Protection of rustics. Exemptions 397 



probable. Some may have been stray barbarians, not included in the 

 various barbarian corps which more and more came to form the back- 

 bone of the Roman army. But the majority would probably be indigent 

 wretches to whom any change seemed better than the miserable lives 

 open to them in the meanest functions of the decaying civilization of 

 the towns. In any case such recruits 1 would be but a poor substitute 

 for the pick of the rustic population. 



The same anxiety to spare the rustics unnecessary exactions, that 

 they might not sink under their present burdens, appears in other 

 regulations. The subordinates employed in the public services such 

 as the Post, or as attendants on functionaries, were tempted to ease 

 their own duties by demanding contributions from the helpless country- 

 folk. This we find forbidden 2 in 321 as interfering with the farmers' 

 right to procure and carry home things required for agriculture. So 

 too a whole Title 3 in the Codex is devoted to the prevention of super- 

 exactiones, a form of extortiofi often practised by officials, chiefly by 

 the use of false weights and measures or by foul play with the official 

 receipts. The laws forbidding practices of this kind seem to belong to 

 the latter part of the fourth century and the earlier part of the fifth. 

 But the evil was clearly of old standing, and the laws almost certainly 

 vain. That illicit exactions were a particular affliction of the poorer 

 rustics, who could not bribe the officials, is confessed 4 by a law of 362, 

 which ordains that the burdens of supplying beasts fodder etc for service 

 of the Post, upkeep of the roads and so forth, are to be laid on all 

 possessores alike. Further enactments follow in 401 and 408. But these 

 rules for equitable distribution of burdens, even if carried out, only 

 spread them over all landowners and coloni. All the upper ranks 5 of 

 the imperial service carried exemption from sordida munera in some 

 form or other, and personal grants of exemption were often granted 

 as a favour. It is true that such exemption only extended to the life 

 of the grantee, that exemptions were revocable, and that in course of 

 time extreme necessities led to revocations. But all this did not operate 

 to relieve the unhappy rustic on whom the whole imperial fabric rested. 

 The rich might have to lose their privileges, but it was too late for the 

 poor to gain a benefit. That the underlings of provincial governors 

 were a terror to farmers, levying on them illicit services and generally 

 blackmailing them for their own profit, is clear from the law 6 (some- 



1 Cf Vegetius rei milit I 7, of the disasters caused by slovenly recruiting, dum indicti 

 possessoribus tirones per gratiam aut dissimulationem probantium tales sociantur armis quales 

 domini habere fastidiunt. 



2 Cod Th iv 13 2, 3, kept with variants in cod Just iv 61 5. 



3 Cod Th xi 8. 4 Cod Th xi 16 10, 17 2-4. 



5 For the special position of imperial senators see Dill pp 126, 166, 196, 218 foil. 



6 Cod Th xi i j, kept with some omissions in cod Just xi 55 2. 



