This policy of planting colonies of German colonists—even whole clans under their petty chiefs—in the Belgic provinces and Britain, with the double object of keeping up the supply of corn for the empire and soldiers for the legions, was therefore steadily adhered to for several generations. And a further proof of the extent to which the system was carried turns up later in the numerous cohorts of Læti mentioned by Ammianus,[418] and in the 'Notitia,' [419] as having been drawn from these colonies [p288] and placed as garrisons all over Gaul and Germany, but especially on the banks of the Rhine.
It has been necessary to dwell upon this subject because it is needful for the present purpose that it should be fully understood that throughout the German provinces of Rhætia, the Agri Decumates, Upper and Lower Germany, in Belgic Gaul, and in Britain, there were large numbers of German semi-servile settlers upon the Ager Publicus interspersed among the free coloni and veterans; and that most of the settlers, whether free coloni, veterans, or læti, were engaged in agriculture. Some of them, no doubt, especially since the encouragement said to have been given by Probus to vine culture, may have occupied vineyards in Southern Gaul, or in the valleys of the Rhine and its tributaries.
Lastly, it must also be remembered that there may have been intermixed among the privileged veterans and the overburdened 'læti,' on the public lands, dwindling remains of original Gallic inhabitants, and other free coloni or tenants, not privileged like the veterans, but subject to the various public burdens. Some of these were scarcely to be distinguished, perhaps, in point of law and right from the owners of villas. They may have been holders of slaves, and have had possibly sometimes even free coloni of their own, though varying very much in the size of their holdings, and falling far below the owners of latifundia in social importance. Be this as it may, we shall presently find the free class of landholders, whoever they might be, sinking steadily into a semi-servile condition under the oppression of the Imperial fiscal officers and the burden of the taxation and services [p289] imposed upon them—the tributum and sordida munera—the oppressive exaction of which during the later empire was forcing them gradually to surrender their freedom, and to seek the shelter of a semi-servile position under the patrocinium, sometimes of the fiscal officer himself, sometimes of the lord of a neighbouring 'villa.'
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.