia, and Egypt, as 1Fustel de Coulanges, of. cit., pp. 13-14. 2 Plin., Epist., 1x, 37. 3 Epist., iii, 19. 4Dig., Xxxiii, 7, passim. § De R. R. i, 3, 12, “ occupatos nexu civium.” © De Bel. Gall., i, 4. 153] AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 153 well as in Italy. Probably on all these estates where debtor tenants were to be found the same change was made from money rent to rent in shares which had taken place on the estate of Pliny.? | Two important consequences followed from this condi- tion. The tenant in debt was legally permitted to leave the domain but only on condition that he could obtain some one to furnish bail* for his arrears. Of course in actual prac- tice the debtor tenant had slight chance of finding a rich man who would offer security for him, so the real effect of this law was to bind the debtor to the estate until his debt was paid. In the second place, when the landlord had changed the tenure of his estate from a fixed money rent to a share rent, he at the same time withdrew the protection of the law from his tenants; for an agreement made by his tenants to pay rent in shares was not a contract recognized by the law. The result was that the landlord could impose any condition he pleased on his coloni partiaru. Pliny re- quired his share tenants to work under the supervision of his slave stewards,* while Catiline® and Domitius Aheno- barbus © used their coloni along with their freedmen and slaves as personal retainers in their campaigns. The coloni could not leave the estate on account of their debts, so they had no alternative but to submit to the will of their landlord. Thus the former free tenant had fallen through debt into a condition of dependence which he had little chance of chang- ing; and custom crystallized his position into a subjection almost perpetual.’ Perel ie 4,17. 2 Fustel de Coulanges, of. cit., pp. 15-20. > Dig., xxxiii, 7, 20, 3, “. . . interposita cautione.” * Epist., ix, 37. 5 Sallust., Catil., 59. * Caes. Bel Civ., i, 34 and 56. 7Fustel de Coulanges, op. cit., pp. 20-22. 154 THE ROMAN COLONATE [154 In Italy a dependent colonate was gradually being estab- lished through debt and the substitution of the non-contrac- tual share rent for the five-year lease with its money rent. In the provinces a similar dependent status was developing on the great saltus, particularly those belonging to the em- peror. In an analysis of the texts bearing upon the saltus, most of which had already been discussed by Heisterbergk and Esmein, Fustel de Coulanges came to the same conclu- sion, namely, that the cultivators of the fields were not slaves nor peasants fully free but a tenantry in a condition of considerable dependence.* In addition to texts pre- viously studied, Fustel de Coulanges called attention to a brief inscription which had been recently discovered in Africa in which the peasants, whom the inscription called coloni, “ restored a monument which had become dilapidated from age in honor of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius and his children, and also built two arches at the order of the pro- vincial procurator, a freedman of the emperor.” * These coloni were not slaves, Fustel de Coulanges argued, for they erected the monument “at their own expense,” nor should they be regarded as a free peasantry for they were working “under the orders of the procurator.” But the document which illuminated all other sources and which gave the clearest picture of the condition of the peas- antry on a great provincial saltus was the inscription of Souk-el-Khmis. The conclusions drawn by Fustel de Cou- langes after a study of the inscription corresponded very closely to those already published by Esmein. The peasants on the estate were called colom but they had nothing in 1 Tbid., pp. 25-32. *C. I. L., viii, 587. “ Pro salute imp. Caes. M. Aureli Antonini Aug. liberorumq(ue) eius, coloni saltus Massipiani aedificia vestustate con- lapsa s(ua) p(ecunia) r(efecerunt), item arcuus duos a s(olo) f(ecer- unt) iubente Provinciale Aug(usti) lib(erto) pro(curatore).” 4155] AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 156 common with the tenant-coloni of the Digest except the name. The head-tenant or conductor held a short-term _ lease, but the coloni had no contract, for had they held one they would have mentioned the fact that it had been broken in their complaint to the emperor. Thus they resembled the colont partiarit of Italy not only because they paid rent in shares but also because their condition was not ruled by the law of contracts. Instead, their rights and obligations were governed by an imperial regulation known as the lex Hadriana, which was described in the inscription as a per- petua forma. Evidently, then, they were regarded as per- petual tenants. No law compelled them to remain on the estate but they were kept there by the strong bonds of cus- tom. No doubt their ancestors had entered the domain voluntarily, but after several generations they had come to look upon the land as an hereditary possession. ‘“ The more they lived there the more interest they had to continue to live there. The proprietor never thought of expelling them nor did they ever think of leaving. Thus the man gradually took root in the soil before the day when the law would attach him there. He became a voluntary colonus before becoming an obligatory one. Habit and interest began what the law was destined to complete.” * The main sources of the colonate were the tenants who were attached to the estates of their landlords by their debts, and those who, like the coloni of the saltus Burunitanus, were attached to the domain through habit and interest. During the second and third centuries the numbers of the coloni were considerably augmented by the transplantation 1Fustel de Coulanges, op. cit., p. 42. “Plus ils y vécurent, plus ils eurent intérét 4 continuer d’y vivre. Ni le propriétaire ne songea a les expulser, ni eux a quitter la terre... . Ainsi homme, peu a peu, prit racine au sol bien avant le jaur ot la loi devait l’y attacher. I! se fit colon volontaire avant d’étre colon obligé. L’habitude et l’intéret com- mencérent ce que la loi allait achever.” 156 THE ROMAN COLONATE [156 of northern barbarians within the Empire as coloni. In the third chapter of his treatise, Fustel de Coulanges discussed the texts on barbarian settlements already assembled by Zumpt and Huschke and came to much the same conclusion as the earlier writers in regard to the status of the dedititit. But while Zumpt and Huschke held that the barbarian colo- nate served as the model for the colonate of the Codes, Fustel de Coulanges maintained that the barbarians merely were settled in the condition in which the mass of the peas- antry had already fallen. In this way he avoided the ob- jections which had been urged against the theory of bar- barian settlements by Schultz, Kuhn and Heisterbergk, that the barbarians were too few in number and not widely enough extended to form the basis of the colonate. But although Fustel de Coulanges argued more eloquently than either Zumpt or Huschke that the barbarian dedititu were settled as serf-coloni, the barbarian settlements played only a subsidiary role in his theory. At the same time that a dependent tenant class was grad- ually being formed among the free peasantry, a similar development was taking place among the slaves. The old system of working an estate by slave gangs of ten (decuriae) was giving place everywhere in the second and third cen- turies to the later practice of assigning the slave a lot and giving him a share of the proceeds as a reward. The germ of the new system probably lay in granting the slave poor land as his peculiwm which had been done as early as the time of Varro. By the time of Alexander Severus, Ulpian could refer to a slave as a quasi colonus* and in the same reign we have the first mention of the adscripticius,? whom Fustel de Coulanges regarded as a slave with a servile tenure ? Dig:, XxXiil, 7, 12, 3. 2 Cod. Just., viii, 51, 1. 157] AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 157 who had been inscribed in the census for his plot of fand.* In 327 Constantine decreed that the adscripticit could. not be sold out of the province’ and forty years later Valen- tinian I declared that they were bound forever to the land and could not be sold from the estate by their masters.® However, like Serrigny and Rodbertus, Fustel de Coulanges was careful to distinguish between the slave adscripticu and the serf-coloni. Servile tenures had no direct connection with the formation of the colonate, for slave adscriptici were distinguished from coloni not only in the time of Justinian in the sixth century but in the documents of the eighth and ninth centuries. Yet the servile tenure is im- portant in showing that the formation of the colonate was not an isolated fact but one which was accomplished with the development of another analogous institution, which must have had some indirect effect on it.* The colonate existed in actual practice in the second and third centuries; but it was not recognized by law until the fourth. The legal recognition of the colonate came through the registration of the coloni in the tax rolls of the census. The census had fallen into disuse during the half-century of anarchy which followed the death of Alexander Severus, but it was revived and vigorously applied by Diocletian in connection with his tax reforms. The exact nature of Dio- cletian’s changes in the tax administration has never been fully understood, because of the scanty and somewhat con- flicting source material at our disposal; but Fustel de Cou- langes presented the following interpretation. The latifun- dium was the typical estate of the late Empire, he said, but 1 Op. cit., pp. 62-63. * Cod. Theod., xi, 3, 2. > Cod. Just., xi, 48, 7. * Fustel de Coulanges, of. cit., pp. 54-69. 158 THE ROMAN COLONATE [158 it was very difficult to evaluate for the purposes of taxation because it was so large that it was composed of land of very different quality. Some of the land was fertile and some sterile; some fields were devoted to arable crops and vine- yards, while others were pastures, forests, or waste; and usually only a part of the land was utilized by the pro- prietor. If the land did not yield a product it was exempt from taxation according to the earlier tax laws* and during the late Empire there were many disputes between the gov- ernment and the proprietors in regard to these exemptions.* It was almost impossible to determine the value of the differ- ent grades of land and to decide what land could claim exemption and what land was properly taxable. Hence the most practicable basis for the assessment of the land tax was the number of people employed in cultivation, Fustel de Coulanges believed.* The unit of taxation was the caput, or able-bodied cultivator. Whether he was a slave or a free- man made no difference so far as the assessment of the land tax was concerned. Women were rated at one-half * and children and old men were not counted at all. The coloni were registered in the census, therefore, for the purpose of determining the number of taxable capita in the Empire.* The registration of the coloni in the census was probably not applied universally at one time, for an edict establishing the practice has never been found nor was it ever mentioned in later documents. It is possible that it was applied in first one province and another until all throughout the Em- PG th oeea ? Cod. Theod., xi, 28, 12, “. . . desertorum nomine querela;” cf. Cod. Theod., xiii, 11, 4 and 15. * Op. cit., p. 79. * Cod. Just., xi, 48, 10. * Lactantius, De Mort. Persecut., 23. © Fustel de Coulanges, op. cit., pp. 75-81. 159] AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 159 pire censitt, censibus adscripti, adscripticii, censibus inserti, and tributarii became common designations for coloni. In fact the registration in the census may have passed almost unnoticed at the time but indirectly it had an important consequence. ‘The coloni were dependent tenants before the registration in the census, but their condition had never been recognized by law and they were not legally prevented from leaving their landlord’s estate if they wished. But once they were registered on the tax rolls for a certain piece of land they could not leave it. Adscriptus censibus became equivalent to praedio adscriptus.' “ The registration in the census did not create a single colonus because the man had already become a colonus before he was registered in the census as such; but it was the first certain title which had officially designated their condition; and it was also the first point of contact which the coloni had with the government.” * Although there were many constitutions dealing with the coloni in the Codes, a law establishing the colonate has never been found; and it is doubtful if such a law ever existed. But after the registration of the coloni in the census by Diocletian the problem soon arose as to the procedure which should be followed in case a colonus deserted a piece of Jand for which he had been registered. Such a desertion would cause confusion in the tax rolls, so it was declared illegal and the proprietor who had received the deserter as his tenant was compelled to pay his back capitation tax.® 1 Cod. Theod., xi, 1, 26. 2Fustel de Coulanges, of. cit., pp. 85-86. “ L’inscription au cens ne créa pas un seul colon par la raison que l’homme était déja colon avant d'etre comme tel inscrit au cens; ... mais elle a été le premier titre certain qui ait marqué officiellement leur condition; et elle a été aussi le pre- mier point de contact que les colons aient eu avec le gouvernement im- péerial.” > Cod. Theod., v, 17, 1. “Apud quemcumque colonus iuris alieni fuerit inventus, is non solum eundem origini suae restituat, verum super eodem capitationem temporis agnoscat.” 160 THE ROMAN COLONATE [160 Thus the colonate legislation of the late Empire was not drawn up in order to create a serf class but merely to regu- late the administration of the capitation tax. The colonate had existed as an economic institution for three centuries; the legislation in the Codes merely gave it fornfal legal recognition.* The theory of Fustel de Coulanges was received with the ereatest favor in France. It was followed very closely in 1888 by both Willems * and Rérolle* in their explanations of the origin of the colonate; and in 1892, in a new work,* Esmein modified the theory which he had advanced in 1880 to bring it in closer harmony with that of Fustel de Cou- langes.° In a more extended work, Glasson ® after review- ing previous theories of the colonate found that his views were in closest accord with the theory of Fustel de Coulanges. The main source of the coloni, he maintained, was the peas- antry on the great domains like the saltus Burunitanus. From the time of the first formation of the latifundia in Italy he believed that a large class of humble dependents was to be found as tillers of the soil on these great estates. They did not hold contracts, but were governed by general regulations similar to the lex Hadriana of the saltus Buruni- tanus. With the establishment of the Empire probably the 1Fustel de Coulanges, op. cit., pp. 87-91, 97, 185. 2 Droit public romain (Paris, 1888), pp. 616-619. * Le colonage partiaire (Lyons, 1888), pp. 54-59, 76-83. * Histotre du droit francais (Paris, 1892), pp. 22-25. * It is interesting to note that the most recent work in France on the colonate is based altogether on the theory of Fustel de Coulanges. Cf. Leclercq in the Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de ltturgie (Paris, 1914), art. “ Colonat,” vol. iii, pp. 2235-2266. It was also fol- lowed by Cunningham in his Western Civilization (Cambridge, 1898), vol. i, pp. 190-191. ® Histoire du droit et des institutions de la France (Paris, 1887), vol. i, pp. 458-495. 161] AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 161 number of tenants with leases increased in the vicinity of Rome, but these were only the tenants in better circum- stances. The large pauper class of the Empire could only obtain tenancies on the land by accepting the more rigorous terms offered by the proprietors of the great saltus, where they cultivated the soil without individual contracts, just as the coloni of the saltus Burunitanus. At the same time the slaves on the latifundia were granted servile tenures and barbarians were settled on Roman domains in the same con- dition as the native coloni. Finally, as Fustel de Coulanges had pointed out, the registration of the coloni in the census brought about not the creation but merely the legal recog- nition of the colonate.* Glasson, although he agreed with Fustel de Coulanges in most of the details of his theory, took issue with him strongly in regard to the first source of the coloni which the latter had mentioned, namely the share tenants whom Fustel de Coulanges claimed had lost their leases and were bound to the soil by their debts; and the objections of Glasson have in general been sustained by subsequent writers.* The share colonate was not an extra-legal institution as Fustel de Cou- langes maintained, but it was specifically recognized by Gaius in a decision in the Digest.* The partiarius colonus was as much a regularly constituted lessee as the colonus qut ad pecuniam numeratam condusitt. Payments in kind were likewise recognized by jurists as coming under contractual 1 Ibid., pp. 493-495. 2 Cf. Dareste, Journal des savants (1886), p. 517; Humbert, La grande encyc., art. “ Colonat,” xi, p. 1055; Toutain, Nouv. rev. hist. du droit fr. (1897), pp. 414-415; Beaudouin, ibid., p. 692; Cuq, Mém. a lacad. des inscrip., xi, 1, pp. 117-121; Vinogradoff, Growth of the Manor, p. 109; Heitland, Agricola, p. 365. 3 Dig., xix, 2, 25, 6. “ Apparet autem de eo nos colono dicere qui ad pecuniam numeratam conduxit; alioquin partiarius colonus, quasi so- cietatis jure, et damnum et lucrum cum domino fundi partitur.” 162 THE ROMAN COLONATE [162 relations.* In the second place, the hypothesis of Fustel de Coulanges that the indebted tenant could not leave his hold- ing unless he found some one to offer security for his debts ° was based on a misconception of the meaning of cawutto. Cautio as used by the Roman jurists meant not security in the sense of bail but a written acknowledgement of the debt.® Hence the argument which Fustel de Coulanges had ad- vanced that indebted tenants were bound to remain on their tenures because of their inability to find security for their debts, cannot be sustained. The tenant in debt undoubtedly held a humble position on the estate of his landlord, but he was not a serf. As we have shown before, there is not the slightest evi- dence that either the tenants on the great saltus* or the barbarian dedititu® were attached to the soil before the legislation of the Codes. They were no doubt in a position of considerable dependence as the inscription of Souk- el-Khmis had demonstrated, but there was a much greater difference between such a state and the hard-and-fast lines of the serf-colonate than Fustel de Coulanges and Glasson seemed to realize. No condition can be very op- pressive which one is free to leave at pleasure. But when a man was attached forever to a certain piece of land in bonds which affected not only himself but his children and descendants as well he was removed by an important step from the tenantry of the second and third centuries, poor and humble though they doubtless were. It was a trans- 2 Inst, iit, 2412 Dt, CIR, 1S, eens “2 Dig., xxxiii, 7, 20, 3. “‘Quaesitum est an reliqua colonorum, qui finita conductione, interposita cautione, de colonia discesserant.” *Glasson, op. cit., i, 491. Cf., especially Cuq, of. cit. p. 121 for references. 4 Cf. supra, pp. 149-150. 5 Cf. supra, pp. 74-91. 163} AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 163 formation entirely too radical and out of harmony with the whole development of the Roman law to be accounted for merely by Diocletian’s reforms in tax administration and the census. The entire Roman world was waning in vigor, and decay had set in everywhere. When industry, agricul- ture, the army, and the administrative bureaux seemed un- able to maintain themselves against the universal disintegra- tion, force was applied and every employment was made fixed and hereditary. The colonate legislation was funda- mentally concerned with maintaining the cultivation of the fields at any cost and punishing with increasing penalties the colonus who fled or the patron who received and sheltered him. The assumption of Fustel de Coulanges and Glasson that the attachment of the colonus to the soil was merely incidental to the registration of the coloni in the census for purpose of taxation is a total misplacement of emphasis. The coloni were being registered in the census during the reign of Alexander Severus (222-235 A. D.)* at a time when numerous texts in the Digest show that they were unquestionably free tenants. They continued to be attached to the soil long after the Roman tax system had disappeared. The government was indeed concerned with them incidently to see that they were properly inscribed in the tax rolls of their estates; but it was fundamentally concerned in main- taining their perpetual and hereditary adscription to the soil. The first effect of the inscription of Souk-el-Khmis had been to turn the attention of writers on the colonate away from the legislation of the fourth century. By studying the historical development of the tenant classes they at- tempted to account for the origin of the colonate inde- pendently of the administrative pressure of the imperial 1Ulpian in Dig., L, 15, 4, 8 (De censibus). “Si quis inquilinum vel colonum non fuerit professus, vinculis censualibus tenetur.” 164 THE ROMAN COLONATE [164 government. Esmein had felt that the quasi-permanent and semi-servile conditions on the saltus Burunitanus might be the survival of a previous Carthaginian serfdom. Fustel de Coulanges had believed the permanence of their tenure was the result of custom which the peasants never thought of breaking. But could it be related to the same administrative pressure which later completed the process by attaching the coloni forever to the soil? This was the thesis of Henry Francis Pelham, who in 1890 presented a new theory of the colonate, the first contribution to be made by an English writer.” Heisterbergk had maintained that the original home of the colonate was in the provinces where the taxability of the land did not permit pleasure estates nor wasteful slave cul- ture as in Italy. Esmein found the original home of the coloni in the great saltus where the power of the proprietor was so great that it made him independent of local govern- ment and kept his tenants wholly in his subjection. Pelham likewise believed that the colonate first appeared on the latt- fundia, but originally those which belonged to the emperor. The coloni as described in the Digest bore little similarity to the serf-coloni of the Codes. The first certain reference to a system of tenure essentially like that of the serf-colonate is to be found on the saltus Burunitanus, which was an imperial domain. It is easy to see, said Pelham, how a custom in force on the estates of the crown might become general throughout the whole Empire and eventually be in- corporated in the law of the land. The imperial estates ex- isted in all parts of the world and comprised a substantial part of all provincial land.* More important even than the 1 The Imperial Domains and the Colonate (London, 1890). Also in his Essays on Roman History (Oxford, 1911), pp. 275-299, to which we refer. *Pelham, op. cit., pp. 278, 282. Cf. Garsonnet, Locations perpétuelles, pp. 148-149. 165] AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 165 ubiquity of the domains was the unity of their management from generation to generation. A: perpetua forma such as that in force on the salius Burunitanus could hardly have developed on private estates which frequently changed hands, especially since a perpetual tenure such as this was not recog- nized by law. So far as the imperial coloni themselves were concerned they found themselves the most favored of the small farmer class. They were largely exempt from munici- pal burdens * and were under the especial protection and care of the imperial administrators. But if they still legally had the right of leaving their holdings, there is no doubt that any general migration of coloni would have been strongly dis: couraged by the imperial authorities.? The only full description of the position of the coloni on an imperial domain is to be found in the inscription of Souk- el-Khmis.* But other brief descriptions, which were being found yearly in Africa, mention coloni on other imperial estates in Africa evidently in a condition similar to that of the coloni of the saltus Burumtanus.* Also the recent dis- covery of a series of inscriptions in Asia Minor, dating from 218 A. D., revealed the existence of a large imperial domain in south-eastern Phrygia which seemed to be organized in much the same way as the saltus Burumtanus. At least the inscriptions mention a working population (8jpos “OpuyAéwv), an imperial procurator (‘exitporos) and conductores (wo8wrat). The “people of the Ormeleis” were grouped into three villages, each of which had a headman (zpodywv) who cor- responded to the magister of the coloni of the saltus Burun- tanus.° Pelham concluded, therefore, that the condition of 1Cf. supra, p. 147. ? Pelham, Op. cit., pp. 277-282, 292. 3 Tbid., pp. 282-287. Mer, Ci 1. L., viii, 587; 8701; 8702; 8777. 5C. I. L., viii, 10570; iv, 25-29. “Feliciter consummata et dedicata 166 THE ROMAN COLONATE [166 the coloni on the saltus Burunitanus was typical of the con- dition of the coloni everywhere on the imperial domains throughout the Empire.* What was the origin of the type of tenure which existed on these imperial domains? The Digest contains only a little information about the coloni Caesaris for it is mainly concerned with the coloni of an entirely different type, who held a short-term lease and paid a money rent. But in the Liber Coloniarum.? Pelham believed that more valuable in- formation could be obtained. In this work several refer- ences were made to the settlement of coloni by Vespasian, Trajan, and Hadrian in Campania in a manner which Pel- ham maintained was different both from the old method of Roman colonization and the terminable lease described in the Digest. The coloni were designated as colom wnpera- toris, coloni sui, or coloni eorum (imperatorum) and the lands upon which they were settled were apparently imperial domains.* It is significant also that these settlements were made by Vespasian, Trajan, and Hadrian, “ those emperors to whom was due an heroic and partially successful effort to replace the extravagance of the Neronian age by careful economy and to husband and develop resources which recent experience had shown to be no longer inexhaustible.” * The imperial domains were surveyed and reorganized under a ...cura agente C. Julio...ope Salaputi magistro.” For the text of the Ormelian inscriptions see Sterrett, An Epigraphical Journey in Asia Minor (Boston, 1888), pp. 48-57. 1 Op. cit., pp. 287-289. 2 Included in Lachmann’s edition of Gromatici veteres, vol. 1. 3 Gromatici veteres, i, p. 230. “Coloni vel familia imperatoris Ves- pasiani iussu eius acceperunt,” p. 236, “ Colonis et familiae (Vespasiani) est adiudicatus (ager);” p. 235, “Imp. Hadrianus colonis suis agrum adsignari iussit”; p. 236, “Ab imperatoribus Vespasiano, Traiano et Hadriano...colonis eorum adsignatus.” * Pelham, of: cit., p. 290. 167] AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 167 system of procuratores and intense efforts were made to maintain cultivation and check the desertion of the fields. The lands were leased to large capitalist lessees, or conduc- tores, as on the saltus Burumtanus, while the labor force was comprised of coloni, who sublet the land from the con- ductores. ‘Slave labor was seldom utilized because it was both difficult to obtain and had already proved itself to be unprofitable. This system, inaugurated on the imperial domains of Campania, soon spread throughout the whole Empire and the first step in the direction of the serf-colonate was taken, that is the substitution of coloni holding their land according to the terms of perpetuae formae for tenants possessing the terminable leases described in the Digest. The coloni on the imperial domains might be natives or poor Italian emigrants. Later barbarians were settled on the imperial domains in substantially the same condition as the imperial coloni. In all cases liberty of movement must have been confined at least within the limits of certain dis- tricts, while the authority of the procurator over the coloni must have been unquestioned. Tihe condition of the colomi was not ruled by law, as set forth in the Digest, but by im- perial regulations which were coming to have more and more the force of law. The wide distribution of these domains gave this law a still more general character. But with the late Empire the increasing centralization of the government and the declining energy which was manifesting itself throughout all society brought about measures of more com- prehensive scope. The coloni everywhere were bound to the soil while the same hereditary adscription was applied to the gilds, the army, and the decurionate. But the later legislation was really nothing more than an extension of the economic policy of the earlier emperors, especially of Hadrian, in their attempt to maintain and develop agricul- ture on their own domains. The position of the colom 168 THE ROMAN COLONATE [168 Caesaris and the regulations in force governing the imperial domains served as the prototype for the colonate legislation of the late Empire.* Pelham added a real contribution to the explanation of the origin of the colonate by showing that there was an historical connection between the imperial policy on the fiscal domains of the second century and the colonate legislation of the Codes. Neither policy was primarily related to the more or less ephemeral changes in tax administration, as previous writers had urged, but both were caused by the fundamental necessity of checking decline in agricultural production and in conserving natural and human resources. Esmein and Glasson, and to a certain extent Fustel de Cou- langes, had emphasized the factor of oppression and illegal encroachments on the part of proprietors and imperial func- tionaries which they believed gradually brought about the immobilization of status of the peasantry. But the pater- nalistic policy of the wiser emperors, stressed by Pelham, was probably more important in leading to permanence of conditions on the domains than the element of oppression. The coloni on the saltus Burumtanus did not leave their holdings because, notwithstanding the encroachments of the conductores, they felt that they were in a more favorable position there than they would be if they should leave and try to establish themselves elsewhere. The weakest part of Pelham’s argument lay in the con- clusions which he drew from the settlements of Vespasian, Trajan, and Hadrian in Campania. ‘The texts are so brief that they offer no clue in regard to the condition of the coloni on these Italian domains of the crown. The expres- sions ‘‘ coloni imperatoris”’ or “ colont sui” are certainly no more illuminating than the similar expressions in regard to 1 Pelham, op. cit., pp. 204-205. 169 | AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 169 the coloni of Catiline* or of Domitius Ahenobarbus * during the Republic. So far as most of the provinces were con- cerned Pelham was probably right in affirming that the con- ditions on the imperial domains were followed by the private possessor; for in most provinces the imperial domains in- cluded a very considerable proportion of the total land of the province. It Italy, however, the imperial domains were relatively much smaller and probably differed little from the private estates in their organization and development.* It is possible that the imperial domains were more carefully administered than the private estates and that an hereditary tenantry developed on them first. Yet it seems improbable that there was as great a distinction between the estates of the crown and those of private possessors as Pelham imagined. It is true that many private latifundia, especially in Italy, were pleasure estates,* yet the more far-sighted pro- prietors followed much the same policy as the imperial ad- ministration. An African inscription, discovered several years after Pelham’s essay appeared, shows that private domim attempted to keep a permanent peasant population on their land by inducements of all kinds.” Private proprietors no less than emperors were beginning to realize that the resources of the Empire were not inexhaustible ° and that a policy of conservation must be followed before it was too late. Yet a system of tenures under perpetuae formae was only 1Sallust, Catil., 59. 2 Caesar, Bel. Civ., i, 34; 1, 56. 3 Cf. Rostowzew, art. “Kolonat,” in Conrad’s Handwérterbuch der Staatswissenschaften, v, p. 917. 4 Cf. Simhkovitch, Pol. Sci. Quart., xxxi (1916), p. 219; Heisterbergk, Die Entstehung des Colonats, pp. 67-68. 5 Cf. infra, pp. 173, 175, 179. 6 Pelham, op. cit., p. 290. 170 THE ROMAN COLONATE [170 a step in the direction of the serf-colonate. The colonate legislation was much more than an extension of imperial regulations on the emperor’s estates to the Empire at large, as Pelham explained it. In the second century the imperial coloni, as well as many coloni of private possessors, were kept on their holdings by the fact that they felt themselves better off there than elsewhere on account of the many in- ducements offered them to remain.* But in the fourth cen- tury the coloni were bound to the soil by force. The end sought by the imperial administration was the same in each instance, but the means were different. What brought about the change of policy? This is the vital question in explain- ing the colonate legislation of the fourth century and this question Pelham did not answer. 1Cf. infra, pp. 173, 175, 181-182, 292-294. CHAM ERGV i THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS AND THE COLONATE: II. 1892-1907 In 1892 another long African inscription was brought to light, four years later a third was discovered, and finally in 1906 still another inscription was added to the list. The oldest and most important of these was the inscription of Henchir Mettich, discovered in 1896. It was an imperial regulation for the fundus of Villa Magna Variani, or Map- palia Siga, as it was called by the natives, issued by two imperial procuratores at Carthage, under the authority of “Imp. Caes. Trajani Aug. Optimi Germanici Parthici.” * Trajan was given the surname Parthicus by the Senate in 116 A. D. and as he died in 117 we can be relatively sure that the inscription can be assigned to one of these years.” The inscription was engraved on the four faces of a large rectangular stone, and, although it is badly mutilated in certain places, it is nevertheless able to give a fairly adequate description of conditions on an African estate in the early part of the second century. The frequent mention of vilict in the inscription as well as the reference to servis dominicis® indicates that there were slaves on the estate, in all probability cultivating the demesne under the direction of the vilicus or steward. But 1j,1-4. For text see Bruns, Fontes, 7th ed., no. 114; Toutain, Mém. a V’Acad. des Inscr., xi, 1, pp. 31 et seq. 2 Toutain, op. cit., p. 44. 3 Bruns, Fontes, 114, iv, 39. 171] 171 172 THE ROMAN COLONATE [172 the inscription is principally concerned with the coloni, who seemed to be universally occupying share-rent tenures like the coloni of the saltus Burumtanus. The amount of the rent varied somewhat for the different products but was ap- proximately one-third of the crop. In the words of the regulation, As for those who have or will have holdings within the limits of the fundus of Villa Magna, that is Mappalia Siga, they ought to pay either to the domint or to the conductores or to the vilict of this fundus in entirety the shares of the fruits or of the products of the vine which the consuetudo Manciana has fixed for each of the categories which it includes: for wheat a third of the harvest after threshing; for beans a fourth (or a fifth qu....tam) after shelling; for vines a third of the product drawn from the vat; for olive oil, a third of the finished pro- duct; for honey a sextarius (about a pint) for each hive. Then follow some slightly mutilated passages which seem in general to indicate that if anyone possessed more than five hives of bees he would have to pay a somewhat aug- mented rent, while anyone attempting to defraud the estate by taking his hives of bees outside the fundus would be punished by the confiscation of the bees and honey.* Figs were to be dried and then divided, but in what proportions it is impossible to tell from the garbled state of the in- scription.® 1 Tbid., i, 20-30. “Qui (i)n f(undo) Villae Magnae sive Mappalia Siga villas habent habebun(t), dominicis ejus f(undi) aut conductoribus vilicisv(e) eorum in assem partes fructum et vineam ex consuetudine Manciane, cujusque generis habet prestare debebunt; tritici exaream (pa)rtem tertiam; hordei exaream partem tertiam; fabe exaream partem qu...tam; vinu de laco partem tertiam; ole(i co)acti partem tertiam; mellis in alve(is) mellaris sextarios singulos.” 2 Tbid., ii, 1-3. § Tbid., ii, 13-17. “ Ficus aride ar(b)o(rum earum) que extra pom(a)rio erunt, qua pomariu(m..... in)tra villam ips(am) sit, ut non amplius q(....pe)rcipiat colonus arbitrio suo; co(....)ci conduct(o)ri vilicisve ejus f{(undi) d(are) d(ebebit).” 173] THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 173 If the colonus plants a fig orchard he will be permitted to dispose of the product as he pleases for five harvests ; but after the fifth harvest he should give to the conductores or to the vilici of the fundus, the share fixed by the lex Manciana and indicated above. It is permitted to plant and cultivate new vines in the place of old vines on the following conditions: during the first five vint- ages the product of the vines shall be left to the disposal of the man who planted them; but after the fifth vintage from the time of planting a third of the product should be given in accordance with the lex Manciana to the conductores or to the vilici of the said fundus. It is permitted to plant and cultivate an olive orchard in a place which was before altogether uncultivated, under the following conditions: during ten harvests from the time of planting, the colonus can dispose of the product of this olive orchard as he pleases; then he should give a third of the olive-oil produced to the conductores or vilict of the said fundus. But he who has grafted wild olive trees should give the same third of this product at the end of five years.* By encouragements such as these the productive capacity of the domain was doubtless augmented and the tendency of the peasants to remain on their holdings for indefinite periods was considerably furthered.” When a tenant had 1Tbid., ii, 20- ii, 12. “Si quod ficetum...factum erit, ejus fic(eti) fructum per continuas ficationes quinque arbitrio suo eo qui seruerit percipere permittitur, post quintam ficationem eadem lege M(anciana) qua s(upra) s(criptum) est conductoribus vilicisve ejus f(undi) p(restare) d(ebebit). Vineas serer(e) colere loco veterum permittitur ea con- dicione (ut) ex ea satione proximis vindemi(i)s quinque fructu(m) earum vinearum is qui ita fuerit suo arbitr(i)o percipeat, itemque post quinta vindemia quam ita sata erit, fructus partes tertias e lege Manciana con- ductoribus v(ilicisve)e ejus...dare debebu(nt. O)livetum serere colere in eo loco qua quis incultum excoluerit permittitur ea condicione ut ex ea satione ejus fructus oliveti, quid ita satum est, per olivationes proximas decem arbitrio suo permittere debeat, item post olivationes ole(i) coacti partem terti(am) conductoribus vilicisve ej (us fundi) d(are) d(ebebit). Qui inseruerit oleastra post (olivationes quin) que partem tertiam d(are) d(ebebit).” 2 Cf. Heitland, Agricola, p. 344. 174 THE ROMAN COLONATE [174 set out fruit trees or vines and was receiving the product of them rent-free he was not likely to desert his land. Yet such desertion did occasionally take place, as is shown by the following clause of the regulation. If a colonus after he had cultivated a certain plot of land which formerly was uncultivated, and after he has built or rented a construction there, then deserts it and abandons it completely, from the time when the desertion has taken place, he who had or will have had the right to cultivate this field, keeps or shall keep this right for two years from the day when he has ceased to cultivate it; after two years this right shall pass to the con- ductores or to the vilict of the said fundus. . . . As for land which was cultivated during the preceding years and then has been abandoned the conductor or the.vilicus of the said fundus should make known the fact that the field has been abandoned and should announce it in a formal report, and the next year he should do the same thing, and if after two years no protest has been made, the conductor or vilicus should arrange to put the field in cultivation.* Besides paying the conductores a certain share of the product, the coloni of the fundus Magna Villa Variani like those of the saltus Burumtanus and the estate mentioned in the inscription of Gazr-Mezuar, were required to furnish a certain number of days’ services on the demesne every year during the busy season. 1 Bruns, Fontes, 114, iv, 10-12. “(Qui su) perficiem ex inculto excoluit excoluer (it....e)t aedificium deposuit posuerit, elocavit(....si) desierit perdesierit, eo tempore quo ita ea superfi(cies) coli desit desierit, eo quo fuit fuerit jus colendi, dumta(xa)t bienn(i)o proximo ea qua die colere desierit, servatu(r) servabitur; post biennium conductores vilicisve eo(rum....E)a superficies que proximo annos culta fuit et coli (de- sie)rit, conductor vilicusve ejus {(undi) ea superficies esse d(..... )ua denuntiet superficiem cultam ejus non egis nav(..... ) denuntiationem denuntiatur(..... ), Siga sis) testa...’ )s; itemque nnsequentem( sic) annum (....et si vac)at ea sine quer(el)a ejus f(undi) post biennium ‘conductor vilicusve cole(re ju) beto.” 175] THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 178 The coloni who dwell within the fundus Villa Magna, that is Mappalia Siga, will each be obliged to furnish to the domini, the conductores, or will vilici, two days’ service every year in plowing, the same amount in harvest, and two days’ service for each other kind of work. The inscription also deals with the cultivation of waste lands outside of the estate which were known as the sub- cesiva. ‘Coloni of the fundus proper were permitted to take up holdings in the subcesiva and cultivate them, in return for rent in shares, in accordance with the little understood right of usus proprius which was included in the lex Man- ciana.? Gsell interpreted usus proprius to mean the right which was granted to the squatter colonus of providing for his subsistence and that of his family from the products of the subcesiva, while the surplus was divided with the con- ductor of the fundus according to an agreed ratio.? Whether usus proprius gave the coloni hereditary rights on their clearings is a problem which has aroused an enormous amount of discussion, but the weight of opinion seems to lie with those who believe that the coloni had no hereditary rights on the waste land before they were granted by ler Hadriana de rudibus agris mentioned in later inscriptions.” 1 Tbid., iv, 23-27. “Coloni qui intra f(undum) Ville (Magne sive Mappalie) Sige ha(bit)abunt dominis aut conduc(toribus vilicisve) in assem (qu)odannis in hominibus (singulis in arati)ones operas n(umero) II et in messem op(eras et in curas cujusque) generis singulas operas binas pr(estare debebunt).” 2 Thid., i, 6-15. “Qui eorum (i)ntra fundo Villae Mag(na)e Variani id est Mappalia Siga, eis eos agros qui su(bc)esiva sunt excolere per- mittitur lege Manciana, ita ut eas qui excoluerit usum proprium habeat. Ex fructibus qui eo loco nati erunt dominis au(t) conductoribus vilicisve ejus f(undi) partes e lege Manciana prestare debebunt hac condicione coloni: fructus cujusque culture quota dare adportare et terere debebunt, summas (redd)ant arbitratu§ (s)uo conductoribus vilicis(ve ej)us f (undi).” 3 Mél. darch. et d’hist. (1898), p. 109. 4 Cf., Toutain, op. cit., p. 59; Gsell, op. cit., p. 109; Cuq, Mém. a Pacad. 176 THE ROMAN COLONATE [176 Likewise uncultivated land within the estate which had been reclaimed + was probably held by precarious tenure until it was made hereditary by the law of Hadrian.? Besides the question of the rights of the coloni on re- claimed land another problem in the interpretation of the inscription of Henchir Mettich has called forth even more lengthy discussion. Was the fundus of Villa Magna Var- 1amt an imperial domain or a private estate, and consequently was the constitution governing the condition of the coloni, the lex Manciana, an imperial or a private regulation? The other African inscriptions all referred to imperial domains, so information regarding the coloni on the private latifundia is all the more eagerly sought. The inscription frequently mentions domim to whom together with the conductores and vilict the coloni owed their rents and services.* Manifestly domim could not refer to the emperor, the proprietor of the imperial domains, for the use of the plural domim must refer to several proprietors, not to a single one.* Likewise the lex Manciana could not have been an imperial regulation, since an imperial regulation, even though it were drawn up by procuratores, would have borne the name of an emperor, like the lex Hadriana, which later came to be in force on the imperial domains of Africa; and of course no provincial des inscr., xi, I, pp. 98-99; Pernot, Mél. d’arch et dhist. (1901), pp. 71-72; Kriiger, Zeitsch. d. Savignystift. (1800), pp. 271-272; Rostowzew, Studien zur Geschichte des romischen Kolonates, p. 347. ‘Bruns, Fontes, iv, 10-13. “(Qui su)perficiem ex inculto excoluit excoluer (it) ....quo fuit fuerit jus colendi.” Cf. supra, p. 174. 2 Cf. Toutain, op. cit., pp. 60-61; Cugq, op. cit., pp. 101-108; Rostowzew, op. cit., p. 347. *Eg., Bruns, Fontes, 114, i, 9-13. “Ex fructibus qui....dominis aut conductoribus vilicisve ejus fundi partes....prestere debebunt ...coloni; ili, 19-20, “Conductoribus vilicisve dominorum ejus f(undi) prestare debebunt.” * Toutain, op. cit., p. 45; Beaudouin, Nouv. rev. hist. de droit fr. (1898), p. 41; Seeck, Zeitsch. fiir Sozial-u. Wirt., vi (1808), pp. 322-323. 177] THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 77 magistrate would have had authority to prescribe regula- tions for an imperial domain.* Hence, in the opinion of Toutain and Beaudouin, the fundus of the Villa Magna Variant was a private estate.” On the other hand, the regulation in the inscription was issued by two procuratores, who must have been imperial agents as the inscription specifically states that one of them was a freedman of the emperor.* If the fundus of Villa Magna was a private estate, as Toutain and Beaudouin affirmed, it is hard to understand why imperial procuratores, who were charged with the supervision of the emperor’s provincial domains, should issue regulations governing it. So Schulten was led to reject the earlier hypothesis that the fundus was a private estate and to uphold the contrary view that it was an imperial domain.* But if the latter hypothesis be accepted how can the regulation of the unknown Manci- anus or Mancia be explained, as well as the use of donunz, both of which seem inconsistent with the theory that the fundus of Villa Magna was an imperial domain? The lex Manciana, Schulten held, was probably a law governing es- tates on the ager publicus issued by a Roman magistrate Mancia in the last century of the Republic, which after the Empire was extended to apply to all imperial estates. The word domini he believed was used synonymously with con- ductores, for like the emphyteutic tenants of the late Empire they were to all intents and purposes actual proprietors.° The conclusion of Schulten that the fundus of Villa Magna Variant was an imperial domain, at least at the time 1 Cuaq, op. cit., p. 143. ? Toutain, op. cit., p. 45; Beaudouin, of. cit., pp. 40-47. Bruns, Fontes, 114, i, 4-6. “ Data a Licinio (Ma)ximo et Feliciore Aug. lib. proce. ad exemplu(m) (leg)is Manciane.” 4 Abhandl. d. Gott. Ges. de. Wiss., Philol.-Histor. Klasse, ii (1807), pp. 48-40. 5 [bid., pp. 21-22, 44. 178 THE ROMAN COLONATE [178 of the inscription of 116-117 A. D., has been generally ac- cepted by commentators on the inscription of Henchir Met- tich whose works have appeared subsequently to Schulten’s essay. But his far-fetched identification of dommi and conductores has been universally rejected. Aside from the fact that the words proprietor (dominus) and lessee (con- ductor) are never confounded, the inscription of Henchir Mettich itself is always careful to distinguish the dominz from the conductores and the vilict. The interpretation of Cuq? seems to harmonize the apparently contradictory features of the inscription considerably more successfully. The lex Manciana, he said, was an old regulation of the Republic which governed conditions on the estates formed from the ager publicus, whether they were public or private domains and whether they were managed by their own pro- prietors (domint), by lessees (conductores), or slave stew- ards (wilict).2 The fundus of Villa Magna Variani had Cuq, op. cit., p. 141; Gsell, op. cit., p. 108; Seeck, op. cit., p. 323; Rostowzew, op. cit., pp. 324, 328; Heitland, Agricola, p. 343. 2 Op. cit., pp. 143-145. This has been substantially followed by Gesell (op. cit., p. 108) and Pernot (op. cit., pp. 78-79). ® Cuq reached his conclusion as to the date of the lex Manciana in a different way from Schulten. Certain legal expressions employed in the inscription were common in the time of Cicero but had been succeeded by others by the time of Trajan (Cuq, op. cit., pp. 144-145.) In addition, he argued, a general regulation such as the /ex Manciana which favored both the native cultivators and the general development of agriculture might very likely have been promulgated at the beginning of the period when Rome began seriously to exploit the fertile African lands (1bid., p. 145). Rostovtzeff argued with considerable plausibility that the ler Manciane was drawn up by an imperial legate to Africa under Vespasian as a unifying ordinance to restore order after the confusion caused by the enormous confiscations of Nero (op. cit., pp. 325-330). But if such a regulation was necessary, why was it not called the lex Vespasiana, especially since, as Rostovtzeff himself holds (op. cit., p. 338), the later lex Hadriana was merely a modification of the earlier and more com- prehensive lex Manciana? It is possible, of course, that the regulation might have been issued by 179] THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 179 long been a private estate owned by a Varianus and his suc- cessors, but recently it had become an imperial domain. The regulation of the procuratorcs in the inscription of Henchir Mettich ad exemplum legis Mancianae* was for the purpose of adapting the fundus to the new régime and at the same time of assuring the coloni that the rules of the lex Manciana would continue in force. In quoting from the old regulations frequently the old expression domini, con- ductores, vilicive was retained, even though in the case of the fundus of Villa Magna Variant it was superfluous. Thus the use of domini in the inscription does not prove, as Toutain and Beaudouin had thought, that the fundus of Villa Magna was a private estate. But it does bring to light the very important fact that the lex Manciana was a general law which could be applied to private possessions as well as imperial domains; and that the condition of the African coloni did not differ materially on the private estates and the imperial domains, as Pelham had believed. The theory that the lex Manciana was a general law and not a private regulation for a single estate was strongly substantiated by the discovery of a later inscription at Ain- el-Djemala in 1906, ten years after the inscription of Hen- chir Mettich was found. The inscription, which is of the time of Hadrian (117-138 A. D.), begins with a petition which a group of peasants had sent to the imperial procura- tores. ‘These peasants requested that they be granted the privilege which the coloni of the neighboring saltus Neroni- anus already enjoyed of reclaiming swampy and wooded a proconsul Mancia under Augustus or even Tiberius; for Africa was a senatorial and not a Caesarian province and its administration retained for some time the characteristics of the Republic. Cf. McFayden, “ The Princeps and the Senatorial Provinces,” Class. Philol., xvi (1021), pp. 34-50. 14, 5-6. 8a THE ROMAN COLONATE [180 lands? in accordance to the terms of the lex Manciana.* Their request was granted and all waste land, as well as land which was wooded and swampy, in four imperial domains, the saltus Blandianus, Udensis, Lamianus, and Domitianus was made available for assignment to anyone who wished to reclaim it “in accordance with the lex Manciana.”* ‘The references to the lea Manciana in the inscription of Ain-el- Djemala thus lend support to the conclusion already reached by the majority of the commentators on the inscription of Henchir Mettich that the lex Manciana was not merely a regulation governing the relations of the fundus of Villa Magna Variani but was instead a general law with juris- diction over several estates and probably the whole province.* In the inscription of Ain-el-Djemala the procuratores not only granted the petition of the peasants to make use of the privileges of the Jer Manciana but they also took this occasion to apply a new regulation of the present emperor Hadrian to the four imperial domains, the saltus Blandianus, Udensis, Lamianus, and Domttianus. By a rather remarkable coin- cidence the communication of the procuratores (sermo pro- curatorum) which applied the law of Hadrian to these do- mains is almost identical word for word with the sermo pro- curatorum of the inscription of Ain Ouassel, which had been discovered in 1892, not far from the place where the inscrip- tion of Ain-el-Djemala, was found fourteen years later. The inscription of Ain Ouassel is a much later document than the inscription of Ain-el-Djemala, as it dates from the reign ' Bruns, Fontes, 7th ed., 116, i, 5-6. “... (agros) qui sunt in paludibus et in silvestribus.” ?Tbid., i, 7. “...lege Manciana condicione.” 3 Tbid., iv, 8-10. “Si qui agri cessant et rudes sunt, si qui silvestres aut palustres in eo saltuum tractu (1. e. ii, 10-13, saltus Blandianus et Udensis et illae partes quae ex saltu Lamiano et Dom(i)tiano iunctae Thusdritano sunt) volentes lege Manciana colere ne prohibeas.” * Cf. Schulten, Klio, vii (1907), p. 201. 181 | THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS ISI of Septimius Severus (193-206 A. D.), three quarters of a century after the time of Hadrian. But it was carved on an altar erected to the memory of Hadrian, and contains in the sermo procuratorum an exemplum legis Hadrianae de rudibus agris,* so far as it applied to the saltus Blandianus, Udensis, Lamianus, and Domitianus. The sermo procura- torum is somewhat mutilated in both the inscription of Ain Ouassel and Ain-el-Djemala, but the uninjured portions of the one have served to restore gaps in the other, and the re- sult is a fairly complete copy of the lex Hadriana de rudibus agrts as it was adapted to the four imperial domains. The lex Hadriana provided in the first place that all land which had never been put in cultivation by the conductores or land which had been abandoned for ten years was to be open for occupation, and those who reclaimed these lands should receive full rights of possession, enjoyment, and be- quest over them. Since our emperor, because of the indefatigable care which he is constantly exercising in behalf of the welfare of his subjects, has ordered all lands to be cultivated which are suitable for the growing of olives, vines, or grain, therefore permission is granted to everyone to occupy the lands which are divided in centuriae * of the saltus Blandianus and Udensis, and of the parts of the saltus Lamianus and Domitianus which are joined to the saltus Thusdritanus and are not being cultivated by the conductores; and to those who occupy these lands the right of possession, of enjoyment, and of transmission to their heirs is hereby granted, which right is included in the lex Hadriana in regard to waste land and land which has remained uncultivated for ten successive years.® 1 Bruns, Fontes, 7th ed., no. 115, i, 7-83 ii, 10-11. 2 Surveyed land in plots of 200 or 240 jugera. Cf. Siculus Flaccus in Gromatici Veteres, ed. Lachmann, 1, pp. 154-156, 150. * Ain Ouassel i, 9-ii, 13; Ain-el-Djemala ii, entire. “Quia Caesar noster pro infatigabili cura per quam adsidue pro humanis utilitatibus a THE ROMAN COLONATE [182 Tenants who took up holdings on waste or deserted land and brought them under cultivation were required to pay the “customary third part of the fruits.”’* But as in the case of the lea Manciana certain exemptions were given. As for olive trees which anyone sets out in trenches or grafts on wild olive trees, no part of the fruit gathered will be de- manded for the first ten years; and for other fruits for the first seven years; and only those fruits will fall to the division (4. e pay a share as rent) which will be sold by the possessors. As for the shares of dry crops? which each tenant will be obliged to pay, he shall pay those for the first five years to him under whose lease he has occupied the land; and after that time to the account (of the fiscus).* _ The commentators on the new African inscriptions did not limit themselves to clarifying obscure passages in the inscrip- excubat omnes partes agrorum quae tam oleis aut vineis quam frumentis aptae sunt excoli iubet, idcirco permissu providentiae eius potestas fit omnibus etiam eas partes occupandi quae in centuris elocatis saltus Blan- diani et Udensis et in iis partibus sunt quae ex saltu Lamiano et Dom(i)tiano iunctae Thusdritano sunt nec a conductoribus exercentur ; isqtie qui occupaverint possidendi ac fru(en) di eredique s(u)o relinquendi id ius datur quod et lege Ha(dria)na comprehensum de rudibus agris et iis qui per X an(n)os continuos inculti sunt.” ' Ain Ouassel iii, 2-4; Ain-el-Djemala iii, 3-5. tertias partes fructuum (da) bit.’ * Probably grain, as most commentators hold. Cf. Carton, Revue archéol., xxi (1893), p. 26; Schulten, Hermes, xxix (1894), p. 214: Carcopino, Mél. d’arch. et d’hist., xxvi (1906), p. 457; Heitland, Agricola, p. 350. Mispoulet, however, translates “partes aridas fructuum” as “the rents of desert lands.” Nouv. rev. hist. de droit fr., xvi (1892), p. 121. * Ain Ouassel, iii, 7-18; Ain-el-Djemala, iii, 8-12. “De oleis quas quis(que aut in scro)bibus posuerit aut oleastris (inse)ruerit, captorum fructuum nul(la pars) decem proximis annis exiget(ur) ; set nec de pomis - septem annis proximis; nec alia pom(a) in divisione(m) umquam cadent qu(a)m quae venibunt a possessoribus. Quas partes aridas fruct(u)um quisque debebit dare, eas pr(o)ximo buinquennio (sic) ei dabit in cuius conductione agr(um) occupaverit; post it tempus rationi.” 6é ..qttae (dari so) lent 183] THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 183 tions, but many of them attempted to determine the relation which the lex Manciana and the lex Hadriana bore to the agricultural policy of the imperial administration and espec- ially to the problem of the origin of the serf-colonate. Mis- poulet, the first commentator on the inscription of Ain Ouas- sel, like Mommsen who first discussed the inscription of Souk-el-Khmis, doubted whether the second-century inscrip- tions threw any light upon the origin of the colonate, which he regarded as exclusively a fourth-century institution, the result of the universal immobilization of status of the time.’ But Carton, the next writer on the inscription, believed that the inscription of Ain Ouassel offered a real clue to the explanation of the origin of the colonate. This was the method of putting waste lands in cultivation which was in- augurated by the lex Hadriana.° The Emperor Hadrian, as is well known, was a great traveler, and in his journeys through the provinces he must have been seriously concerned over the large amount of un- cultivated land to be found even in fertile grain provinces like Africa. Consequently, when he drew up a general re- gulation for his provincial domains, he included a chapter which concerned itself with the reclamation of waste lands. Many inducements were offered to peasants of all conditions to take up holdings on the waste lands as partiary tenants of the crown, but so far as the cultivators themselves were con- cerned the most important provision of the law was the jus heredt relinquendt, for this made them eventually hereditary tenants on the imperial domains. It was a condition not at all unfavorable to the tenant at first, but as generation fol- lowed generation in the same condition the custom of culti- vating the same plot of state land crystallized into obliga- tion. The civil and religious wars of the third and fourth 1 Nouv. rev. hist. de droit fr.. xvi (1892), p. 124. * Revue archéologique, xxi (1893), pp. 21-39. 184 THE ROMAN COLONATE [i84 centuries and the disorder and devastations which followed in their wake ruined many of the state tenants and made it impossible for them to pay their rents. The arrears in rents accumulated and when the fathers died the burden of the debt was passed on to the sons. ‘The latter could not leave the land, for their only means of maintaining a livelihood in those troubled times lay in their inherited plots of land, debt-ridden though they were. Finally, with the increase of internal warfare and confusion, the colonate proper was definitely established. The lex Hadriana itself did not create the colonate, said Carton, but it formed an hereditary status which the anarchy and civil wars of the third century transformed into the serf-colonate of the Codes.* The theory of Carton, as to the important role of the lex Hadriana in the development of the colonate, was sub- stantially followed by Carcopino, the first commentator on the inscription of Ain-el-Djemala.* The ancestors of the serf-coloni of the Codes were not the coloni on the domains, he said, but the state-tenants who reclaimed waste lands under the favorable terms of the lex Hadriana. Originally they must have been peasants with a certain amount of capital tor they planted their holdings at their own expense with clives and vines, fruits which do not yield a crop for several years. But in the late Empire their fortunes declined and they were transformed from partiary tenants into serf- coloni, not on account of the devastations of war, as Carton had maintained, but through the general “ economic decad- ence” (décadence économique) of the times.® With the discovery of the inscription of Henchir Mettich, Cuq* connected the origin of the colonate with the earlier 1 Tbid., p. 38. 2 Mél. d’arch. et d’hist., xxvi (1906), pp. 365-481. 3 Thid., pp. 403, 480. * Mém. a lacad. des inscrip., xi, 1 (1897), pp. 83-146. 185] THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 185 lex Manctana, which he believed was ‘a regulation of the Republic.» The African coloni, who were under the juris: diction of the lex Manciana, were by no means serf-coloni, he said, yet the result of the law was to bring about per- manence of conditions on the African estates. The pro- prietors might change, or a private estate might be converted into an imperial domain, but the condition of the coloni re- mained the same. The result of this was to cause the coloni to be regarded as an integral part of the estate, who went with it whenever the estate was sold or alienated in any way. Finally, in the interests of the treasury, the coloni were for- bidden to leave the estate which their ancestors had freely consented to cultivate.* A much greater contribution to the treatment of the his- torical development of the coloni was made by Schulten, who besides publishing commentaries on all three of the African inscriptions discovered since 1890, discussed the origin of the colonate in two other essays.* In 1894 in an article on “ Die Lex Hadriana de rudibus agris,” * Schulten expressed his approval of Carton’s theory that the hereditary rights granted by the lex Hadriana constituted the first step to- ward the serf-colonate. Hadrian was the great organizer of the imperial domains and the origin not only of the colonate but of emphyteusis and émody can be traced to his domanial regulations. But in subsequent essays Schulten developed a more comprehensive theory of the colonate. 1Tbid., pp. 144-145. 3 JIbid., p. 146. “On finit, dans un intérét fiscal, par leur défendre de quitter le fonds que leur ancétres avaient librement consenti a cultiver.” Cf. Cuq, Les institutions juridiques des Romains (Paris, 1902), vol. i, Pp. 790-792. 3 Die rémischen Grundherrschaften (Weimar, 1896); “Der romische Kolonat,” Historische Zeitschrift, xxviii (1897), pp. 1-17. 4 Hermes, xxix (1894), pp. 204-230. 5 Ibid., pp. 224, 227. 126 THE ROMAN COLONATE [186 The origin of the serf-colonate, said Schulten in his Romischen Grundherrschaften, is to be found in the gradual evolution of the status of the small tenant on the great estates." Legally the coloni as late as the third century held short-term leases which they were under no obligation to renew. But in actual practice they tended more and more to become an hereditary and dependent tenantry. In the his- torical development of the tenant classes in Italy Schulten followed Fustel de Coulanges in stressing the importance of debt on the condition of the small tenant. Coloni who were not in arrears were perfectly free to leave their leaseholds at the expiration of their contract, but if they were in debt they could not leave unless they should happen to find some- one who would be willing to offer bail for them.*. Besides being retained by their debts, self-interest caused many peas- ants to remain on their landlord’s estates, and Italian in- scriptions show that coloni frequently cultivated the same plot of land for many years, if not for their whole lives.* There came to be very early a close connection between the coloni and the estate in which they lived and cultivated the soil. They were spoken of as the coloni agri Caelt,* the colont fundi Mariani,’ just as they were called the colom saltus Burunitant in Africa.6 They followed their landlord 1P. o4. ? Histor. Zeitsch., xxviii (1897), p. 7. Schulten relied on the same text in the Digest which had been formerly cited by Fustel de Coulanges. Dig., xxxiii, 7, 20, 3. “...colonorum, qui finita conductione, ister- posita cautione...discesserant.” For the criticism which professors of Roman Law have raised against this use of interposita cautione, cf. supra, p. 162. * Cf. C.I.L., x, 1877. “Q. Justeio Diadumeno...coluit annis XXXXV (176 A. D.); C. I. L., ix, 3674. “ Colonus fundi Tironiani quem: coluit annis numero L.” . "10, 0) Es, vi, 0275. °C.1..L., vi, 9276. * Schulten, of. cit., p. 8. 187] THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 187 to battle in the civil wars,’ and even Catiline in his desperate cause was supported by his coloni.” The Jandlords were al- ways trying to find ways of getting the maximum amount of work out of their tenants and beginning with the first century after Christ a change from a money rent to a share rent tenure was begun on private estates; * and this change proved an important step in the direction of the serf- colonate.* However, as the partiarius colonus is only mentioned once in the Digest,° it is doubtful whether the share colonate was ever very extensive on the estates of private individuals. But if unusual in the sphere of private law, the share rent system seems to have been generally practiced on the im- perial domains, at least in the provinces.© It was not a native Italian institution. It was first met by the Romans when they conquered the Hellenistic land of Sicily. Later when they spread their conquests eastward the Romans found that in other Hellenistic lands, such as Asia Minor, the realm of the Seleucids and the Attalids, and Egypt, the kingdom of the Ptolemies, the same share-rent system was in common usage. As it was the Roman provincial policy to change the economic organization of the conquered lands as little as possible, it is very probable that the Hellenistic practice of share rent was adopted generally on the imperial domains.’ The African inscriptions presented a clear picture of a dependent tenantry paying rent in shares under the super- 1 Caesar, Bel. Civ., i, 34; 56. ? Sallust, Catil. 59. > Plin., Epist., ix, 37. * Schulten, op. cit., p. 9. § Dig., xix, 2, 25, 6. *Schulten, Abhandl. d. Gétt. Ges. d. Wiss., Philol.-Histor. Klasse. ii (1897), p. 45. 'Tbid., p. 46. 188 THE ROMAN COLONATE [188 vision of administrative officials. While not legally bound to the soil they were held there by bonds of custom which they found impossible to break, even when they were op- pressed by the conductores and the procuratores. One ele- ment of great significance in their condition was the fact that since the proprietor of the imperial domains was the em- peror, domanial regulations came to have the force of im- perial law." In Africa the lex Manciana had proved an important measure in regulating the share rent of the coloni and in offering all sorts of inducements to bring waste land under cultivation. Still more important was the lex Hadri- ana which introduced the principle of hereditary tenures on the imperial domains and extended the right of reclamation to all uncultivated land within the estate as well as waste land. It was a step in the direction both of the serf-colonate and emphyteusis and showed that the administration was ready to make far-reaching innovations in order to maintain the cultivation of the soil. Under these imperial regula- tios the coloni gradually lost their character as tenants and became imperial peasants (kaiserliche Leute) pure and simple.” By the third century the coloni even on private estates had become so closely identified with the estates that the jurist Marcian said that they could not be bequeathed without the estate to which they were attached,® while a passage from the Sententiae of Paulus showed that the colonus like the slave actor might be included in the inventory of an estate.* Yet 1 Schulten, Grundherrschaften, pp. 96-97. Cf. Vorwort., “Aui den kaiserlichen Domiinen ist der Pachter zum an die Scholle gebundene Colonen geworden, weil sich hier privates and Offentliches Recht in einem fort durchkreuzen.”’ 2Tbid., p. 06. Cf. Schulten, Hermes, xxix (1804), pp. 224, 227; Kho, vii (1907), pp. 201-203. 3 Dig., xxx, I, 112, pr. “Si quis inquilinos sine praediis, quibus ad- haerent, legaverit: inutile est legatum.” * Sent., iii, 6, 48. “Actor vel colonus ex alio fundo in eodem constitutus, qui cum omni instrumento legatus erat, ad legatarium non pertinet, nisi eum ad ius eius fundi testator voluerit pertinere.” 189 | THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 189 the coloni were not legally attached at this time for a rescript of Philip of 244 A. D. said that they could not be retained on a landlord’s estate after they had fulfilled the terms of their lease." Legally the glebae adscriptio came only with the fourth century. Economicaly it had come long before, developing first on the imperial domains. But, in the fourth century, in the interests of taxation the coloni were legally bound forever to the soil and the domanial regulations of the first and second centuries were transformed into imperial laws affecting the tenantry of the entire empire.” Schulten’s theory was followed very closely in 1897 by Beaudouin in his Les grands domaines dans empire romain.* The colonate, he said, was primarily the result of the histor- ical development of the tenantry on the great estates. A per- petual tenantry was an ideal set forth by Columella in the first century but it had become an economic necessity on the imperial domains in the second century. The lex Hadriana introduced hereditary tenures on the estates of the emperor and finally the legislation of the fourth century made adscrip- tion to the soil universal. The last measure was merely an extension of a development which had already taken place on the imperial domains and was taken in the interests of the treasury. The most important source of revenue of the government was the land tax, while the income of private proprietors was chiefly derived from the rents of their coloni. So the perpetual and hereditary colonate of the imperial domains was introduced on the private estates in order to euarantee to the proprietors their rents and in turn to insure the government that the land tax would be regularly paid.’ 1 Cod. Just., iv, 65, 11. “Invitos conductores (—coloni) seu heredes eorum post tempora locationis impleta non esse retinendos saepe rescrip- tum est.” 2 Schulten, Grundherrschaften, pp. 95-97. 3 Nouv. rev. hist. de droit fr., xxi (1807), pp. 692-715. * Tbid., pp. 605-700. 190 THE ROMAN COLONATE [190 But aside from the development of a perpetual and heredi- tary colonate on the imperial domains, two other accessory causes had some influence in the formation of the universal colonate of the late Empire. One was the settlement of bar- barians within the realm in the same condition as the imperial coloni, while the second was the use of native cultivators as dependent tenants on Roman provincial estates, such as the coloni of the African inscriptions.* The first commentators on the African inscriptions had somewhat overstressed the importance of the information contained in them by maintaining that the serf-colonate could be traced ultimately to the lea Manciana or the lex Hadriana. ‘The African colonate as regulated by these laws was far different from the tenant-colonate in Italy as des- cribed by the Digest, yet it was not the colonate of the Codes. Schulten and Beaudouin, while they emphasized the import- ance of the lex Manciana and lex Hadriana in developing a permanent and hereditary tenantry on the imperial domains, realized that further explanation was necessary to account for the colonate of the Codes, so they went back to the old taxation theory of Wallon and Revillout to explain the colon- ate as a universal institution. However the next writer, Seeck,? believed that there was still too large a hiatus from the hereditary tenantry of the second century to the tax re- forms of the late Empire, so in rgo1 he offered a new theory of the colonate. Like the preceding writers Seeck believed that the colon- ate was closely connected with the depression in the status of the tenant classes, but he found that the historical develop- ment of the tenantry differed somewhat in different parts of the Empire. In Italy, the concentration of landed property 1 Tbid., pp. 701-708. 2 Art., “ Colonatus” in Pauly-Wissowa’s Real Encyclopadie der clas- sischen Altertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart, 1901), vol. iv, pp. 483-510. 19i | THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS ent into latifundia during the Republic and.the importation ot enormous masses of slaves as agricultural laborers almost completely destroyed the native peasant class. But the slave population soon declined in numbers and the relatively peace- ful policy of the Empire brought in no fresh hordes of cap- tives to make up for the loss. Soon proprietors found that they had an insufficient supply of labor to keep their estates in cultivation and they were obliged to seek free tenants as cultivators for their lands. However, as the old peasant stock had long since disappeared, the only available material for tenants was the dregs of the city proletariat.1 But a farming class is not made in a day; and this city rabble proved wretched farmers. Slave wilict were set over them to see that they were up in time for work but their lack of energy and improvident habits soon caused them to fall into debt, from which they never seemed able to extricate themselves, notwithstanding the remissions of rent which the landlords occasionally granted. The result was that agriculture in Italy was far from profitable either to the tenant or the pro- prietor.? In Africa the coloni apparently were in a considerably more vigorous condition in the first century under the lex Manciana. But during the second century Seeck believed that the decline in population which was already noticeable in other regions of the Empire commenced to make itself felt in Africa. The failing slave supply was unable to keep the demesne lands in cultivation and the conductores at- tempted to make up for the lack of slave labor by forcing the coloni to furnish more days’ services than specified in the lex Hadriana. The procuratores, sympathizing with the conductores in their endeavor to maintain cultivation on the demesne, winked at their encroachments on the law and it was 1 Tbid., p. 488, “ die Hefe des stadtischen Proletariats.” 7 Tbid., pp. 487-489. 192 THE ROMAN COLONATE [192 only rarely that the coloni could obtain relief from the em- peror, like the coloni of the saltus Burunitanus. The amount of deserted land increased steadily. The lex Manciana of the Republic had concerned itself only with the reclamation of waste land while the law of Hadrian opened all deserted land to cultivators, making the coloni who reclaimed it hered- itary tenants of the crown. In 193 A. D. the Emperor Pertinax went a step farther than Hadrian and offered de- setted land not as tenancies but in full ownership with a ten year tax exemption to anyone who guaranteed to keep it in cultivation." Yet even laws as favorable as those of Hadrian and Pertinax seemed unable to check the depopulation which was threatening to take away all value from the land he- cause of the lack of cultivators.” In Greece conditions were worse than in any other pro- vince, for there depopulation had gone so far that two-thirds of the land was uncultivated.? In Egypt alone the popula- | tion held its own, but because of the great demands on the province from the rest of the Empire the position of the Egyptian tenant was anything but a desirable one. The holdings of land were very small and intensively cultivated while the rent which the tenants were obliged to pay steadily mounted. Under the Ptolemies papyri show that the Egypt- ian tenant paid rent of one-fifth of his produce; by the time of the Emperor Tiberius the rent had been raised to one- third; while by the fourth century it had reached one-half.* In addition to his rent the tenant was compelled to pay taxes, amounting to one-fifth of his product so he was left with less than one-third of his product for his own livelihood. Thus, although the symptoms of decline were not as marked ! Herodian, ii, 4, 12(6). * Seeck, of. cit., p. 492. *Ibid., p. 494. * Tbid., p. 4092. 193 | THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 193 in Egypt as elsewhere, it is doubtful whether the Egyptian tenants were in a better condition than the coloni of the rest of the Empire. The depopulation of the Empire was already causing’ ser- ious misgivings in the first century, but the tremendous losses in population from the plague of 166 A. D. left enormous stretches of land without a cultivator. To offset the losses in population Marcus Aurelius imported thousands of bar- barian captives as cultivators of the deserted lands. Pre- vious writers on the barbarian settlements had attempted to relate the settlements of Marcus to the transplantation of the Scyrae as coloni in the fifth century." But Seeck presented a new method of determining the condition of the settled barbarians. Among the Germans themselves, he said, the agricultural work was done by slave captives who were known as “lites.” The “lite’’ was more of a serf than a slave as he cultivated the soil with very little direct super- vision of his master. However, he was not allowed to leave the tribal land and paid a fixed rent in grain, cattle, and wool. When the Romans transplanted their German dedititu within the Empire, Seeck maintained that they became the “ lites ” of the Romans and held the same position on the lands of the Roman Empire that their own captives had held in their native homes. The barbarians whom Marcus settled in Gaul were known as laeti, which Seeck held was the Latinized term for “lites.” However, the more common term for the barbarian cultivators was inguilini. These inguilint were closely associated with the coloni on the great estates. Both occupied a dependent position but the tqulint like the Ger- man “lites”? were tied forever to the soil while the coloni were still free to leave if they wished.* The coloni were brought into the same condition as the : Cf. supra, pp. 35, 48, 57-58, 76. * Seeck, op. cit., pp. 495-496. 194 THE ROMAN COLONATE [194 inquilint by the tax legislation of Diocletian. When Diocle- tian devised tax units called capita or juga, coloni were as- similated with the zquzlint and slaves in forming a caput. The decuriones were made responsible for the taxes and if the tax collection fell short of the assessed amount they were obliged to pay the tax from their own resources. The heavier taxes of the tetrarchy caused many of the coloni to desert their holdings, and, to prevent the decuriones trom being ruined by their responsibility for the taxes of the coloni, the coloni were bound to the soil in the same way as the barbarian mquiluu.* But the underlying cause of the whole development of the colonate, from the decline of slave culture and the depression of the status of the tenantry to — the settlement of barbarian izqutlii and the final adscription of the coloni to the glebe, was the steady decline in population of the Empire.° Seeck did not differ greatly from his predecessors in his account of the gradual depression of the free tenant in Italy and the provinces and of the final legal attachment of the coloni to the soil in the interests of taxation. But his in- troduction of the barbarian “ inquilinate”’ as the model of the colonate was a return to the theory of Zumpt and Huschke; and the arguments with which he supported his assumptions were of considerably more doubtful validity than the arguments previously advanced by the earlier ex- ponents of the theory of barbarian settlements. His whole theory rests on the hypothesis that the Latin word laetus was derived from the German “lite,” or “ lide.’ Such a derivation of laetus had originally been suggested by Gotho- fredus in the seventeenth century * but it had been rejected as untenable by later expositors of Roman and barbarian ‘Tbid., pp. 497-498. 2 Tbid., pp. 509-510, et passim. * Commentary on Cod. Theod., vii, 15, 1. 195] THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 195 law.’ The laeti were not serfs like the German “lites,” but were free landholders who received lands along the Rhine frontier in return for military service. The second mistake which Seeck made in regard to the laeti was in confounding them with the barbarian dedititu. The dedititii were cap- tives and if they were not settled in the Empire as coloni at least they held a position of considerable dependence. The laett, on the other hand, were foederati * who held land along the frontier in a condition precisely similar to that of the veterans on the fund: limitrophi.2 Thus the laett were re- lated neither to the German “lites” nor to the serf-coloni. But the more common name by which the settled barbarian was known was inqutlinus, according to Seeck. This use of the word inqutlinus Seeck derived from the famous passage from Marcian* in which it was said that tquilint could not be bequeathed without the estate to which they were at- tached.° Since the decision of Marcian rested on a rescript of Marcus Aurelius, and the barbarians which that emperor transplanted were the only part of the agricultural population which was then attached to the soil, the imqutlint must have been the barbarian serf-tenants, Seeck argued. Just in what way the inquilini differed from the coloni has always puzzled commentators on the Roman Codes. Origi- nally inquilinus meant the tenant of a city dwelling just as colonus referred to the tenant of a farm. But in the Codes the word inquilinus like colonus was used to designate an 1 Cf. Giraud, Hist. du droit francais, i, pp. 185-187; Guérard, Polyp- tyque d’ Irminon, i, p. 275; Serrigny, Droit public romain, i, pp. 362-365. Giraud, op. cit., p. 189; Serrigny, op. cit., p. 360. " Giraud, op, cit., p. 196; Léotard, Essat sur la condition des barbares, pp. 118-1109. 4 Dig., Xxx, 1, 112, pr. Cf. supra, p. 188. 5 Seeck, op. cit., p. 496. Cf. Seeck, “Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt,” i, pp. 585-590. 196 THE ROMAN COLONATE [196 agricultural serf-tenant. ‘The two words were apparently used interchangeably and a constitution of Arcadius and Honorius of 400 A. D. said that although there was a differ- ence of name between the inqutlini and the coloni there was practically (paene) no difference between their condition.’ Whether the inquilint were barbarian serf-tenants, as Seeck contended, or not, it is impossible to decide because of the absolute lack of evidence the one way or the other. But of one thing we may be fairly sure, and that is that there was no more difference between the inquilint and the coloni at the time of the Digest than at the time of the Codes. If the decision of Marcian indicated that the inquthni had be- come so closely associated with an estate that they were be- queathed with it at the death of the owner, a contempora- neous decision of Paulus cited by Schulten* testified that the coloni were in a similar condition for they could be included in the inventory of an estate; while a decision of Ulpian in the reign of Alexander Severus in regard to the registration of tenants in the census, treated the imquilini and coloni in a precisely similar manner.* So, whatever type of tenant the inquilinus did represent, it is certain that the “ inquilinate” did not, as Seeck supposed, serve as the model after which the colonate was formed. Seeck’s treatment of the laeti and the inquilini was the - weakest part of his theory. But even though he himseif regarded the “‘ inquilinate” as an essential part of his doc- trine, much remained in his explanation of the origin of the colonate that was suggestive and enlightening. In his de- scription of the gradual depression of the free tenantry in 1 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 13. “... inter inquilinos colonosve, quorum quantum ad originem pertinet vindicandam indiscreta eademque paene videtur esse condicio, licet sit discrimen in nomine.” 2 Cf. supra, p. 188. 5 Dig., L, 15, 4, 8. “Si quis inquilinum vel colonum non fuerit pro- fessus, vinculis censualibus tenetur.” 197] THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 197 Italy and the provinces, he showed more clearly than any of his predecessors that the peasantry were in the grip of the same forces which were bringing about the decay and de- struction of the ancient world. The key-factor in the de- cline of ancient civilization, according to Seeck, was race suicide. The population shrank steadily century after cen- tury and the only way to keep the lands in cultivation was to bring the agricultural classes more and more under the con- trol of the landlords. In Italy the coloni became a dependent class of debtor tenants; in Africa they became a perpetual hereditary tenantry subject to increasing exactions on the part of their overlords; in Egypt the coloni retained a pro- gressively smaller share of their produce as time went on, until the fourth century they had barely enough to maintain a livelihood. Every Roman right and privilege gave way to the desperate energy of a decaying empire to make up for its decreasing man-power by forcing the survivors to perform more and more work in a condition of increasing servitude. Like Seeck, Vinogradoff, the next writer to take up the problem of the colonate,’ believed that the origin of the colonate was intimately connected with the economic decline of the Roman Empire; but instead of being the result of an arbitrary depression of status of the free tenant, Vino- gradoff held that the colonate was primarily a meliorative institution devised for the purpose of maintaining and im- proving agriculture, in a period when productive agriculture was carried on with increasing difficulty.* Such certainly was the case in the transformation of the slave from a mem- ber of a chain gang to the condition of a slave tenant with a home and a plot of land of his own. This change was not made in the interests of humanity but because it had become necessary to give the slave a direct personal interest in the 1 Growth of the Manor (London, 1905), pp. 67-83, 107-113. 2 Tbid., pp. 76, 79. 198 THE ROMAN COLONATE [108 work of cultivation, if the cultivation of the land was to be — maintained on a profitable basis; and encouragement suc- ceeded where force had failed. Also, in case of the large fandholders, the emphyteutic legislation of the late Empire offered important inducements in the way of remission of taxes, hereditary tenures, and low rent in order to bring deserted land into cultivation. It is not likely, said Vino- gradoff, at a time when a policy of encouragement was re- lied on in the case of slaves and the great landlords, that the coloni alone should have been held to their work by force.’ The “emphyteutic aspect’ of the colonate is plainly vis- ible in the African inscriptions. The rent which the coloni were required to pay was only one-third of their product, which was very moderate especially in view of the fact that the landlord had to pay one-fifth of the total product to the government in taxes, thus receiving a net rent of less than one-seventh for his lands.* In addition, the coloni were merely held to six days’ services a year which is insignificant compared to the two or three days a week required of the medieval serf. Further, the cultivation of waste lands and the planting of new crops were encouraged by bounties of considerable value, such as remission of rent for a period of years and possessory and hereditary rights on their holdings. In fact the whole imperial policy seemed to be in the direc- tion of developing and maintaining a sturdy free peasantry on the estates of the crown. Of course occasionally the ! Thid., p. 77. *Ibid., p. 80. According to Vinogradoff the land tax was wholly sub- tracted from the landlord’s share of the product, while according to Seeck (op. cit., p. 492), the tax was taken altogether from the tenant’s share. As we have no information on this subject either alternative may be correct, or neither; for there is nothing to preclude the possibility that the imperial tax was deducted from both the landlord’s and the tenant’s share, which would give the landlord a net return of approximately one-fourth of the product (4/15) while the tenant would retain a little more than one-half (8/15). 199 | THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 199 conductores and procuratores were guilty of encroachments on the rights of the imperial coloni, but the latter were not slaw to raise strenuous protests and their rights were upheld by imperial rescripts as the inscriptions of Souk-el Khmis, Gazr-Mezuar, and Ain Zaga bear witness. But the principal argument in favor of an emphyteutic theory of the colonate lay in the later history of the colonate itself, Vinogradoff contended. There were numerous de- crees during the fourth and fifth centuries enforcing the adscription to the glebe, but in the fifth century the empire completely disintegrated in the West. Yet the colonate did not disappear but continued apparently in unabated vigor until the Middle Ages. This survival of the colonate through these centuries of disorganization could only have been posible if the position of the colonus was a relatively attractive one. “ Low rents, economic self-government in the management of their farms and efficient protection and help in case of need, must have been the attractions which had more to do with their holding out on the land than threats of fines and imprisonment.” * {t is unfortunate that Vinogradoff did not develop a com- plete theory of the colonate, for his clear vision led him into the heart of the problem. The registration of the coloni in the tax rolls of the census was, as he said, merely the public side of the process of the attachment of the coloni to the soil.* At root the colonate was vitally connected with the problem of maintaining agriculture in the Empire. Gar- sonnet had first called attention to the close relation which existed between the emphyteutic and the colonate legislation of the late Empire* As Vinogradoff said, this aspect of 1 Thid., pp. 80-82. 2 Ibid., p. 79. 3 Tbid., p. 76. * Cf. supra, pp. 132-133. 200 THE ROMAN COLONATE [200 the problem had been entirely too much neglected. Just as capitalists were invited to invest their capital under exceed- ingly attractive conditions in the reclamation of uncultivated lands, so the coloni were kept on the soil by inducements of equal relative value. aa is no doubt that the colonate had this “ meliorative ” or ““emphyteutic”” aspect, as Vinogradoff maintained; yet it had its compulsory side also, and this was probably even more important. Emphyteusis was not the only means em- ployed by the government to bring waste lands under culti- vation ; émBody, the compulsory addition of deserted land to land under cultivation, was even more typical of the spirit of the administration. As long as proprietors could be in- duced to undertake the cultivation of waste land the govern- ment was satisfied with emphyteusis. But when hereditary leases, low rents, and remissions of taxes proved insufficient, the more drastic principle of émBod# was applied and pro- prietors were forced to cultivate deserted lands. Likewise, in relation to the development of the colonate, as long as the emphyteutic features illustrated by the African regula- tions proved sufficient to keep the coloni on their holdings, they were regarded as satisfactory by the administration. But when the coloni could no longer be retained on the soil by inducements and favorable conditions, then force had to be applied and the coloni bound to the soil by imperial edict. It is true, as Vinogradoff said, that the colonate did not disappear, with the collapse of the Empire of the West. Yet this does not indicate, as he implied, that force was no longer applied to keep the coloni on the soil. The fall of Rome was succeeded by political anarchy in western Europe but not by complete economic disorganization. The economic and political history of the fifth century was largely concerned with the growth of patronage. As the central government gradually lost control of its constituent parts the local ad- taneememieir bes aremes so a 201] THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS 201 ministration passed into the hands of ‘great proprietors or military potentates. So far as the coloni were concerned the patron took the place of the imperial government and if his position was changed at all it was probably for the worse, just as was the experience of the coloni on the saltus Burunttanus under the conductor Allius Maximus before the intervention of Commodus. When the Western Empire finally came to an end the power of the patrons over their coloni was complete and the colonate gradually sunk into medieval serfdom. The meliorative features of the colo- nate may have been retained in many districts of the West, particularly in the domains of the monasteries where agri- culture was most seriously practiced; but the dominating | characteristic of the serf-colonate was the compulsory at- tachment of the cultivator to the soil.* 1Cf. Seeck, op. cit., p. 509. De Zulueta, De Patrociniis Vicorum, pp. 18-40. 2In 1894, in an article in the Archaecologisch-Epigraphische Mitthei- lungen (xvii, 1804, pp. 125-134), “Uber den rémischen Colonat und seinen Zusammenhang mit dem Militardienste,”’ Hartmann argued that just as the free Italian peasant during the Republic had been forced to give place to the slave because of the liability of the former to military service, so in the late Empire because of the difficulty of obtaining re- cruits and the unavailability of slaves for military service the reverse process took place. It was as much an obligation of the proprietors to furnish soldiers for the army (Cf. Cod. Theod., vii, 13, 2) as the capita- tion tax for the treasury; and possibly the former was as important a cause of the legal attachment of the coloni to the soil as the latter. (Hartmann, op. cit., pp. 132-134. Cf. Mommsen, Hermes, xxiv (1889), p. 242. ‘Das ganze Institut des Colonats beruht darauf, dass der Leib- eigene als freier Mann behandelt wird, um ihn zum Eintritt in das Heer fahig zu halten.”) Hartmann’s suggestion was accepted by Bolkestein (De Colonaty Romano ejusque Origine, Amsterdam, 1906, pp. 159-160) as one of the causes leading up to the adscription of the coloni. But, in the main, Bolkestein followed Seeck in tracing the origin of the colonate to the gradual depression of the tenantry on the imperial saltus, because of the increasing scarcity of agricultural labor, and their final legal adscription in the interests of the treasury. (Jbid., pp. 120-175.) CHAPTER VII THE INFLUENCE OF THE EAST Tue African inscriptions had had a great influence in molding theories of the colonate since 1880: Before they were discovered the gap between the colonus of Columella and the Digest and the colonus of the Codes seemed so great that most writers felt it necessary to relate the coloni to another source, such as barbarian settlements, earlier servile tenures, or conditionally emancipated slaves. The unsatis- factory character of all these explanations had given rise to the theory of administrative pressure, but exponents of that school had difficulty in explaining the enormous change in condition from the short-term tenant to the serf-colonus and in discovering a source which would be adequate to serve as the basis of the colonate. Heisterbergk, three years before the inscription of Souk-el-Khmis was discovered, advanced the theory that the great provincial latifundia were the home of the colonate, and the African inscriptions apparently sub- stantiated his contention, at least so far as Africa was con- cerned. The inscriptions presented a picture of a numerous free tenantry cultivating the land under permanent and hereditary conditions. They were not serf-coloni, for they were not legally bound to the soil, yet they represented a class of cultivators from which it seemed that the coloni of the Codes might far more easily be derived than from barbarian settlers, slaves, or the short-term tenants of the Digest. However, the African inscriptions related only to condi- tions in Africa. Investigators soon commenced to search for evidence of similar conditions in other provinces. A 202 [202 203 | THE INFLUENCE OF THE EAST 203 few years after the inscription of Souk-el-Khmis was found Ramsay discovered a number of early third-century inscrip- tions in southeastern Phrygia which came to be known as the Ormelian inscriptions. Although these inscriptions were far less enlightening than any of the African inscriptions, the mention of procuratores (émirpowo.), conductores (pur8wrat), actores (mpayporevrai ), and a magister vict (mpodywy) led both Ramsay * and Pelham * to maintain that conditions on the imperial domains in Asia Minor were substantially simi- lar to those in Africa. Likewise in 1897 a study of some recently discovered Egyptian papyri brought Paul Meyer to the opinion that conditions on the African domains were closely paralleled by those on the catoecic land (9 xarouxxy) in Egypt.* The catoecic land was state land granted to Greek or Roman soldiers and their descendants for which they paid a moderate rent and which they frequently sublet to the native peasantry. While the position of the tenants on state land (8ypdcw yewpyet) was rather favorable as late as the third century, the catoecic peasants (yewpyol KAjpov KaroiKixed ) had fallen into a condition of decided dependence by the second century. The lower status of the latter Meyer be- lieved was due to the fact that they were only sub-tenants while the state peasants were direct tenants of the crown. Like the African coloni of the same period the catoecic tenants in Egypt had the essential characteristics of the serf- coloni, Meyer held. In fact not only were the serf-tenants similar to the African coloni but their landlords, the xaro:xor, corresponded very closely to the conductores of the African domains.* Four second-century papyri indicated in general 1 The Historical Geography of Asia Minor, London, 1890, pp. 173-176; The Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, Oxiord, 1895, pp. 280-284. 2 Cf. supra, p. 165. 5 Philologus, |vi (1897), pp. 201-205. * Tbid., p. 207. 204 THE ROMAN COLONATE [204 the terms of the leases on catoecic land.* In accordance with these leases the catoecic peasants paid share rent, furnished. their own seed, and agreed to perform all the necessary work to keep their tenancies in good condition. The imperial vectigal (ra dyueow) was paid by the xaroxes himself and not the yewpyes, just as in Africa it was the conductor who paid the vectigal, and in the late Empire it was the proprietor of the servile colonus. The principal difference between the yeopyo: on catoecic land and the coloni of the fourth century lay in the fact that the yewpyot had no claim to the land after the expiration of their leases and must leave unless the land was re-leased.? The analogy which Meyer drew between conditions on catoecic land in Egypt and the African domains was not very favorably received by other Egyptologists. Rostovtzeff con- tended that there was nothing at all in common between the xaroxos and the African conductores? The xéroxa paid share rent to the government like the coloni, rather than a money rent like the conductores. The coloni in Africa were obligated to perform certain operae on the demesne, while the catoecic peasants had no such obligation. Although the sub-tenants of the xdroxe probably paid a higher rent than the tenants on the state land, legally their condition was the same as that of the Syudor yewpyoi, that of free tenants hold- ing leases.*| Mayence likewise added his criticism to that of Rostovtzeff. Although the papyri cited by Meyer showed that the catoecic peasants paid rent in shares like the African coloni and the coloni of the Codes, yet they also indicated that they were short-term tenants and hence neither bound 1B. G. U., 390 (185-186 A. D.); 227. (150-151 Ai: D.)isG) Poe ot (154 A. D.) ; 240 (126 A. D.) 2 Ibid., p. 204. > Philologus, vii (1898), pp. 572-573, note 13. * Tbid., loc. cit. and p. 570. 205 | THE INFLUENCE OF THE EAST 205 to the soil like the servile coloni nor perpetual tenants like the coloni in Africa. Lacking these essential characteristics Mayence maintained that the conditions on catoecic land can- not be said to lead to the colonate of the Codes.’ Mitteis, like Rostovtzeff, had criticised Meyer for regard- ing the xdrowos as the Egyptian counterpart of the African conductor,” but in a later work he returned to the theory that Egypt was the “classic land of the colonate’’ where the oldest traces of dependence of the peasantry in the Roman Empire were to be found.* While the Egyptian papyri did not definitely state that the peasants were in a semi-servile condition, yet they at least indicated such a conclusion, Mitteis maintained. In the. first place there was the wevOnpepia, the five days’ services on the canals and irrigation ditches, which were required of the peasants of the Fayum district. Then .a third-century papyrus in the British Museum referred to the removal of twelve peasants from one village to another.* If the government was in the habit of transferring peasants from one village to another Mitteis contended that it certainly must have the power to compel them to stay in their native villages if it so desired. Even in the first century there had been a tendency on the part of the provincial administration to force men to lease public lands. “For I am well aware” said the prefect Tiberius Julius Alexander in his edict of 68 A. D., “that your re- monstrance is most reasonable that men should not be forced against their will to take up tax-farming contracts or other 1T,¢ musée belge, vi (1902), pp. 91-93. * Hermes, xxxii (1807), p. 657, note 2. ) > Mitteis, Aus des griechischen Papyrusurkunden (Leipzig, 1900), pp. 31-32, “ Dagegen beginnt Aegypten...sich nachgerade als ein clas- sischer Boden des Colonats herauszustellen. Wir finden hier jetzt die altesten sicheren Spuren der bauerlichen Unfreiheit im r6émischen Reich.” * P. Lond., ii, 322 (214-215 A. D.). 206 THE ROMAN COLONATE [206 property leases (4% @dAas pioGdoes évewxds) contrary to the common custom of the provinces.” * Finally, this same policy of government control of the peasantry can be seen in a papyrus of the second century B. C.” in which reference was made to the compulsory sowing of the royal lands re- quired of certain peasants.® In the meantime a new inscription had been discovered in Asia Minor which was published by Haussoullier in 1901 in the Revue de Philologie* The inscription was of the year 256 B. C. and concerned the purchase of the village of Pannos by the Seleucid queen, Laodice. The queen not only obtained control over all the peasantry (Aeo) then living in the village and their rents, but “equally,” the inscription satd, ““in the case of the peasants of the village who have gone into other locahties, if they are not obligated to the royal treasury, those also she will have the right to attach to a city state if she wishes.” *® This inscription, notwithstand- ing its early date, had an important influence in forming a new theory of the colonate which was presented by Ros- tovtzeff in 1901.° | In recent years, said Rostovtzeff, two particular elements 1 Rheinische. Museum fiir Philologie, ii (1828), p. 147, lines 10-11. ‘““"Eyvwv yap apo mavTo¢ ebAoyworaryy otoav tin évreviiw imen dTép TED py Gxovrac avOporouc sic TeAwveiac 7 aAAag picbdceic ovoLaKd¢g Tapa TO Kooy efor Tov erapyiov mpoc Biav ayecba,’’ But as the Edict was addressed to Alexandrian proprietors the forced Jeases in question concerned them rather than the peasants, as Mitteits supposed. Cf. supra, pp. 35-36. oi Ore Oz. * Mitteis, op. cit., p. 32. * Revue de Philologie, xxv (1901), pp. 9-12. 5 Jbid., p. 9, lines 7-10. ‘‘ dpoiwe dé Kai ci tives Ex THE KOUNE TadTHC dvTeC Aaoi pereAnribacw sig GAAove térove ép’ Ge odOiv amoTEdeiv sic TO Baoidixdy, wat nupia sora mpoodepopivy mpo¢ méAw hv dv BovAnrat,”? *“Der Ursprung des Kolonats,” Beitraége zur alten Geschichte, i (1901), pp. 205-299. 207] THE INFLUENCE OF THE EAST 207 had been stressed in explaining the historical development of the colonate.. The first was the attachment of the coloni to the soil on the imperial domains as a matter of custom and habit before it became legal adscription. The second was the close relation of this gradual attachment to the soil to the extra-municipal character of the estates of the crown; for the colonate had developed almost exclusively on the tax-exempt territories of the salius.1 Most writers had re- garded the adscription to the glebe and the extra-municipal character of the domains as pure Roman products which developed first in Italy and Africa and then spread to the East. But, Rostovtzeff contended, it is better to look for these roots of the colonate in the cultured Hellenistic East rather than in the West; and since an extra-municipal domanial policy could hardly have developed in city-less Egypt, the real home of the colonate may well have been the kingdom of the Seleucids in Asia Minor.’ The Laodice inscription referred to above showed that the essential features of the imperial policy, as seen in the African domains; existed in Asia Minor in the third century B. C. on the domains of Seleucids. Like the African do mains the lands purchased by Laodice were under no munici- pal control, the peasants were bound to the soil, and were tenants of the crown rather than small proprietors. Ap- parently then, Rostovtzeff argued, we have evidence of a continuous development of the colonate on royal domains from the very earliest times. The domains of the monarchs of the Assyrians, Babylonians, and their predecessors were inherited by the Persian kings; the Persian domains fell into the hands of the Hellenistic rulers; and finally with the Roman conquest the domains. became first ager publicus and 1Tbid., p. 295. “Der Kolonat hat sich fast ausschliesslich auf den eximierten Territorien der saltus entwickelt.” 2 Thid., p. 206. 208 THE ROMAN COLONATE [208 later the estates of the emperor. But the peasants who culti- vated these lands probably changed little with the change of overlords. As coloni bound to the soil they appear in the Laodice inscription, our earliest source of information, and coloni bound to the soil they remained." The Romans not only retained the domanial organization of the Hellen- istic monarchs and their predecessors in the East, but they used it as the model for the organization of their imperial domains in the West. Hence the emperor’s provincial es- tates, instead of being formed after the Italian municipal system, were organized on the basis of the extra-municipal domains of the East. So far as the cultivators were con- cerned it was not at first the intention of the emperors to import the Eastern colonate into the West, for they wished to revive a small farmer class if possible. But in time the colonate became necessary and when that time came the East furnished the model after which it was organized. “ Hence the rebirth of the never dead colonate bound to the soil.” * In the same year Meyer returned to the championship of Egypt as the home of the colonate.* The Laodice inscrip- tion, he said, presented a picture of a dependent peasantry in Asia Minor, but the Aaot were not completely bound to the soil for many of them left the village of Pannos to avoid paying taxes. Yet, since the inscription said that the queen had the right to re-attach them to the village, it 1s evident that legally they were still regarded as belonging to the dis- trict in which they were born. This same principle of at- tachment to the place of one’s birth, or id as it was called, was present in Egypt, as numerous papyri testify. At first 1 Thid., pp. 297-208. * [bid., p. 200. “So geschah die Wiedergeburt das nie gestorben, an die Scholle gebundenen Kolonats.” *“Zum Ursprung des Kolonats,” Beitriige sur alten Geschichte, i (1901), pp. 424-426. 209] THE INFLUENCE OF THE EAST 209 iSta, stated that it was beyond doubt one of the roots of the taxes and services. But as time went on the peasant came to be tied more and more closely to his place of origin until finally he was not allowed to leave under any pretext... The final adscriptio glebae was really nothing more than a further development of the ancient principle of id. In Asia Minor, as Rostovtzeff argued, the colonate may first have developed on the great extra-municipal domains of the crown. But lack of such an organization in Egypt did not prevent, as Rostovtzeff supposed, a native development of the colonate in Egypt.” The principle of i8@, to which Meyer had called attention, was indeed an important one. A few years later De Zu- lueta, who had collected a number of new texts bearing on idia, stated that it was beyond doubt one of the roots of the colonate.* And Rostovtzeff himself was finally so con- vinced of its importance that in the restatement of his theory, which appeared in 1910 in his Studien zur Geschichte des romischen Kolonates, his attention was largely shifted from Asia Minor to Egypt The historical development of the colonate was a highly complicated one, said Rostovtzeff, and cannot be understood simply from the material available from Italian and African sources. It developed differently in each province of the Empire, and the local provincial differences were so strong that even the harmonizing policy of the imperial adminis- tration was unable to introduce a uniform development in different parts of the Empire. In the Hellenistic lands of the East a dependent state peasantry was to be found which 1 Cod. Theod., xi, 24, 6, 3 (415 A. D.). “Hi sane, qui vicis quibus adscripti sunt derelictis....ad alios seu vicos seu dominos transierunt, ad sedem desolati ruris constrictis detentatoribus redire cogantur.” 2 Meyer, op. cit., p. 425. 3 De Zulueta, De Patrociniis Vicorum (Oxford, 1909), pp. 42-43. 210 THE ROMAN COLONATE [210 apparently went back to the earliest historical times; in the West, on the other hand, a free tenant class was equally discernible. Most writers had regarded the historical evo- lution of the Western tenantry as the dominant factor in the development of the colonate as a universal institution of the late Empire, while the influence of the East had been overlooked. But so far as one part of the Roman world affected other parts, it was the influence of the East which was paramount. The experience of ages of civilization was to be learned there and as the Roman emperors found it increasingly difficult to maintain prosperity in a decaying Empire, the economic policy of their Eastern predecessors was imitated again and again. Especially important was the influence of the régime of the Ptolemies in Egypt. They had found Egypt in a deplorable condition after the misrule of its Assyrian and Persian overlords, but through their careful policy of exploitation of the natural resources of the country they had restored Egypt to her ancient prosperity and made it the garden spot of the world. The methods employed by these Hellenistic monarchs with so much success in Egypt beyond doubt had a strong influence in forming the Roman imperial policy when the resources of the Empire began to decline and great stretches of deserted land com- menced to appear.* In Egypt in the Ptolmaic period all land belonged to the king, but it was divided into two main categories, royal land (yj Baotttxy), which was directly administered by royal officials, and land under grant (yf évddéon). The chief kinds of land under grant were the old temple land (yf tepd), which was little disturbed from the time of the Pharoahs, and two new categories, land granted to Greek veterans. 1 Rostowzew, Studien, pp. v-vii; art. “ Kolonat” in Conrad’s Handw. di. Staatsw., v, Pp. 913, 919; Univ. of Wis. Stud. in Soc. Sci., vi (1922),. PP. 3-4. Ort THE INFLUENCE OF THE EAST 2II known as cleruchic land (yf xAnpovyixy), and private lease- holds (yf iSiexryros or xrjata). Much of the cleruchic and private land was dry land (yf xépcos) and was granted on terms which were very similar to the later Roman em- phyteusis. The grant of land included the duty of cultiva- tion, the taxes were lower there than elsewhere, and while the granted land was originally held in precarious tenure it tended to become hereditary like the Roman emphyteutic land.* By emphyteutic grants of land the Ptolemies were able to keep much of the less valuable land in cultivation. But where encouragements failed coercion could be applied. Peasants could be compelled to cultivate the deserted fields, or the gleba inutilis could be forcibly added to the possessions of an owner of fertile land just as in the case of the éiBorr practice of the late Roman Empire.’ Most of the fertile Egyptian land was included in the royal land which was cultivated by small tenants known as royal peasants (Bacwrrxot yewpyot or Aaot) under the close supervision of a hierarchy of state officials. They held their land according to the terms of a precarious lease which ap- parently could be revoked or changed at the pleasure or con- venience of the administration. The peasants had no choice but to accept the terms which the government saw fit to grant them. In case the conditions of their tenure became unbearably oppressive the peasants occasionally or- ganized a strike (dvaxépyois) and withdrew in a body to a temple where they were under the protection of the gods and could not be molested.* They were excluded from the courts, all their disputes being settled by the royal officials 1 Rostowzew, Studien, pp. 7-11, 15-17, 30-31, 40-41. 2 Ibid., pp. 53-58. Cf., De Zulueta, op. cit., p. 70. 3 Rostowzew, op. cit., p. 51. 4 Rostowzew, Joc. cit., and p. 74; Univ. of Wis. Stud. in Soc. Sct, vi (1922), pp. 75-76, 80-81. 212 THE ROMAN COLONATE [212 set over them. In fact their whole life was regulated to the minutest detail by the official bureaucracy charged with the administration of the crown land.* Were the royal peasants of the Ptolemaic period serfs? Rostovtzeff doubted it but believed that they retained in their dependent condition many vestiges of an earlier pre-Ptole- maic serfdom. The forced precarious lease which they held, the complete control which the royal officials exercised over them, the heavy public services on the canals and in the mines and galleys which the government could exact, and above all the principle of i&% by which the peasant could always be recalled to his native village for his obligations to the government—all these pointed to an earlier servile status, Rostovtzeff maintained.* As for the peasants on the granted land, who were the sub-tenants of the priests, the cleruchs, and the private lessees, their condition differed little from that of the crown peasants. Probably their rents were higher and their economic condition somewhat lower than that of the Baowrtxoi yewpyot. But the latter were under much closer supervision by the state officials and the principle of i8f2 was more strictly enforced in regard to them. They were a kind of aristocracy of agricultural labor, but at the same time they were the most dependent class of the Egyp- tian peasantry.* The Roman conquest did not introduce any revolutionary changes in the agricultural conditions of Egypt. For the most part the Roman administrators built on foundations already laid by their Hellenistic predecessors. Like the Hellenistic, the Roman system of exploitation was partly a 1 Rostowzew, Studien, pp. 68-70. 2 Tbid., pp. 75-76. 3 [bid., p. 83. “Die Konigsbauern...scheiden damit aus der tbrigen Bevolkerung Agyptens aus, indem sie als nahere Untertanen behandelt werden, eine Art Aristokratie und zugleich etwas den Leibeigenen 4 99 L Ahnliches unter den iibrigen dgyptischen Aao/, 213] THE INFLUENCE OF THE EAST 213 policy of encouragement and partly a policy of force. Under the Ptolemies no land had been sold outright but land which was not directly administered by the government was leased in grants of different types. The Romans, however, thought that in many cases privately owned land might be more productive in the way of taxes than leased land, so unculti- vated land was offered for sale at low prices with a remis- sion of taxes for three years.t Likewise the land which had been granted to foreign soldiers and their descendants (yf KAnpovxLKH or YH KaToiKiKy) Was in many cases changed from a status of an hereditary leasehold to full possession. The emphyteutic lease also was largely extended, complete free- dom from rent being granted for five years and a reduction in the rent being allowed for three additional years, while great care was taken to see that the emphyteuta fulfilled his contract by keeping up the constant cultivation of the land.° But the chief policy applied by the Roman administration in maintaining the cultivation of the fields was “the iron yoke of force.’* Property holders were burdened with compulsory leases and émPorAy, while from the peasantry many additional corvées were demanded. If they attempted to leave their villages the old principle of i&a was applied and they were brought back to their native districts.” The mass of the agricultural population of Roman Egypt was composed of the state peasants (8nudoin yewpyd.) who corresponded to the royal peasants (PaewArxol yewpydt) of the Ptolemies. Like their predecessors the state peasants held leases of indeterminate length which could be canceled or 1Tbid., p. 97. 3 [bid., p. 112. 3 Tbid., pp. 108-11. 4 Ibid., p. 193. ‘“‘ Neben diesem freieren Zuge weht aber als Hauptzug dere eiserne Zug des Zwanges.” 5 Ibid., pp. 193-205. 214 THE ROMAN COLONATE [214 altered at the pleasure of the government.* Although they were not hereditary tenants they had considerable rights over their tenancies as long as their leases remained in force. They could sublet parts of their land to others, they could divide the parcels up with other members of the community, and they could even go so far as to use the land which they cultivated as a pledge for their debts.” On their part they agreed to irrigate the land and keep it in cultivation. The government furnished them with seed but they obligated themselves to pay it back at harvest, together with their taxes and rents in kind; although in case the Nile failed to overflow they were granted a reduction in their rent.* Other obligations, such as work on the canals and dams, the forced cultivation of deserted land, and the duty to remain in their idta were not included in the contracts of the Roman period which have come down to us and apparently were enforced by other means. The most important of these obligations was the practice of ida. “Ida, however, did not imply that the peasants were bound to the soil, for papyri give examples of peasants leasing the land of neighboring villages and even of making their homes away from the village of their nativity.* The principle of iia meant that the peasant was regarded as belonging to the village oa whose tax rolls he was registered. The whole community of peasants registered in the tax rolls of any particular village was held responsible for the taxes of each constituent member. Colum., De. R. R., i, 3. “...praepotentium, qui possident fines gen- tium, quos ne circumire equis quidem valent.” Cf. Hyginus, De Cond. Agr., (Ed. Lachmann) p. 115. *Tac., Ann., iii, 53-54; Senec., De Benef., vii, 10; Epist., 80. 5 Plin., NV. H., xviii, 7. “Latifundia perdidere Italiam iam vero et pro- vincias. Sex domini semissem Africae possidebant, cum interfecit eos Nero princeps.” Cf. Florus, ii, 7, (iii, 19) 3. “ (Sicilia) terra... lati- fundiis civium Romanorum tenebatur.” ® Caes., Bel. Gal., 1, 40. 257] THE COLONI OF THE REPUBLIC 207 southern Italy and Sicily, making life unsafe for the trav- eler or for the dwellers in unprotected homesteads and small villages." From the time of the Second Punic War siave revolts were common.” The terrible slave wars in Sicily at the end of the second century B. C.* fought with desperate ferocity by the slaves and punished with merciless sever.ty by the masters showed the Romans the danger which threat- ened Italy. At length in 73 B. C. the great servile revolt of Spartacus broke forth.“ For three years Rome was held in terror. Six Roman armies were defeated by the insurgent slaves under their valiant leader and at one time Spartacus marched on Rome itself at the head of 120,000 slaves. Finally, however, the slave army was defeated by Crassus. Most of the slaves were butchered in battle, while the prisoners were crucified, the crosses forming a continuous line from Capua to Rome.” The revolt of Spartacus forcefully called to the attention of the Romans the disadvantages of an agricultural system based on slavery. The slaughter of huge numbers of slaves created the first shortage of servile man-power which Italy had ever experienced,® while the internecine character of the ‘war made the Roman proprietors realize that the old Latin | proverb quot servi, tot hostes was full of dreaded reality.' Agricultural writers were already declaiming against culti- vation by means of chained gangs of slaves, while pasturage by slave herdsmen had proved itself to be a constant menace 1Diodor., xxxiv, 2; Valer. Max., 1i, 10, 2. 2 Liv., xxxii, 26; xxxiii, 36; xxxiv, 29. 3Diodor., xxxiv, 2; xxxvi, I-11. Appian, Bel. Civ., i, 9. Cf. Wallon, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 299-317. 4 Appian, Bel. Civ., i, 116-120. 5 [bid., 1, 120. ® Cf. Davis, op. ctt., p. 241. 1Cf. Wallon, op. cit., ii, 39; Frank, op. cvt., p. 203-204. 258 THE ROMAN COLONATE [258 to the safety of the community. Both methods of utilizing slave labor were dependent on continual fresh supplies of war captives, for the death rate among slaves was very high, especially with the Northern barbarians, and the birth rate very low. Although Caesar’s conquests brought in enor- mous new hordes of slaves, the diminution of foreign con- quests and the repression of piracy which came with the Empire seriously cut down the available supply. Conse- quently we find that the proprietors of the great estates in many districts ceased to depend solely on slave labor for the exploitation of their domains and gradually returned to the older system of cultivating their lands by means of small tenants or coloni. Probably even during the period of the greatest develop- ment of the slave-worked latifundia the small tenantry con-. tinued to exist in remote districts and in mountain valleys like Horace’s Sabine farm.* Terence, in the second century B. C. at the very heyday of slavery, mentioned the custom which proprietors had of dwelling in the city and renting out their land to tenants.* Cuincius, a century later, said that the ninth month of the year was called Mercedonius because tenants paid their rent (merces) in that month.* The ety- mology may not be correct, but the attempted explanation shows that the payment of rent in that month was an old custom and that the small tenantry must have been an ap- preciable element in the population during the whole period of the great extension of slavery.* Campania, also, seems 1 Hor., Epist., i, 14, 1-3. Cf. Festus, verb. Saltus. * Terent., Adelph., v, 8, line 953. “ Agelli est hic urbe paulum, quod locitas foras. 5 Cincius, De Fastis, 5, in Huschke, Jurisprud. Anteiust. Relig., 6th Ed., pp. 25-26. 4Cf. Fustel de Coulanges, Recherches sur quelques problémes d’his- toire, p. II. 259] THE COLONI OF THE REPUBLIC 2509 never to have been absorbed by the great slave-worked lati- fundia, but instead to have been divided into small farms and leaseholds, for Cicero said that the whole Campanian land was cultivated and possessed by the plebeians.* Beginning, however, with the closing years of the Re- public the references to coloni became very much more numerous.” During the civil wars the coloni of the nobles formed by no means an inconsiderable element in their fol- lowing. Catiline’s coloni as well as his freedmen followed him in his special body-guard.* Domitius Ahenobarbus in the war between Caesar and Pompey manned seven vessels with his coloni, freedmen, and slaves in April 49 B. C.* and in July of the same year fitted out several more vessels with coloni and slave herdsmen.® Pompey, himself, col- lected an army from the Picenian farms, which were en- tirely occupied by this father’s clients.° In the time of Cicero municipalities might lease all their domains to coloni and support themselves completely by the rents thus ob- tained.’ Cicero frequently mentioned coloni in his writ- 1 Cic., C. Rull., ii, 84. “Totus enim ager Campanus colitur et posside- tur a plebe, et a plebe optima et modestissima.” Cf. ibid., ii, 88. ® Bolkestein (De Colonatu Romano, pp. 96-110) has assembled nearly 150 texts referring to coloni and free agricultural labor during the period of the late Republic and the early Empire. 8 Sall., Catil., lix. “...cum libertis et colonis propter aquilam absistit.” 4 Caes., Bel. Civ., i, 34. “...profectum item Domitium ad occupandam Massiliam navibus actuariis septem, quas...servis, libertis, coloms suis compleverat.” 5 Ibid., i, 56. “ Certas sibi deposcit naves Domitius atque has colonis pastoribusque quos secum adduxerat complet.” 6 Vell. Paterc., ii, 29. “ Pompejus...ex agro Piceno, qui totus paternis ejus clientelis refertus erat, contraxit exercitum.” ™Cic., Ad. Fam., xiii, 11. “(Quorum quidem omnia commoda omnes- que facultates...consistunt in iis vectigalibus, quae habent in provincia Gallia. Ad ea visenda pecuniasque, quae a colonis debentur, exigendas ...legatos equites Romanos misimus.” Cf. Hyginus, De Cond. Agr., p.117. (Ed. Lachmann.) 260 THE ROMAN COLONATE [260 ings,’ and it is not at all unlikely, as Heitland contends, that Cicero’s own estates were leased in praediola to tenant farmers.” Cato’s De Agricultura had been based altogether on slave labor and looked askance upon any other kind of culture.* A century later the treatise of Varro was still principally intended for proprietors of slave-worked lat:- fundia, but he occasionally mentioned cultivation by coloni and the regulation of their leases (leges colomicas).* By the time of Columella, however, the tenant-farming system had become so common that Columella devoted a chapter to it. For lands which were still fertile and close enough to the capital to be constantly under the master’s eye he still favored slave-culture; but for all other lands he regarded coloni as preferable.” Vergil’s Georgics referred to the agri- culture of a free peasantry, not of a slave estate.° Seneca, decrying the enormous possessions which a few individuals owned, said that thousands of coloni plow and dig and sow in Sicily and Africa in order that one man’s stomach might be satisfied." The younger Pliny’s estates were cultivated by coloni; he had no chained slaves.* While by the time of the writers of the Digest not only was the tenant-farming 1Cf. Pro Cluent., 175; 182; Pro Caec., 94; In Verr., ti, 3, 55; 228; Pro Plancio, 20. 2 Cic., Ad Att., xiii, 9. “ Mihi Arpinum eundem est. Nam... opus est constitui a nobis illa praediola.” Cf. Heitland, op. ctt., p. 194, note 3. * Cato, De Agric., v, 4. “ Operarium, mercennarium, politorem diutius eundem ne habeat die.” Cf. Oliver, Roman Economic Conditions, p. 73. a MOTTO, ied ieee dy ee s ae, Peay > Colum., De R.R., i, 7. ° Heitland, op. cit., p. 218. " Epist., cxiv, 26. “ Adspice quot locis vertatur terra, quot mzllia col- onorum arent fodiant: unum videri putas ventrem, cui et in Sicilia et in Africa seritur?” Srp line We bist. 1, 10 7°1Ks0375 3X, ged. 261] THE COLONI OF THE REPUBLIC 261 system customary everywhere but the slaves themselves were with increasing frequency given a holding of their 1 IO aD own and treated as “ quasi coloni””’. 1 Dig., Xxxili, 7, 12, 3. “ Servus qui quasi colonus in agro erat.” Cf. ibid., xxxili, 7, 18, 4; xxxiii, 7, 20, I. CHAPTER IX Tue ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL THE most complete description of the condition of the Italian colonus of the early Empire is to be found in the writings of the great jurists. The colonus leased his land under a formal contract, known by the double word locatio- conductio, which was as binding to the lessor (locator) as to the lessee (conductor).* If either party of the contract violated his agreement the other could appeal to law for its enforcement.” The duration of. the lease was the period of the lustrum or five years.* At the end of that period the colonus might leave or renew the contract, just as he wished.* A formal renewal was not necessary, for if the colonus continued to cultivate the land it was considered a tacit reconductio.” His rent was a fixed amount payable usually in money.® Fustel de Coulanges maintained that 1In the Digest the tenant-farmer is designated both by the words conductor and colonus, the former word denoting his legal relation to the proprietor and the latter his function as a cultivator. For detailed references see Heitland, Agricola, p. 364, note 5, and Fustel de Coul- anges, Recherches, p. 12, note 3. * Gaius, Instit., iii, 135. .“ Consensu fiunt obligationes in... locationibus conductionibus.” Jbid., iii, 137. “Item in his contractibus alter alteri obligatur de eo, quod alterum alteri ex bono et aequo praestare oportet.” Cf. Dig., xiv, 2, 9. 3 Dig., xix, 2, 9, 1; 24, 2, “locare in quinquennium.” Jbid., xix, 2, 13, 11, “post finitum lustrum.” Jbid., xlix, 14, 3, 6, “ peracto lustro.” RDgg)) Kix 2) 74> xixa raat: Pye RIK, 2,503, LE CURL LAS 6 Dig., xix, 2, 25, 6. “...colono...qui ad pecuniam numeratam con- duxit;” ibid., xlvii, 2, 26. “...colonum qui nummis colat.” Cf. ibid., Kix, 2, 213 $15.52; Ol; xvii, I, 1,4 sexxxix, 5,0; 262 [262 263 | THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 263 only leases which involved a money rent were included in the legal contract of locatio-conductio, basing his opinion principally on a decision of Gaius. ‘“‘ Unless a certain money rent is agreed upon,” said Gaius in his Institutes, “the contract of locatio-conductio does not exist.”* But Gaius in another place speaks of the partiarius colonus,? and all writers since Fustel de Coulanges have agreed that the share-rent lease constituted just as much of a legal contract as a lease requiring a money payment.* Yet, as the share rent contract is only mentioned once in the Digest while the lease for money rent is mentioned frequently, it is evident that the latter was more common in Italy during the early Empire. Many disputes naturally arose between the landlords and their tenants; and the decisions which the jurists handed down in regard to these mooted points constitute a whole title of the Digest, in which the rights and obligations of the landlords and their tenants are clearly defined. The most important obligation of the tenant was the proper cultivation of the soil. ‘‘ Before all,’’ said Gaius, “the colonus ought to see that all types of farm work are done each at its proper time, so that cultivation out of season may not cause the estate to deteriorate.’* “If a colonus _abandons the cultivation of the estate,” said Paulus, “ the landlord can immediately sue him in the courts.”° If he 1 Gaius, Instit., iii, 142. “Locatio et conductio...nisi merces certa statuta sit non videtur contrahi.” Cf. Fustel de Coulanges, op. cit., pp. 12-13. 2 Dig., xix, 2, 25, 6. “Alioquin partiarius colonus, quasi societatis jure, et damnum et lucrum cum domino fundi partitur.” 3 Cf. supra, p. 161. 4 Dig., xix, 2, 25, 3. “ Ante omnia colonus curare debet ut opera rus- tica suo quoque tempore faciat, ne intempestiva cultura deteriorem fundum faceret.” 5 Dig., xix, 2, 24, 2. “ Potest dominus si deserueret...fundi culturam colonus cum eo statim agere.” 264 THE ROMAN COLONATE [264 does not pay his rent he may be expelled, Paulus stated in another decision." The coloni were compelled to offer security of various kinds when they leased a farm, and this was forfeited in case they did not pay the rent or let the farm run down.” On the other hand, the tenant was protected against any disturbance of his lease, and, if he was not permitted to cultivate the land during the whole period of his lease, he could sue the landlord for damages.* In case of flood, earthquake, or the incursion of enemies the tenant received a total remission of rent, but the landlord was not respon- sible for losses due to unfavorable weather.* If the tenant made any permanent improvements on the estate he could indemnify himself for these out of his rent.° He had the right to sublet his tenement,® and in case of any legal pro- cedure with the landlord his oath was as valid as that of the prietor.’ Another evidence of the independent position of the colonus was his freedom to renew the lease or not at his pleasure. ‘‘ There is no doubt,” said Gaius, “that a colonus or inquilinus is permitted to relinquish his lease.” ” “It is easier to find tenants,” said the Emperor Hadrian in a rescript, ‘if they know that they will not be retained if they wish to leave at the end of the lustrum.” ° Thus the colonus of the Digest is seen to be markedly ¥ DG. RIX 2, SA OY; 9 Dig. XX; 0, 15 > XX, 1,81 Pr > Dig., xix, 2, 24, 4. Cf. sbid., xix, 2, 15, 8; 25, I. * Dig., xix, 2, 25, 63 15, 2. ® Dig., xix, 2, 55, 1; 61, pr. * Dig., xix, 2, 24, 13 xii, 2, 30, 6. " Dig., xii, 2, 28, 6. ® Dig., xix, 2, 25, 2. “Quin liceat colono vel inquilino relinquere conductionem nulla dubitatio est.” ® Dig., xlix, 14, 3, 6. “Nam et facilius invenientur conductores, si scierint fore, ut si peracto lustro discedere voluerint, non teneantur.” t 265 | THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 265 different from the colonus of the Codes. The earlier colo- nus held a short-term lease while the later colonus was a perpetual tenant; the former, in Italy at least, ordinarily paid a money rent while the latter owed as rent payments in kind and services; and most important of all, the colonus of the Digest was perfectly free to leave his tenement at the expira- tion of his contract while the colonus of the fourth century was bound to the soil in perpetuity. | Yet, notwithstanding the fact that the Digest clearly represents the legal status of the colonus as that of a free and independent tenant who entered into a contract with his landlord on terms of equality, | the references to coloni which appear in contemporaneous literature make us doubt whether the actual condition of the coloni was as favorable as their legal status would seem to indicate; and there are statements in the Digest itself which are difficult to understand except as relating to a tenantry which was already rapidly approaching a dependent condi- tion. The passages quoted above,’ which relate how Catiline and Ahenobarbus enlisted their coloni along with their clients, freedmen, and slaves as their personal following in the civil wars, are very significant. The coloni here appear as personal dependants of the landlord. Many of them no doubt were freedmen themselves or the descendants of freedmen. The scanty information on rural affairs which has come down to us is altogether silent in regard to the freeing of agricultural slaves; yet the manumission of dili- gent members of the familia rustica must have been very common. In the time of the Republic it had not been cus- tomary to emancipate slaves in great numbers, but in the early Empire the manumission of slaves became so frequent that it had to be checked by the imperial authority, for the emperors did not wish to see the Roman body politic 1 Cf. supra, p. 259. Was THE ROMAN COLONATE [266 demoralized by an enormous influx of new citizens: But at the same time measures were passed which permitted in- formal manumission under the terms of which the slaves became freedmen of inferior grade. Augustus introduced the lex Aelia Sentia in 5 A. D. which formed a class of freedmen called dedititii who had the same rights and privileges as the dedititw proper, but not those of Roman citizens or Latin confederates.” Fourteen years later, by the lex Junia Norbana Tiberius created the Latin: Juniant, who were freedmen possessing the rights of Latins but were were not eligible for Roman citizenship.* That manumitted slaves became coloni on the estates of their former masters we have no direct evidence. But we know that freedmen were required to work for their patrons a certain portion of each day;* and the kind of work required was that to which the freedmen had been accustomed before their manu- mission.° Likewise we know that the libertim dedititu were not urban freedmen for they were not allowed to reside within a radius of one hundred miles of Rome.* It does not seem hazardous to conclude, therefore, that just as the urban freedman became the client of his master in the city, so the rural freedmen customarily became a small tenant working on the same estate which he had formerly culti- vated as a slave. It is true that the legal dependence of the freedmen on their patrons was not transmitted to their offspring; but it 1 Cf. Hunter, Roman Law (4th Ed., London, 1903), pp. 178-182; Buck- land, The Roman Law of Slavery (Cambridge, 1908), pp. 537-548. * Gaius, Instit., i, 13. 3 Ibid., i, 22. * Dig., xxxviii, 1 (De Operis Libertorum), 1. “ Operae sunt diurnum officium.” 5 Dig., XXXViii, I, 38. § Gaius, Instit., 1, 27. 267] THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 207 is very likely that the children of the freedmen tenants continued to cultivate the plots of land formerly leased to their fathers in very much the same condition, so that the extra-legal obligation to follow their landlords to battle was accepted by them as a matter of course. How humble and dependent the coloni were regarded is clearly indicated in a passage in Cicero’s oration in defense of Cluentus. Sassia, the mother of Cluentus, in attempting to implicate her son in the poisoning of his stepfather Oppianicus, instituted an investigation to collect evidence. But to membership in this investigating body Cicero charged that ‘“‘ she admitted, I will not say no man, lest you may perhaps say a colonus was present, but no respectable man.” * Coloni, then, in Cicero’s opinion were not boni virt and were too much under the control of their landlady to be capable of independent testi- mony. . Whatever the condition of the colonus at the beginning of the Empire may have been it is certain that it did not improve in the course of time. Debt was very common among the coloni and in many regions coloni became habitual debtor tenants. Cultivation of the soil by debtors was by no means a new situation in Italy. In early days many of the agricultural slaves were poor peasants who had lost their liberty on account of their debts.* Slavery for debt was eventually abolished but cultivation by debtor tenants con- tinued to be very common. Varro in enumerating the classes of agricultural labor said that besides the slaves, the peasant proprietors, and the day laborers there was an addi- tional class of men “whom our rustics call obaeratr”’.* 1Cic., Pro Cluent., 182. “ Nullo adhibito non dicam viro, ne colonum forte adfuisse dicatis, sed bono viro.” ? Liv., ii, 23; vi, 14. Dionys., Antigq., vi, 26. *Varro, R. R., i, 17, 2. “Omnes agri coluntur hominibus servis aut liberis aut utrisque. Liberis, aut cum ipsi colunt,..aut mercenariis... iiquie quos obaeratos nostri vocitarunt.” 268 THE ROMAN COLONATE i [268 Columella likewise mentioned debtor tenants along with slaves as the cultivators of the latifwndia.» Wallon be- lieved that Martial also was referring to the same situation when he coined the epigram, “ Heirs, do not bury the poor colonus; for earth, however little it is, rests heavily upon him ”’.? These vague references become considerably more signifi- cant when seen in the light of the clear evidence which the letters of the younger Pliny present. Pliny employed no manacled slaves on his estates * but cultivated his lands by means of coloni holding five-year leases and paying money rent. In two of his letters he complained that his tenants were unable to pay their rent and that he had been forced to make abatements.* But notwithstanding these abatements the arrears increased, and in addition he found that his tenants once hopelessly in debt made no effort to reduce their obligations. ‘‘ They even seize and consume all the produce of the land,” he wrote to his friend Paulinus, “ as men who now believe they should not stint themselves.” ° The situation set forth in these letters of Pliny was by no means confined to the estates of Pliny himself. In another letter Pliny described conditions on a neighbor’s estate which were even worse than on his own.° The neighboring landlord, instead of granting abatements in the rent as Pliny 1Colum., De R. R., i, 3. “...occupatos nexu civium et ergastulis tenent.” i * Martial, Ep., xi, 14. Haeredes nolite brevem sepelire colonum: Nam terra est illi, quantulacumque, gravis.” Cf. Wallon, L’Esclavage dans l’antiquité, vol. ii, p. 378. * Epist., iii, 19. “...nec ipse usquam vinctos habeo.” 4Tbid., ix, 37, “post magnas remissiones.” x, 8. “ Continuae sterili- tates cogunt me de remissionibus cogitare.” >Ibid., ix, 37. “ Rapiunt etiam consumuntque, quod natum est, ut qui iam putent se non sibi parcere.”’ 6 Epist., ili, 19. 269 | LHE\ADSCRIPTION TO. THE SOIL 269 . had done, seized and sold the stock of the tenants which | they had pledged as security for their rent. But this policy, while it lessened the arrears of the coloni for the time being, proved to be short-sighted and disastrous in the long run, for without their former equipment the coloni were less able than before to pay their rent and their arrears mounted more rapidly than ever.* As a result of this ‘“ imbecile’ measure and “‘the general hard times” the estate which had for- merly been valued at five million sesterces was now offered for sale for three millions.” But it is in the Digest where the references to the indebt-: edness of the coloni are the most frequent. The Emperor Antoninus Pius issued several rescripts against granting remission of rent too easily, merely because the tenants complained of a small crop (de fructuum exiguitate) or that their grape vines were old (propter vestustatem vinearum) .* But in case of an unfruitful year (ob sterilitatem) there was nothing to do but to allow the tenant an abatement and hope - to receive the delinquent rent in succeeding years.* That the chance of recovering the back rent was an extremely meager one is seen from the constant references to the arrears of the coloni which appear in the Digest. In fact these debts became so general and of such long standing that the phrase cum reliquis colonorum was customarily in- cluded in the bequest of a landlord’s estate.” Interest was 1 Ibid., “ Sed haec felicitas terrae imbecillis cultoribus fatigatur. Nam possessor prior saepius vendidit pignora et, dum reliqua colonorum minuit ad tempus, vires in posterum exhausit, quarum defectione rursus reliqua creverunt.” 2Tbid., “Superest, ut scias, quanti videantur posse emi. Sestertio tricies, non quia non aliquando quinquagies fuerint, verum et hac pae- nuria colonorum et communi temporis iniquitate ut reditus agrorum sic etiam pretium retro abiit.” Ge six, 2,15, 5. #1. Kix, 2, 15, 4- 5K. g., Dig., xxxiii, 7, 20, pr. “(Codicillis ita scripsit: Postea mihi 270 THE ROMAN COLONATE [270 due on these back debts, which made the payment of them still more difficult for the tenant.’ Why was the colonus so likely to fall in debt? Seeck discussed this question and came to the conclusion that it was due to the poor quality of the tenants.” With the small farmer class destroyed by the concentration of property into latifundia, and the slave supply failing, the only source from which agricultural labor could be obtained was, according to Seeck, the “ dregs of the city proletariat’, who were more competent ‘‘to exercise their hands in the theatre and the circus, than in the wheat field and the vineyard”.* These coloni, as was to be expected, proved very lazy and ineffi- cient. The poor material of the tenantry Seeck believed made necessary the laws which are mentioned in the Digest in regard to the expulsion of the coloni before the expira- tion of their leases;* and it was the same lack of energy and application and the care-free disposition of the city rabble which made debt almost inevitable.° To what extent the landlords were able to recruit their coloni from the capital must remain a matter of conjecture, for our sources are altogether silent on this point. But, judging from the celerity with which veterans deserted lands * which were granted to them in full ownership and venit in mentem, Seiae fundos quos reliqui, ita ut sunt instructi rustico instrumento, suppellectile, pecore, et vilicis, cum reliquis colonorum, et apotheca, habere volo.” Cf. ibid., xxxii, 78, 3; 91; 97; IOI, 1; xXxxiil, 2, 32, FT ZOO Si29, PES OT) tarot eye te 1 Dig., X1xX, 2, 54, pr. *Seeck, Art. “Colonatus” in Pauly-Wissowa, Real Encyk., vol. iv, pp. 487-480. * Varro, R. R., ii, pr., 3. “ Manus movere...in theatro ac circo, quam in segetibus ac vinetis.” * Dig., Xix, 2, 54, I. 5 Seeck, op. cit., p. 488. 6 Cf. supra, p. 248. 271 | THE ADSCRIPTION TO: THE SOIL 271 not as leaseholds, it seems unlikely that any considerable part of the tenantry of the early Empire could have been obtained from the city rabble. They loved the excitement and the amusements of Rome too well to give them up for the “thankless labor’ of the fields, which caused even farm- bred boys to desert their homes.t What emigration from the city there was probably came early when the latifundia were first changing from slave culture to a small tenant system. By the first and second centuries slavery had given place in many districts to a free peasantry born and bred on the farm. Yet this is just the period when the refer- ences to debt are most numerous. Pliny said that it was a growing evil in his day’* and the decisions of the jurists during the second and third centuries constantly refer to it. Let us examine the explanation offered by Pliny and the Digest as to the origin of the debts of the coloni. “ The continuous unfrutfulness of the soil compels me to consider abatements of rent’, said Pliny in a letter to the Emperor Trajan.* Likewise it was the “‘universal hard times’ (com- mun. temporis wuquitate) and the “ poverty of the coloni ” (paenuria colonorum) which Pliny regarded as the cause of the fall in value of an estate of one of his neighbors from five million sesterces to three millions.“ Similarly in the Digest proprietors were warned by the jurists not to grant remission of the rents for trivial excuses, but if the reason was “unfruitfulness’ (ob sterilitatem) * the abatement must of necessity be granted. The scanty yield of the Ital- 1Cf. supra, p. 248. Cf. the interpretation of Horace, Epist., i, 7, in Heitland, Agricola, p. 234. 2Epist., ix, 37. “Occurrendum ergo augescentibus vitiis et meden- dum est.” 8 Epist., x, 8. “Continuae sterilitates cogunt me de remissionibus cogitare.” 4 Cf. supra, p. 260. 5 Dig., xix, 2, 15, 4. 272 THE ROMAN COLONATE [272 ian fields which had brought about the wholesale desertion of many agricultural districts during the Republic remained as a continual source of anxiety to the patriotic Romans of the early Empire. In fact we learn from Columella that the prevailing view of the time was that the land was com- pletely exhausted. Not only was exhaustion of the soil the popular explanation of agricultural distress in the first cen- tury but men who were regarded as authoritative agricul- tural writers, such as Tremellius, whom Columella held in especially high esteem, believed that the Italian fields were completely worn out and sterile.* It was largely to combat this hopeless attitude toward farming which induced Colu- mella to write his treatise on husbandry. He refused to admit that the land had completely lost its fertility but felt that by more careful cultivation and especially by using more manure much of the ancient fruitfulness of the Italian soil might be restored.* ‘But debtor tenants were the last persons in the world to be able to profit by the advice of Columella, excellent though it was. To restore the fertility of exhausted soil requires capital and time. Debtor tenants had neither. As soon as their arrears with the accrued in- terest reached a sum which it appeared impossible for them to pay, the majority, like the tenants of Pliny, “ seized and consumed all the produce of the land as men who now be- lieved they should not stint themselves.” * The consequences of the indebtedness of the coloni were 1Colum., De R.R., i, pr. * Tbid., ii, 1; cf. Simkhovitch, Pol. Sct. Quart., xxxi (1916), pp. 209-2II. *Colum., De R. R., ii, 1. Tacitus likewise refused to admit that the Italian soil has become barren. ‘He lamented over the fact that Italy could no longer provision her legions as in the past but laid the blame of scanty crops to the wrath of heaven, and the dependence on African and Egyptian grain to the perversity and shiftlessness of a stiff-necked generation. Cf. Tac., Ann., xii, 43; ili, 54. 4 Plin., Epist., ix, 37. Cf. supra, p. 268. 273] THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 273 very important in the future development of tenancy. It is certain that a condition such as that which existed on Pliny’s estates was neither profitable to the tenants nor to the pro- prietor. Pliny was a gentleman and a man of letters and not a hard-fisted dirt farmer like Cato, yet he was not a little concerned over the luckless plight of his tenants. He finally decided that the best way to meet the situation was to make a radical change in the form of his rent. So he entered into agreements with his coloni to receive their rent in shares rather than in money.* “There is no juster form of rent,” he said, “ than that which the earth, the climate, and the seasons yield.” * Since the share of the coloni was directly proportional to the size of the crop, they could be expected to do their best to produce as large a crop as possible; and so far as the landlord was concerned, while the value of his share may have been less than the old money rent, yet at least he was assured of something better than the promis- sory notes of his tenants. But since share rent afforded much more opportunity to the coloni to defraud the land- lord than under the former system when a fixed money rent was required, it was necessary to appoint overseers to see that the coloni did their work honestly and turned over the agreed share of the harvest to the proprietor. For this work - of supervision Pliny employed certain of his slaves. “It is a work,” he said, “which requires great honesty, sharp eyes, and many hands. But the experiment ought to be made and, just as in an old disease, the remedy of a change of some sort ought to be tried.”’ ® 1 Epist., ix, 37. “Occurrendum ergo augescentibus vitiis et medendum est. Medendi una ratio si non nummo sed partibus locem.” 2 Tbid., ““Nullum iustius genus reditus, quam quod terra, caelum, -annus refert.” 8 [bid., “ Ex meis aliquos operis exactores, custodes fructibus ponam... Ad hoc magnam fidem, acres oculos, numerosas manus poscit. Ex- periundum tamen et, quasi in veteri morbo, quaelibet mutationis auxilia ‘temptanda sunt.” 274 THE ROMAN COLONATE [274 This is the only actual account we have of a change from money rent to rent in shares. Yet such changes must have been very common where the tenants were unable to pay their rent in money. Money rent was universal in Italy at the beginning of the Empire but from the time of Nero we commence to hear of payments in kind, and by the time of Diocletian even taxes were paid in produce. Columella men- tioned the requirement to furnish wood and other parvae accesstiones as customary incidents in the tenure of the coloni of his day.* Tacitus, in describing the German slave, said “the lord requires from him a certain quantity of grain, cattle, or cloth just as from a colonus”’.* Evidently, then, in 98 A. D., when Tacitus wrote the Germamia, the colonus was accustomed to make such payments in kind. Similar payments were likewise mentioned by Martial, whose Epi- grams were also published in the last decade of the first century. The Pelignian colonus furnished wine,* the Um- brian colonus chickens, eggs, figs, goats, olives, and vege- tables,* and the colonus of Baia honey, cheese, dormice, goats, capons, and osier baskets.’ The substitution of payments in kind for money rent was an important step in lowering the status of the colonus. In 1De R. R.,i, 7. “ Lignis et ceteris parvis accessionibus exigendis... cui colonum obligaverit.” *Tac., Germ., 25. “Frumentum modum dominus aut pecoris aut vestis ut colono iniungit.” ae Pt xi, aT 20, il os bY 5 Ep., iii, 58. Fert ille ceris cana cum suis mella Metamque lactis Sassinate de silva; Somniculosos ille porrigit glires, Hic vagientem matris hispidae fetum, Alius coactos non amare capones. Et dona matrum vimine offerunt texto Grandes proborum virgines colonorum. 275 | THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 275 the passage from the Germania referred to above Tacitus wrote, ‘The lord requires from him (his dependent) a cer- tain quantity of grain, cattle, or cloth just as from a colo- nus; and he appears as a slave to that extent.’* Just as the commutation of customary services and payments in kind into money rents played a significant part in the emancipa- tion of the medieval villein, so the opposite substitution had an equally important effect in gradually increasing the de- pendence of the Roman tenantry. The work of the coloni was now supervised by slave custodes,? and in many ways the coloni were very closely associated with the familia rus- tica.* It was the function of the wilicus to see that the coloni like the agricultural slaves, were roused early. “ For it is of great importance,” said Columella, ‘that the coloni should begin their work as soon as morning begins to dawn and not dally lazily in getting started.’* They probably were included among the rustict who ate at the proprietor’s table along with the familia rustica.’ Their tools, livestock, and other equipment were usually furnished by the landlord,° while like the medieval serf they were expected to use the bakery and mill of the landlord’s villa.’ 1Germ., 25. “Frumenti modum dominus aut pecoris aut vestis ut colono iniungit; et servus hactenus paret.” 2 Plin., Epist., ix, 37. “ Ex meis aliquos operis exactores, custodes fruc- tibus ponam.” ® Cf. C. I. L., ix, 3675. “ Atiliae (Restut(a)e Alfenus Atticus coniugi b(ene) m(erenti) et familia Tironianensis (id est fundi Tironiani) colon(a)e b(ene) m(erenti) p(osuit).” *De R. R., xi, 1, 14. “ Plurimum enim refert colonos a primo mane opus aggredi, nec lentos per otium pigre procedere.” 5 Ibid., xi, 1, 18. “‘Consuescatque rusticos circa larem domini, focum- que familiarem semper epulari.’ Possibly this was the case only when they were performing services on the demesne, if Weber’s hypothesis is correct. Cf. Weber, Die romische Agrargeschichte, pp. 244-245. a Digixix, 2) 3; xix, 2, I9,'2; xxxill, 7, 24; Cf. xxxiil, 7,;.20, I and 3; ivi. 1,52, 2. ™ Colum., De R. R., i,6, 21. “\Circa villam deinceps haec esse oportebit : furnum et pistrinum quantum futurus numerus colonorum postulaverit.” 276 THE ROMAN COLONATE [276 —_ Heitland argues with much plausibility that one of the effects of the indebtedness of the coloni was their subjection to a certain specified amount of labor on the home farm.’ Abatements in rent may have been allowed in return for work on the lord’s demesne during the busy seasons. There is no text which specifically refers to such a substitution of operae for money payments, yet it is difficult to understand some of the passages just quoted from Columella except as referring to coloni cultivating the lord’s demesne under the direction of his vilicus. Free day-laborers were rarely men- tioned after the time of Varro, and as slaves became scarce the only labor which was available to supply the gaps in the working forces of the villa was that of the tenantry. Coloni were used for that purpose in Africa? and it seems to be a reasonable assumption that the same policy was followed on many of the estates in Italy. Could the tenant who was in arrears leave his tenement at the expiration of his lease? Scaevola answered this ques- tion indirectly in a decision in the Digest. “A man be- queathed his estate together with the arrears of his coloni. The question is raised whether the words ‘ with the arrears of his coloni’ of the phrase written above include those who, after their lease had expired and after they had pro- vided cautio, had left their holdings. He (Scaevola) an- swered that the arrears of these coloni were not included in the will.’ * The important point for our purpose in the de- cision of Scaevola concerns the nature of the cautio which 1 Agricola, pp. 256-257. 2 Cf. supra, pp. 139, 143, 148, 174-175. * Dig., xxxiii, 7, 20, 3. “ Praedia ut instructa sunt cum... reliquis colonorum (legavit); quaesitum est an reliqua colonorum qui, finita conductione interposita cautione, de colonia discesserant, ex verbis sup- rascriptis legato cedant. Respondit non videri de his reliquis esse cogitatum.” 2777 | PHEIADSCRIPTION FO THE SOIL 277 must be provided before a tenant could leave his holdings. Fustel de Coulanges, taking the ordinary meaning of cautio as “bail” or “ surety’, held that it was necessary for some rich man to offer to guarantee the debt of the colonus be- fore it was possible for him to leave his landlord’s estate; and as few men of means would be willing to serve as spon- sors for coloni who were hopelessly in debt, the arrears of the coloni, therefore, practically tied them to the soil.’ However Cug and other savants in Roman law have shown that cautio as a legal term merely meant a kind of promis- sory note, so that this passage from Scaevola cannot be in- terpreted to indicate that indebted coloni were bound to the soil by their debts.” We can find no sure trace of any legal attachment to the soil before the legislation of Constantine; yet there unde- niably was a tendency toward long and perhaps hereditary tenures, The proprietors usually found it to their advan- tage to keep the same tenants as long as possible and their children after them. It was no easy matter to find new tenants who would make satisfactory coloni. Pliny ob- tained a thirty-day leave from his duties as governor of Bithynia for that purpose.* Columella advised proprietors against changing tenants frequently, and considered coloni born and bred on an estate and retained throughout their whole lives as the most satisfactory.*. The transient tenant, caring nothing for the future productivity of the soil, was likely to exploit it for as much immediate profit as the land would yield and after it was exhausted go elsewhere; but 1 Fustel de Coulanges, Recherches, pp. 17-18. Cf. supra, p. 153. 2Cf. supra, p. 162. * Piityd pist., x, 8 (24). *De R.R., i, 7, 3. “ Patrisfamilias felicissimum fundum esse, qui colonos indigenas haberet, et tanquam in paterna possessione natos, jam inde a cunabilis longa familiaritate retineret.” 278 THE ROMAN COLONATE [278 when land was left in the hands of the same family it was cultivated much less wastefully. Of the means employed by the landlords to keep their coloni on their estates, we have no information. The ten- ant in debt was in no position to act freely and in all proba- bility cautiones were accepted by the proprietor with extreme reluctance, and possibly only when the tenant could be trusted to meet his back payments eventually. One thing which is certain is that the tenants were frequently retained by force on their leaseholds after the expiration of their contracts, for there were many imperial rescripts against the practice.” As a rule, however, tenants were probably kept on the same estate by custom and their own interests rather than by force. As time went on the coloni came to feel a strong sense of ownership over tenements which they had held for some years and which possibly their fathers before them had cultivated. They even went so far as to object to the sale of an estate to a new proprietor, and if the new landlord should expel the disaffected coloni from their hold- ings they could appeal to law against dispossession; and according to the jurists Marcellus and Papinian, the law supported the coloni in their rights to continued possession of their tenements even against the will of the landlord.* Whether the coloni ever held perpetual leases before the legislation of the fourth century we cannot say, for the sources are again silent on this point. The perpetua con- 1 Cod. Just., iv, 65, 11. (244 A.D.) “Invitos conductores seu heredes eorum post tempora locationis impleta non esse retinendos saepe rescrip- tum est.” Cf. Dig., xlix, 14, 3, 6. “Divus etiam Hadrianus in haec verba rescripsit: ‘ Valde inhumanus mos est iste, quo retinentur con- ductores...publicorum agrorum, si tantidem locari jnon possint.””. This latter rescript, however, probably refers to the capitalist lessees of the imperial domains rather than to the small tenants. Cf. infra, p. 306. 2 Marcellus in Dig., xliii, 16, 12. Papinian in Dig., xliii, 16, 18. 279] THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 279 ductio is mentioned once in the Institutes of Gaius,: and once in a rescript of the Emperor Gordian in 239 A. D.,’ but in both cases the conductor referred to appears to have been a large lessee and not a colonus. But re-leasing was very common. No formal contract was necessary either verbal or in writing. The simple agreement of each party was sufficient.* \ le neither party raised any questions about the contract at the time of the expiration of the lease their mutual silence constituted an automatic renewal. | “He who leases a tenement for a certain time remains a colonus after the expiration of the lease,” said Ulpian.* Certain epitaphs of coloni which have been preserved to our day show that tenant farmers remained for as long as fifty years cultivat- ing the same holding.® 1 InStit., iii, 145. 2 Cod. Just., iv, 65, 10. 3 Dig., xix, 2,14. “ Et hujus modi contractus neque verba neque scrip- turam utique desiderant, sed nudo consensu convalescunt.” * Dig., xix, 2, 14. “Qui ad certum tempus conducit, finito quoque tempore, colonus est.” Cf. iid., xix, 2, 13, 11. “In ipso anno quo tacuerunt, videantur eandem locationem renovasse.” 5C.I.L., ix, 3674. “T. Alfeno Attico...colono f(undi) Tironiani, ‘quem coluit ann(os) n(umero) L.” I[bid., x, 1877. ‘‘Q. Insteio Dia- dumeno Augustali...coluit annis XXXXV.” JIJbid., x, 1918. “ Afranio Felici...q(ui) coluit ann(os) XXIII.” It is in the light of these conditions that we can best study the two third-century texts in the Digest which have led many scholars to regard the servile colonate as an institution which existed before the legislation of the Codes. (Cf. supra, pp. 31, 58, 100, 193.) The decision of Ulpian (Dig., L, 15, 4, 8), that “if any proprietor does not register his inquilinus or his colonus he will himself be held answerable to the authorities of the census,” does not seem to imply more than a careful supervision of the census returns by the landlords before the reform of Diocletian put the administration of the census under the control of state officials. (Cf. Savigny, Vermischte Schriften, vol. ii, pp. 42-43.) The decision of Marcian (Dig., xxx, I, 112, pr.), that “if anyone be- queaths inquilini without the estate to which they belong the bequest is null and void,” cannot indicate that the tenant farmers were legally attached to the soil at this time, for the rescript of Philip of 244 A.D. 280 THE ROMAN COLONATE [280 Not only was the declining productivity of the soil an important cause in transforming the condition of the coloni, but it also had an equally significant effect on the condition of the agricultural slaves. The old military system of hand- ling slaves in groups of ten (decuriae) each under its own slave driver (decurio) may have proved the most profitable method of exploiting the land while the fertility of the soil was still unimpaired. But after the soil commenced to lose its native richness the disadvantages of this purely exploi- tative system commenced to become apparent. Pliny the Elder held that the cultivation of land by slaves from the ergastulum was “the very worst plan of all”’,* while the younger Pliny said that neither he nor any of his neighbors employed chained slaves on their estates.” In fact it was the failure of the chain gang and the ergastulum which had caused many proprietors to supplant slavery on their estates by a small tenant system, first on the poorer land * and later on the whole estate, for self-interest caused the tenant to cultivate the land less wastefully, particularly where he re- garded his tenure as a permanent one. However, possibly on a miajority of estates, cultivation by slaves continued as the principal form of agriculture. But beginning about the last century of the Republic there was a marked change in the treatment of ‘the slaves. They were given some property of their own (peculium) and were encouraged to marry and have children, both of which, ac- renewed the old edict that the tenantry could not be retained on an estate after the expiration of their leases. (Cod. Just. iv, 65, 11.) Yet the decision of Marcian does show that by this time the tenants were so closely tied to an estate by bonds of mutual interest and custom that there was no thought of separating them from their holdings even on the occasion of the death of the proprietor. 1Plin., NV. H., xviii, 7. “Coli rura ab ergastulis pessumum est.” 2 Plin., Epist., iii, 19. “...nam nec ipse usquam vinctos habeo nec ibi quisquam.” 3 Cf. supra, p. 260. 281 | IHE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 281 cording to Varro, “ would make them more steady and attach them to the estate”.* Later they were given plots of land which they cultivated as tenants of their master. Such slaves were called “ quasi coloni’’,? they were not in- cluded in the inventory of the estate any more than the coloni,” they paid a fixed rent,* and like the coloni they might fall in arrears in their rent to their landlord and master.© So, just as the necessities of agriculture were gradually transforming the coloni with short-term leases into perpetual tenants, in practice if not in law, the same forces were transforming the agricultural slaves into tenants who, however different they might be in the eyes of the law, in their economic condition were growing more and more like the coloni with each succeeding generation. The tendency in the direction of long-term or perpetual tenure in the interests of the conservation of the soil was probably more consciously guided on the imperial domains than on most private latifundia. It is true that emperors like Nero and Domitian regarded their possession as pleas- ure estates and cared little what would happen to them in the future. But such was not the attitude of Vespasian, Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, and the Antonines, emperors who were fully cognizant of the serious situation in which agri- culture found itself and who took vigorous steps to build up a state peasantry on the imperial domains.° Vespasian 1Varro, R. R., i, 17, 5. “...dandaque opera ut habeant peculium et coniunctas conservas, e quibus habeant filios; eo enim fiunt firmiores ac coniunctiores fundo.” 2 Dig., Xxxiii, 7, 12, 3. “ Servus, qui quasi colonus in agro erat...” 8 Dig., loc. cit., xxxili, 7, 18, 4. 4 Dig., xxxiii, 7, 18, 4. 5 Dig., XXxXili, 7, 20, 1 and 3. 6 The Emperor Tiberius had lamented mournfully over the agricultural desolation of Italy and the complete dependence of the Roman popula- tion upon foreign food supplies, (Tacitus, Ann., 11, 54), but so far as we know he proposed no constructive remedies to improve the situation. 280 THE ROMAN COLONATE [282 caused the domains to be surveyed, boundary stones to be set up, and when private estates had encroached on the do- mains he saw that the land was restored to the crown.*> The domains were then settled by peasants who became colont imperatoris.” The development of a state peasantry on the imperial domains was temporarily checked during the reign of the tyrant Domitian, who interested himself in making gardens * of some of the crown estates and allowed many of the others to fall into utter ruin.* But Nerva, during his short reign, immediately returned to the policy of Vespa- sian. “To the very poor Romans,” said Cassius Dio, “ he granted allotments of land worth as much as fifteen million (drachmae).” ° Settlers were sought for the former “ gar- dens’ of the prince by Trajan,® while further assignments of land were made by Trajan, Hadrian,’ and probably An- toninus Pius,*> whom the Digest shows to have been es- pecially watchful of the interests of the coloni Caesaris. 1Gromatict Veteres (Ed. Lachmann), i, p. 211, Calabria. “Ab imp. Vespasiano censita;” zbid., p. 261-262. ‘Apulia et Calabria. “...col- lectione petrarum...et naturalibus signatis lapidibus;” zbid., p. 122. “ Lapides...inscripti nomine divi Vespasiani sub clausula tali, occupati a privatis fines: P. R. restituit.” *Jbid., p. 230, Abella. “Coloni vel familia imperatoris Vespasiani iussu eius acceperunt.” Jbid., p. 236, Nola. “‘Colonis et familiae (Ves- pasiani) est adiudicatus (ager).” 3 Plin., Paneg., 50, 6. ‘ Ibid., 50, 3. “...foeda vastitate procumbant.” 5 Cassius Dio, Ixviii, 2, 1. “roig re wdvu wévnor TOv ‘Popuaiov é¢ yeAcdda Kal revtakociag pupiddas yHe KTHoLw Exapioaro,’’ 6 Plin., Paneg., 50, 6. “ Nunc princeps in haec eadem dominos quaerit ipse inducit; ipsos illos magni aliquando imperatoris hortos...” ™Gromatici Veteres, i, p. 236. Ostensis ager. “Ab imppp. Vespas- iano, Traiano, et Hadriano...colonis eorum adsignatus.” Jbid., p. 234. Laurum Lavinia. ‘“ Ager eius ab imppp. Vespasiano, Traiano et Adriano in lacineis est adsignatus.” I[bid., p. 235. LLanuvium. “Imp. Hadrianus colonis suis agrum adsignari iussit.” BIS ed (IQ) 3 Ds. Lan Lae es 283] THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 283 “Such is the bounty of the Prince arid such is the tran- quility of the present age that he thinks us subjects worthy of enjoying what emperors have enjoyed,” said Pliny in his Panegyric to Trajan. But the emperors did not make these assignments of land out of their domains simply from the goodness of their hearts, as Pliny implied. Wealthy private citizens might use their estates in Italy as hunting grounds or parks,? and pleasure-seeking monarchs like Nero and Domitian might neglect the interests of the realm to satisfy their own personal vanity. But the wiser emperors saw that the decline in agriculture must be checked if the imperial revenues were not to be dried up at their source. Hence they tried every legal means to insure the continuous cultiva- tion of their domains. The actor, the slave or freedman manager of the agricultural slaves of a domain, could not be sold * or alienated* from an estate of the crown without the consent of the emperor. If the actor should be sold the law declared the sale null and void,® and if he should be emancipated and then leave he would lose his freedom.° Such forcible means of retaining agricultural laborers on the domains of course could not be legally applied to coloni, who were freemen, although probably force was occasionally employed by too zealous procuratores." But attempts were made to hold them by giving them certain rights and privi- 1 Paneg., 50, 7. “Tanta benignitas principis tanta securitas temporum est, ut ille nos principalibus rebus existimet dignos.” 2“ Voluptaria praedia.” Dztg., vii, 1, 13, 4. Cf. Heisterbergk, Die Entstehung des Colonats, pp. 67-68; Heitland, Agricola, pp. 365-366. 3 Dig. xlix, 14, 46, 7. PiG., Kix, 14, 30. 5 Dig., xlix, 14, 46, 7. “Et si veneant (actores), venditio nullas vires habebit.” 6 Dig., xlix, 14, 30. “Si manumissi fuerint (actores), revocantur ad servitutem.” 7 Cf. supra, p. 278, n. 1. 284 THE ROMAN COLONATE [284 leges which made their condition a particularly favored one. The Emperor Antoninus provided that they should receive special police protection from the imperial procuratores themselves." They were allowed to bring their disputes directly before the procuratores, thus relieving them of the tedious processes of the ordinary courts of law;? and ii they were unable to secure satisfaction from the procura- tores it was always possible to appeal to Caesar, sometimes with excellent results as the inscriptions of Souk-el-Khmis and Gazr-Mezuar testify. From the middle of the second century the imperial coloni received certain exemptions from municipal taxes, as it was feared that the payment of these might interfere with the prosperity of the domain,* while in the third century they were completely relieved of municipal munera, “ that they might be more suitable tenants for the domains of the fiscus,’ as the jurist Callistratus phrased it.° The tendency in the direction of a settled and hereditary peasant class probably existed in all parts of the Roman world, in Italy as well as in the provinces. The development must have differed considerably in different parts of the Empire, for the agrarian conditions in the various provinces were very clissimilar and the contrast was striking between the Italian tenant, who held a short-term lease and paid a money rent, and the African colonus or the Egyptian yewpyés, to whom the contract of locatio-conductio was unknown. Unfortunately, we have only a comparatively few records 1) 949.,1.4; £0, 1s 1s 2 Dig., xliii, 8, 2, 4. “Sed si forte de his sit controversia, praefecti eorum judices sunt.” 3 Cf. supra, pp. 142, 143. * Dig., L, 1, 38, 1. “...colonos praediorum fisci muneribus fungi sine damno fisci oportere.” 5 Dig., L, 6, 6, 11. “‘Coloni quoque Caesaris a muneribus municipalibus liberantur, ut idoniores praediis fiscalibus habeantur.” 285 | THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 285 of the many individual measures taken in various parts of the Roman world to establish a settled peasant class. Yet enough have been preserved for us to be able to trace the general trend with some degree of assurance; and we be- lieve that the legal attachment of the coloni to the soil was merely the last step in a series of measures taken with the object of maintaining the continuous cultivation of the land. If a settled peasantry already existed in a province Rome at first did litthe more than continue the pre-Roman policies. If the heavy drain of the Roman tribute proved too much for land where the soil was thin and caused it finally to be deserted as unprofitable, abatements of rent and encourage- ments of various sorts were offered to reclaim the abandoned land and restore it to its former productivity. And when encouragements failed, force was applied both to the wealthy proprietor and to the poverty-stricken peasant to keep the land in constant cultivation. If the country which Rome conquered had previously had a satisfactory system of raising revenue the Roman admin- istration ordinarily left it intact; and as most of the revenue was derived from some sort of a land tax the condition of the agricultural population and its relation to the fiscal ad- ministration remained very much the same as it had been before the Roman occupation. This certainly was the case in Sicily, Asia Minor, and Egypt, as Rostovtzeff has shown.* {n Sicily, from the time of the Syracusan tyrant Hiero II, the state assumed ownership of all the land of the island charging the cultivators as rent one-tenth of the produce which it collected by means of tax-farmers.” After the 1Cf. supra, pp. 212, 216, 218. Likewise, in Gaul, Guizot believed that the Roman conquest made little difference in the status of the agricultural population. Cf. Guizot, Cours d’histoire moderne, iv, p. 249; Rostowzew, Studien, p. 381. 2 Cicero, In C. Verr., ti, 3, 13. 226 THE ROMAN COLONATE [286 Roman conquest the land passed into the ownership of the Roman state and the Sicilian peasants remained permanent tenants on state land as before, and paid the tithe under the name of decuma now instead of Sexdrny. The coloni at times might be burdened with heavier payments under a corrupt proconsul, such as Verres, but the indignation of Cicero shows that this was altogether contrary to the usual policy; * and there is no doubt that the Sicilian coloni had less to fear in the way of arbitrary exactions under the early Empire than under the Republic. Likewise in Asia Minor the Roman conquest was little more than a change of overlords so far as the peasants were concerned. They appear as permanent residents of little agricultural villages in the inscriptions of the third and fourth centuries B. C.,? and probably had existed in a simi- lar state previous to the Greek and Persian conquests.*® Some were tenants on the public domain and some on municipal or private estates, but they were all subject to a uniform tax (¢épos) paid usually in kind.* The grain tithe continued to be paid after the Roman conquest, and when the Roman tax-farmers forced the peasantry to pay more than the customary amount the surplus was returned to them by Julius Caesar, while they were permitted to pay the tithe to the native tax-gatherers.° Three centuries later, the Ormelian inscriptions show the coloni still cultivating the land under the direction of government functionaries and 1 Cicero, Op. ctt., 11, 3, 25. 2For the Laodice inscription, see above p. 206; for references to more recently discovered documents containing accounts of villages being granted or sold by the Seleucids intact, see Westermann, Class Philol., Xvi (1921), pp. 12-17, 391-392. 3 Cf. Westermann, Am. Hist. Rev., xx (1915), pp. 733-734. 4 For references see Rostowzew, Studien, p. 247; Schulten, Adhandl. d. Gott. Ges. d. Wiss., Philol.-Histor. Klasse, ii (1897), p. 46. 5 Appian, Bel. Civ., v, 4; cf. Cicero, Ad. Att., v, 13, 1; Pro Flac., 109. 287 | THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 287 living in village communities each with its own officers, priests, and common fund.* In Egypt the Romans found a system of agricultural ad- ministration admirably fitted for their purposes. The fertile Nile valley had been used by the Hellenistic monarchs to produce a large revenue for themselves and every step had been taken to insure the steady cultivation of the land. The peasants were not bound to the soil—in fact they held short- term or precarious leases—but they were completely under the control of administrative officials and the principle of iSta kept them constantly within the tax supervision of their registration district. It was a system which had operated with conspicuous success in the past, and so far as we are able to discover, the condition of the agricultural population did not change materially in the first centuries of Roman rule. The yewpyot continued to live in village communities with their own officers who were responsible to the admin- istration officials for the supply of the heavy government liturgies and rents in kind, just as under the régime of the Ptolemies.* Whether the Romans after their conquest of Africa merely continued the Carthaginian system of land tenure or introduced one which they devised themselves it is impossible to state because of our complete ignorance of the condition of the African peasantry under Carthaginian rule. But the African inscriptions, brought to light in the last half-century, reveal beyond the question of a doubt that there existed in the African latifundia of the second century a settled and indigenous tenantry, who, though not bound to the soil, nor- 1Sterrett, An Epigraphical Journey in Asia Minor, pp. 48-57. Cf. supra, pp. 203, 218-2719. 2 Cf. supra, pp. 213-215. 3 For references see Rostowzew, Studien, pp. 81-82, 163, 218-219; De Zulueta, De Patrociniis Vicorum, pp. 60-64. 288 THE ROMAN COLONATE [288 mally had no thought of leaving their native fields. It was a condition similar to that which had apparently existed from the earliest times in Egypt and Asia Minor and toward which economic forces were already bringing the short-term tenant of the Italian domains. The head tenants (conductores) of the African domains, it is true, held the regular five-year lease. But we have no record that the coloni, the actual cultivators of the fields, held leases of any kind. In fact everything points to the conclusion that they did not. When the coloni of the saltus Burumtanus complained of the en- croachments of the conductor they did not say that he had exceeded the terms of their leases, but that he had demanded rent and services in excess of those provided by the lex Hadriana, an imperial regulation. In their petition to the emperor they speak of themselves not as free contracting’ parties but as “thy native peasants, and foster children of thy domains.” * They were not, then, tenants like the Italian coloni described in the Digest, but were crown peas- ants whose condition was ruled by administrative regulations such as the lex Manciana and the lex Hadriana. The lex Hadriana was called a perpetua forma and was still in force during the reign of Septimius Severus’ three-quarters of a century after the time of Hadrian. The coloni of the saltus Burumitanus complained bitterly of their mistreatment at the hands of the conductor and his allies, the procuratores at Carthage, who had sent soldiers to scourge them for their temerity in petitioning the emperor; and yet they did not leave the domain. The coloni on a neighboring saltus, which was mentioned in the mutilated inscription of Gazr- Mezuar, did threaten to abandon the saltus unless their grievances were redressed, yet such an action seems to have 1C, I, L., viii, 10570, iii, 28-20. “...rustici tui vernulae et alumni saltum tuorum.” 2 Cf. supra, pp. 140, 181. 289] THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 289 been looked upon as a last resort. The coloni of the saltus Burunitanus spoke of themselves as born on the estate * and apparently had no other intention than to continue to live there during their whole lives. | Besides the long inscriptions which were discussed in Chapter V and Chapter VI a large number of brief inscrip- tions have been discovered in Africa which add significant bits of information in regard to the condition of the tenants on the great domains. In the often quoted passage in which Frontinus described the huge extent of the African estates which individual landlords possessed before the Neronian confiscations, he said, “ And these private proprietors have on their estates a by no means small plebeian population and villages about the villa something like fortifications.”’ * The coloni of the African latifundia seem habitually to have lived in little village communities called vici or castella. Not only are there frequent references to them in inscriptions,* but the ruins of these villages are still today to be found in Northern Africa.* In fact, as Beaudouin has said,°® the provincial African estate with its central villa and the sur- rounding peasant villages was in many respects like the medieval manor. Like the manor it was largely a self- sufficient economic unit. On the estate itself all the essentials of community life were to be found. The inscription of 1C. I. L., viii, 10570, iii, 29, “... vernulae et alumni saltum tuorum.” 2 Gromatici Veteres, Ed. Lachmann, vol. i, p. 53. “...habent autem in saltibus privati non exiguum plebeium et vicos circa villam in modum munitionum.” $C. I. L., viii, 280. “Aug(ur) vici...” C. I. L., viii, 8280, “. . .vicu(m) et nundina(m).” C.J. L., viii, 8777, “...a colonis eius castelli Cellensis.” C. I. L., viii, 8701, “... per colonos eiusdem kastelli.” For the complete list of references see Schulten, Grundherrschaften, pp. 45 et seq. * Cf., Beaudouin, Nouv. rev. hist. de droit fr. xxi (1897), pp. 567-568; Schulten, op. cit., p. 100. 5Op. cit., p. 565. 290 THE ROMAN COLONATE [290 Gazr-Mezuar speaks of “ shops always available for the pub- lic use,’ * which the domain mentioned in that inscription possessed. The community had its own baths,’ which must have been rather extensive, for in the ruins of some of the estates, as they exist today, the remains of the baths are more conspicuous than those of the villa itself.* For the religious life of the coloni the saltus had its own temple * or portico’ with attendant priests ® and augurs.’ The in- scription of Henchir Salah speaks of coloni building a temple and dedicating it to Ceres, probably the chief deity of the wheat province of Africa.* Besides their priests the colomi had their own officials. The inscription of Henchir Mettich and Souk-el-Khmis were both inscribed by the “ headman ” (magister) of the coloni.® The tenants of the Villa Magna Variant also possessed a defensor, evidently a man of Car- thaginian blood to judge from his name, “ Felix Annobal Piradcors 1C. I. L., viii, 14428, A, 13. “...tabernae quae semper publicis usibus.” 27C. I. L., viii, 14457. “In his praed(iis) ... (thermas) vetustate con- lapsas (coloni restituerunt).” 5 Cf. Schulten, op. cit., p. 50. *C.I. L., viii, 16411. Coloni fun(di...aedem fecerunt) cum columnis ornatis.” 5C. I. L., viii, 11731. “ Porticum sacram a solo co(loni saltus Massi- piani fecerunt).” ‘Cc. I. L., viii,. 291.“ Sacerdos.” C. I. L.;) viii, 580.0) eee Cererum.” VCoToL. vii) e8os) Aue Car) wich 8 Année Epigraphique, 1893, No. 66. “...plebs fundi...itani mac- eriam dom(us) Cerer(um) s(ua) p(ecunia) f(ecit) idemq(ue) ded- (icavit.)” ® Henchir Mettich, i, 31. ‘“ (Ha)ec lex scripta a Lurio Victore Odilonis magistro.” Souk-el-Khmis, iv, 28-29. “Cura agenti C. Julio...ope Salupti mag(istro).” Cf. Henchir Salah, “|Plebs fundi...itani... mag(istro) P. Statilio Silvano.” 10 Henchir Mettich, i, 32. ‘‘ Defensore Felici Annobolis Birzilis.” 291] THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 291 The semi-communal life of the village required of the coloni a number of services in addition to the operae which they owed the conductores. These services were principally connected with building operations. Brick-making is men- tioned in the inscription of Gazr-Mezuar.* Several inscrip- tions speak of the walls of the village (castellwm) being built by the coloni.? Another refers to coloni constructing two arches in addition to other buildings by the order of the provincial procurator; * and the work of the coloni in build- ing temples, porticoes and baths has been mentioned above. We have, then, the picture of a small tenantry living in their own villages under conditions which made for per- manence. They were kept there by no force of law. lia colonus abandoned land which he had once undertaken to cultivate he was visited with no other punishment than the loss of his claim to the land after two years. If the colom were oppressed by illegal exactions of the conductor they could still threaten to leave, as the inscription of Gazr- Mezuar shows. But the ties of custom which held them to the lands which their ancestors had cleared and to the villages in which they had been brought up were not easy to break. And as long as the land yielded them a fairly bountiful re- turn it was not likely that they would ever think of deserting their homes and starting afresh elsewhere. The African inscriptions have proved of great value in presenting a clear picture of a type of coloni who differed considerably from the short-term tenants described in the Digest. But in addition to this, these inscriptions are able 1A, 8 “...paleam in lateribus ducendis.” 2C. I. L., viii, 8701. “...muros kastelli Dianensis extruxit per colonos iusdem kastelli.” Cf. C.J. L., viii, 8777. 8C J. L., viii, 587. “ Coloni saltus Massipiani aedificia vetustate con- lapse... arcuus duos a s(olo) f(ecerunt) iubente Provinciale Aug(usti) lib(erto) pro(curatore.) ” 292 THE ROMAN COLONATE [292 to give us some insight into the Roman provincial agricul- tural policy of the first and second centuries. The condition of the agricultural population of Africa was governed by provincial regulations of which we have record of two, the lex Manciana, an ordinance either: of the first century or earlier, and the lex Hadriana, a regulation of the second century. One of the most significant features of these ordinances was the fact that they established a fixed rent which the coloni were to pay to the conductores or the pro- prietors of the estates within their jurisdiction. This may not have been an innovation of the Roman administration in Africa, for fixed rent may have been habitual in the Car- thaginian system of land tenure, just as it was in some of the Hellenistic domains. But fixed rent established by per- petuae formae was certainly not characteristic of Roman land tenure as formulated by the jurists of the Digest. And when it was made a part of the domanial regulations of Africa by the Roman administrative officials it was a step in the direction of permanence of tenure; for as long as the rent was not fixed the tenant would hesitate to make im- provements on the land for fear that the rent might be raised. That such was only too likely to take place can be seen from a decision of Scaevola in the Digest. A colonus had set out some vines, although his lease had not provided for it, and on account of this improvement in his tenancy the landlord increased the rent by ten pieces of gold a year. The colonus was subsequently evicted because he was unable to pay the additional rent and the question arose whether he could lay claim to indemnity for the expense he had undergone in setting out the vines. Scaevola decided in this case that such an indemnity was due him,’ but, nevertheless, it is seen that where the rent was not fixed the tenant would seldom GT) 4G xiny 2) OR; 293 | THE ADSCRIPTION) TO THE SOIL 203 feel that it was worth while for him to make any extensive improvements on his farm. But when the rent was fixed the opposite situation developed; for then the whole profit from the improvements would accrue to the tenant and he would make every effort to remain on the same farm and pass it on, if possible, to his children.) That the administration was very anxious to have the coloni constantly making im- provements in the land is seen from the provisions in both the lea Manciana and lex Hadriana relative to setting out fruit trees and vines and reclaiming waste or uncultivated land. It is interesting to compare the lex Manciana with the lex Hadriana in order to see the increasing pains the admin- aes was taking to insure the steady cultivation of the land. ‘The lex Manciana had granted exemption from rent for ate years’ produce for figs and vines and ior olives that were grafted on wild olive trees, while an abatement of ten years’ crops was allowed on olive orchards newly set out.” The ler Hadriana increased the rent-free period from five to seven years for vines and fruit trees, while olives, whether planted or grafted, received a ten-year exemption; and the important addition was made that after the abatement period had ended only those fruits should ey a share as rent which were marketed by the cultivators.” y Inducements were made in each ordinance for the reclamation of waste land. The right of occupying lots of the subcesiva was limited in the lex Manciana to coloni who lived on specified domains, and after the land had been reclaimed they were required to pay the customary share rent to the conductores. Asa reward for reclamation they received the right of wsus proprius, a privilege the nature of which has puzzled all commentators, 1 Cf. supra, p. 173. 2 Cf. supra, p. 182. 3 Cf. supra, pp. 175, 179-180. 204 THE ROMAN COLONATE [294 but perhaps meant, as Gsell suggested, the permission which the cultivators received of providing for their own subsis- tence before dividing the crop with the conductores.: But apparently the reclamation of waste land did not go so rapidly as the administration wished, for the ordinance of Hadrian opened these lands not simply to the imperial coloni but to anyone who wished to cultivate them.” In addition abandoned land on the estate which under the ler Manciana had reverted to the conductores under the ler Hadriana was opened to squatters under the same terms as waste land, provided that it had not been cultivated for ten years. | Peasants who reclaimed these lands after the period of exemption had expired paid share rent to the conductores in wine, fruits, and olive oil, but so far as grain was con- cerned, the crop, of course, in which the Roman adminis- tration was most vitally interested, after paying rent five years to the conductores they turned over their shares directly to the fiscus, thus becoming direct tenants of the crown.* Most important of all, the peasant settlers received not merely the right of possession and enjoyment of their claims, but the right of transmitting them to their heirs,” a development of tremendous significance in the history of the tenantry and without doubt the most important step in the direction of permanent tenure before the adscription to the soil. | | The soil of the greater part of Italy was pretty well ex- hausted by the end of the Republic; and, although the con- servation policy of the more far-sighted emperors of the 1Cf. supra, p. 175. ? Ain-el-Djemala, ii, 8-9. “...potestas fit omnibus e(tia)m eas partes occupandi...” There is no mention made of coloni in either the inscrip- tion of Ain Ouassel or Ain-el-Djemala. 3 Cf. supra, p. 182. * Ain Ouassel, ii, 7-9. “...isque qui occupaverint possidendi ac fru- (en) di eredique s(u)o relinquendi id ius datur...” “ 66 295] THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 295 early Empire was able to check the decline of agriculture to some extent, it came too late to accomplish very much. The vitality of the Roman empire lay in the provinces which annually shipped vast stores of food to the capital. Con- sequently it was necessary to insure the maintenance of agri- culture in the provinces. Even soils as fertile as those of northern Africa could not bear heavy crops year after year without showing some signs of declining fertility. And so, even in the second century, we read in the lex Hadriana of land within the estates being abandoned and of the strenuous efforts made to restore them to cultivation, while encourage- ments of various sorts were held out as inducements to in- crease the arable area; and the grant of hereditary rights on the reclaimed land offered the greatest possible induce- ments to coloni to keep the land in the best condition possible. But it needed the strong hand of a vigilant emperor to see that the rights and privileges granted to the imperial coloni were observed so that a contented class of small tenant farmers would continue to find it to their advantage to keep the land in constant cultivation. In a dominion as widely extended and composed of as many and as heterogeneous elements as that of the Roman Empire a vast army of bureaucratic officials was required to oversee the provincial land which owed tribute to the fscus. It was an almost impossible task to prevent these officials and the great capitalist lessees of the imperial domains from increasing their demands on the peasantry. In some cases, as Beau- douin has maintained,’ the avarice of the conductores may have been due to the arrogance which came from their wealth and the prestige of their position as direct lessees of the emperor. In some cases it may have been due to the ability of the strong to take advantage of the weak. But in many 1 Nouv. rev. hist. de droit fr., xxi (1807), pp. 680-681. 296 THE ROMAN COLONATE [296 cases the conductores of the second and third century, like the curtales of the fourth, themselves were hard pressed. Their canon to the provincial administration had to be paid. The constant drain of the grain tribute to Rome, which robbed the soil of the precious plant nutrients and did nothing to return them, commenced to manifest itself in the shape of smaller harvests. Hence the necessity for more intensive cultivation and the application of more labor to the exploitation of the land, as the increased operae which the conductor demanded on the saltus Burumtanus. ‘The conductores found themselves in between two millstones, the demands of the provincial procuratores and the formae perpetuae of their sub-tenants. The requirements of the procuratores were inflexible, for they too were middlemen and were held responsible by the treasury officials at Rome that there should be no diminution in the amount of grain shipped to Italy. The procuratores pressed upon the con- ductores who found it easier to increase their demands upon the coloni than to obtain remission from the procuratores. The tributwm was saving Italy from starvation; but it was crushing the life out of the provinces. A virgin soil is such a storehouse of nitrogen, phosphoric acid, potash, and other plant-food constituents that it will bear many harvests without any diminution in the crop. Yet the time will inevitably come when the fertility of the soil will gradually decline unless the essential chemical ele- ments are restored to it and the land is kept in good texture so that it can avail itself of them. The modern farmer, even though he carries away a large crop from his farm every year, is careful to see that a part of his gross profits are used in returning the necessary plant nutrients to the soil and keeping it in good tilth by applying manures and fertilizers or by plowing under green manuring crops. But sometimes the cultivator is anxious only to make the greatest 297] THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 297 immediate profit and exploits the land without making any return of the plant food which he has taken away. Or some- times he must make such heavy payments that nothing is left from his gross profits to be reinvested in the soil; nor can he afford to let the land rest and regain its fertility by Nature’s methods before it becomes so completely worn out that it can no longer support sufficient plant life to check erosion. In these cases after the soil has lost its virgin fertility it rapidly deteriorates until it yields such meager crops that the cultivator is tempted to desert it. This was the case of the Roman provincial. As long as the soil retained its native richness he could pay the tribute. The policy of the Roman provincial administration in foster- ing long-term and hereditary holdings was a direct incentive to the peasant to maintain the fertility of his plot of land. Yet the land was losing in fertility even under the best cultivation.» The numbers of those in the unproductive classes were enormous, and despite the efforts of the em- perors to reduce them they continued to be a burden on the treasury more and more difficult to support. The area of the productive regions of the Empire was constantly dim- inishing and the pressure of the land tax fell all the more heavily on the regions whose soil had not yet been worn out. Greece? and Italy were growing more unproductive every 1 Of course the ‘Roman knowledge of scientific agriculture cannot be compared to that of the present. Yet the familiarity of the Roman agricultural writers with methods of restoring fertility to the soil was surprising and is certainly superior to any European practice prior to the agricultural revolution of the eighteenth century. We have no record, except in Egypt, whether or not the teachings of the agricultural writers were ever actually applied; yet the administrators of the im- perial domains must have been acquainted with them. Cf. Simkhovitch, Pol. Sci. Quart., xxxi (1916), pp. 220-221. 2 On the decline of fertility in Greece see Guiraud, La propriété fonciére en Gréce (Paris, 1893), pp. 548 et seqg.; Justus von Liebig, Die Chemic in threr Anwendung auf Agricultur und Physiologie, 7th Ed. (Bruns- wick, 1862), p. 96. 298 THE ROMAN COLONATE [298 generation, while to Salvian, writing in the fifth century, the fertile grain provinces of Spain and Africa, whose wheat had once yielded a hundred-fold and more,’ as well as the recently exploited province of Gaul, appeared utterly ruined.’ “All the land between the stormy Black Sea and the Adriatic (i. e., Thrace, Moesia, and Illyria) lies waste, without cattle and cultivated by no coloni,” said Claudian, “ just like burn- ing Libya, which, always parched by the sun, is never brought under cultivation.” ° One country alone seemed for a long time unaffected by the heavy tribute and its disastrous effects on the productiv- ity of the soil. This was Egypt where the annual overflow of the Nile constantly renewed the fertility of its fields. While the population of the Empire was steadily declining the population of Egypt maintained itself and even increased a little.* While the other provinces found it increasingly difficult to furnish their requisitions of grain to the capital, Egypt continued to supply Rome and other cities annually with millions of modu of grain. There was no danger of exhausting the fertility of the Nile valley; for the overflow of the Nile deposited silt which it had collected on its long 1Phin., N. H., xviii, 21. ? Salvianus, De Gubernat. Dei., iv, 4.“ Denique sciunt hoc Hispaniae, quibus nomen relictum est, sciunt Africae, quae fuerunt, sciunt Galliae devastatae...” Cf. Simkhovitch, op. cit., p. 231. Guiraud (op. cit., p. 548) judges from modern chemical analyses of African soil that it was the unreplaced loss of phosphoric acid which caused the land of Roman Africa to lose its fertility. * Claudianus, In Rufinum (395-404 A. D.), ii, 38-42. “Omnis quae mobile Ponti Aequor, et Hadriacas tellus interjacet undas, Squalet inops pecudum, nullis habitata colonis, Instar anhelantis Libyae, quae torrida semper Solibus humano nescit mansuescere cultu.” 4 Cf. Simkhovitch, op. cit., pp. 232-233; Seeck, Geschichte des Unter- gangs der antiken Welt, vol. i, p. 347. 299] THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 299 —_ journey from Abyssinia, so that the Nile-valley peasant cultivated soil which was perennially virgin. Hence the enormous importance of Egypt in the economic life of the Roman Empire. After Julius Caesar had conquered Egypt he did not make it a province for fear that an ambitious governor might establish himself there and make it the seat of revolt.” Augustus made it a province,’ but largely on account of its importance in the production of grain he re- tained the administration in his own hands.* “In view of the populousness of both cities and country,” said Cassius Dio, “. . . and the importance of grain supplies and revenue, so far from daring to entrust the land to any senator, he (Augustus) would not even grant one permission to live init.” * The prefects were appointed not from the powerful senatorial families, but from the equites ° who could be kept more thoroughly under the imperial control. In the next reign the jealous anger of Tiberius was aroused because Germanicus had entered Egypt without his permission.* This was regarded by the emperor almost as treason, for a general controling Alexandria had it in his power to reduce Italy to famine by preventing the shipments of Egyptian grain." Egypt had for centuries before the Roman conquest been 1 Suet., Jul., 35. 2 Suet., Aug., 18. 3 Tac., Hist., i, 11, “Ita visum expedire provinciam...annonae fecun- dam...ignaram magistratuum domi retinere.” * Cassius Dio, 51,17. Trans. by Foster. tac. Hist. 1, 11. 6 Tac., Ann., li, 59. ™Tac., loc. cit., “Nam Augustus... seposuit Aegyptum, ne fame urgueret Italiam, quisquis eam provinciam...insedisset.” Ferrero even argued that the infatuation of Anthony for Cleopatra was a myth, and that the real purpose of the triumvir was to establish a world empire with Egypt rather than Italy as its nucleus. Cf. The Greatness and Decline of Rome (New York, 1908), vol. iv, pp. 261-277. 300 THE ROMAN COLONATE [300 an exporting country and her monarchs had amassed vast treasures from her favorable balance of trade. They were not satisfied simply with the produce of the flooded regions but attempted to extend the productive areas of land as far as possible. There were three “ productive categories’ of land in Egypt, the flooded land (BeBpeypevn), the land which was unflooded but which was capable of irrigation (dBpoxos), and the dry land (xépc0s).' Both encouragement and force were employed by the Ptolemies to bring the less valuable categories of land under cultivation. “Dry farms” (9 xépcos) were granted to veterans on very favorable terms, while the taxes which they were required to pay were lower than elsewhere; and although the land legally reverted to the crown at the death of the veteran, it became customary to continue the grant of land to his eldest son.” Similar favorable leases were granted to cultivators who set out vines and fruit trees and who attempted to reclaim aban- doned or waste land; * and where emphyteutic leases were not sufficient to induce the cultivation of the unflooded land, peasants were arbitrarily settled there,* while the head ten- ants either of the royal domain (yj Pacwrsuxy) or of the granted land (y7 év ddéca) were forced to add portions of the less valuable land to their leaseholds.° The Ptolemaic system of maintaining the cultivation of the unflooded land was appropriated by the Romans and extended as far as possible. The irrigation system was given a thorough overhauling by Augustus,® the silt de- 1 Westermann, Class. Philol., xv (1920), p. 123. * For references to papyri see Rostowzew, Studien, pp. 7-11. ° Cf. ibid., pp. 14-17, 30-31, 38, 40-41. * Cf. ibid., pp. 53-55. 5 Cf. ibid., pp. 57-58. © Suet., Aug., 18. Cf. Westermann, “ Aelius Gallus and the Reorganiza- tion of the Irrigation System of Egypt under Augustus,” Class. Philol., xii (1917), PP. 237-243. | 301] THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 301 “posits were cleaned out and no doubt distributed on poor ‘land, as is done today in China." The system of emphy- _teutic sales and leases was considerably extended, greater abatements in rents and taxes were given, and the obliga- tion of continuous cultivation was more carefully enforced ; ” and émZoA) was applied not only to the lessee of state land but the private landholder as .well.* The unflooded land capable of irrigation (éBpoyos yf) was charged with higher _rents and taxes than the more valuable flooded land—an ingenious device to enforce cultivation not unlike the taxa- tion of unimproved lands advocated by the Single Taxers. But where this land was artificially irrigated (érnvrAnpevy y7) by ditching from the canals or basins, or by the use of water-wheels, bucket-chains, or the ancient native device of a water-lift (shaduf), an abatement of one-half the rent was allowed.* There was one significant change brought about by the Roman conquest which in due time resulted in important consequences. The Ptolemies, though foreigners, had al- ways regarded themselves as national rulers and their policy aimed to further what they conceived to be the true interest of Egypt itself. The Roman emperors, on the other hand, ordinarily regarded Egypt as a mere province whose sole function was to supply the rest of the Empire with food products; ° and in an age before artificial refrigeration and rapid transportation this meant grain par excellence. The 1 According to Strabo the increased utilitization of the waters of the Nile proved of considerable benefit to Egyptian agriculture. Strabo, XVil, 1; 3. 2 Cf. supra, p. 213. 3 Cf. Rostowzew, Studien, pp. 200-201. 4For a discussion of the texts see Westermann, Class. Philol., xvi (1921), pp. 169-177, 184-188. 5 Rostowzew, Op. cit., p. 207. 6 Cf. Westermann, Class. Philol., xv (1920), p. 120. 302 THE ROMAN COLONATE [302 Egyptians might find it more profitable to produce market garden products, yet the Romans compelled them to culti- vate grain;* and as the yield of the grain tribute com- menced to decline in other provinces the Roman adminis- tration pressed so much harder on Egypt. No amount of intensive cultivation could injure the flooded land, but after a century or two of Roman methods of exploitation the unflooded land commenced to show the strain. Beginning with the second century, the tenants in Egypt seem to have been as frequently in arrears as those in other parts of the Empire.” Desertion of the land increased and it became necessary to enforce the old tax principle of ida with in- creasing severity to keep the yewpyot in their native districts. Under the Ptolemies when the peasants had been unable to pay their rents and taxes, they had found some relief by organizing a strike and marching away to a temple where they could remain until the government reduced their pay- ments. But the Romans took away the right of sanctuary, while the attempt to strike was severely punished.* Yet flight was common, as the peasant often preferred the pre- carious life of a fugitive highwayman to performing thank- less toil for the Roman tax-gatherers.* Most of the references to é:Bod» and forced leases of the gleba inutilis come in the second century and later.° It was growing more and more difficult to keep the land not directly watered by the Nile under cultivation. The decline in the semi-arid districts seems to have set in about in the 1 Plin., Ny xix, 20. 2 Rostowzew, Studien, pp. 140-141; cf. supra, p. 269. * Rostowzew, op. cit., pp. 200, 217. ‘ Tbid., p. 206. 5 Cf. De Zulueta, De Patrociniis Vicorum, p. 70; Rostowzew, Studien, p. 200. 303] THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 303 middle of the second century,’ and continued with steadily increasing force during the third and fourth centuries.* The irrigation system, which had been renovated by Augus- tus, once more fell in a bad state of disrepair and some of the low land became too marshy for cultivation. The Em- peror Probus in the third century by draining the swamps and improving the irrigation system was able to restore some land of cultivation.* But the effect of his activity was only temporary and the desert and the swamp once more encroached on the arable land. A new category of land was now mentioned in the papyri, called “entirely unproduc- tive land” (dzopov).* In the fourth century towns like Philadelphia, Bacchias, and Euhmeria, which had been prosperous as long as the irrigation had been kept up, were swallowed up by the desert, never to be reclaimed; while towns such as Karanis and Tebtunis, which formerly had been teeming agricultural centers, became mere strag- gling villages on the new frontier of the desert.” And finally, by the beginning of the fifth century, the forced occupation of deserted villages became a regular feature of the Roman agrarian administration of Egypt.° 1De Zulueta, op. cit., p. 66. Rostovtzeff, Wisc. Stud. in Soc. Sci., vi (1922), p. 13. 2 Rostovtzeff, op. cit., p. 14; Westermann, Class. Philol., xiv (1919), p. 164; Grenfell, Hunt, and Hogarth, Fayum Towns and their Papyvri, pp. 16, 45. 3 Vopiscus, Probi Vita, 9. 4 Rostovtzeff cites P. Gen., 66, 67, 69, 70. Cf. Univ. of Wis. Stud. in Soc. Sci., vi (1922), p. 14. 5 Cf. Grenfell, Hunt, and Hogarth, op. cit., pp. 16, 45; Rostovtzeff, Op. cti., p. 14. 6 Cod. Theod., xi, 24, 6. (415 A.D.) “Ii sane, qui vicis quibus adscribti sunt derelictis...ad sedem desolait ruris constrictis detenta- toribus redire cogantur...et in earum metrocomiarum locum, quas temporis labsus vel destituit vel virtbus vacuavit, ex florentibus aliae subrogentur.” 304 THE ROMAN COLONATE [304 The great economic problem of the late Empire was the desertion of the fields. It was the same problem which had confronted Italy at the close of the Republic and had caused such alarm to statesmen who felt that Italy should be self- supporting. But Italy had saved herself by importing food products from her subject provinces and Rome waxed greater than ever on the contributions of conquered races to her treasury. As long as the bountiful harvests of the fertile districts in the provinces furnished an ample supply of grain to the regions of the Empire which could not sup- port themselves there was little general anxiety as to the future of the Empire. But by the third century the declin- ing productivity of the soil, which had already made Greece and Italy economically dependent, commenced to make itself felt in the provinces; and desertion of the fields instead of being a vexatious local problem became a world problem upon whose solution the very existence of the Empire depended. Plans of all sorts were tried by the emperors to check the evil, which was a far greater menace to the Empire than any external foe; and out of these heterogeneous measures taken by the administration there evolved the three most significant agrarian institutions of the late Empire, emphy- teusis, ér.Body, and the colonate. Whether the lex Hadriana, which gave squatters heredi- tary rights over waste and deserted lands which they occu- pied, was a general law valid for the whole Empire* or merely a regulation pertaining to the African domains, it is impossible to determine from the authorities at present at our disposal. The first general law concerning the agri desertt of which we have record was an edict of Pertinax of 193 A. D. According to this edict Pertinax offered 1 As Carton (Rev. archéol., xxi, 1893, pp. 28, 38-39), Carcopino (Kiio, viii, 1908, p. 179), Weber (Die rémische Agrargeschichte, p. 257), and Ramsay (The Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia, p. 284) believed. 305] THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 305 waste land or abandoned farms in Italy or the provinces in perpetual ownership to anyone who would undertake to re- claim them; and as a reward for the expense of clearing the fields the cultivators were granted an exemption from the land tax for a period of ten years." Later, attempts were made to induce veterans to settle on uncultivated lands (terrae vacantes) under the most favorable conditions. Not only were they offered perpetual immunity from rent to make the grant of land attractive but they were given cattle, seed, and money to defray their initial expenses.” In addition it was decreed that in case veterans wished to lay claim to any land which was not being worked by its owners they might do so, while the proprietor of the land was forbidden to hinder them in any way or to demand a share of the crops of the farm.* Finally the same right was given to any squatter, by a rescript of Valentinian II, Theo- dosius I, and Arcadius, giving the proprietor in this case, however, two years of grace to lay claim to the land. If the proprietor did reclaim his property within the prescribed time he was ordered to pay the squatter full compensation for his outlays; but if he made no effort to regain his prop- erty within two years, full ownership passed to the man who had occupied the land.* On the imperial domains the increasing difficulty of keep- ing the fields in cultivation brought about an important change in the form of lease. In the early Empire the do- mains were ordinarily leased to capitalist lessees (conduc- 1 Herodian, ii, 4, 12(6). 2 Cod. Theod., vii, 20, 3 and 8. These land grants to veterans were purely agricultural in character and are to be distinguished from the assignments of land on the border (agri limitanei or fundi limitrophi) which were granted to soldiers in return for military service. Cf. Gar- sonnet, Locations perpétuelles, pp. 152, 164-166. 5 Cod. Theod., vii, 20, II. 4 Cod. Just., xi, 59, 8; Cod. Theod., v, 11, 12. 306 THE ROMAN COLONATE [306 tores) under the terms of the regular five-year contract of locatio-conductio.* At first the returns from the domains were sufficiently profitable for the administration to obtain conductores without difficulty and releasing fertile domains was no doubt as common elsewhere as on the saltus Bur- unitanus.” But even as early as the time of Hadrian, we read of the difficulty of finding conductores and of retaining them on some of the imperial domains after expiration of their leases.° And in the late Empire there was so little profit to be obtained from leasing the imperial domains that the fiscus could ordinarily obtain lessees only by means of perpetual grants which gave the grantee most of the rights of ownership, while the short-term lease almost wholly dis- appeared.* There were three forms of perpetual leases which were utilized in the late Empire. The jus perpetuwm or perpetu- arium, a simple perpetual and hereditary lease, was probably the most common of the perpetual leases at first, but later was merged into the emphyteutic lease.” When capitalist lessees could not be obtained under the jus perpetuum it was frequently found advantageous to grant the land under the terms of the jus privatum salvo canone. ‘This was legally a sale rather than a lease, giving the purchaser the rights of a proprietor over the estate, such as the right to free the slaves of the domain,° a privilege which was forbidden to 1 Beaudouin, “ Les grands domaines dans l’empire romain,” Nouv. rev. hist. de droit fr., xxii (1808), pp. 312-315. The conductor Allius Maximus of the saltus Burunitanus held such a lease. Cf. C. I. L., viii, 10570, iti, 22-23. 7C, I..L., vill, 10570, loc. cét. * Dig., xlix, 14, 3, 6. “‘ Divus etiam Hadrianus in haec verba rescripsit > ‘Valde inhumanus mos est iste, quo retinentur conductores... pub- licorum agrorum, si tantidem locari non possint.’ ” * Cf., Beaudouin, op. cit., p. 340; Garsonnet, op. cit., p. 148. ° For texts see Beaudouin, op. cit., pp. 150-151. ® Cod. Just., xi, 62, 12. 307 | THE ADSCRIPTION TO ae SOIL 307 the perpetuarius conductor.* However, as the grantee under the jus privatum salvo canone still had to pay a small rent to the fiscus in addition to his taxes, the contract was actually a perpetual lease of a very favorable character.” But by far the most common and important form of lease of the im- perial domains was the emphyteutic lease (jus emphyteu- ticum). Applied first to abandoned domains of the em- peror, in the course of time it absorbed the jus perpetuum and came to be used very frequently as a means of main- taining the cultivation of private estates,* as well as those of the emperor. The essential characteristic of emphyteusis, the feature which distinguished it from the other forms of perpetual and hereditary leases of the late Empire, was the obligation assumed by the lessee of improving the land and keeping it in constant cultivation* (éu@urevev = to plant in). On as- suming possession of the uncultivated land the emphyteuta was given complete exemption from rent for three years, while if the land was of mediocre quality, although not de- serted, he was freed from rent for two years.° After the expiration of the years of exemption a very moderate canon was to be paid.®. The most favorable feature of the emphy- teutic lease was the fact that the leasehold could not be burdened with higher rents or taxes in subsequent years. “For it is absurd,” said a rescript of Theodosius II and Valentinian III, “‘ that those who at our request have un- 1 Cod. Just., xi, 63, 2. 2 Cf., Beaudouin, op. cit., pp. 347, 576; Garsonnet, op. cit., pp. 149-150. 8 Beaudouin, op. cit., p. 546, 572. AGoarsusi., tv, 66, 2,and 3.'' Nov., 7,3; 2; 120, & Cf, Mitteis; “ Zur Geschichte der Erbpacht in Altertum,” Abhandl. der philol.-histor. Cl. d. kénigl. sichsisch. Gesell. d. Wiss., xx, p. 64. 5 Cod. Theod., v, 14, 30; Cod. Just., xi, 50, 7. 6 Cod. Just., xi, 65, 4; Cod. Theod., v, 15, 20. 308 THE ROMAN COLONATE [308 dertaken to improve poor and unproductive soil at great labor and expense and possibly to the great detriment of their own family fortunes, should be deceived (by our promises) and forced to bear an unexpected burden .. . which, if they had foreseen it, would have caused them to be unwilling to enter upon the lease or even to cultivate the land.” * However, if the land was allowed to deteriorate or if the rent was not paid for three years in case of crown lands or two years in case of church property the estate reverted to the lessor.” The emphyteutic lease was by no means a new creation of the late Empire. It had been, under other names, indeed, frequently practiced in the past in Greece,* Egypt * and no doubt in other lands where the Hellenic influence was strong. But it had never been seized upon by any nation and applied with such desperate thoroughness as by the Roman administration in the late Empire, until it well-nigh supplanted all other forms of agricultural tenure. Yet, ad- vantageous as the benefits of the emphyteutic leases were to the conductores and stringent as their obligations were in maintaining the constant cultivation of the land, the fields continued to be deserted. In 365 A. D. we read of the em- phyteutic conductores complaining of desertion of their fields and asking for remission of their canon.° In 395 A. D. it was stated that there were 528,042 jugera of agri ce 1 Cod. Just., xi, 50, 17. “...quoniam nimis absurdum est eos qui nobis hortantibus fundos inopes atque egenos magno labore impenso aut ex- hausto patrimonio vix forte meliorare potuerint, utpote deceptos ino- pinatum onus suscipere, .. quod si se daturos praescissent, fundos minime suscipere aut etiam colere paterentur.” * Cody Justi, 1, 00,42, 2} NOV 7s By 2s >For the Greek leases, éc¢ rdv aravra ypévov, aevvduc, tig marpiKd, etc. which were essentially the same as Roman emphyteusis, see Guiraud, La propriété fonciere en Gréce. pp. 426 et seq. 4 Cf. supra, pp. 211, 213. 5 Cod. Just., xi, 62, 3. 309 | THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 309 desertt in Campania alone.’ The beneficial features of the emphyteutic legislation were not sufficient to keep the land in cultivation. It was necessary to apply force as well. The many attempts which the Romans made to compel the northern barbarians to cultivate waste and abandoned land within the Empire we have already discussed in detail. “On account of the scarcity of grain,’ says the Constitutio de Scyris, the most famous of the documents on the bar- barian settlements, “it will be permitted to keep them (the barbarians) in the transmarine provinces and to attach them to estates forever.” * On lands where the native peasant class had failed to make a living not much could be expected from untutored and restless barbarians; and it was only on the exhausted lands of the border that these semi-military, semi-agricultural settlements of barbarians showed any signs of permanence. Yet the repeated attempts of the Roman administration to locate barbarians forcibly on agri deserts within the Empire shows that it was neglecting no means, however unpromising, of keeping the land in cultivation. Far more important was the so-called émBody* legislation, the most astonishing and arbitrary agrarian legislation in the world’s history. The first law of which we have record was an edict of Aurelian (270-275 A. D.) which assigned all deserted lands within the territory of a municipality to the city senators, and, after an immunity of three years, made them responsible for the land tax from these estates.” 1 Cod. Theod., xi, 28, 2. 2 Cf. supra, pp. 74-91. 8 Cod. Theod., v, 6 (4), 3. “‘Licet... pro ret frumen(tari)ae angustiis in provinciis transmarinis...eos retinere et postea in sedes perpetuas (conl)ocare.” Cf. supra, pp. 34-35. 4 The forcible addition of exhausted land to productive land. It was also called junctio, permixtio, and adjectio. 5 Cod. Just., xi, 50, 1. 210 THE ROMAN COLONATE [310 This proved to be a burden so heavy that many of the cuniales were unable to bear it and Constantine, a half- century later, was forced to transfer the obligation of the ruined curiales to the landholders of the district.1 A second law was drawn up under Constantine in 337. In this the purchaser of an estate was forbidden to buy merely the fertile land of the estate but was required to include in his purchase the unproductive parts as well.* Similarly in 371, Valentinian I, Valens, and Gratian ruled that the heirs of an estate must accept the bad land as well as the good, and be accountable for the taxes of both, or else renounce all claim to the whole estate. A few years later Valens, Gra- tian and Valentinian II decreed that conductores of fertile tracts of municipal land must take over unfruitful fields in addition or they would be required to surrender their leases,* while, in 383, Theodosius the Great applied the same regu- lation to lessees of the imperial domains and of the confis- cated land of the pagan temples.® Finally, in 386, the most drastic of all the é.Bod}) laws was enacted. This was an- other edict of Theodosius which provided that a conductor was not only responsible for the cultivation of barren tracts of land in the immediate vicinity of his estate, but that he 1Tbid., “...praecipimus, ut, si constiterit ad suscipiendas easdem pos- sessiones ordines minus idoneos esse, eorundem agrorum onera posses- sionibus et territoriis dividantur.” Monnier believes that this division — of the tax “ among the possessions and territories” meant a pro rata dis- tribution of the land tax on these estates to the tax-payers of the district. Cf. Nouv. rev. hist. de droit fr., xvi (1802), p. 331. 2 Cod. Just., xi, 59, 2; Cod. Theod., xi, 1, 4. The law was re-enacted by Arcadius and Honorius in 308. Cod. Just., xi, 59, 10; Cod Theod., Sil, 13,0; 3 Cod. Just., xi, 59, 4; Cod. Theod., xi, 1, 17. * Cod. Just., xi, 50, 5. 5 Cod. Just., xi, 50, 6; Cod. Theod., xi, 3, 4. | | SUT | THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL mali might be compelled to cultivate and pay taxes on abandoned fields located at a distance.* However, arbitrary and harsh as these measures were, they were closely linked with the emphyteutic legislation. In case a conductor could show that he was improving his leasehold, the emperors Gratian, Valentinian II, and Theo- dosius I decreed that he could not be, forced to undertake the cultivation of more than one abandoned tract of land.” While Theodosius II declared that conductores who under- took the reclamation of abandoned land would be free from the imposition of émBodry (adjectio) forever.® It is only in connection with the contemporaneous emphy- teutic and émPody legislation that the adscription of the coloni to the soil can be understood in proper perspective. The same cause which induced the wealthy landholders to abandon the cultivation of much of their lands operated with equal force upon the humble tenants and led them to desert their holdings. A vast area of land had simply ceased to yield a remunerative return and neither landlord nor tenant wished to keep up the gratuitous struggle. ‘“ My farm is in bad condition,’ wrote Symmachus in the fourth century, “and a large part of the returns is in arrears, while the coloni have no means either to pay their accounts or to keep up cultivation.”* “ The property which has fallen to me must be inspected,’ he wrote in another letter, “ not that I have any hopes of making it profitable but in order 1 Cod. Just., xi, 59, 7, 2. “...ut primum vicinas et in eodem territorio sortiatur, dehine si neque finitimas neque in isdem locis reppererit con- stitutas, tunc demum etiam longius positas...suscipiat.” Cod. Just., Xi, 71,2 3 Nov. Theod. II, xxvi, 1, 4. “...nullamque eos descriptionem aut adjectionem aut innovationem in posterum sustinere.” 4 Symmachus, Epist., vi, 81. “Neque ager cultura nitet et fructuum pars magna debetur, nihilque iam colonis superest facultatum, quod aut rationi opituletur aut cultui.” 312 THE ROMAN COLONATE [312 to keep up the farm by further expenditures. For it has come to be the custom in our age that the land which once fed us now itself must be fed.’* In consequence of the unremunerative character of agriculture in many districts the proprietors of the land and the great capitalist lessees of the imperial domains were either offered extraordinary inducements to keep poor land under cultivation or else they were forcibly presented with tracts of barren land and held accountable for the taxes; while the coloni were attached in perpetuity to the estates which in many cases they were trying to desert. The legal attachment of the coloni to the soil was an en- actment which applied as much to the proprietors of the estate as to the tenants. Under no circumstances were land- lords allowed to sell, bequeath, or even give away land with- out the coloni. “If they (the proprietors) think that the coloni are of use,” said Constantius in a rescript of 357, “either they ought to retain them on their own estates, or, if they despair of making their land profitable, they should relinquish them to the men to whom they have surrendered their estates.” * f The coloni are “‘the slaves of the land itself on which they were born”. They cannot be sep- arated from their fields, said Justinian, “for it is sufficiently inhuman to deprive the land of its members ne Not only the proprietors but the Treasury itself was not allowed to 1 Symmachus, op. cit., i, 5. “ Sed res familiaris inclinata a nobis usque quaque visenda est, non ut quaestuum summa ditescat, sed ut spes agri voluntariis dispendiis fulciatur. Namque hic usus in nostram venit aetatem, ut rus, quod solebat alere, nunc alatur.” 2 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 2. “Qui enim colonos utiles credunt, aut cum praediis eos tenere debent aut profuturos aliis derelinquere, si ipsi sibi praedium prodesse desperant.” > Cod. Just., xi, 52,1. “...servi tamen terrae ipsius, cui nati sunt.” 4 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 23, pr. “Cum satis inhumanum est terram... suis membris defraudari.” . 313] THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 313 break the bonds which attached the coloni to the soil. ‘“The coloni must never be disturbed in their tenure by the tax- collectors by reason of any arrears in taxes,’”’ ordered Hono- rius and Theodosius II, “ because they are so closely bound to the soil that they may not be detached even for a single moment” * Nor was the Treasury allowed to levy addi- tional taxes against the peasants while they were engaged in planting or harvesting the crops; ‘“ for,” said Constantine, “the occasion favorable to finishing this important work must not be permitted to be lost.” * At about the same time that free tenants were bound to the soil, laws were passed depriving landholders of the right to sell agricultural slaves from the land or to sell the land without the slaves who had been accustomed to work it.® This was utterly contrary to the old Roman law of slavery which gave the master almost complete control over his slaves. But in the face of the great menace of ever- increasing stretches of barren and deserted land old rights and privileges had to go by the board. ‘Everyone is forced by the pressure of inexorable laws to submit his own for- tune that the public interest may not suffer,” said Theodo- sius II in a rescript of 440.* The land must be cultivated for sufficient food products must be raised to feed the population of the Empire and to support the army and the official bureaucracy, whose maintenance was necessary to prevent the breaking of the bonds which held the Empire together. 1 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 15. “‘Colonos numquam fiscalium nomine debitorum ullius exactoris pulset intentio: quos ita glebis inhaerere praecipimus, ut ne puncto quidem temporis debeant amoveri.” 2 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 1. “...cum providentiae sit opportuno tempore his necessitatibus satisfacere.” 3 Cod. Just., xi, 48, 7; xii, 35, I0. 4Cod. Just., x, 71, 4. “...pro definitione legum inexorabilium suam fortunam subire compelli, quatenus nec publicis quicquam noceatur.” 314 THE ROMAN COLONATE [314 The legal attachment of the coloni to the soil brought with it considerable advantages both in respect to the ad- ministration of recruiting and of taxation. In fact many writers have maintained that these advantages were suffi- cient in themselves to account for the colonate legislation. Where the coloni were bound to the soil it was much easier to allocate justly the number of recruits to be drafted from each district than in the case of a roving peasant class. Similarly, the poll tax (capitatio humana) could be col- lected with much greater ease where the residence of the colonus was fixed and unchangeable; and since the propri- etor of an estate was made responsible for the poll tax of his tenants it would have been extremely difficult to admin- ister the tax if the coloni had been allowed to desert their holdings in large numbers." Even more advantageous was adscription of the coloni in the case of the land tax (jugatio terrena). ‘The evaluation of the land upon which the land tax was based was made probably every five years.* During the five-year periods the cadastre remained practically uni- form, although in case of some disaster such as an earth- quake or drought deductions were allowed,® while an in- crease in the value of the estate through birth of slaves or live stock within the assessment period also was to be de- clared.* The decuriones were responsible for the land tax within their districts, and in case it fell short of the as- sessed amount they were compelled to make up the deficit from their own private resources. Consequently, the suc- 1 Cf. Fustel de Coulanges, Recherches, pp. 80-86, 89-91. 2 Cf. Seeck, in Deutsche-Z. f. Geschichtswissensch., vol. xii (1894), pp. 279 et seq., and in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encycl., vol. iv, p. 497. The older belief was in a fifteen-year census period. Cf. Savigny, V ermischte Schriften, vol. ii, pp. 126-134; Humbert, Essai sur les finances chez les Romains, vol. ii, pp. 348-340. Pe Beye PANN) CAP i * Dig. L, 18, 4, 9. 315] THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 315 cessful administration of the tax depended upon the main- tenance of agriculture in each district. Desertion of the land by the coloni on a large scale or the abandonment of cultivation by proprietors would have resulted in serious loss if not ruin to the decuriones, and probably the break- down of the whole system of delegated responsibility for taxation. The passage of the laws binding the coloni for- ever to their estates and forcing the large landholders to keep barren tracts of land in cultivation enabled this rigid system of tax administration to subsist a while longer, even though it did occasionally crush the decuriones in regions where the whole force of the administration was not able to keep the land in cultivation. But these advantages of the adscription of the coloni and of the émPodr}) legislation were merely incidental. Deser- tion of the fields meant far more to the Empire than an embarrassment to a rather clumsy and inflexible system of tax administration. It meant that the source itself of the principal tax of the realm was wasting away, so that unless it were arrested, no tax administration, however efficient, could obtain sufficient revenue to maintain the imperial government. Still more important, it meant that the sur- plus of agricultural products above the mere necessities of subsistence of the peasants would soon be so small that it could not support a metropolitan or imperial economy. All civilization depends upon the surplus of product over cost. From the time of the early Republic Rome had de- veloped a military and administrative organization which had proved supremely successful in the work of conquest and exploitation of the conquered land. But as Rome ex- tended her dominion it was necessary continually to increase the size of the military and administrative organization which gathered in the fruits of victory, while the success of the legions provided untold wealth and luxury for the great, 316 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY [316 and bread and circuses for the rabble. The result was that although the surplus furnished by the productive classes of the Empire was very considerable the requirements of the administration and of the parasitic classes were so great that the productive capacity of the Empire was always taxed to the limit. The time eventually came when the returns from agri- culture, the most vital form of production, began to de- cline. The soil which had responded so long with bountiful harvests began to show the results of the heavy tribute which did not permit the conservation of the elements of fertility, As long as the decline of the productivity of the soil was merely local it could be met by securing a part of the surplus from other districts. But by the fourth century the decadence of agriculture had become so widespread that it threatened the great imperial economy itself which Rome had constructed. To arrest this decline, to induce the cul- tivation of the fields by encouragement or by force, to pre- vent the exhausted soil from turning into a barren desert or a malarial marsh was the essential object of the emphy- teutic and émBody legislation; and it was precisely the same | cause which led to the adscription of the tenantry to the soil in the perpetual bonds of the colonate. At approximately the same time, as writers from the time of Carl Hegel have pointed out,’ the industrial classes were similarly bound to their collegia. The decline in the yield of the land tax had compelled the government to recoup itself by levying heavier taxes on industry. The attempt of the industrial classes to escape their new obligations led the administration to take the same restrictive measures against them that it had against the peasantry.” The exhaustion of the soil in so 1 Cf. supra, pp. 53-54, 55, 96, 102, 110, 132, 136, 183. *Cf. Brown “ State Control of Industry in the Fourth Century,” Pol. 317 | THE ADSCRIPTION TO THE SOIL 217 many districts of the Empire was proving a fatal malady which affected the whole body politic. The legislation of the Codes was so drastic because a desperate situation was to be met; and this legislation was effective in keeping an agricultural population and somehow maintaining agricul- tural production. Sct. 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Guizot, Francois, Cours d’histoire moderne (Paris, 1829-1830), vol. iv, PP. 230-251. Hartmann, L. M., “Uber den rémischen Colonat und seinem Zusam- menhang mit dem Militardienste” in Archaeologisch-epigraphische Miithetlungen aus Oesterretch-Ungarn, vol. xvii (1894), pp. 125-134. Hegel, Carl, Geschichte der Stadteverfassung von Italien (Leipzig, 1847) vol. i, pp. 84-88. Heisterbergk, Bernhard, Die Entstehung des Colonats (Leipzig, 1876). Heitland, W. E., Agricola (Cambridge, 1921). Humbert, G., Essai sur les finances et la comptabilité publique chez les Romains (Paris, 1886), vol. i, pp. 314-369; vol. ii, pp. 256-265, 337-365. Articles “Colonus” and “Census,” in Daremberg and Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines, vol. i, pp. 1322- 1325, 1003-1010. Huntington, Ellsworth, The Pulse of Asia (Boston, 1907), pp. 359-385. “ Climatic Change and Agricultural Exhaustion as Elements in the Fall of Rome,” in Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. xxxi (1917), Pp. 173-208. 320 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY [320 Huschke, G. P. E., Ueber den Census und die Steuerverfassung der friihern rémischen Kaiserzeit (Berlin, 1847), pp. 145-175. Ingram, J. K., A history of Slavery and Serfdom (London, 1895), pp. 13-85. Jung, Julius, “Zur Wirdigung der agrarischen Verhaltnisse in der romischen Kaiserzeit,” in Historische Zeitschrift, vol. xlii (1879), pp. 43-76. Karlowa, Otto, Rémische Rechtsgeschichte (Leipzig, 1885), pp. 918-920. Kuhn, Emil, Die stadtische und biirgerliche Verfassung des romischen Reichs (Leipzig, 1864), vol. i, pp. 257-270. Laboulaye, Edouard, Histoire du droit de propriété fonciére en occident (Paris, 1839), pp. 67-122. Laferriére, M. F., Histoire du droit civil de Rome et du droit francais (Paris, 1846), vol. ii, pp. 434-447. Leclerq, Henri, article “ Colonat,” in Cabrol and Leclerq’s Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie (Paris, 1914), vol. iii, pp. 2235-22606. Leonhard, R., article “ Emphyteusis,” in Pauly-Wissowa’s Real- Encyclopadie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, vol. v, pp. 2513-2516. Léotard, E., Essai sur la condition des barbares établis dans Vempire romain au quatriéme siécle (Paris, 1873), pp. 34-64, 103-128. Levasseur, E., Histoire des classes ouvriéres et de Vindustrie en France avant 1789, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1900), vol. i, pp. 38-53, 83-00, 123-129. Liebig, Justus von, Die Chemie in ihrer Anwendung auf Agricultur und Physiologie, 7th ed. (Brunswick, 1862), vol. i, pp. 93-107. Maine, Sir Henry S., Ancient Law, 4th American Edition (New York, 1906), pp. 275-203. Marquardt, Joachim, Rdmische Staatsverwaltung (Leipzig, 1876), vol. ii, pp. 232-236. Mayence, F., “Le colonat dans l’Egypte romaine,” in Le musée belge, vol. vi (1902), pp. 88-93. Meyer, Paul M., “Aus agyptischen Urkunden,” in Philologus, vol. lvi (1897), pp. 193-200. “Zum Ursprung des Kolonats,” in Beitrage zur alten Geschichte, vol. i (1901), pp. 424-426. Mispoulet, J. B., “L’Inscription d’Ain Ouassel,”’ in Nouvelle revue historique de droit francais et étranger, vol. xvi (1892), pp. 117-124. “L’Inscription d’Ain-el-Djemala,” in Nouvelle revue historique de droit francais et étranger, vol. xxxi (1907), pp. 1-48. Mitteis, L., dus den griechischen Papyrusurkunden (Leipzig, 1900), PP. 31-33. Mommsen, Theodor, “ Decret des Commodus fiir den Saltus Burunitanus,” in Hermes, vol. xv (1880), pp. 385-411, 478-480. 321] SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 321 Monnier, H., “ Etudes de droit byzantin. L’ ENIIBOAH’,” in Nouvelle revue historique de droit francais et étranger, vol. xvi (1892), pp. 125- 164, 330-352. Oliver, E. H., Roman Economic Conditions to the Close of the Republic (Toronto, 1907). Pelham, H. F., “The Imperial Domains and the Colonate,” and “Pascua,” in Essays on Roman History (Oxford, 1911), pp. 275- 290, 300-3IT. Pernot, Maurice, “L’Inscription d’Henchir Mettich,” in Mélanges d’archéologie et d'histoire, vol. xxi (1901), pp. 67-95. Puchta, G. F., Cursus der Institutionen, 1oth ed. (Leipzig, 1893), vol. ii, PP. 97-99. Ramsay, W. M., The Historical Geography of Asia Minor (London, 1890), pp. 23-26, 173-176. The Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia (Oxford, 1895), vol. i, pp. 280-286. Studies in the History and Art of the Eastern Provinces of the Roman Empire (Aberdeen, 1906), pp. 307-308, 356-359. Rérolle, Lucién, Le colonage partiaire (Lyons, 1888), pp. 23-41, 54-59, 76-83. Revillout, Charles, “ Etude sur l’histoire du colonat chez les Romains,” in Revue historique de droit francais et étranger, vol. ii (1856), pp. 417-460; vol. iii (1857), pp. 209-246. Rodbertus, “ Zur Geschichte der agrarischen Entwickelung Roms unter den Kaisern oder die Adscriptitier, Inquilinen, und Colonen,” in Hildebrand’s Jahrbiicher fiir Nationalokonomie und Statisttk, vol. ii (1864), pp. 206-268. Rostovtzeff (Rostowzew), M., “ Die kaiserliche Patrimonialverwaltung in Aegypten,” in Philologus, lvii (1898), pp. 564-577. “Der Ursprung des Kolonats,” in Beitrage zur alten Geschichte, vol. i, pp. 295-299. Article “ Kolonat,” in Conrad’s Handworterbuch der Staatswissen- schaften, vol. v, pp. 913-921. “ Studien zur Geschichte des r6mischen Kolonates,” in Archiv fur Papyrusforschung und verwandte Gebiete, Beiheft i (Leipzig, 1910). “The Foundations of Social and Economic Life in Egypt in Hellenistic Times,” in Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, vol. vi (1920), pp. 161-178. “A Large Estate in Egypt in the Third Century B. C,,” in University of Wisconsin Studies in Social Sciences and History, no. 6 (Madison, 1922). Rudorff, A., “Das Edict des Tiberius Julius Alexander,” in Rheinische Museum fiir Philologie, vol. ii (1828), pp. 178-180 et passim. Savigny, F. C. von, “ Ueber den Romischen Colonat,” in Vermischte Schriften (Berlin, 1850), vol. ii, pp. 1-66. 322 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY [322 Schulten, Adolf, “Die Lex Hadriana de rudibus agris,” in Hermes, vol. xxix (1894), pp. 204-230. Die romischen Grundherrschaften (Weimar, 1896). “Der rémische Kolonat,” in Historische Zeitschrift, vol. Ixxviii (1897), pp. I-17. “Die Lex Manciana, eine africanische Domanenordnung,”’ in Abhandlungen der koniglichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschafien zu Gottingen, Philologisch-historische Klasse, Neue Folge, vol. ii (1897), PP. 17-47. | “ Die ‘Lex Hadriana de rudibus agris’ nach einer neuen Inschrift,” in Klio, vol. vii (1907), pp. 188-212. Schultz, C. L. F., Grundlegung zu einer geschichtlichen Staatswissen- schaft der Romer (Cologne, 1833), pp. 339-353, 445-452. Seebohm, Frederic, The English Village Community, 4th ed. (London, 1905), pp. 252-335. Seeck, Otto, ‘ Die Pachtbestimmungen eines rOmischen Gutes in Afrika,” in Zeitschrift fiir Social- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte, vol. vi (1808), Pp. 305-368. Articles “Colonatus” and ‘é7:80A7,” in Pauly-Wissowa’s Real- Encyclopadie der classischen Aliertumswissenschaft, vol. iv, pp. 483- 510; vol. vi, pp. 30-33. . Serrigny, D., Droit public et administratif romain (Paris, 1862), vol. ii, pp. 386-426. Simkhovitch, V. G., “ Rome’s Fall Reconsidered,” in Political Science Quarterly, vol. xxxi (1916), pp. 201-243. Terrat, Barthélemy, Du colonat en droit romain (Versailles, 1872). Thouvenot, R., “ Salvien et la ruine de l’empire romain,” in Mélanges d@archéologie et dhistoire, vol. xxxviii (1920), pp. 145-163. Toutain, J., “L’Inscription d’Henchir Mettich,” in Nouvelle revue his- torique de droit francais et étranger, vol. xxi (1807), pp. 373-415, and Mémoires ad lacadémie des inscriptions et belles-letires, vol. xi (1901), pt. i, pp. 31-81. “Nouvelles observations sur l’inscription d’Henchir Mettich,” in Nouvelle revue historique de droit francais et étranger, vol. xxiii (1899), pp. 137-169, 284-342, 401-414. ) Usher, A. P., “Soil Fertility, Soil Exhaustion, and their Historical Significance,” in Quarterly Journal of Economics, vol. xxxvii (1923), pp. 385-411. Vinogradoff, Sir Paul, The Growth of the Manor (London, 1905), pp. 45-83, 106-113. Wallon, H. A., Histoire de Vesclavage dans Vantiquité (Paris, 1847), vol. ii, pp. 333-446; vol. iii, pp. 268-313 et passim. Weber, Max, Die romische Agrargeschichte (Stuttgart, 1891), pp. 195-281. Westermann, W. L., “The Economic Basis of the Decline of Ancient Culture,” in American Historical Review, vol. xx (1915), pp. 723-743. ee Pe 323} SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 323 Zumpt, A. W., “ Ueber der Entstehung und historische Entwickelung des Colonats,” in Rheinisches Museum fiir Philologte, Neue Folge, vol. iii (1845), pp. 1-60. I was unable to obtain copies of the following works: Blanc, F., Essai historique sur le colonat en Gaule (Blois, 1866). Bois, G., Du colonat en droit romain, 1883. Camescasse, Du colonat dans les codes théodosien et tect (Paris, 1861). Campana, H., Etude historique et juridique sur le colonat et le servage Peer dence 1883). Gummerus, Die Frohnden der Kolonen (Helsingfors, 1906). Petitbien, Essai sur le colonat. INDEX —_—— Adscripticiate, slave, 102, 109, 115,”.2. See Slaves, attached to the soil Adscriptici, slave, 102, 109-110, 156- 157. See Slaves, attached to the Soi Adscripticuit, synonym of coloni, 17,0.2, 25, 159 ar het He ate inscription of, 179- 182 Ain Quassel, inscription of, 180-183 Ain Zaga, inscription of, 142, 199 Africa, coloni of, see Coloni, Afri- can; cultivation of waste lands in, 175; decline of population in, 191-192; dense population of, 124; desertion of the soil in, 174, 181- 182, 192, 295; development of the colonate in, 138-150, 154-155, 160-161, 163-165, 171-192, 198- 199, 219-222, 287-206; effect of Roman conquest on, 126, 219-222; exhaustion of the soil in, 294- 298; fertility of, 124, 131; grain tribute of, 124; latifundia of, 119, 256, 260 Ager publicus, cultivation of, 238- 240; distribution of during the Republic, 253-255; granted to Ligurians, 88, 248; patricians’ tenure of, 49, 67, 239-240, 254- 255; rents and taxes of, 120, 255 Agrarian legislation, in Italy, 253- 255 SR Sita see Exhaustion of the soi Agri deserti, 5, 41, 44, 51, 80, 93- 94, 96, III, 116, 118, 127, 130, 135, 247-248, 250, 252-253, 304- 312; in Africa, 174, 181-182, 192, 295; in Egypt, 215-216, 302-303 Ahenobarbus, Domitius, coloni of, 51-52, 60, 153, 169, 222, 259, 265 Alfenus, 108 Allius Maximus, conductor of the saltus Burumitanus, 140, 201 325] Ammianus, 77 Appian, 254 Arable land, conversion to pasture in Italy, 247-249 Arnold, W. T., theory of the colon- ate of, 137,11. I Asia Minor, debtor tenants in, 45, 152; development of the colonate in, 165- 166, 202-203, 206-208, 217- 219, 286-287 : effect of Roman conquest on, 218-219, 285-287; imperial domains of, 165, 203; land tenure in, 217-219; share- rent tenures in, 187 Athenaeus, 71-72 Augustus, ‘barbarian settlements of, 59, 87; census of, 61, 75, 140; land grants to ‘veterans, 46; manumission law of, 66, 266; re- organization of the Egyptian ir- rigation system, 300- 301; treat- ment of Egypt, 299 Aurelian, barbarian settlements of, 47, 79, 83 Bagaudes, rebellion of, 56-67 Bail, 153. See Cautio Barbarian settlements, of Augustus, 59, 87; of Aurelian, 47, 79, 83; of Claudius II, 42, 47, 58, 70, 83-84; of Constantine, 42, 47. 58, TT OF Constantius I, 42, 47, 48, 58, 79-80; of Constantius ik 47, 58, 77; of Diocletian, 47, 58, 79, 80, 82; of Gratian, 47, 58, 77; of MHonorius, 47, 58, 76; of Julian, 77-78; of Marcus Aure- lius, 47, 79, 84-86, 93, 103; of Maximian, 47, 58, 790, 80, 82; of Nero, 50, 87; of Probus, 47, 48, 58, 70, 82-83; of the Republic, 60, 88-89; of Theodosius II, 47, 58, 76; of Tiberius, 87; of Valen- tinian I, 47, 77; of Valentinian II, 58 325 326 Beaudouin, E., on the inscription of Henchir Mettich, 176-177; theory of the colonate of, 180- 190 Beggars, entrance into the colon- ate, 29, 40, II2 Bolkestein, H., theory of the colon- ate of, 201,”.2 Caesar, Julius, 39, 51, 60, 68-60, 116, 152, 241, 258; allotments of land, 46, 246, 255; treatment of coloni of Asia Minor, 286; treatment of Egypt, 299 Callistratus, 284 Capitatio humana, 25-26, 110, 159- 160, 314 Capitolinus, Julius, 84, 125 Caput, tax unit, 110-111, 158, 194 Caracalla, Edict of, 122,n.3, 127 Carcopinio, J., theory of the colon- ate of, 184 Carton, L. B. C., theory of the colonate of, 183-184 Cassius, Spurius, attempt at agra- rian reform, 253 Catiline, coloni of, 60, 153, 160, 187, 222, 250, 265 Cato the Elder, 105, 243, 244, 246- 247, 248, 240, 251 Catoecic land, in Egypt, 203-205 Cautio, 153, 162, 276-277, 278 Censibus adscripti, synonym of coloni, 17,n.3, 25, 159 Censitt, synonym of coloni, 17,n.3, 25, 159 Census, of Augustus, 61, 75, 140; registration of coloni in, 58, ror, IIO-I1I, 157, 158-150, 163, 270, 5 Nn. Cicero, 249, 256, 259-260, 267 Cincius, 258 Claudian, 298 Claudius II, barbarian settlements of, 42, 47, 58, 79, 83-84 Claudius, Appius, attempt at agra- rian reform, 253 Clients, Gallic, see Early servile tenures Clients, of Pompey, 259 Clients, Roman, see Early servile tenures Collegia, 30, 53, 55, 95-96, 316 Colonate, development of, in Africa, 138-150, 154-155, 160-161, 163- INDEX ee AE AS [326 165, I7I-192, 198-199, 219-222, 287-296; in Asia Minor, 165-166, — 202-203, 206-208, 217-219, 285- 287; in Egypt, 35-37, 203-206, 208-216, 287, 301-303; in Italy, 31, 39-41, 50-52, 59-60, 67, 105- II2, 127, I51-154, 166-167, 186- 187, I90-IQI, 222-223, 232-233, 258-279; in Sicily, 216-217, 285- Colonate, theories of origin, of Arnold, 137,n.1; of Beaudouin, 189-190; of Bolkestein, 201,7.2; of Carcopino, 184; of Carton, 183-184; of Cujacius, 31; criti- cism of, 32, 67; of Cunningham, 160,n.5; of Cugq, 184-185; of Dureau de la Malle, 42; criti- cism of, 70-74; of Esmein, 144- 149, 160; criticism of, 149-150; of Frank, 235,7.3; of Fustel de Coulanges, 150-160; criticism of, 161-163; of Garsonnet, 132-133; criticism of, 136; of Giraud, 50- 52, 63; criticism of, 61, 70-74; — of Glasson, 160-162; criticism of, 162-163; of Gothofredus, 31-32; criticism of, 32; of Guizot, 38- 39; criticism of, 54, 68-70; of Hartmann, 201,”.2; of Hegel, 53-54; criticism of, 136; of Heisterbergk, 103, 115-128; criti- cism of, 128-131; of Heitland, — 231-234; criticism of, 234-235; of Huschke, 57-61; criticism of, 61, 75-91; of Kuhn, 132; criti- cism of, 136; of Laboulaye, 41- 42; of Laferriére, 49-50, 63, 64; criticism of, 65, 67; of Leclercq, 160,.5; of Marquardt, 137,n.1; of Meyer, 203-204, 208-200; criticism of, 204-205; of Mis- poulet, 183; of Mitteis, 205-206; of Mommsen, 143-144, 201,n.2; of Pelham, 164-168; criticism of, 168-170; of Puchta, 43-44, 65-66; criticism of, 46, 61, 66; of Rérolle, 160; of Revillout, 92-06; criticism of, 96-98, 134-135; of Rodbertus, 103-112; criticism of, 112-118, 124, 128, 130, 143-144; of Rostovtzeff, 206-208, 200-225 ; criticism of, 226-231; of Rudorff, 35-37; criticism of, 37, 67-68; of Savigny, 32-34, 37-38, 61-62, SOAR! A AP OLON, ~ ~nn ohn OD. 327 | Coloni, 63, 65; criticism of, 39-40, 63-64; of Schulten, 185-189; of Schultz, 39-41 ; criticism of, 67; of Seeck, 190-194; criticism of, 194-197; of Serrigny, 98-102; criticism of, 102-103, 136; of Simkhovitch, 5-7, 235; of Terrat, 137,n.1; of Vinogradoff, 197-200; criticism of, 200-201; of Wallon, 53, 54- 57; criticism of, 133-135; of Wenck, 35; criticism of, 37-38; of Willems, 160; of Zumpt, 44- 49; criticism of, 75-91 Colonate, theories of origin, admin- istrative pressure, 53-54, 55-57, QI, 92-134, 137,n.1, 148-149, 157- 160, 164-168, 185, 189, 104, 224- 225, 234; criticism of, 134-136, 162-163; barbarian settlements, 31-32, 35, 41-42, 46-49, 52, 57-60, 100, 102, 133, 137,n.1, 144, 156, 193-194; criticism of, 39-40, 74- 91; conscription for military ser- vice, 133, 201,”.2, 314; exhaus- tion of the soil, 5-7, 13, 235, 236- 317; gradual depression of status, 150-160, 183-184, 186-180, 190- 194, 232-234; criticism of, 162- 163; immobilization of status, 53-55, 96, 102, 110, 132, 136, 183, STG criticism of, 136; influence of Christianity, 57; criticism of, 134; influence of the East, 187, 202-225; criticism of, 226-230; latifundia, 145-140, 154-155, 160- 161, 164-168; criticism of, 169- 170; limited manumission of slaves, 33-34, 43-44; criticism of, 65-66: maintenance of agricul- ture, 52, I00, 102, 132-133, 188, 197-200, 233-234; previous ser- vile tenures, II, 31, 36-37, 38-41, 42, 49-52, 59-61, 101, 132. 103; criticism of, II, 32-33, 66-74; taxation, 53-55, 57, 93-96, I10- EIT, 126-128, 159-160, 185, 186, 194, 224-225, 314-315; criticism of, II-I2, 134-135, 162-163, 315; voluntary enlistment of freemen, 33-34, 50-51, 63-65, 100; criticism of, 64-65, 102-103 African, compared to Egyptian yewpyoi, 228-220; ex- emptions from rent of, 173, 182, 198; desertion of holdings, 174, INDEX 327 Coloni, serf-, hod 181-182, 192, 295; held no lease, 155, 288; hereditary rights of, 175-176, 181, 183, 204; humble condition of, 147-148, 288; per- manent tenure of, 148, 155, 287- 288; not bound to the soil, 143, 149-150, 174; share rent of, 139, 155, 172, 182; services of, 139, 143, 148, 174-175, 198, 201 Coloni, tenant-, abatements of rent of, 152, 264, 268-269; arrears in rent of, 152-153, 186, 267-273; 311; change from money rent to rents in kind, 152-153, 187, 273- 275; compared to serf-coloni, 5, 9-10, 30, 264-265; dependent condition of, 153-154, 186-187, 265-267, 272-276; free to leave at end of lease, 93, 114, 151, 189, 262, 264, 276-277 : illegal reten- tion of, 278; improvements of, 264, 292-203 ; increase in numbers in late Republic, 258-261; in early Rome, 238-241; in the pro- vinces, I2I-122; lease cf, 114, 262-264; money rent of, 114, 151, 262-263, 268; obligations of, 263- 264; payments in kind, 274; registration in the census, 58, IOI, 157, 158-159, 163, 196, 270,n.5; renewal of leases, 262, 279; rights of, 264, 278; share rent of, 152, 161, 187, 263, 273; services of, 275.5, 276; ten- dency toward long tenures, 186, 277-279, 281-284 i as priests, 19; as soldiers, 19, 26-27; attached to the soil, 17-18, 21-22, 312-313; compared to Egyptian yewpyoi, 230; compared to slaves, 19-22; compared to tenant-coloni, 5, 9- 10, 30, 264-265; could not be disattached by proprietor, 23, 312; nor ‘Treasury, 312-313; emancipation of, 20-30; entrance into condition, 28-20, 34; flight of, 21-23; legal status of, 18; marriage of, 19, 27-28; prop- erty of, 20; punishment of, 21; rent of, 23-24; rights of, 19-21; security of tenure, 23; services of, 10, 24-26; taxes of, 20, 25-26 Colom Caesaris, 58, 146-148, 165- 168, 281-284; liberi, 51, 98-100, 328 102, III-112; partiari, 152-153, 155, 161-162, 187, 263, 273 Colonus, as a colonist, 238; as a peasant proprietor, 236-237 ; deri- vation of word, 236 Columella, 6, 40, 41, 51, 52, 59, 97, 105-106, 109, I14, 118, 119, 121, 122, 129, 131, 138, 145, 152, 243, 252, 256, 260, 268, 272, 274, 275, 27 Commodus, grants petition of Afri- can coloni, 141-143 Conductores, of Africa compared to coloni, 139, 147-148; compared to xdrotkot, 203-205; encroach- ments on rights of coloni, 140, 191, 295-296; identified with domint by Schulten, 177-178; short-term lease of, 141, 148 Conductores, of Asia Minor, 203 Conductores, of Italy, 151, 262 Constantine, barbarian settlements of, 42, 47, 58, 77, 78; rescript Of. 332 AD Dita WIste ae reforms of, 94 Constantius I, barbarian settle- ments of, 42, 47, 48, 58, 79-80 Constantius II, barbarian settle- ments of, 47, 58, 77 Constitutio de Scyris, 6, 18-19, 48, 57-58, 309; text, 34-35 Corporations, see ’Collegia Cujacius, theory of the colonate of, 31; criticism of, 32, 67 Cuq, E., on the inscription of Hen- chir Mettich, 178-179; theory of the colonate of, 184-185 Curtales, see Decuriones Cunningham, W., theory of the colonate of, 160,”.5 165, Dacia, barbarians settled in, 47, 85 Daughters of Aphrodite, see Early servile tenures, hierodules Debt, effect on condition of ten- antry, 153, 274-277 Debtor tenants, Asian, 45, 152; Egyptian, 45, 152, 215, 302; Gallic, 69, 152; Illyrian, 45, 152; Italian, 45, 152, 153, 186, 267-273 Decaprotes, 93-94. See Decuriones Decuriones, attached to curia, 53, 95-96; burden of é7¢fo0A7) on, 310- 311; responsibility for taxes, 53- 54, 134, 194, 314-315 INDEX [328 Dedititu, see Barbarian settlements Demosthenes, 71 Desertion of the soil, see Agri desertt Dio Cassius, 85, 86, 299 Diocletian, barbarian settlements of, 47, 58, 79, 80, 82; tax reforms of, IIO-I1I, 127, 133, 134, 157-158, 194 Diodorus, 36, 68 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 71,. 236, 253 Dureau de la Malle, theory of the colonate of, 42; criticism of, 70-74 Early servile tenures, clients, Gallic, 49-50, 68-70; clients, Roman, 33, 40-41, 40, 60, 65, 67, 266 ; yewpyol, dypdotot, 36-37, 42, 59, 67-68, 146, 213-215, 287; hie- rodules, 42, 70, 218; Latin Juniani, 101, 103, 266; libertini dedititu, 100-101, 103, 266; lites, German, 193- 195; next, 50, 60, 122; obaerati, 45, 60; operarn, 31, 36, 67; peregrini, 40-41; serfs, German, 33, 38-39, 40, 274, 275; serfs, Greek, 42, 51, 60, 70-74, 218; tribesmen, Gallic, 39, 60, 68- 70 Edictum perpetuum, 149, 150,n.3 Egypt, condition of peasantry ac- cording to Rudorff, 35-37; debtor tenants in, 45, 152, 215, 302; de- cline of agriculture in, 302-303; desertion of the soil in, 302-303; development of the colonate in, 35-37, 203-206, 208-216, 287, 30I- 303; effect of Roman conquest on, 126, 212-213, 285, 287, 300- 303; fertility of, 124, 131, 298- 302; land tenure in, 187, 192, 203- 205, 210-211, 213 Emphyteusis, 58, 132-133, 136, 188, 198-200, 211, 213, 218, 224, 231, 301, 307-300, 311, 316 éviPoah, 200, 211, 213, 215, 221, 224, 231, 301, 302, 309-311, 316 Ergastula, 107, 110, 243, 256 Esmein, A., theory of the colonate of, 144-1490, 160; criticism of, 149-150 Eumenius, 48, 79-80, 82 Eusebius, 78 329 | Exhaustion of the soil, in Africa, 294-296, 208; in Gaul, 298; in Greece, 297; in Italy, 6-7, 130- 131, 243-253, 271-272, 280-281; in the Roman Empire, 308-313, 315- 317; in Spain, 298 Familia rustica, 43, 44, 107, 265 Familia urbana, 43 Fertility, of Africa, 124, 131; of Egypt, 124, 131, 298-302; of Italy, 245; of Spain, 124, I3I. See Exhaustion of the soil Frank, Tenney, theory of the colonate of, 235,n.3. Freedmen, 40, 60, 107, 265-267 Frontinus, 59, 124-125, 128, 138, 289 Fundus Villae Magnae Variam, 171-172, 174-179, 290 Fustel de Coulanges, N. D., theory of the colonate of, 150-160; criti- cism of, 161-163 100-102, Gaius, 66, 161, 263, 264, 279 Gallic tribesmen, see Early servile tenures Garsonnet, E., theory of the colon- ate of, 132-133 Gaul, barbarian settlements in, 87; condition of peasantry, 30, 68-70; debtor tenants of, 69, 152; effect of Roman conquest on, 126; ex- haustion of the soil in, 298 Gazr-Mezuar, inscription of, 142- 143, 150, 199, 290, 291 Germany, barbarians settled in, 47, 85; subject tenantry of, 33, 38-39, 40, 274, 275 yewpyot, BaotAikoi, 211-212 yewpyot, dnpdorot, compared to A fri- can coloni, 228-229; compared to serf-coloni, 230. See Early ser- vile tenures yewpyot KAgpov KaTOLKLKOV, 203-204 Giraud, C., theory of the colonate of, 50-52, 63; criticism of, 61, 70-74 Glasson, E., theory of the colonate of, 160-162; criticism of, 162-163 Gothofredus, J., theory of the colonate of, 31-32; criticism of, 32 Gracchi, agrarian reforms of, 46, 246, 248, 254-255 INDEX 329 | Grain, scarcity of, 6, 35, 49, 233- 234, 245, 206, 302, 304, 309; Sicilian, effect on Italian agricul- ture, 246 Gratian, barbarian settlements of, 47, 58, 77 nA, Greece, decline of population in, 192; exhaustion of the soil in, 297; influence on Roman agra- rian development, 51 Greek serfs, see Early servile tenures Gsell, S., on usus proprius, 175 Guizot, F., theory of the colonate of, 38-39; criticism of, 54, 68-70 Hadrian, efforts to develop a state peasantry, 166, 168, 183, 281-282 Hartmann, L. M., theory of the colonate of, 201,n.2 Hegel, C., theory of the colonate of, 53-54; criticism of, 136 Heisterbergk, B., theory of the colonate of, 103, 115-128; criti- cism of, 128-131 Heitland, W. E., on services of tenant-coloni, 276; theory of the colonate of, 231-234; criticism of, 234-235 Hellenistic influences on Roman agrarian policy, 208, 210, 212- 213, 216-217, 220-230 Helots, of Sparta, see Early ser- vile tenures, Greek serfs Henchir Mettich, inscription of, 171-179, 184, 290 Henchir Salah, ccnintion of, 290 Herodian, 124 Herodotus, 36, 68 © Early Hierodules, see servile tenures Honorius, barbarian settlements of, 47, 58, 76 Horace, 250, 258 Huschke, G. P. E., theory of the colonate of, 57-61; criticism of, 61, 75-91 iia, 208-200, 212-217, 219, 222, 225, 229-230, 287, 302 Illyria, debtor tenants of, 45, 152; effect of Roman conquest on, 126 Inquilini, attached to the soil, 193, 195-196, 233; bequest of, 31, 58, IOI, 100, 188, 195, 279,7.5 ; de- 339 claration in census, 58, 101, 163, 196, 270,n.5; identified with ded:- tit, 193-196; meaning of term, 17,n.3, 31, 195-196 Imperial domains, coloni of, 58, 146-148, 165-168, 281-284; ex- tent of, 164; in Italy, 166, 160, 281-283; leases of, 305-307; re- organization of, by Vespasian, Trajan, and Hadrian, 166-167, 281-283; unity of management of, 165 Italy, agrarian development during the Republic, 236-261; agrarian legislation in, 253-255; barbarian settlements in, 47, 77, 83, 85, 88- 89; debtor tenants in, 45, 152- 153, 186, 267-273; decline in grain production of, 105-106, 245, 246- 247; decline in population of, 46, 116-117, 130, 191; development of the colonate in, 31, 30-41, 50-52, 59-60, 67, 105-112, 127, 151-154, 166-167, 186-187, 190-191, 222- 223, 232-233, 258-279; fertility of, 245; exhaustion of the soil in, 6-7, 130-131, 243-253, 271-272, 280-281; imperial domains of, 166, 160, 281-283; latifundia of, 5I, 90, 105, 107, 118-121, 130, 240-241, 253-256; slavery in, see Slavery Josephus, 124 Jugatio terrena, 110, 314 Jugum, tax unit, II0-III, 194 Mapas barbarian settlements of, 77- 7 Junian Latins, see Latint Juniani Jus emphyteuticum, 307. See Em- phyteusis Jus perpetuum, 306 Jus privatum salvo canone, 306-307 xdroxot, compared to African con- ductores, 203-205 KTATOPEC, 215 Kuhn, E., theory of the colonate of, 12: criticism of, 136 Laboulaye, E., theory of the colo- nate of, 41-42 Laeti, identified with lites, 193-195 Laferriére, ME Ey theory of the INDEX [330 colonate of, 49-50, 63, 64; criti- cism of, 65, 67 Land, deserted, waste, see Agri desertt Laodice inscription, 206, 217-218 Aaoi, in Asia Minor 206, 208, 217- 210 Lotifundin cultivation of, 51, 105, 107, I18-I19, 244; great size of, 118-119; in Italy, 51, 90, 105, 107, 118-121, 130, 240-241, 253-256; in the provinces, I19, I120-I2I, 129- 130, 256, 260; taxation of, 157-158 Latin Juniam, see Early servile tenures Leases, forced, in Egypt, 211; of imperial domains, 305-307; of tenant-coloni 114, 262-264 Leclercq, H., theory of the colonate of, 160,7.5 Lex Aelia Sentia, 266 Lex a majoribus constituta, expla- nation of Fustel de Coulanges, 151; identified with the census of Augustus, 61, 149; with the Edictum perpetwum, 149, 150,n.3; with idia, 225; with the Jex Had- riana, 148-150 Lex Hadriana, as the law establish- ing the colonate, 149-150; com- pared to the lex Manciana, 203- 294; identified with the Edictwm perpetuum, 149, 150,7.3; with the lex a majoribus constituta, 148- 150; influence on the development of the colonate, 183-184, 185; Hellenistic influences on, 220, 228; regulations on hereditary tenures, 181, 183, 188, 180, 104; on operae, 1390-142; on unculti- vated lands, 180-183 Lex Hieronica, 216 Lex Junia Norbana, 266 Lex Manciana, an imperial or pri- vate regulation? 176-180; com- pared to the lex Hadriana, 293- 294; influence on the development of the colonate, 184-185; grant of usus proprius, 175, 2903-204; Hel- lenistic influence on, 220, 228; regulations on deserted lands, 174; on rents, 173, 202-203 Libertini dedititii, see Early servile tenures Licinian Law, 253 331] Lites, German 193-195. servile tenures Livy, 88, 116, 245, 252, 253 See Early Macedonia, barbarian settlements in, 83; effect of Roman conquest On, 217 Magister, of coloni, 165, 290 Malaria, 250-252 Marcellus, 278 Marcian, 101, 109, 188, 195, 270,n.5 Marcus Aurelius, barbarian settle- ments of, 47, 79, 84-86, 93, 193 Marquardt, J., theory of the colo- nate of, 137,n.1 Martial, 268, 274 Maximian, barbarian settlements of, 47, 58, 79, 80, 82 Mayence, F., criticism of Meyer, 204-205 Meyer, P., theory of the colonate of, 203-204, 208-209; criticism of, 204-205 Minoans of Crete, see Early servile tenures, Greek serfs Mispoulet, J. B., on the inscription of Ain Ouassel, 183; theory of the colonate of, 183 Mitteis, L., criticism of Meyer, 205; theory of the colonate of, 205-206 Moesia, barbarians settled in, 47, 85, 87 Mommsen, T., on the inscription of Souk-el-Khmis, 139, 143-144; theory of the colonate of, 143- 144, 201,2.2 Mowat, on the inscription of Souk- el-Khmis, 139 Nee barbarian settlements of, 59, 7 Nerva, efforts to develop a state peasantry, 281-282 Nexus civium, 59, 122. See Early servile tenures, next Obaerati, see Debtor tenants; Early servile tenures Operae, see Coloni, services of Operari, see Early servile tenures Originari, synonymn of colont, 17,n.3, 26 Origo, 95-97, 230 Ormelian inscriptions, 165-166, 203, 286-287 INDEX 33! Papinian, 278 Pannonia, barbarians settled in, 47, Pasturage, conversion of arable to, in Italy, 247-249 Patricians, 49, 67, 238-240 Patronage, in Gaul, 68-70; in the late Empire, 23, 50, 64, 65, 103, 200-201 ; in the Republic, 40, 67 Patronus, 34 Paulus, 108, 188, 196, 263-264 Pausanius, 72 Peculium, of coloni, 20; of slaves, 156, 280 Pelham, H. F., theory of the colon- ate of, 164-168; criticism of, 168-170 Penestes, of Thessaly, see Early servile tenures, Greek serfs Peregrim, see Early servile tenures Pertinax, grants of deserted land, 93, 192, 304-305 Plautus, 251 Plebeians, 239-241, 259 Pliny the Elder, 50, 105, 106, 118, IIQ, 131, 138, 236, 242, 243, 245, 252, 253, 256, 280 Pliny the Younger, 40, 41, 45, 97, 108, 114, 120, 130, 138, 152, 153, 260, 268-269, 277, 280, 283 Plutarch, 72, 248 Pollio, Trebellius, 48, 84 Population, decline of, 5, 41, 197; in Africa, 191-192; in Greece, 192; in Italy, 46, 116-117, 130, 191 Pompey, clients of, 259 Prescription, 26, 28, 30 Probus, barbarian settlements of, 47, 48, 58, 79, 82-83; improve- ment of irrigation system of Egypt, 303 i Procuratores, of Africa, 139, 140, 147, 148, 154, 176-177, 179, 180- 181, 191-192, 206; of Asia Minor, 165, 203; of the imperial do- mains, 146-147 Proprietors, responsibility for taxes, 56, 94, 224-225 Provinces, as the home of the colonate, 118-129 Ptolemy Philadelphus, Revenue Laws of, 216 Puchta, G. F., theory of the colon- ate of, 43-44, 65-66; criticism of, 46, 61, 66 332 Punic Wars, effect on agriculture, 246-247 Quasi coloni, see Slaves, as tenants Ramsay, W. M., on the imperial domains of Asia Minor, 203 Recruits, barbarian, 35, 79-81, 85, 89 Rent, abatements of, 264, 268, 260. See Coloni, rent of _ Rérolle, L., theory of the colonate of, I Revillout, C., theory of the colon- ate of, 92-96; criticism of, 96- 98, 134-135 Rodbertus, theory of the colonate of, 103-112; criticism of, 112- 118, 124, 128, 130, 143-144 Rostovtzeff, M., criticism of Meyer, 204; theory of the colonate of, 206-208, 209-225; criticism of, 226-231 Rudorff, A., theory of the colonate of, 35-37; criticism of, 37, 67-68 Saltus, 145-146 Saltus Burunitanus, 139-142, 164, 165; coloni of, 147-148 sta 29, 33, 59, 63-64, 65, 76, 2 Savigny, F. C., theory of the colonate of, 32-34, 37-28, 61-62, 63, 65; criticism of, 39-40, 63-64 Scaevola, 108, 109-110, 276-277, 292 Schulten, A., on the inscription of Henchir Mettich, 177-178; theory of the colonate of, 185-189 Schultz, C. L. F., theory of the colonate of, 39-41; criticism of, 67 Seeck, O., on debts of coloni, 270; theory of the colonate of, 190- 194; criticism of, 194-197 Seneca, 260 Serfs, German, see Early servile tenures Serfs, Greek, see Early servile tenures Serrigny, D., theorv of the colon- ate of, 98-102; criticism of, 102- 103, 136 Services, required by the ler Hadriana, 139-140, 141, 142. See Coloni, services of INDEX [332 Share rent, in Africa, 139, 155, 172, 182; in Egypt, 192; in Italy, 152- I 33; 155, 161, 263, 273; in Sicily, I Share-rent Colont partiarit Sicilian grain, effect on Italian agriculture, 246 Sicily, development of the colon- ate in, 216-217; effect of Roman conquest on, 216-217, 285-286; latifundia of, 256,n.5, 260; share- rent tenures of, 187; slave re- volts in, 257 Simkhovitch, V. G., theory of the colonate of, 5-7, 235 Slavery, decline in Italy, 117, 191, 257-258; development in Italy, 240-244 : Slaves, as tenants, 41, 98-100, 102, 107-108, III, I14-115, 118, 156- 157, 261, 281; attached to the soil, 7, 102, 100, III-113, 127, 157, 313; cultivation by, 105, 107, 239, 240-244; decline in numbers, 55, 92, 117, 191, 257-258; improve- ment in condition in early Empire, 5I, 109-110, 280-281; in Africa, 124, 171; manumission of, 43-44, 65-66, 100-101, 265-266; revolts of, 117, 257; sources of, 56, 241- 242 Slave stewards, see Vilici Sordida munera, 26 Souk-el-Khmis, inscription of, 138- 142, 147-148, 150, 154-155, 163- 164, 165, 199, 290; text, 140-142 Spain, effect of Roman conquest on, 126; exhaustion of the soil in, 298; fertility of, 124, 131; grain tribute of, 124 Spartacus, revolt of, 257 Strabo, 50, 71, 242 Strikes, of Egyptian peasants, 211, 302 Subcesiva, 175 Sulla, allotments of, 46, 248 Symmachus, 7, 311, 312 tenants, see Tacitus, 33, 40, 52, 70, 272,".2, 274, 275 Taxes, farming of, 119, 216, 286; poll, 25-26, 110, 159-160, 314; abolished in Thrace, 135; pro- vincial, 123; reforms of Diocle- 333] tian, IIO-III, 127, 133, 134, 157- [ 158, 194. See Capitatio humana, Jugatio terrena, Tributum, V ectigal Terence, 251, 258 Terrat, B., theory of the colonate of, 137,n.1 Thrace, barbarian settlements in, 2, 83 Theodosius II, barbarian settle- ments of, 47, 58, 76 Tiberius, Emperor, barbarian set- tlements of, 87; manumission law of, 66, 266; watchfulness over Egypt, 200 Tiberius Julius Alexander, prefect of Egypt, Edict of, 35-36, 68, 128, 205-206 Trajan, efforts to develop a state peasantry, 166, 168, 281-283 Tributarii, 17,n.3, 25, 48, 59, 77- 78, 159 Tributum, 78, 110, 120, 127; effect on the provinces, 295-208, 30I- 303, 316 Triumvirs, allotments of, 246 Toutain, J., on the inscription of Henchir Mettich, 176-177 Ulpian, 101, 108, 196, 279, 279,n.5 trouofwtai, 215 Usus proprius, right of, 175, 203- 204 Vagabonds, entrance into the colon- ate, 20, 56, 112 Valentinian I, barbarian ments of, 47, 77 settle- INDEX 333 Valentinian II, barbarian settle- ments of, 58 Varro, 36, 45, 51, 60, 97, 106, 152, 244, 249, 251, 260, 267, 276 Vegetius, 10 Vectigal, 77, 78, 120, 204, 239, 255 Venerii of Sicily, see Early servile tenures, hierodules Vergil, 250, 260 Vespasian, efforts to develop a state peasantry, 166, 168, 281-282 Veterans, allotments of land to, 46, 93, 195, 210-211, 213, 248, 270, 300, 305 Victor, Aurelius, 124 Vilict, 107, 108, 153, I71, 173, 174, 178, 179, I91, 242, 244, 273, 275 “Villa” system, in prehistoric Rome, 237 Vinogradoff, P., theory of the colonate of, 197-200; criticism of, 200-201 Von Thiinen, influence on Rod- bertus, 104-106 Vopiscus, 82 Wallon, H. A., theory of the colon- ate of, 53, 54-57; criticism of, 133-135 Wenck, theory of the colonate of, 35; criticism of, 37-38 besa! theory of the colonate of, 160 Zosimus, 82 Zumpt, A. W., theory of the colon- ate of, 44-40; criticism of, 75-91; supported by Savigny, 6, 62 & Raa Pi Columbia University in the City of New York Che University includes the following : ,Solumbia College, founded in 1754, and Barnard College, founded in \39, offering to men and women, respectively, programs of study which may | begun either in September or February and which lead normally in from three | four years to the degree of Bachelor of Arts. The program of study in Co- , abia College makes it possible for a qualified student to satisfy the requirements | both the bachelor’s degree and a professional degree in law, medicine, mining, sineering, chemistry, or architecture in six years. 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