The Henschir Mettich domain 343 



which have direct bearing on my subject and which can be gathered 

 with reasonable certainty from the often mutilated texts. French and 

 German savants have contributed freely to the deciphering and inter- 

 pretation, with happy results: but some of the proposed ' restorations' 

 are much too bold to serve as a basis for further argument. After 

 the details, I purpose to consider the points common to these in- 

 teresting cases, and their place in the history of agriculture and 

 agricultural labour under the earlier Roman Empire, say from Trajan 

 to Severus. 



(i) The inscription of Henschir Mettich 1 belongs to the year 

 1 16-7 AD, at the end of Trajan's reign. It deals with a domain called 

 fundus villae magnae Variant, and does not refer to it by the term 

 saltus at all. There is no reference to arrears of rent, the reliqua 

 colonorum of which we often hear in the jurists and other writers. In- 

 deed there is no mention of money-rents, unless we reckon as such 

 the little dues (4 as per head) payable for grazing stock on the common 

 pasture. The coloni are partiarii, paying certain shares (generally J) 

 of their yearly produce as rent. These are paid, not to an imperial 

 official but to the lords or head-tenants of the estate (dominis aut con- 

 ductoribus eius fundi) or to their stewards (vilicis). It seems certain 

 therefore that it was the chief tenants who were responsible to the 

 imperial treasury for the amounts annually due, and that upon them 

 rested the troublesome duty of collection. That this charge was a new 

 one, laid upon them by Trajan, is perhaps possible, but hardly probable. 

 For this statute regulating the domain (a lex data) is expressly 

 declared to be modelled on a lex Manciana*, which can hardly be 

 other than a set of regulations issued by a former owner of the estate, 

 and adopted with modifications by the imperial agents (procurators) 

 specially appointed to organize it as an imperial domain. In Roman 

 practice it was usual to follow convenient precedents. How long the 

 estate had become Crown-property, and by what process, inheritance 

 purchase confiscation etc, we do not know. Nor is it certain whether 

 the new statute was prepared as a matter of course on the cessation 

 of private ownership, or whether it was issued in response to an appeal 

 to the emperor complaining of oppressive exactions on the part of 

 the head-tenants. But of the latter situation there is no sign, and I 

 am inclined to accept the former alternative. In that case it appears 

 necessary to suppose that the system of letting a great estate to one 

 or a few great lessees, who might and did sublet parcels to small 



1 Text in Girard's Textes de droit Romain part III chapter 6. 



2 We seem to have the names of two former owners, Varianus and Mancia. For the 

 retention of names of former owners see Dittenberger in Orientis Graeci inscriptiones selectae 

 No 669 note 18. Rostowzew Gesch des Rom colonates ch 4 rejects this view and makes the 

 lex Manciana an imperial law. 



