SERFDOM. 485 



&quot; The class of colon! appears to have been composed partly of tenants 

 by contract who had incurred large arrears of rent and were detained 

 on the estates as debtors (obcerati), partly of foreign captives or immi 

 grants, and also, apparently, of fugitives from the barbarian invasions, 

 whom the State settled in this condition on the land, and partly of 

 small proprietors and other poor men who voluntarily adopted the 

 status as an improvement in their position. They paid a fixed propor 

 tion of the produce (pars agraria) to the owner of the estate, and gave 

 a determinate amount of labour (operce) on the portion of the domain 

 which he kept in his own hands (mansus dominicus).&quot; 



It was indeed the requirements of the fiscus and the conscription 

 which impelled the imperial government to regulate the system. The 

 coloni were inscribed (adscripti) on the registers of the census as pay 

 ing taxes to the State, for which the proprietor was responsible, reim 

 bursing himself for the amount.&quot; 



4 The children of a colonus were fixed in the same status, and could 

 not quit the property to which they belonged.&quot; 



&quot; In no case could the rent or labour dues be increased. The colonus 

 could not be transferred apart from the land nor the land without the 

 colonus.&quot; 



Thus to supply money for the armies, to supply corn for 

 the armies, to supply soldiers for the armies, and to be under 

 a rigorous rule like that of the armies, was the fate of 

 Roman serfs. They existed simply for furnishing men, 

 materials, and food, to the fighting machine. 



805. We cannot know to what extent the social arrange 

 ments of the Roman Empire affected the social arrange 

 ments throughout mediaeval Europe. When its organized 

 savagery lapsed into the unorganized savagery of the dark 

 ages, the main lines of structure disappeared ; but since the 

 militant type of society in a less developed form preceded 

 Roman domination and survived it, we &quot;may infer that the 

 more definite system of subjection which Roman rule devel 

 oped, being congruous with the type, left traces. Be this 

 as it may, however, we have evidence that the institution of 

 serfdom was in a sense natural to the European peoples from 

 early times. The description Tacitus gives of the Germanic 



