The evil of ' protections ' 



401 



senators (cur tales) whose turn it was to collect the dues from the district 

 under their municipality (a duty that they were not allowed to shirk) 

 went out to the villages for the purpose. They were beaten off 1 by use 

 of force, often wounded as well as foiled. They were still bound to pay 

 over the tax, which they had not received, to the imperial treasury. In 

 these latter days default of payment rendered them liable to cruel 

 scourging. So the unhappy curiales had to sell their own property to 

 make up the amount due. The loss of their means strikes them out of 

 the curia for lack of the legal qualification. And this was not only a 

 loss to their particular city: it damaged imperial interests, bound up 

 as the whole system was with maintaining unimpaired the supply of 

 qualified curiales. The evil of these ' protections ' was, according to 

 Libanius, great and widespread. The protectors had become a great 

 curse to the villagers themselves by their tyranny and exactions. Their 

 lawless sway had turned 2 farmers into brigands, and taught them to 

 use iron not for tools of tillage but for weapons of bloodshed. And 

 the trouble was not confined to villages where the land belonged to a 

 number of small owners: it extended also to those 3 under one big 

 proprietor. The argument that the villagers have a right to seek help 

 in resistance to extortion, is only sound if the means employed are fair. 

 To justify this limitation two significant analogies 4 are applied. Cities 

 near the imperial frontier must not call in the foreign enemy to aid 

 them in settling their differences with each other : they must seek help 

 within the empire. A slave must not invoke the aid of casual bystanders 

 against ill-usage : he stands in no relation to outsiders, and must look 

 to his master for redress. The full bearing of these considerations is 

 seen when we remember that the farmers are serf- ten ants. They are 

 owned 5 by masters, as the municipal city exists only in and for the 

 empire, and the slave has no legal personality apart from his lord. 



It is a fact, says 6 Libanius, that through such evasion of their lia- 

 bilities on the part of the rustics many houses have been ruined. He is 

 surely referring to the curiales and other landlords resident in the city, 

 the numbers of which class it was the imperial policy to maintain at 

 full strength. In moral indignation 7 he urges the iniquity of beggaring 

 poor souls who have nothing to live on but the income from their lands. 

 ' Say I have an estate, inherited or bought, farmed by sensible tenants 

 who humbly faced the ups and downs of Fortune under my considerate 

 care. Must you then stir them up by agitation, arousing unlooked-for 

 conflicts, and reducing men of good family to indigence ? ' This appeal 



1 Orat 47 8-10. Zulueta (see below) points out that the protection given by the 

 patrons was exerted quite as much by improper influence on judges as by use of force. 



2 6 TOVTO Kal Xflo-raj yewpyotis eiroi-rjffe. 3 1 1 dXXa /eai ofs efs 6 



4 TQ 21. 



24 



7 34. 



eiffiv (ol yeupyoi). 



H.A. 



26 



