The English Village Community / Examined in its Relations to the Manorial and Tribal Systems and to the Common or Open Field System of Husbandry; An Essay in Economic History (Reprinted from the Fourth Edition)

by Frederic Seebohm

VI. THE 'TRIBUTUM' OF THE LATER EMPIRE.

Passing now to the system of taxation and forced services during the later empire, it will be found to be of peculiar importance, not only because of its connexion with the growing manorial tendencies, but also because the taxation resembled so closely the system of 'hidation' prevalent afterwards in Saxon England, and some of the forced services actually survived in the manorial system.

The system of taxation was modified by the Emperor Diocletian at the very time when the policy of forced colonisation described in the last chapter was being carried out.

The jugatio or assessment by the jugum or caput.

It was known as the taxation 'jugatione vel capitatione'—the tribute or stipendium of so much for every jugum or caput.

'Jugum' and 'caput' were names for a hypothetically equal, if not always the same, unit of taxation.[420]

The 'jugum' was probably originally taken from the area which could be cultivated by the single or double yoke of oxen allotted to the settler, and may [p290] have been a single or double one accordingly. But a person holding a fraction of a jugum or caput was said to hold only a 'portio,' [421] and paid, in consequence, a proportion only of the burdens assessed upon the whole jugum.

Now, if the taxation had continued at actually so much per yoke of oxen, the system would have been simple enough; and it would be easy to understand how, whilst the jugum represented the unit of taxation for land, the caput might be the unit corresponding in value with the jugum, but applying to other kinds of property, such as slaves and cattle, and including the capitation tax levied in respect of wives and children. And this, probably, may be the meaning of the double nomenclature—jugum vel caput. At any rate, we know from the Theodosian Code, that the members of a veteran's family were constituent parts of his 'caput.' [422]

The subject is obscure, but the reform of Diocletian seems to have aimed at an equalisation of the taxation according to the value of property.

The jugum became a unit of taxation,

This seems to have involved an assessment of various kinds of land in hypothetical juga, of the same value (said to be fixed at 2,000 solidi); and this involved a variation in the acreage of the hypothetical jugum, according to the richness or otherwise of the land, just as according to Flaccus was the case also as regards the actual centuriæ and allotments.

and varied in area.

In one instance in which the figures have been [p291] preserved, viz. for Syria, under the Eastern Empire, the assessment was as follows under the system of Diocletian:[423]—

Of vine-land	5 jugera, or  10 plethra or half-acres.
Arable, first class	20 jugera, or  40 plethra or half-acres.
Arable, second class	40 jugera, or  80 plethra or half-acres.
Arable, third class	60 jugera, or 120 plethra or half-acres.

In the east, therefore, sixty jugera, or 120 Greek plethra or half-acres, of ordinary arable land, were assessed as a jugum.

This instance makes it clear that while originally the actual allotment to a single or double yoke of oxen may have been taken as the basis of taxation, the 'jugum' had already become a hypothetical unit of assessment, just as, by a similar process, was the case with the English hide. Property had come to be assessed at so many juga under the jugation, without any attempt to make the assessment accord with the actual number of yokes employed.

The Indiction.

The assessment was revised every fifteen years at what was called the Indiction.[424]

We have seen that the nominal acreage of the typical holding assigned to the single yoke of two oxen under Roman law on the Continent resembled very closely that of the Saxon yard-land, which also had two oxen allotted with it.[425] [p292]

Analogy of the jugum and centuria to the yard-land and hide.

We have also seen that the twenty-five or thirty jugera of the single yoke were probably fixed as an eighth of the Roman centuria, as the yard-land was the eighth of a double hide.

The common acreage of the centuria was, as we have seen, 200 or 240 jugera. The latter number may be the simple result of the use of the long hundred of 120; or it may have resulted, as suggested above, from the necessity of making the centuria of the free citizen's typical estate divisible into four double holdings of 60 acres, or eight single holdings of 30 acres each.

Be this as it may, the centuria, or typical estate of a free citizen in a regularly constructed Roman colony, seems to have stood to the single or double holding of the common and often semi-servile settler in the same arithmetical relation as the Saxon larger hide of 240 acres did to the yard-land.[426]

We have, then, two kinds of holdings:—

1. The one or more centuriæ embraced in the [p293] latifundia or villas of the large landowners, which, however, when tilled by their coloni, and not by slaves, might well be subdivided into holdings of sixty or thirty acres each.

2. The double and single holdings of the smaller settlers on the 'ager publicus' of fifty or sixty and twenty-five or thirty acres each.

And we may conclude that the system of taxation called the 'jugatio' was founded upon these facts, though in order to equalise its burden the assessment of an estate or a territory in juga became, under Diocletian, a hypothetical assessment, corresponding no longer with the actual number of yokes, just as the Saxon hide ad geldam, at the date of the Domesday Survey, no longer corresponded with the actual carucate ad arandum.

Another resemblance between the Roman jugation and the Saxon hidage was to be found in the method adopted when it became needful to reduce the taxation of a district.

Thus, the land of the Ædui had been ravaged and depopulated. It had paid the tributum on 32,000 juga; 7,000 juga were released from taxation. In future it was assessed at 25,000 juga only; and so relief was granted.[427]

The tributum paid by the lord, who claimed tribute from his tenants, or 'tributarii.'

Further, as the English manorial lord paid the hidage for the whole manor, so the lord of the villa, under Roman law, paid the tributum not only for his own demesne land, but also for the land of his coloni and tenants. Just as the servile tenants of a Saxon thane were called his 'gafol gelders,' so the [p294] semi-servile tenants of a Roman lord were called his tributarii. In both cases they paid their tribute to their lord, whilst the lord paid the imperial tributum for himself and for them.[428]

Coloni and tributarii in Britain.

In a decree of the year 319, issued by Constantine to the 'Vicar of Britain,' words are used which prove that there were coloni and tributarii[429] on British estates.[430]

Putting all these things together, the analogy between the Roman 'jugation' and the later English hidage can hardly be regarded as accidental.

But to return, at present, to the tribute and the service due from each jugum or caput.

The Roman 'tributum' and the Saxon 'gafol.'

The tribute was generally paid part in money and part in produce, and was, in fact, a tax. It was a separate thing from the tithe of produce, rendered as rent to the State on the tithe-lands of the Agri decumates and of Sicily, though all these various annual payments in produce may have been confused together under the term annonæ. The tribute proper survived probably, as we shall see, in the later manorial 'gafol.' The tithe, or other proportion taken as rent—for the proportion was not always a tenth[431]—more nearly resembled the manorial 'gafol-yrth.' [p295] But we are not quite ready yet to trace the actual connexion between these Roman and later manorial payments.