APPENDIX. 



SOME BYZANTINE AUTHORITIES. 



To follow up the history of agricultural labour under the so-called Byzan- 

 tine empire, after the Roman empire had fallen in the West, is beyond my 

 scope. Yet there are certain matters on which light is thrown by surviving 

 documents that it is hardly possible wholly to ignore. That the position of the 

 agricultural classes did not follow the same lines of development in East and 

 West, is in itself a fact worth noting, though not surprising. It may be said to 

 run parallel with the general fate of the two sections of the once Roman world. 

 In the West 1 the growth of what we call Feudalism and the rise of new nation- 

 states are the phenomena that in the course of centuries gradually produced 

 our modern Europe. In the East the Empire long preserved its organization, 

 declining in efficiency and power, but rallying again and again, serving as a 

 bulwark of Christian Europe, and not extinguished finally till 1453. It might 

 perhaps have been guessed that the conditions of rustic life would undergo 

 some change, for the system of the later Roman colonate was already shewing 

 signs of coming failure in the time of Arcadius and Honorius. The need of 

 some system more favourable to individual energy and enterprise, more to be 

 trusted for production of food, was surely not to be ignored. Food must have 

 been a need of extreme urgency, with armies constantly engaged in northern 

 or eastern wars, and the mouths of Constantinople ever hungry at home. 

 After the Saracen conquest of Egypt in the seventh century, the food-resources 

 on which the government could rely must have been seriously reduced, and 

 the need greater than ever. Thus we are not to wonder if we find indications 

 of great interest taken in agriculture, and direct evidence of reversion to a 

 better land-system than that of the later Roman colonate. 



A. GEOPONICA. 



The curious collection known as Geoponica 2 comes down to us in a text 

 attributed to the tenth century, which is supposed to be a badly-edited version 

 of an earlier work probably of the sixth or early seventh century. It is in a scrap- 

 book form, consisting of precepts on a vast number of topics, the matter under 

 each heading being professedly drawn from the doctrine of some author or 

 authors whose names are prefixed. Some of these are Byzantine writers, others 

 of much earlier date, including Democritus and Hippocrates, and the Roman 

 Varro. Modern critics consider these citations of names untrustworthy, the col- 

 lector or editor having dealt very carelessly with the work of his predecessors. lean 



1 For the survival of the colonate in the West see de Coulanges pp 145-86. 



2 See Krumbacher's history of Byzantine Literature in I wan Muller's Handbuch, and 

 Oder's article in Pauly-Wissowa. 



