Taxation. Cultivation. Currency 387 



years, and innumerable references to the land-questions attest the con- 

 tinual anxiety of the imperial government to secure adequate cultivation 

 of every possible acre of land. Contemporary history may suggest 

 motives for this nervousness. The increased expenses of the court and 

 the administrative system made it necessary to raise more taxes than 

 ever for the civil services. The armies, now mainly composed of Ger- 

 mans and other barbarians, were necessary for imperial defence, but 

 very costly to equip pay and feed. Whether they were mercenaries 

 drawing wages, or aliens settled as Roman subjects within the empire 

 on lands held by tenure of military service, they were either a burden 

 on the treasury or a doubtful element of the population that must at 

 all costs be kept in good humour. On a few occasions Roman victories 

 furnished numbers of barbarian prisoners to the slave-market. These 

 would be dispersed over various districts, generally at some distance 

 from the troubled frontiers, and the rustic slaves of whom we hear were 

 doubtless in great part procured* in this way. But that the rustic popu- 

 lation consisted largely of actual slaves we have no reason to believe. 

 Of estates worked on a vast scale by slave labour we hear nothing. 

 Naturally ; for the social and economic conditions favourable to that 

 system had long passed away. Slaves were no longer plentiful, markets 

 j were no longer free. Under the Empire, the pride of great landlords 

 needed a strong mixture of caution ; under a greedy or spendthrift 

 emperor the display of material wealth was apt to be dangerous. In 

 the century of confusion before Diocletian agriculture had been much 

 ' interrupted in many parts of the empire, and much land had gone out 

 >of cultivation. So serious was the situation in the later part of that 

 period, that Aurelian 1 imposed upon municipal senates the burden of 

 providing for the cultivation of derelict farms. 



When a taxpayer is required to pay a fixed amount in a stable 

 currency, he knows his liability. So long as he can meet it, any surplus 

 income remains in his hands, and he has a fair chance of improving 

 ; his economic position by thrift. If what the state really wants is (say) 

 corn, it can use its tax-revenue to purchase corn in the open market. 

 ,But this assumes that the producer is free to stand out for the best 

 j price he can get, and that he will be paid in money on the purchasing 

 I power of which he can rely for his own needs. This last condition 

 I had ceased to exist 2 in the Roman empire. Not to mention earlier 

 >tamperings with the currency, since the middle of the third century 

 its state had been deplorable. Things had now gone so far that the 

 value of the fixed money taxes seriously reduced the income derived 



1 Cod Just xi 59 i, in which Constantine, finding the civitatum ordines unequal to this 

 burden, extends the liability to other landlords also. 



2 See Seeck n 214 foil, 223, 249, iv 88. 



252 



