464 



4t 



The state of things inferred from the provisions of the 'Farmer's Law' is 

 so remarkable in itself, and so different from the course of rustic development 

 in the West, that we are driven to seek an explanation of some kind. Many 

 influences may have contributed to produce so striking a differentiation. But 

 one can hardly help suspecting that there was some one great influence at 

 work in the eastern empire, to which the surprising change noted above was 

 mainly due. In his History of the later Roman Empire^ Professor Bury has 

 offered a conjectural solution of the problem. It is to be sought in the changes 

 brought about in the national character and the external history of the Empire. 

 Since the middle of the sixth century north-west Asia Minor and the Balkan 

 country had been filled with Slavonic settlers, and other parts with other new 

 colonists. Now the new settlers, particularly the Slavs, were not used to the 

 colonate system or the rigid bond of hereditary occupations, and emperors 

 busied in imperial defence on the North and East knew better than to force 

 upon them an unwelcome system. Invasions had reduced the populations 

 of frontier provinces and shattered the old state of serfdom. Resettlement 

 on a large scale had to be carried out within the empire, and under new 

 conditions to suit the changed character of the population. Among the 

 new elements that produced this change the most important was the coming 

 of the Slavs. 



For the Slavs had themselves no institution corresponding to the German 

 laeti. Slaves indeed they had, but not free cultivators attached to the soil. 

 Therefore they could not, like the Germans in the West, adapt themselves to 

 the Roman colonate; accordingly their intrusion led to its abolition. In support 

 of this view the well-known Slavonic peasant communities are cited as evidence. 

 Nor can it be denied that this consideration has some weight. But, while we 

 may provisionally accept the conclusion that Slavonic influences had some- 

 thing, perhaps much, to do with the new turn given to the conditions of rustic 

 life in the East, we must not press it so far as to infer that the colonate-system 

 was extinct there. In no case could the 'Farmer's Law' fairly be used to prove 

 the negative : and moreover it is apparently the case according to Mr Ashburner 

 that the document is not a complete agricultural code for all agricultural classes 

 within the empire. If it is 'concerned exclusively with a village community, 

 composed of farmers who cultivate their own lands,' it cannot prove the non- 

 existence of other rustic conditions different in kind. Colonate seems to have 

 disappeared, while slavery has not. But that is the utmost we can say. The 

 slave at least is still there. As to the important question, whether the farmers 

 contemplated in the Law enjoy a real freedom .of movement, as has been 

 thought, it is best to refer a reader to the cautious reserve of Mr Ashburner. 



The one general inference that I venture to draw from these two authorities 

 is that, however much or little the conditions of agriculture may have changed 

 in the surviving Eastern part of the Roman empire, the employment of slave 

 labour still remained. 



1 Vol n pp 418-421. 



