There is therefore nothing to be done but to glean the few scraps of information that in any way bear upon the condition of tillers of the soil in this period. They are as a rule of little value, and they come from writers of little authority. But it is something if they are of a piece with the general record of these unhappy times. Even the imperial biographies of Marius Maximus survive only in the meagre abstracts of later writers, and modern historians are quite unable to reconstruct any clear picture of the inner life of the period 180-284 AD owing to the lack of materials.
The most significant piece of information relates to Pertinax. We are told[1363] that one of the useful reforms contemplated by him was the reclamation of waste lands throughout the empire. He ordained that any one might occupy derelict lands, even on the imperial estates: on careful cultivation thereof, the farmer was to become owner[1364]. For a space of ten years he was to be exempt from all taxation, and his ownership was to be guaranteed against future disturbance. This passage is good evidence of the decay of agriculture, agreeing with what we have learnt from other sources. But we cannot gather from it that the well-meant design had any practical effect. Pertinax was only emperor for the inside of three months, and could not realize his virtuous aspirations. About 80 years later we find Aurelian[1365] planning the development of waste lands in Etruria, and Probus[1366] giving allotments in the wilds of Isauria to his veterans as settlers with obligation of military service. There can be little doubt that the depopulation and decline of cultivation, made sadly manifest in the calamitous times of Marcus Aurelius, had never ceased to undermine the vital forces of the empire. How to fill up deserted lands, and make them productive of food and revenue, was the problem that every serious ruler had to face. And there was in fact only one resource available to meet the need. The native population of the empire, stationary at best, had been further reduced by pestilence and famine, and was not able to fill up the spaces laid waste by frontier wars. Hence the policy of bringing in masses of barbarians, adopted by Marcus, had to be repeated again and again.
We must not confuse these settlements with the immigrations of conquering tribes that occurred later. Rome was still superior to her adversaries in military organization and skill, and under fairly equal conditions able to defeat them in pitched battles. Thus Claudius II gained great victories over the Goths, and the biographer[1367] tells us of the sequel. ‘The Roman provinces were filled with barbarian slaves and Scythian tillers of the soil. The Goth was turned into a settler on the barbarian frontier. There was not a single district but had some Gothic slave whose bondage attested the triumph.’ Here we seem to have the echo of a somewhat boastful contemporary version. The mention of both slaves and frontier colonists is to be noted. We have no statistics to guide us in an attempt to estimate the relative numbers of the two classes. But the settlement of defeated barbarians on the frontier as Roman subjects is clearly regarded as a worthy achievement. So indeed it might have been, had it been possible to civilize them as Romans, only profiting by the introduction of new blood. But this process was no longer possible: its opposite, the barbarizing of Roman lands, steadily went on. Claudius only reigned about two years. The great soldier who followed him in 270-5, Aurelian, had a plan for employing prisoners of war[1368] on the cultivation of waste lands in Italy itself, but we have no reason to think that much came of it. And the true state of things was confessed in his abandonment of Trajan’s great Province of Dacia. Aurelian withdrew[1369] the army and the provincials, whom he settled south of the Danube in Moesia; putting the best face he could on this retirement by giving Moesia the name of Dacia.
These phenomena attest an obvious truth, sometimes ignored, that territorial expansion needs something more than military conquest to give it lasting effect. In order to hold conquered lands the conquerors must either occupy them or thoroughly assimilate the native population. Emperors in this period became aware that they could do neither. Alexander Severus (222-35) gained a great victory[1370] over the Persians and took a number of prisoners. It was a tradition of Persian kings not to let their subjects pass into foreign slavery, and Alexander allowed them to redeem these captives by a money payment. This he used partly in compensating the masters of those who had already passed into private ownership, and the rest he paid into the treasury. This conciliatory policy may have been wise. In any case the treasury was in this age chronically in need of ready money. But dealing with the great oriental monarchy was a simpler undertaking than that of dealing with the rude peoples of the North, who pressed on in tribal units, offering no central power with which to negotiate. Probus (276-82) seems to have been sorely troubled by their variety and independence of action. We hear that when operating in Thrace he settled 100,000 Bastarnae[1371] on Roman soil, and that all these kept faith with him. But he went on to transplant large bodies of Gepidae Gruthungi and Vandals. These all broke their faith. While Probus was busy putting down pretenders in other parts of the empire, they went on raiding expeditions at large by land and sea, defying and damaging the power of Rome. True, the emperor broke them by force of arms, and drove the remnant back to their wilds: but we can see what the biographer ignores, that such raids did mischief which the empire was in no condition to repair. What were the terms made with these barbarians, to which the Bastarnae faithfully adhered, we are not told. Probably the grant of lands carried with it the duty of furnishing recruits to Roman armies and accepting the command of Roman officers.
In connexion with agricultural conditions we must not omit to notice the change that was passing over Roman armies. The straits to which Marcus had been reduced by the years of plague and losses in the field had compelled him to raise fresh troops by any means, enrolling slaves, hiring barbarian mercenaries, and so forth. With this miscellaneous force he just managed to hold his ground in the North. But the army never recovered its old tone. The period 180-284 shews it going from bad to worse. It is full of sectional jealousy and losing all sense of common imperial duty; only effective when some one strong man destroys his rivals and is for the moment supreme. The rise and fall of pretenders[1372] is a main topic of the imperial history. As from the foundation of the Empire, the numbers of the army were inadequate for defence against simultaneous attacks on several frontiers. The lack of cooperation among their enemies, and the mobility of Roman frontier armies, had sufficed to keep invaders at bay. But as pressure became more continuous it was more difficult to meet the needs of the moment by moving armies to and fro. More and more they took on the character of garrisons, their chief camps grew into towns, local recruits filled up their ranks, and they were less and less available for service as field-armies. But it was obviously necessary that the country round about their quarters should be under cultivation, in order to supply them with at least part of their food. It may safely be assumed that this department was carefully attended to in the formation of all these military stations. And it seems that under the new conditions one of the evils that had hitherto embarrassed the empire was gradually brought to an end. For the fact remains that, after all the wholesale waste of lives in the bloody wars of the third century, it was still possible to raise great and efficient armies. Reorganized by Diocletian and Constantine, the empire proved able to defend itself for many years yet, even in the West. The new system may have been oppressive to the civil population, but it certainly revived military strength. This could not have been achieved without an improvement in the supply of man-power. It has been maintained[1373] that this improvement was due to the permanent settlements of barbarians, mostly of German race, within the territories of the empire during the third century. Whether planted on the vacant lands as alien settlers (inquilini)[1374] on easy terms, but bound to provide recruits for the army, or enlisted from the first and settled in permanent stations, they were year by year raising large families and turning deserted border-lands into nurseries of imperial soldiers. This picture may be somewhat overdrawn, but it has the merit of accounting for the phenomena. Without some explanation of the kind it is very hard to understand how the empire came to survive at all. With it, the sequel appears natural and intelligible. These barbarians were so far Romanized as to be proud of becoming Romans: the empire was barbarized so far as to lend itself to institutions of a more and more un-Roman character, and to lose the remaining traditions of literature and art: and when ruder barbarians in the fifth century assailed the empire in the West they found the control of government already in the hands of kinsmen of their own.
If we are to take the very meagre gleanings from the general records of this period and combine them with the information gathered from the African inscriptions referred to below, we can provisionally form some sort of notion of the various classes of labour employed on the land. First, there were coloni, freemen[1375] in the eye of the law, however much local conditions, or the terms of their tenancies and the tendency for tenancies to become hereditary, may have limited the practical use of their legal freedom. Secondly, there were, at least in some parts, protected occupants encouraged to turn to account parcels of land that had for some reason or other lain idle. Thirdly, there were also rustic slaves who did most of the work on large farms. The stipulated services of tenants[1376] at certain seasons to some extent supplemented their labour, at least in some parts: and the falling supply of slaves tended to make such auxiliary services more important. For the value of agricultural land depends mainly on the available supply of labour. Fourthly, chiefly if not entirely in the northern Provinces, a number of barbarians had been planted upon Roman soil. Some entered peacefully and settled down as willing subjects of the empire on vacant lands assigned to them. Some had surrendered after defeat in battle, and came in as prisoners. But, instead of making them rustic slaves on the old model, Marcus had found a new and better use for them. A new status, that of inquilini[1377] or ‘alien denizens’ was created, inferior to that of free coloni but above that of slaves. They seem to have been generally left to cultivate plots of land, paying a share of the produce, and to have been attached to the soil, grouped under Roman landlords or chief-tenants. They had their wives and families, and their sons recruited Roman armies. Lastly, we have no right to assume that small cultivating owners[1378] were wholly extinct, though there can hardly have been many of them.
We have an account[1379] of the rising in Africa (238 AD) which, so far as it goes, gives us a little light on the agricultural situation there in the middle of this period. The barbarian emperor Maximin was represented in the Province by a procurator fisci whose oppressions provoked a conspiracy against him. Some young men of good and wealthy families drew together a number of persons who had suffered wrong. They ordered their slaves[1380] from the farms to assemble with clubs and axes. In obedience[1381] to their masters’ orders they gathered in the town before daybreak, and formed a great mob. For Africa is naturally a populous[1382] country; so the tillers of the soil were numerous. After dawn the young leaders told the mass of the slaves to follow them as being a section of the general throng: they were to conceal their weapons for the present, but valiantly to resist any attack on their masters. The latter then met the procurator and assassinated him. Hereupon his guards drew their swords meaning to avenge the murder, but the countrymen in support of their masters[1383] fell upon them with their rustic weapons and easily routed them. After this the young leaders, having gone too far to draw back, openly rebelled against Maximin and proclaimed the proconsul Gordian Roman emperor. In this passage we have before us young men of landlord families, apparently holding large estates and working them with slave labour. They are evidently on good terms with their slaves. Of tenant farmers there is no mention: but there is a general reference to support given by other persons, already wronged or afraid of suffering wrong. The Latin biographer[1384], who drew from Herodian, speaks of the murder as the work of ‘the rustic common folk[1385] and certain soldiers.’ Now Frontinus[1386], writing in the latter part of the first century AD, tells us that in Africa on their great estates individuals had ‘a considerable population[1387] of common folk.’ The language can hardly refer to slaves: and a reference to levying recruits[1388] for the army plainly forbids such an interpretation. But it does not imply that there were no slaves employed on those great estates; the writer is not thinking of the free-or-slave labour question. In regard to the writers who record this particular episode, are we to suppose that by ‘slaves’ Herodian loosely means coloni? Surely not. Then does Capitolinus by ‘rustic common folk’ mean slaves? I cannot believe it. More probably the writer, contemporary with Diocletian and Constantine, uses a loose expression without any precise meaning. If we are to attempt any inference from the language of Herodian, we must accept him as a witness that in Africa, or at least in parts of Africa, agriculture was still being carried on by slave labour. This does not exclude the existence of a small-tenancy system side by side with it. And the state of things disclosed[1389] in the African inscriptions referred to above is consistent with both systems: for that the manor-farm on a great estate employed a slave staff for its regular operations, and drew from tenants’ services only the help needed at certain seasons, seems the only possible conclusion from the evidence. Therefore, while agreeing with Heisterbergk[1390] that the narrative of Herodian shews the populousness of Africa, we need not go so far as to ignore the fact of a considerable farm-slave element in the Province.
Meanwhile there are signs that rural Italy was suffering from the disorders and insecurity that had so often hindered the prosperity of agriculture. Even under the strong reign of Severus, with a larger standing army in Italy than ever before, a daring brigand[1391] remained at large for two years and was only captured by treachery. Though we do not hear of his attacking farmers directly, such a disturbance must have been bad for all country folk. That he black-mailed them is probable: that they were plundered and maltreated by the licentious soldiery employed against him, is as nearly certain as can be from what we know of the soldiery of this time.
XLVII. THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS.
Certain inscriptions[1392] from the Roman Province of Africa, dating from the second and third centuries AD or at least referring to matters of that period, throw some light upon the management of great imperial domains in that part of the world. To discuss these in full one by one would be beyond the scope of this work, and would require several chapters of intolerable length. I shall content myself with giving a short account of each case, confined to those details which have direct bearing on my subject and which can be gathered with reasonable certainty from the often mutilated texts. French and German savants have contributed freely to the deciphering and interpretation, with happy results: but some of the proposed ‘restorations’ are much too bold to serve as a basis for further argument. After the details, I purpose to consider the points common to these interesting cases, and their place in the history of agriculture and agricultural labour under the earlier Roman Empire, say from Trajan to Severus.