384 coloni bound to the soil 



this. And, law or no law, things had to move in one or other direction. 

 Either the landlord and head-lessee had to win further control of the 

 tenants, or the tenants must become less dependent. Only the former 

 alternative was possible in the circumstances ; and the full meaning of 

 the change that turned de facto dependence into legal constraint may 

 be stated as a recognition of the colonus as labourer rather than tenant. 

 Whether the settlement of barbarians as domiciled aliens in some 

 Provinces under strict conditions of farm-labour had anything to do 

 with the creation of this new semi-servile status, seems hardly to be 

 decided on defective evidence. At all events it cannot have hindered 

 it. And we must make full allowance for the effect of various conditions 

 in various Provinces. If we rightly suppose that the position of coloni 

 had been growing weaker for some time before the act of Constantine, 

 this does not imply that the process was due to the same causes 

 operating alike in all parts of the empire in the same degree. The 

 evidence of the Theodosian Code shews many local differences of phe- 

 nomena in the fourth and fifth centuries ; and it is not credible that 

 there was a greater uniformity in the conditions of the preceding age. 

 Laws might aim at uniformity, but they could not alter facts. 



My conclusion therefore is that the general character of the imperial 

 system was the main cause of the later serf-colonate. However much 

 the degradation of free farm-tenants, or the admission of slaves to 

 tenancies, or the settlement of barbarians under conditions of service, 

 may have contributed to the result, it was the mechanical nature of 

 the system as a whole that gave effect to them all. After Trajan the 

 rulers of the empire became more and more conscious that the problem 

 before them was one of conservation, and that extension was at an 

 end. Hadrian saw this, and strove to perfect the internal organization. 

 By the time of Aurelian it was found necessary to surrender territory 

 as a further measure of security. We can hardly doubt that under such 

 conditions the machine of internal administration operated more me- 

 chanically than ever. Then, when the reforms of Diocletian made fresh 

 taxation necessary to defray their cost, an agricultural crisis was pro- 

 duced by the turning of the imperial screw. The hierarchy of officials 

 justified their existence by squeezing an assured revenue out of a 

 population unable to resist but able to remove. There was no other 

 source of revenue to take the place of the land: moreover, it was 

 agricultural produce in kind that was required. Therefore the central 

 bureaucracy, unchecked by any public opinion, did after its wont. In 

 that selfish and servile world each one took care of his own skin. 

 Compulsion was the rule : the coloni must be made to produce food : 

 therefore they must be bound fast to the soil, or the empire would 

 starve and the officials with it. 



