346 The saltus Burunitanus 



do I venture to draw confident inferences from the references to 

 inquilini or coloni inquilini^ or to discover an important distinction be- 

 tween the tenants who actually resided on the estate and those who 

 did not. It may be right to infer a class of small proprietors dwelling 

 around on the skirts of the great domain and hiring parcels of land 

 within it. It may be right to regard the inquilini as coloni transplanted 

 from abroad and made residents on the estate. But until such con- 

 clusions are more surely established it is safer to refrain from building 

 upon them. The general effect of this document is to give us outlines 

 of a system of imperial 'peculiars,' that is of domains on which 

 order and security, necessary for the successful working and con- 

 tinuous cultivation, were not left to the operation of the ordinary 

 law, but guaranteed in each case by what we may call an imperial 

 by-law. 



(2) The inscription of Souk el Khmis 1 deals with circumstances 

 between 180 and 183 AD. The rescript of Commodus, and the appeal 

 to which it was the answer, are recorded in it. The imperial estate 

 to which it refers is called saltus Burunitanus. A single conductor 

 appears to have been the lessee of the whole estate, and it was against 

 his unlawful exactions that the coloni appealed. Through the conni- 

 vance of the responsible procurator (corruptly obtained, the coloni 

 hint,) this tyrant had compelled them to pay larger shares of produce 

 than were rightly due, and also to render services of men and beasts 

 beyond the amount fixed by statute. This abuse had existed on the 

 estate for some time, but the proceedings of the present conductor had 

 made it past all bearing. Evidently there had been some resistance, 

 but official favour had enabled him to employ military force in sup- 

 pressing it. Violence had been freely used: some persons had been 

 arrested and imprisoned or otherwise maltreated; others had been 

 severely beaten, among them even Roman citizens. Hence the appeal. 

 It is to be noted that the appellants in no way dispute their liability 

 to pay shares of produce (paries agrarias) or to render labour-services 

 at the usual seasons of pressure (pperarum praebitionem iugorumveft 

 They refer to a clause in a lex Hadriana, regulating these dues. It is 

 against the exaction of more than this statute allows that they venture 

 to protest. They judiciously point out to the emperor that such doings 

 are injurious to the financial interest 2 of his treasury (in perniciem 

 rationum tuarum\ that is, they will end by ruining the estate as a 

 source of steady revenue. The officials of the central department in 

 Rome were evidently of the same opinion, for the rescript of Com- 



1 Text in Girard, part I chapter 4 10. 



2 This significant hint seems to have been almost normal in such petitions. A good 

 instance is the petition of Scaptoparene (see index, Inscriptions]. 



