484 INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



therefore not only the fighting part but the sustaining part 

 has to be despotically controlled. After centuries of con 

 quests the Roman Empire had developed an extreme form 

 of this type. The conception generated by frequent wars 

 among the Greeks, that the citizen did not belong to himself 

 nor to his family but to his city, was, by the perpetual wars 

 of -the Romans, developed into the conception that he not 

 only belonged to the State but was a vassal of the State, 

 bound for life to his function and very generally to his place. 

 There was, as Dr. Ingram writes in his History of Slavery 



&quot; a personal and hereditary fixity of professions and situations . . . 

 Members of the administrative service were, in general, absolutely 

 bound to their employments . . . the curiales, or members of the local 

 senates, were bound, with special strictness, to their places and their 

 functions. . . . Their families, too, were bound to remain. . . . The 

 soldier . . . served as long as his age fitted him for his duties, and 

 his sons were bound to similar service. . . . Everyone was treated, 

 in fact, as a servant of the State, and was bound to furnish labour or 

 money, or both; those who worked only for private profit were classed 

 as idle (otiosi).&quot; 



So that in fact serfdom was universal. There were official 

 serfs, fighting serfs, farming serfs. 



The origin of the farming serfs was miscellaneous. In 

 part it was a sequence of those devastations which added to 

 Roman glory reducing large areas to silence and barren 

 ness. The kind of coloni called Iceti are described by See- 

 bohm as 



1 families of the conquered tribes of Germany, who were forcibly 

 settled within the limes of the Roman provinces, in order that they 

 might repeople desolated districts or replace the otherwise dwindling 

 provincial population in order that they might bear the public bur 

 dens and minister to the public needs, i.e., till the public land, pay the 

 public tribute, and also provide for the defence of the empire.&quot; 

 But State-serfs on the land had various other derivations. 

 Recognizing the fact that the universal servitude above de 

 scribed, formally established by Diocletian and others, had 

 previously been growing, Dr. Ingram says: 



