VII. THE 'SORDIDA MUNERA' OF THE LATER EMPIRE.
The sordida munera.
In addition to the payments in kind or rents in produce, called annonæ, there were other personal services demanded from settlers in the provinces. They were called 'sordida munera,' and strangely resembled the base services of later manorial tenants.
There is a special title of the 'Codex Theodosianus' on the 'base services' exacted under Roman law;[432] so that there is evidence of the very best kind as to what they were.
Of three grades of holdings.
By an edict of A.D. 328 there was laid upon the rectores of provinces the duty of fixing the burden of the services according to three grades of holdings—those of the greater, the middle, and the lowest class—as well as the obligation of seeing that the services were not exacted at unreasonable times, as during the collection of crops. Further, the rectores were also ordered to record with their own hand 'what is the service and how to be performed for every "caput" [or jugum], whether so many angariæ or so many operæ, and in what way they are to be rendered for each of the three grades of holdings.' [433] [p296]
Certain privileged classes were specially exempted from these 'base services,' and it happens that edicts expressly mentioning Rhætia specify from what services they shall be exempt, and so reveal in detail what the services were.
The province of Rhætia lay to the south of the Roman Limes, and east of the 'Agri decumates' of Tacitus, whilst also extending into the Alpine valleys of the present Graubunden. The chief city in North Rhætia, of which we speak (Vindelicia), was Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg), and Tacitus describes the German tribes of the Hermunduri, north of the Limes, as engaged in friendly commerce with the Romans, and as having perfectly free access not only to the city, but also to the Roman villas around it.[434]
What they were in Rhætia.
We have seen that in this district south of the Danube, and in the Agri decumates between the Danube and the Rhine, there were large numbers of German as well as Roman settlers, occupying land probably as free 'coloni' and 'læti,' paying tribute to the State, in addition to the usual tenth of the produce and personal services, according to their grades of holding. Edicts of A.D. 382 and 390[435] represent the tenants and settlers in this Roman province as liable with others to render, in addition to the tithe of the produce in corn, &c. (annonæ), inter alia, the following 'base services' (sordida munera), viz.:— [p297]