David Hume - The Dark Ages

§ 4. Compulsory Social Organisation

Diocletian and Constantine had to seek solutions not only of political but also of more difficult economic problems. The troubles of the third century, the wars both domestic and foreign, the general disorder of the State, had destroyed the prosperity of the Empire and had rapidly developed sinister tendencies, which were inherent in ancient civilisation, and legislators whose chief preoccupation was the needs of the public treasury applied methods which in some ways did more to aggravate than to mitigate the evils. We find the State threatened with the danger that many laborious but necessary occupations would be entirely abandoned, and the fields left untilled for lack of labourers. The only means which the Emperors discovered for averting such consequences was compulsion. They applied compulsion to the tillers of the soil, they applied compulsion to certain trades and professions, and they applied it to municipal service. The results were serfdom and hereditary status. The local autonomy of the municipal communities, 97the cities and towns which were the true units in the structure of the Empire, had been undermined in some ways under the Principate, but before Diocletian no attempt had been made to impose uniformity, and each community lived according to its own rules and traditions. The policy of uniform taxation, which Diocletian introduced, led to the strict control of the local bodies by the Imperial Government. The senates and the magistrates became the agents of the fisc; the municipalities lost their liberties and gradually decayed.

(1) For some centuries there had been a general tendency to substitute free for servile labour on large estates. The estate was divided into farms which were leased to free tenants, coloni , on various conditions, and this system of cultivation was found more remunerative. 98But towards the end of the third century the general conditions of the Empire seem to have brought about an agrarian crisis. Many colons found themselves insolvent. They could not pay the rent and defray the heavy taxes. They gave up their farms and sought other means of livelihood. Proprietors themselves some sold their lands, and the tenants declined to hold their farms under the new owners. Thus land fell out of cultivation and the fiscal revenue suffered. Constantine’s legislation, to solve this agrarian problem, created a new caste. He made the colons compulsory tenants. They were attached to the soil, and their children after them. They continued to belong legally to the free, not to the servile, class; they had many of the rights of freemen, such as that of acquiring property. But virtually they were unfree and were regarded as chattels. Severe laws prevented them from leaving their farms, and treated those who ran away as fugitive slaves. The conception of a colon as the chattel of his lord comes out clearly in a law which describes his flight as an act of theft; “he steals his own person.” 99But the Emperors, whose principal aim in their agrarian legislation was to guard the interests of the revenue, protected the colons against exorbitant demands of rent on the part of the proprietors. And if a proprietor sold any part of his estate, he was not allowed to retain the tenants. 100At the same time the condition of rustic slaves was improved. The government interfered here too, for the same reason, and forbade masters to sell slaves employed on the land except along with the land on which they worked. 101This limitation of the masters’ rights tended to raise the condition of the slave to that of the colon.

The proprietor’s power over his tenants was augmented by the fact that the State entrusted him with the duties of collecting the taxes for which each farm was liable, 102and of carrying out the conscription of the soldiers whom his estate was called upon to furnish. He also administered justice in petty matters and policed his domains. Thus the large proprietors formed an influential landed aristocracy, with some of the powers which the feudal lords of western Europe exercised in later times. They were a convenient auxiliary to the Government, but they were also a danger. The custom grew up for poor freemen to place themselves under the protection of wealthy landowners, who did not scruple to use their influence to divert the course of justice in favour of these clients, and were able by threats or bribery to corrupt the Government officials. Such patronage was forbidden by Imperial laws, but it was difficult to abolish it. 103

It had long been the custom for public bodies to grant the land which they owned on a perpetual lease, subject to the payment of a ground-rent ( vectigal ). It was on this principle that Rome had dealt with conquered territory. The former proprietors continued to possess their land, but subject to the ownership ( dominium ) of the Roman people and liable to a ground-rent. In the fifth century this form of land tenure coalesced with another form of perpetual lease, emphyteusis , which had its roots not in Roman but in Greek history. Emphyteusis meant the cultivation of waste land by planting it with olives or vines or palms. 104To encourage such cultivation a special kind of tenure had come into use. The emphyteutes bound himself by contract to make certain improvements on the land; he paid a small fixed rent; his tenure was perpetual and passed to his heirs, lapsing only if he failed to fulfil his contract. In the course of time, all kinds of land, not only plantation land, might be held by emphyteutic tenure. Legally this agreement did not answer fully to the Roman conception either of a lease or of a sale, and lawyers differed as to its nature. It was finally ruled that it was neither a sale nor a lease, but a contract sui generis. 105This kind of tenancy was the rule on the Imperial domains. But it was also to be found on the estates of private persons.

(2) The trades to which the method of compulsion was first and most harshly applied were those on which the sustenance of the capital cities, Rome and Constantinople, depended: the skippers who conveyed the corn supplies from Africa and Egypt, and the bakers who made it into bread. These trades, like many others, had been organised in corporations or guilds ( collegia ), and as a general rule the son probably followed the father in his calling. It was the most profitable thing he could do, if his father’s capital was invested in the ships or in the bakery. 106But this changed when Diocletian required the skippers to transport the public food supplies, and made their property responsible for the safe arrival of the cargoes. They had to transport not only the supplies for the population of the capital, but the annonae for the soldiers. This was a burden which tempted the sons of a skipper to seek some other means of livelihood. Compulsion was therefore introduced, and the sons were bound to their father’s calling. 107The same principle was applied to the bakers, and other purveyors of food, on whom the State laid public burdens. In the course of the fourth century the members of all the trade guilds were bound to their occupations. It may be noticed that the workmen in the public factories ( fabricae ) were branded, so that if they fled from their labours they could be recognised and arrested.

(3) The decline of municipal life, and the decay of the well-to-do provincial citizen of the middle class, is one of the important social facts of the fourth and fifth centuries. The beginnings of this process were due to general economic conditions, but it was aggravated and hastened by Imperial legislation, and but for the policy of the Government might perhaps have been arrested.