Problem of available labour 2 n^ 



the fourth century, long prepared for the step by experience not en- 

 countered by theory. To us it is a painful revolution that, instead of 

 the land belonging to the cultivator, the cultivator had become an 

 appendage of the land. But it was the outcome of a long process: as 

 for progress in any good sense, it had ceased. Government had become 

 a series of vain expedients to arrest decay. And the rule of fixed origo, 

 a man's officially fixed domicile, was nothing more than the doctrine 

 of the l&ia long prevalent in the East. 



The true significance of the change binding the tiller to the soil he 

 tilled is to be found in the fact that it was a desperate effort to solve a 

 labour-question. To secure a sufficient supply of food had been a cause 

 of anxiety to the imperial government from the first. The encourage- 

 ment of increased production had become an important part of imperial 

 policy in the second century. It looked to the small working farmers 

 as the chief producing agency, men who provided all or most of the 

 labour on their farms, and in at least some cases a certain amount of 

 task- work 1 on the larger farms of the head-tenants. But in the wars 

 and utter confusion of the third century the strain on the system was 

 too great. The peaceful and prosperous parts of the empire suffered 

 from increased demands on their resources to make good the deficiencies 

 of the Provinces troubled with invasions or rebellions. And there can 

 be no doubt that the working of governmental departments was inter- 

 rupted and impeded by the general disorder. In such times as those 

 of Gallienus and the so-called Thirty Tyrants the protection of the 

 small farmers by intervention of the central authority must have been 

 pitifully ineffective. Naturally enough, we do not get direct record of 

 this failure, but the change of conditions that followed on the restoration 

 of order by Diocletian shews what had been happening. The increase 

 of taxation, rendered necessary by the costly machinery of the new 

 government, led to increased pressure on the farmers, and evasions had 

 to be checked by increased restraints. In a few years the facts were 

 recognized and stereotyped by the law of Constantine, and the coloni 

 were henceforth bound down to the soil by an act of state. Another 

 notable change 2 was introduced by requiring payment of dues to be 

 made in kind. The motive of this was to provide a certain means of 

 supporting the armies and the elaborate civil service ; for the currency, 

 miserably debased in the course of the third century, was a quite un- 

 suitable medium for the purpose. That Diocletian, in these institutions 

 of a new model, was not consciously applying "oriental usage to the 

 empire generally, is hardly credible. It only remained to reduce Italy 



1 The operae referred to in the African inscriptions. 



2 It is possible to see a beginning of this system in the tenancy-on-shares (the colonia 

 partiaria] which we find not only in Italy but in Africa as a recognized plan. 



142 



