The curse of official corruption 357 



ing organization would be admirably fitted to continue under the fiscal 

 administration. Apparently this is just what happened. One small 

 but important improvement would be automatically produced by the 

 change. The coloni would now become coloni Caesaris^, and whatever 

 protection against exactions of conductores they may have enjoyed 

 under the sway of their former lords was henceforth not less likely to 

 be granted and much more certain of effect. To the fiscal officials any 

 course of action tending to encourage permanent tenancies and steady 

 returns would on the face of it be welcome : for it was likely to save 

 them trouble, if not to bring them credit. The only influence liable to 

 incline them in another direction was corruption in some form or other, 

 leading them to connive at misdeeds of the local agents secretly in 

 league with the head-lessees on the spot. That cases of such con- 

 nivance occurred in the period from Trajan to Severus is not to be 

 doubted. During the following period of confusion they probably be- 

 came frequent. But it was not until Diocletian introduced a more 

 elaborate imperial system, and increased imperial burdens to defray 

 its greater cost, that the evil reached its height. Then the corruption 

 of officials tainted all departments, and was the canker ever gnawing 

 at the vital forces of the empire. But that this deadly corruption was 

 a sudden growth out of an existing purity is not to be imagined. All 

 this is merely an illustration of that oldest of political truisms, that to 

 keep practice conformable to principle is supremely difficult. The only 

 power that seems to be of any effect in checking the decay of depart- 

 mental virtue is the power of public opinion. Now a real public opinion 

 cannot be said to have existed in the Roman Empire; and, had it 

 existed, there was no organ through which it could be expressed. And 

 the Head of the State, let him be ever so devoted to the common 

 weal, was too overburdened with manifold responsibilities to be able 

 to give personal attention to each complaint and prescribe an equit- 

 able remedy. / 



How far we are entitled to trace a movement of policy by the con- 

 tents of these African inscriptions is doubtful. They are too few, and 

 too much alike. Perhaps we may venture to detect a real step onward 

 in the latest of them. The renewal of the encouragement of squatter- 

 settlers 2 on derelict lands does surely point to a growing consciousness 

 that the food-question was becoming a more and more serious one. 

 Perhaps it may be taken to suggest that the system of leasing the 

 African domains to big conductores had lately been found failing in 



1 See Dig I 19 3 1 , an opinion of Callistratus, a jurist of the time of Severus. That in 

 some sense or other the coloni were tenants of the emperor seems certain. See CIL vin 

 8425 (Pertinax), 8426 (Caracalla), also 8702, 8777. And Esmein pp 313-5. 



2 This becomes an important subject of legislation in the Theodosian code. See Cod Th 

 v 1 1 8, 14 30. 



