CHAPTER XIX

THE PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION UNDER THE PRINCIPATE

I. THE VICTORY OF AUTOCRACY

*The senate and the appointment of the princeps.* In the preceding chapters we have traced in outline the political history of the principate to the point where it had become an undisguised military autocracy. This change is clearly seen in connection with the imperial nomination. The appointment to the principate originally involved the conferment of the _imperium_, the tribunician power and other rights and privileges. The _imperium_ might be bestowed either by a senatorial decree or through the acclamation as _imperator_ by a part of the soldiery. Each of these forms was regarded as valid, but was regularly confirmed by the other. But the tribunician authority and the remaining powers of the princeps were conferred only by a decree of the Senate, confirmed, during the first century at least, by a vote of the Assembly of the Centuries. However, after the accession of Carus (282 A. D.), the Senate, which could no longer claim to exercise any authority in the state, ceased to participate in the appointment of the new ruler. This marks the formal end of the principate.

*The Senate’s loss of administrative power. I. Rome and Italy.* The constitutional history of the principate is the story of the gradual absorption of the Senate’s powers by the princeps and the supplanting of the Senate’s officers by those in the imperial service. It has been well said that Augustus aimed at the impossible when he sought to be the chief magistrate in the state without being at the same time the head of the administration. He had intended that the Senate should conduct the administration of Rome, Italy and the ungarrisoned provinces, but, as we have seen, he himself had been brought by force of circumstances to take the initial steps in infringing upon the Senate’s prerogatives. Not only did he take over the duties of provisioning and policing the city by establishing the prefectures of the grain supply and the watch, but he also assumed responsibility for the upkeep of the public buildings, streets and aqueducts of Rome, as well as the highways of Italy. These departments of public works were put in charge of commissioners of senatorial rank, called curators, whom the princeps nominated. However, from the time of Claudius equestrian officials, entitled procurators, were appointed to these departments and became their real directors. Finally, under Septimius Severus, the senatorial curators were dispensed with.

*II. The aerarium.* Augustus had left to the Senate the control of the public treasury, the _aerarium_, which was maintained by revenues from the senatorial provinces and Italy. But when the princeps came to assume control of those branches of the administration the expense of which was defrayed by the _aerarium_, it was inevitable that the treasury itself should pass in some degree under his supervision. And so in 44 A. D. the princeps began to designate two quaestors to be in charge of the treasury for a three-year period. Under Nero the place of these quaestors was taken by two prefects appointed in the same manner but from among the ex-praetors. The importance of the _aerarium_ declined in proportion as its revenues passed into the hands of the ministers of the princeps, until in the period between Septimius Severus and Diocletian it sank to the position of a municipal chest for the city of Rome.

*III. The senatorial provinces.* In the early principate the senatorial provinces were administered by appointees of the Senate, all of whom now bore the title of proconsul, assisted as in former days by quaestors. However, only the proconsul of Africa was at the same time commander of a provincial garrison, and his command was transferred to the imperial governor of Numidia by Caligula. Even in the time of Augustus the imperial procurators had appeared in the senatorial provinces in charge of the revenues which were at the disposal of the princeps, and, before the close of the third century they were in complete control of the financial administration of these provinces. But long before this, by the opening of the second century, the princeps had usurped the Senate’s privilege of appointing the proconsuls. The result was that by the close of the principate all the provinces without distinction were equally under imperial control.

*Restriction of Senate’s elective powers.* It was Tiberius who transferred to the Senate the electoral functions of the Assembly but he, as Augustus before him, limited the Senate’s freedom of action by the recommendation of imperial candidates for the lower magistracies. From the time of Nero the consulship also was regularly filled by nominees of the emperors. The custom of appointing several successive consular pairs in the course of each year, each pair functioning for two or four months, greatly weakened the influence of the consulate, while it enabled the emperors to gratify the ambitions of a larger number of candidates for that office.

*Loss of legislative functions.* The rapid disappearance of the Assembly resulted in the transfer of its sovereign legislative powers to the Senate. The decrees of the Senate thus acquired the validity of laws and after the time of Nerva comitial legislation completely ceased. However, the influence of the princeps encroached more and more upon the legislative freedom of the Senate until in the time of the Severi the senatorial decrees were merely proclamations of the princeps (_orationes principis_) which were read to the Senate and approved by it. Furthermore, the princeps developed independent legislative power and by the middle of the second century the ordinances or constitutions of the princeps had acquired the force of law. Early in the third century legislation of this type altogether superseded the senatorial decrees. The imperial constitutions included edicts, _decreta_, or judicial verdicts, responses to the petitions of officers of the princeps or private citizens, and mandates or instructions to his subordinates. Originally, the edicts were only valid during the principate of their author and the other forms of constitutions merely applied to special cases. However, in course of time, they all alike came to be recognized as establishing rules of public and private law which remained in force unless they were specifically revoked by another imperial constitution.

*The administration of justice.* The republican system of civil and criminal jurisdiction was inherited by the principate, and the courts of the praetors continued to function for Rome and Italy, while the proconsuls were in charge of the administration of justice in the senatorial provinces. In addition the Senate, under the presidency of the consuls, acted as a tribunal for the trial of political offences and criminal charges brought against members of the senatorial order. The Senate also served as a court of appeals from the decisions of the proconsuls. But from the time of Augustus the princeps exercised an unlimited right of jurisdiction which enabled him to take cases under his personal cognizance (_cognitio_), or appoint a delegate to try them. The imperial officials administered justice in their respective spheres by virtue of delegated authority and consequently appeals from their courts were directed to the princeps. The development of judicial functions by the military and administrative officials of the princeps in Rome—the praetorian prefect, the city prefect, the prefects of the watch and the prefect of the grain supply—seriously encroached upon the judicial power of the praetors. In addition, the _consulares_ of Hadrian, and the _iuridici_ of Marcus Aurelius further limited the sphere of the praetorian courts. Ultimately, under Septimius Severus, we find the city prefect as the supreme judicial authority for all criminal cases arising in Rome or within a radius of one hundred miles of the city and also exercising appellate jurisdiction in civil cases within the same limits, subject however, to an appeal to the court of the princeps. For the rest of Italy, the court of the praetorian prefect was now the highest tribunal in both criminal and civil suits. By this time also the princeps had acquired supreme appellate jurisdiction for the whole empire, a power which was regularly exercised by the praetorian prefect acting in his place, In the third century the Senate ceased to exercise any judicial authority whatever.

As a result of the above processes the princeps became in the end the sole source of legislative, administrative and judicial authority. The republican magistrates had become practically municipal officers, and one of them, the aedileship, disappeared in the third century. The complete victory of the princeps over the Senate is marked by the exclusion of senators from military commands under Gallienus, and their removal from the provincial governorships in which they had continued to exercise civil authority between the time of Aurelian and the accession of Diocletian.

*The friction between the Senate and the princeps.* It might be thought that owing to the gradual admission to the Senate of the nominees of the princeps that harmony would have been established between the two administrative heads of the state. But although this new nobility was thoroughly loyal to the principate, they proved just as tenacious of the rights of the Senate as the descendants of the older nobility who preserved the tradition of senatorial rule. Augustus and Tiberius endeavored to govern in concord with the Senate by organizing an advisory council appointed from the Senate, but their successors abandoned the practice. The friction between the princeps and the Senate was due in part to the realization that it was from the senatorial order that rivals might arise and in part to the fact that those emperors who did not interpret their position, as did Augustus, in the light of a magistracy responsible to the Senate, were bound to regard the Senate’s powers as restrictions upon their own freedom of action, and as an unnecessary complication of the administration. The chief services of the Senate were to provide a head for the government when the principate was vacant, and to furnish the only means for the expression of opinion with regard to the character of the administration of the individual emperors. The spontaneous deification or the _damnatio memoriae_ of a deceased princeps was not without weight, for it expressed the opinion of the most influential class in the state.

While the Senate as a body was thus stripped of its power, the senatorial order remained a powerful class. Originally embracing the chief landholders of Italy, it came to include those of the whole empire. Collectively the senators lost in influence, but individually they gained. By the end of the second century the senatorial order had acquired an hereditary title, that of _clarissimus_ (most noble), indicative of their rank.

II. THE GROWTH OF THE CIVIL SERVICE

*The first steps.* The necessary counterpart to the assumption of administrative duties by the princeps was the development of an imperial civil service, the officials of which were nominated by the princeps, and promoted or removed at his pleasure. In this Augustus had taken the first steps by the establishment of equestrian procuratorships and prefectures, and the opening up of an equestrian career, but the number of these posts greatly increased with the extension of the administrative sphere of the princeps at the expense of the Senate. The idea of conducting the government through various departments manned by permanent salaried officials was absolutely foreign to the Roman republic, which only employed such servants for clerical positions of minor importance in Rome. However, the chaotic conditions which had resulted from the republican system showed the need of a change, and the concentration of a large share of the administration in the hands of the princeps both required and gave the opportunity for the development of an organized civil service. This development was unquestionably stimulated and influenced by the incorporation in the Roman empire of the kingdom of Egypt, which possessed a highly organized bureaucratic system that continued to function unchanged in its essential characteristics.

*The imperial secretaryships.* At first the imperial civil service lacked system and there was little or no connection between the various administrative offices in Italy and in the provinces. Augustus and his immediate successors conducted the administration as part of their private business, keeping in touch with the imperial officials through the private secretaries of their own households, that is to say, their freedmen, who, in another capacity, conducted the management of the private estate of the princeps. An important change was introduced under Claudius, when his influential freedmen caused the creation within the imperial household of a number of secretaryships with definite titles that indicated the sphere of their duties. The chief of these secretaryships were the _a rationibus_, the _ab epistulis_, the _a libellis_, the _a __cognitionibus_ and the _a studiis._ The _a rationibus_ acted as a secretary of the treasury, being in charge of the finances of the empire which were controlled by the princeps; the _ab epistulis_ was a secretary for correspondence, who prepared the orders which the princeps issued to his officials and other persons; the _a libellis_ was a secretary for petitions, who received all requests addressed to the princeps; the _a __cognitionibus_ served as a secretary for the imperial inquests, entrusted with the duty of preparing the information necessary for the rendering of the imperial decision in the judicial investigations personally conducted by the princeps (_cognitiones_); and the _a studiis_, or secretary of the records, had the duty of searching out precedents for the guidance of the princeps in the conduct of judicial or administrative business. The establishment of these secretaryships in the imperial household tended to centralize more completely the imperial administration and to give it greater uniformity and regularity. At the same time the influence of the freedmen who occupied these important positions was responsible for the admission of freedmen to many of the minor administrative procuratorships. It was under Claudius also that the preliminary military career of the procurators was more definitely fixed.

*The reforms of Hadrian and Septimius Severus.* Hadrian took the next decisive step in the development of the central administrative offices when he transformed the secretaryships of the imperial household into secretaryships of state by filling them with equestrians of procuratorial rank in place of imperial freedmen. From this time the latter were restricted to minor positions in the various departments. Under Hadrian also there was a marked increase in the number of administrative procuratorships owing to the final abolition of the system of farming the revenues and their subsequent direct collection by imperial officials as well as the establishment of the public post as a means of intercourse throughout all the provinces. It was possibly with the object of supplying the necessary officials to undertake these new tasks that Hadrian created the office of the advocate of the _fiscus_ as an alternative for the preliminary military career of the procurators.

Septimius Severus, as we have seen, opened the posts of the civil administration to veteran officers upon the completion of a long period of military service. Thus, although a purely civil career was established, which led ultimately to the highest prefectures, nevertheless, during the principate the civil administrative offices were never completely separated from the traditional preliminary military service. It was Septimius Severus also who made the praetorian prefect, as the representative of the princeps, the head of the civil as well as of the military administration.

*The salary and titles of the equestrian officials.* The ordinary career of an official in the imperial civil service included a considerable number of procuratorships in various branches of the administration, both in Rome, Italy and the provinces. Although from the time of Augustus a definite salary was attached to each of these offices, it was not until after the reforms of Hadrian that four distinct classes of procurators were recognized on the basis of the relative importance of their offices expressed in terms of pay. These four classes of procurators were the _tercenarii_, _ducenarii_, _centenarii_ and _sexagenarii_, who received respectively an annual salary of 300,000, 200,000, 100,000 and 60,000 sesterces; this classification remained unchanged until the close of the third century. At that time the highest class included the imperial secretaries of state, whose title was now that of _magister_, or master. The salary of the four chief prefectures was probably higher still.

Following the example of the senatorial order, the equestrians also acquired titles of honor, which depended upon their official rank. From the time of Hadrian the title _vir eminentissimus_ (most eminent) was the prerogative of the praetorian prefects. Under Marcus Aurelius appear two other equestrian titles, _vir perfectissimus_ and _vir egregius_. In the third century the latter was borne by all the imperial procurators, while the former was reserved for the higher prefectures (apart from the praetorian), the chief officials of the treasury and the imperial secretaries.

*Administration of the finances: (I). The Fiscus.* The most important branch of the civil administration was that of the public finances, which merits special consideration. Augustus did not centralize the administration of the provincial revenues which were at his disposal, but created a separate treasury or _fiscus_ for each imperial province. However, he did establish the _aerarium militare_ at Rome for the control of the revenues destined for the pensioning of veteran troops. Furthermore, Augustus drew a sharp distinction between the public revenues which were administered by the princeps in his magisterial capacity, and the income from his own private property or patrimony. For the expenditure of the former he acknowledged a strict accountability to the Senate. The policy of Augustus was followed by Tiberius and Caligula, but under Claudius a central _fiscus_ was organized at Rome for the administration of all the public revenues of the princeps. The provincial _fisci_ disappeared, and the military treasury became a department of the _fiscus_. This new imperial _fiscus_ was under the direction of the _a rationibus_. From this time the princeps ceased to hold himself accountable for the expenditure of the public imperial revenues, and the _fiscus_ assumes an independent position alongside of the old _aerarium_ of the Roman people, which, as we have shown, it ultimately deprived of all share in the control of the public finances. However, the distinction between the public and private revenues of the princeps was still observed, and the _patrimonium_ was independently administered by a special procurator.

*(II). The Patrimonium.* But with the extinction of the Julio-Claudian house and the accession of Vespasian the patrimony of the Caesars passed as an appendage of the principate to the new ruler. It then became state property, and as it had grown to enormous size owing to the inheritances of Augustus and the confiscations of Caligula and Nero, the _patrimonium_ was organized as an independent branch of the imperial financial administration. The personal estate of the princeps was henceforth distinguished as the _patrimonium privatum_. This situation continued until the accession of Septimius Severus, whose enormous confiscations of the property of the adherents of Niger and Albinus were incorporated in his personal estate. This, the _patrimonium privatum_, was now placed under a new department of the public administration called the _ratio_ or _res privata_. The old _patrimonium_ became a subordinate branch of the _fiscus_. The title of the secretary of the treasury in charge of the _fiscus_ was now changed to that of _rationalis_, while the new secretary in charge of the privy purse was called at first _procurator_, and later _magister_, _rei privatae_. The reform of Severus, which gave to the private income of the princeps a status in the administration comparable to that of the public revenues, is a further expression of the monarchical tendencies of his rule.

*The officiales.* The subaltern personnel of the various bureaus, the clerks, accountants, etc., during the first two centuries of the principate was composed almost entirely of imperial freedmen and slaves. Among these there was apparently no fixed order of promotion or uniform system of pay, nor could they ever advance to the higher ranks of the service. However, from the time of Severus soldiers began to be employed in these capacities and a military organization was introduced into the bureaus. The way was thus gradually paved for completely dispensing with the services of freedmen and slaves in any part of the civil administration.

III. THE ARMY AND THE DEFENCE OF THE FRONTIERS

*The barbarization of the army.* It will be recalled that the military policy of Augustus aimed at securing the supremacy of the Roman element in the empire by restricting admission to the legions to Roman citizens or to freeborn inhabitants of provincial municipalities who received a grant of citizenship upon entering the service. The gradual abandonment of this policy is one of the most significant facts in the military history of the principate.

*The territorial recruitment of the legions.* Under the Augustan system the legions in the West were recruited from Italy and the romanized provinces of the West, the eastern legions from the Greek East and Galatia. But the increasing reluctance of the Italians to render military service led to the practical, although not to the theoretical, exemption of Italy from this burden which now rested more heavily upon the latinized provinces. An innovation of utmost importance was the introduction of the principle of territorial recruitment for the legions by Hadrian. Henceforth these corps were recruited principally from the provinces in which they were stationed, and consequently freedom from the levy was extended to the ungarrisoned provinces, Baetica, Narbonese Gaul, Achaia and Asia. The effect of Hadrian’s reform is well illustrated by a comparison of the various racial elements in the legions stationed in Egypt under the early principate with those in the same legions in the time of Marcus Aurelius. The lists of the veterans discharged from these legions under Augustus or Tiberius show that fifty per cent were recruited from Galatia, twenty-five per cent from the Greek municipalities in Egypt, fifteen per cent from Syria and the Greek East, and the remainder from the western provinces. A similar list from 168 A. D. shows sixty-five per cent from Egypt, the remainder from the Greek East, and none from Galatia or the West. In general, the consequence of Hadrian’s policy was to displace gradually in the legions the more cultured element by the more warlike, but less civilized, population from the frontiers of the provinces. It was Hadrian also who opened the pretorian guard to provincials from Spain, Noricum and Macedonia. As we have seen, Severus recruited the pretorians from the legions and so deprived the more thoroughly latinized parts of the empire of any real representation in the ranks of the army.

*The auxiliaries.* The auxiliary corps, unlike the legions, were not raised by Augustus from Roman citizens but from the non-Roman provincials and allies. At first they were recruited and stationed in their native provinces, but after the revolt of the Batavi in 68 A. D. they were regularly quartered along distant frontiers. From the time of Hadrian, they were generally recruited, in the same manner as the legions, from the districts in which they were in garrison. The extension of Roman citizenship to practically the whole Roman world by Caracalla in 212 A. D. removed the basic distinction between the legions and the auxiliaries.

*The numeri.* A new and completely barbarous element was introduced by Hadrian into the Roman army by the organization of the so-called _numeri_, corps of varying size, recruited from the non-Romanized peoples on the frontiers, who retained their local language, weapons and methods of warfare but were commanded by Roman prefects. The conquered German peoples settled on Roman soil by Marcus Aurelius and his successors supplied contingents of this sort.

*The strength of the army.* At the death of Augustus the number of the legions was twenty-five; under Vespasian it was thirty; and Severus increased it to thirty-three, totalling over 180,000 men. A corresponding increase had been made in the numbers of the auxiliaries. From about 150,000 in the time of Augustus they had increased to about 220,000 in the second century. The total number of troops in the Roman service at the opening of the third century was therefore about 400,000; one of the largest professional armies the world has ever seen.

*The system of frontier defence.* A second momentous fact in the military history of the principate was the transformation of the army from a field force into garrison troops. This was the result of the system developed for the defence of the frontiers. Augustus, for the first time in the history of the Roman state endeavored to preclude the possibility of indefinite expansion by attaining a frontier protected by natural barriers beyond which the Roman power should not be extended. Roughly speaking these natural defences of the empire were the ocean on the west, the Rhine and the Danube on the north, and the desert on the east and south. At strategic points behind this frontier Augustus stationed his troops in large fortified camps, in which both legionaries and auxiliaries were quartered. These camps served as bases of operations and from them military roads were constructed to advantageous points on the frontier itself to permit the rapid movement of troops for offensive or defensive purposes. Such roads were called _limites_ or “boundary paths,” a name which subsequently was used in the sense of frontiers. These _limites_ were protected by small forts manned by auxiliary troops.

*The fortification of the limites.* Although Claudius and Vespasian discarded the maxims of Augustus in favor of an aggressive border policy they adhered to his system for protecting their new acquisitions in Britain and the Agri Decumates. However, these conquests and that of the Wetterau region by Domitian pushed the frontier beyond the line of natural defences and led to the attempt to construct an artificial barrier as a substitute. It was Domitian who took the initial step in this direction by fortifying the _limites_ between the Rhine and Main, and the Main and the Neckar, with a chain of small earthen forts connected by a line of wooden watchtowers. To the rear of this advanced line there were placed larger stone forts, each garrisoned by a corps of auxiliaries, and connected by roads to the posts on the border. While the auxiliary troops were thus distributed along the frontiers in small detachments, the larger legionary cantonments were broken up, and after 89 A. D. no camp regularly contained more than a single legion. Trajan, who also waged his frontier wars offensively, merely improved the system of communication between the border provinces by building military highways along the line of the frontier from the Rhine to the Black Sea, in Arabia, and in Africa.

In the matter of frontier defence, as in so many other spheres, a new epoch begins with Hadrian. He reverted abruptly to the defensive policy of Augustus and began to fortify the _limites_ on a more elaborate scale. The frontier between the Rhine and the Danube was protected by an unbroken line of ditch and palisade, in which stone forts, each large enough for an auxiliary cohort, took the place of the earthen forts of Domitian. At the same time the _limes_ was shortened and straightened, and the secondary line of forts abandoned. In Britain a wall of turf was constructed from the Tyne to the Solway, and in the Dobrudja a similar wall linked the Danube to the Black Sea. The eastern frontier of Dacia was likewise defended by a line of fortifications. Here, as on the other borders, the Roman sphere of influence, and even of military occupation, extended beyond the fortified _limes_.

Antonius Pius followed Hadrian’s example and ran an earthen rampart with forts at intervals from the Forth to the Clyde in northern Britain. This line of defence was abandoned by Septimius Severus, who rebuilt Hadrian’s rampart in the form of a stone wall with small forts at intervals of a mile and intervening watch towers. In addition seventeen larger forts were constructed along the line of the wall. The _limes_ in Germany was strengthened by the addition of a ditch and earthen wall behind Hadrian’s palisade, but along the so-called Raetian _limes_, between the Danube and the Main, another stone wall, 110 miles long, took the place of the earlier defences. A similar change was made in the fortifications of the Dobrudja. However, this system was not followed out in the East or in Africa, where the _limes_ was guarded merely by a chain of blockhouses.

*The consequences of permanent fortifications.* The result of the construction of permanent fortifications along the frontier was the complete immobilization of the auxiliary corps. Stationed continuously as they were for the most part in the same sectors from early in the second century, and recruited, in increasing proportion, from among the children of the camps, it only required the granting to them of frontier lands by Severus Alexander, upon condition of their defending them, to complete their transformation into a border militia (_limitanei_). At the same time the scattering of the legions along the line of the frontiers made the assembling of any adequate mobile force a matter of considerable time. And the fortifications themselves, while useful in checking predatory raids by isolated bands and in regulating intercourse across the frontiers, proved incapable of preventing the invasion of larger forces. Consequently, when in the third century the barbarians broke through the _limites_ they found no forces capable of checking them until they had penetrated deeply into the heart of the provinces.

The chaos which followed the death of Severus Alexander was the result of a military policy which left the richest and most highly civilized parts of the empire without any means of self-defence; created a huge professional army the rank and file of which had come to lose all contact with the ungarrisoned provinces, all interest in the maintenance of an orderly government and all respect for civil authority; and at the same time rendered the army itself incapable of performing the task for which it was organized.

On the other hand the army had been one of the most influential agents in the spread of the material and cultural aspects of Roman civilization. The great highways of the empire, bridges, fortifications and numerous public works of other sorts were constructed by the soldiers. Every camp was a center for the spread of the Latin language and Roman institutions and the number of Roman citizens was being augmented continuously by the stream of discharged auxiliaries whose term of service had expired. In the _canabae_, or villages of the civilian hangers-on of the army corps, sprang up organized communities of Roman veterans with all the institutions and material advantages of municipal life. The constant movement of troops from one quarter of the empire to another furnished a ready medium for the exchange of cultural, in particular of religious, ideas. To the ideal of the empire the army remained loyal throughout the principate, although this loyalty came at length to be interpreted in the light of its own particular interests. Not only was the army the support of the power of the princeps; it was also the mainstay of the _pax Romana_ which endured with two brief interruptions from the battle of Actium to the death of Severus Alexander and was the necessary condition for the civilizing mission of Rome.

IV. THE PROVINCES UNDER THE PRINCIPATE

It is to the provinces that one must turn to win a true appreciation of the beneficial aspects of Roman government during the principate. As Mommsen(16) has said: “It is in the agricultural towns of Africa, in the homes of the vine-dressers on the Moselle, in the flourishing townships of the Lycian mountains, and on the margin of the Syrian desert that the work of the imperial period is to be sought and found.” In this sphere the chief tasks of the principate were the correction of the abuses of the republican administration and the extension of Graeco-Roman civilization over the barbarian provinces of the west and north. How well this latter work was done is attested not merely by the material remains of once flourishing communities but also by the extent to which the civilization of Western Europe rests upon the basis of Roman culture.

*Number of the provinces.* At the establishment of the principate there were about thirteen provinces, at the death of Augustus twenty-eight, and under Hadrian forty-five. In the course of the third century the latter number was considerably increased. The new provinces were formed partly by the organization of newly conquered countries as separate administrative districts and partly by the subdivision of larger units. At times this subdivision was made in order to relieve a governor of an excessively heavy task and to improve the administration, and at times it proceeded from a desire to lessen the dangers of a revolt of the army by breaking up the larger military commands.

*Senatorial and imperial provinces.* As we have seen the provinces were divided into two classes, senatorial or public and imperial or Caesarian, corresponding to the division of administrative authority between the Senate and the princeps. The general principle laid down by Augustus that the garrisoned provinces should come under the authority of the princeps was adhered to, and consequently certain provinces were at times taken over by the latter in view of military necessities while others were given up by him to the Senate. As a rule newly organized provinces were placed under imperial governors, so that these soon came to outnumber the appointees of the Senate. Eventually, as has been observed in connection with the history of the civil service, the public provinces passed completely into the hands of the princeps.

*Administrative officials.* The governors of the senatorial provinces were entitled proconsuls, even if they were of pretorian rank. However, Asia and Africa were reserved for ex-consuls. Following the law of Pompey, a period of five years intervened between the holding of a magistracy and a promagisterial appointment. Each proconsul was assisted by a _quaestor_, and by three propraetorian _legati_ whose appointment was approved by the princeps. The imperial governors were of two classes, _legati Augusti_ and procurators. In the time of Hadrian there were eleven proconsuls, twenty-four _legati Augusti_ and nine procurators, besides the prefect of Egypt. The subordinates of the _legati Augusti_ were the legates in command of the legions, and the fiscal procurators. The procuratorial governors, at first called prefects, were equestrians, and were placed in command of military districts of lesser importance which were garrisoned by auxiliaries only. An exception to this practice was made in the case of Egypt, which senators were forbidden to enter, and which was governed by a prefect who ranked next to the praetorian prefect and had under his orders a garrison of three legions. These governmental procurators had, in addition to their military duties, the task of supervising financial administration. The title _praeses_ (plural _praesides_) which was used in the second century for the imperial governors of senatorial rank, came to designate the equestrian governors when these supplanted the _legati_ in the latter half of the third century.

As under the republic, the governors exercised administrative, judicial, and, in the imperial provinces, military authority. However, with the advent of the principate the government of the empire aimed to secure the welfare and not the spoliation of its subjects, and hence a new era dawned for the provinces. All the governors now received fixed salaries and thus one of their chief temptations to abuse their power was removed. Oppressive governors were still to be found, but they were readily brought to justice—the senatorial governors before the Senate and the imperial before the princeps—and condemnations, not acquittals, were the rule. It was from the exactions of the imperial fiscal procurators rather than those of the governors that the provinces suffered under the principate. Although the term of the senatorial governors, as before, was limited to one year, tried imperial appointees were frequently kept at their posts for a number of years in the interests of good government.

It has been mentioned before that under Augustus the taxation of the provinces was revised to correspond more closely to their taxpaying capacity. Under the principate these taxes were of two kinds, direct or _tributa_ and indirect or _vectigalia_. The _tributa_, consisted of a poll-tax (_tributum capitis_), payable by all who had not Roman or Latin citizenship, and a land and property tax (_tributum soli_), from which only communities whose land was granted the status of Italian soil (_ius Italicum_) were exempt. The chief indirect taxes were the customs dues (_portoria_), the five per cent tax on the value of emancipated slaves, possibly the one per cent tax on sales, and the five per cent inheritance tax which was levied on Roman citizens only. In the imperial provinces the land tax was a fixed proportion of the annual yield of the soil, whereas in the senatorial provinces it was a definite sum (_stipendium_) annually fixed for each community.

The principate did not break abruptly with the republican practice of employing associations of _publicani_ in collecting the public revenues. It is true that they had been excluded from Asia by Julius Caesar, and it is possible that Augustus dispensed with them for the raising of the direct taxes in the imperial provinces, but even in the time of Tiberius they seem to have been active in connection with the _tributa_ in some of the senatorial provinces. Their place in the imperial provinces was taken by the procurator and his agents, in the senatorial at first by the proconsul assisted by the taxpaying communities themselves and later by imperial officials.

On the other hand the indirect taxes long continued to be raised exclusively by the corporations of tax collectors in all the provinces. However, the operations of these _publicani_ were strictly supervised by the imperial procurators. In place of the previous custom of paying a fixed sum to the state in return for which they acquired a right to the total returns from the taxes in question, the _publicani_ now received a fixed percentage of the amount actually collected. Under Hadrian the companies of _publicani_ engaged in collecting the customs dues began to be superseded by individual contractors (_conductores_), who like the companies received a definite proportion of the amount raised. About the time of Commodus the system of direct collection by public officials was introduced and the contractors gave way to imperial procurators. In the same way, the five percent taxes on inheritances and manumissions were at first farmed out, but later (under Hadrian in the case of the former) collected directly by agents of the state.

*The municipalities.* Each province was an aggregate of communes (_civitates_), some of which were organized towns, while others were tribal or village communities. From the opening of the principate it became a fixed principle of imperial policy to convert the rural communities into organized municipalities, which would assume the burden of local administration. Under the Republic the provincial communities had been grouped into the three classes, free and federate (_liberae et foederatae_), free and immune (_liberae et immunes_), and tributary (_stipendiariae_). In addition to these native communities there had begun to appear in the provinces Roman and Latin colonies. Towards the close of the Republic and in the early principate the majority of the free communities lost their immunity from taxation and became tributary. Some of them exchanged the status of federate allies of Rome for that of Roman colonies. During the same period the number of colonies of both types was greatly increased by the founding of new settlements or the planting of colonists in provincial towns. Some of the latter also acquired the status of Roman municipalities. Thus arose a great variety of provincial communities, which is well illustrated by conditions in the Spanish province of Baetica (Farther Spain) under Vespasian. At that time this province contained nine colonies and eight municipalities of Roman citizens; twenty-nine Latin towns; six free, three federate, and one hundred and twenty tributary communities.

We have already mentioned the policy of transforming rural communities into organized municipalities. How rapidly this transformation took place may be gathered from the fact that in Tarraconesis (Hither Spain) the number of rural districts sunk from one hundred and fourteen to twenty-seven between the time of Vespasian and that of Hadrian. A parallel movement was the conversion of the native towns into Roman colonies and municipalities, often through the transitional stage of Latin communities, a status that now existed in the provinces only. The acquirement of Roman or Latin status brought exemption from the poll-tax, while the former opened the way to all the civil and military offices of the empire. An added advantage was won with the charter of a Roman colony, for this usually involved immunity from the land tax also. The last step in the Romanization of the provincial towns was Caracalla’s edict of 212 A. D. which conferred Roman citizenship upon all non-Roman municipalities throughout the empire.

*The three Gauls and Egypt.* From this municipalization of the provinces two districts were at first excluded on grounds of public policy. These districts were the three Gauls (Aquitania, Lugdunensis and Belgica) and Egypt. At the time of its conquest Gaul was a rich agricultural country, with sharply defined tribal communities, but little or no city development. This condition Augustus judged well adapted, under strict imperial control, to furnishing recruits and supplies of money and kind for the great army of the Rhine. Therefore he continued the division of Gaul in tribal units (_civitates_), sixty-four in number, each controlled by its native nobility. His policy was in general adhered to for about two hundred years, but in the course of the third century the municipal system was introduced by converting the chief town of each _civitas_ into a municipality with the rest of the _civitas_ as its _territorium_ or district under its administrative control.

In Egypt Augustus by right of conquest was the heir of the Ptolemies and was recognized by the Egyptians proper as “king of upper Egypt and king of lower Egypt, lord of the two lands, _autocrator_, son of the Sun.” For the Greek residents he was an absolute deified ruler of the Hellenistic type. Thus Egypt, although a part of the Roman empire, was looked upon as subject to the rule of the princeps alone. And, as in the theory of government, so in the political institutions of the country the Romans adapted to their purposes existing conditions in place of introducing radical changes.

In the time of Augustus there were three Greek towns in Egypt, Alexandria the capital, Ptolemais and Naucratis. To these Hadrian added a third, Antinoopolis. Ptolemais, Naucratis and Antinoopolis enjoyed municipal institutions, but Alexandria because of the turbulence of its population was ruled by imperial officials following the Ptolemaic practice. The rest of the population of the country lived in villages throughout the Nile Valley, which was divided for administrative purposes into thirty-six districts called nomes (_nomoi_). The bulk of the land of Egypt was imperial or public domain land, and the great majority of the Egyptian population were tenants on the imperial domain. For the collection of the land tax, poll tax, professional and other taxes, for the supervision of irrigation, and for the maintenance of the public records of the cultivated acreage and the population (for which a census was taken every fourteen years) there had been developed a highly organized bureaucracy with central offices at Alexandria and agents in each of the nomes. This system of government was maintained by the Romans, and profoundly influenced the organization of the imperial civil service. At the head of the administration of Egypt stood the prefect, an equestrian because of his position as a personal employee of the princeps, and because the power concentrated in his hands would have proved a dangerous temptation to a senator. The chief burden laid upon Egypt was to supply one third of the grain consumed at Rome, or about 5,000,000 bushels annually. This amount was drawn partly from the land tax which was paid in kind and partly from grain purchased by the government.

The first step towards spreading municipal government throughout all Egypt was taken in 202 A. D., when Septimius Severus organized a _boule_, or senate of the Greek type, in Alexandria and in the metropolis or seat of administration of each nome. His object was to create in each metropolis a body which could be made to assume definite responsibilities in connection with the administration. However, it was not until after Diocletian that these villages received a full municipal organization.

The principate’s greatest service to the provinces was the gift of two and a half centuries of orderly government, which led in many quarters to a material development unequalled in these regions before or since. It is in these centuries that the history of Rome becomes the history of the provinces. At the opening of the period the Italians occupied a privileged position within the empire, at its close they and their one-time subjects were on the same level. The army and the senatorial and equestrian orders had been thoroughly provincialized, and the emperors had come to be as a rule of provincial birth. Rome was still the seat of the administration, but this and the corn dole to the city proletariat were the only things that distinguished it from a provincial city.

The imperial government of Rome had crushed out all vestiges of national loyalty among the peoples it had absorbed, and had failed to create any political institutions which would have permitted the provincials, as such, to have participated in the government of the empire. With the gradual decline of municipal autonomy the great mass of the provincials were deprived of the last traces of an independent political life. The provincial councils established for the maintenance of the imperial cult did indeed occasionally voice the complaints of the provincials but never acquired active political powers. And that the Roman administration proved a heavy burden is attested by the numerous complaints against the weight of taxation and the necessity which many emperors felt of remitting the arrears of tribute.

V. MUNICIPAL LIFE

The Roman empire was at bottom an aggregate of locally self-governing communities, which served as units for conscription, taxation and jurisdiction. They were held together by the army and the civil service, and were united by the bonds of a common Graeco-Roman civilization. These municipalities were of two general types, the Hellenic in the East and the Latin in the West.

The Hellenic municipalities were developments from the _poleis_, or city-states, which existed prior to the Roman conquest in Greece and the Hellenized areas of Asia and Africa. Municipal towns organized in these areas subsequent to the Roman occupation were of the same type. Their language of government, as well as of general intercourse, was Greek. The characteristic political institutions of the Hellenic municipalities were a popular assembly, a council or _boule_ and annual magistrates. The assembly had the power to initiate legislation; the council and magistrates were elected by it or were chosen by lot. But even under the Roman republic these democratic institutions were considerably modified in the interests of the wealthier classes. Timocratic constitutions were established with required property qualifications for citizenship and for the council and offices. The principate saw a further development along the same lines. The assemblies lost their right to initiate legislation, a power which passed to the magistrates, while the council tended to become a body of ex-magistrates who held their seats for life. However, in spite of this approximation to the Latin type, the Greek official terminology remained unchanged throughout the first three centuries A. D.

The Latin type of municipality was that which developed on Italian soil with the extension of Roman domination over the peninsula, and which was given uniformity by the legislation of Julius Caesar. With the Romanization of the western part of the empire it spread to Africa, Spain, Gaul, Britain, Germany and the Danubian provinces. In spite of the distinctions in status between Roman and Latin colonies and _municipia_, all these classes of municipalities were of the same general type which is revealed to us in the Julian Municipal Law (45 B. C.), the charter of the Roman _Colonia Genetiva Julia_ (44 B. C.), and those of the Latin municipalities of Malaca and Salpensa (81–84 A. D.).

The constitutions of these municipalities were patterned closely after that of Rome, although certain titles, like those of consul and Senate were reserved for the capital city. Like Rome, the municipal towns had their officials, their council (_curia_, _ordo_), and their plebs. The chief magistrates were a pair of duovirs (or at times a college of quattuovirs), who were assisted by two aediles, and two quaestors The duovirs were in charge of the local administration of justice, and in general conducted the public affairs of the community. Every fifth year the duovirs were called _quinquennales_ and took the census. The aediles had charge of public works, and market and police regulations, while the quaestors were the local treasury officials. All the officials were elected by popular vote, but a definite property qualification was required of each candidate. If no candidates presented themselves for any particular office, provision was made for the nomination of candidates who must serve if elected. At his election each magistrate paid into the treasury, or expended in accordance with the direction of the council, a definite sum of money (_summa honoraria_), which varied for each office in different communities. Oftentimes these officers did not restrict themselves to the required sum but took this opportunity for displaying their municipal loyalty. As other prominent citizens followed their example the municipalities were richly provided with useful and ornamental public works donated by the richer classes. Thus the municipal offices, being unsalaried, were a heavy drain upon the resources of their holders, but at the same time they offered almost the sole opportunity for gratifying the political ambitions of the population of the provinces. In addition to these civil officials, each community had its colleges of pontiffs and augurs.

The members of the _curia_ were called _decuriones_, and were usually one hundred in number. They comprised those who had held some local magistracy, and others having the requisite property qualification who were enrolled directly (_adlecti_) in the council. The council supervised the work of the magistrates and really directed the municipal administration. As in early Rome, so in the municipalities the people were grouped in _curiae_, which were the voting units in the local assembly or _comitia_. This assembly elected the magistrates and had legislative powers corresponding to those of the Roman assemblies. However, in the course of the second century A. D. these legislative powers passed into the hands of the council, whose decrees became the sole form of municipal legislation.

*The collegia.* While the plebs of Rome and the municipalities alike had little opportunity for political activity they found a compensation in the social life of their guilds or colleges. These were associations of persons who had some common tie, such as a common trade or profession, a common worship, or the humble desire to secure for themselves a decent burial by mutual coöperation. Thus arose professional, religious, and funerary colleges. The organization of the colleges was modelled on that of the municipalities. They had their patrons, their presidents (_magistri_, or _quinquennales_), their quaestors, and their treasury sustained by initiation fees, monthly dues, fines, contributions, gifts and legacies. The membership was called plebs or _populus_. The chief factor in the life of the colleges was the social element and their most important gatherings were for the purpose of holding a common banquet. The professional colleges in no way corresponded to the modern trades unions; they attempted no collective bargaining with regard to wages, prices or working hours, although they did not altogether neglect the common interests of their profession.

Apparently until late republican times no restrictions had been placed upon the forming of such collegiate associations, but in 64 B. C. all such unions in Rome had been abolished because of the disorders occasioned by political clubs. In 58 B. C. complete freedom of association was restored, only to be revoked again by Julius Caesar who permitted only the old and reputable professional and religious colleges to remain in existence. Under Augustus a law was passed which regulated for the future the character, organization and activities of these associations. New colleges could only be established in Italy or the provinces if sanctioned by a decree of the Senate or edict of the princeps, and membership in an unauthorized college was a treasonable offence. Trajan authorized the unrestricted formation of funerary colleges (_collegia tenuiorum_) in Rome, and Septimius Severus extended this privilege to Italy and the provinces. Under Marcus Aurelius the colleges were recognized as juristic persons, with power to manumit slaves and receive legacies. Not only persons of free birth but also freedmen and slaves, and in many cases women as well as men, were freely admitted to membership in the colleges.

*The decline of the municipalities.* The prosperity of the empire depended upon the prosperity of the municipalities and it is in the latter that the first symptoms of internal decay are noticeable. These symptoms were economic decline and the consequent loss of local autonomy. The reasons for the economic decline are hard to trace. Among them we may perhaps place the ruin of many of the wealthier families by the requirements of office-holding, the withdrawal of others who were eligible for the imperial service with its salaried offices; overtaxation, bad management of local finances, and the disappearance of a free peasantry in the surrounding rural districts who had furnished a market for the manufacturers and merchants of the towns. The devastating wars of the third century with the resultant general paralysis of trade and commerce, plus the depopulation caused by plague and barbarian invasions, struck the municipalities a crushing blow from which they never recovered.

As early as the time of Trajan the imperial government found it necessary to appoint officials called curators to reorganize the financial conditions in one or more municipalities, sometimes those of a whole province. At first these were irregular officials, senators or equestrians, but by the third century they had become a fixture in municipal administration and were chosen from among the local _decuriones_. Another evidence of the same conditions is the change which took place in the position of the local magistracies. In the second century these offices were still an honor for which candidates voluntarily presented themselves, although there were unmistakable signs that in some districts they were coming to be regarded as a burden. In the third century the magistracies had become an obligation resting upon the local senatorial order, and to which appointments were made by the _curia_. The _decurionate_ also had become a burden which all who possessed a definite census rating must assume. To assure itself of its revenues in view of the declining prosperity of the communities the imperial government had hit upon the expedient of making the local decurions responsible for collecting the taxes, and consequently had been forced to make the decurionate an obligatory status. The _curia_ and municipal magistracies had ended by becoming unwilling cogs in the imperial financial administration.

This loss of municipal independence was accompanied by the conversion of the voluntary professional colleges into compulsory public service corporations. From the opening of the principate the government had depended largely upon private initiative for the performance of many necessary services in connection with the provisioning of the city of Rome, a task which became increasingly complicated when the state undertook the distribution of oil under Septimius Severus, of bread in place of grain and of cheap wine under Aurelian. Therefore such colleges as the shipowners (_navicularii_), bakers (_pistores_), pork merchants (_suarii_), wine merchants (_vinarii_), and oil merchants (_olerarii_) received official encouragement. Their members individually assumed public contracts and in course of time came to receive certain privileges because it was recognized that they were performing services necessary to the public welfare. Marcus Aurelius, Severus and Caracalla were among the emperors who thus fostered the professional guilds. Gradually the idea developed that these services were public duties (_munera_) to which the several colleges were obligated, and hence Severus Alexander took the initiative in founding new colleges until all the city trades were thus organized. The same princeps appointed judicial representatives from each guild and placed them under the jurisdiction of definite courts. The colleges from this time onward operated under governmental supervision and really formed a part of the machinery of the administration, although they had not yet become compulsory and hereditary organizations.

The history of the colleges in the municipalities paralleled that of the Roman guilds, although it cannot be traced so clearly in detail. The best known of the municipal colleges are those of the artificers (_fabri_), the makers of rag cloths (_centonarii_), and the wood cutters (_dendrophori_). The organization of these colleges was everywhere encouraged because their members had the obligation of acting as a local fire brigade, but in the exercise of their trades they were not in the service of their respective communities.

It was in the latter part of the third century, when the whole fabric of society seemed threatened with destruction, that the state, with the object of maintaining organized industry and commerce, placed upon the properties of the members of the various colleges in Rome and in the municipalities the burden of maintaining the work of these corporations; a burden which soon came also to be laid upon the individual members thereof. In this way the plebeian class throughout the empire sank to the status of laborers in the service of the state.

VI. THE COLONATE OR SERFDOM

While the municipal decurions, and the Roman and municipal plebs had thus sunk to the position of fiscally exploited classes, the bulk of the agricultural population of the empire had fallen into a species of serfdom known to the Romans as the colonate, from the use of the word _colonus_ to denote a tenant farmer. This condition arose under varying circumstances in the different parts of the empire, but its development in Italy and the West was much influenced by the situation in some of the eastern provinces, where the peasantry were in a state of quasi-serfdom prior to the Roman conquest.

*Egypt.* In Egypt under the Ptolemies the inhabitants of village communities were compelled to perform personal services to the state, including the cultivation of royal land not let out on contract, each within the boundaries of the community in which he was registered (his _idia_). With the introduction of Roman rule this theory of the _idia_ was given greater precision. All the land of each village had to be tilled by the residents thereof, either as owners or tenants. At times, indeed, the inhabitants of one village might be forced to cultivate vacant lands at a distance. During the seasons of sowing and harvest the presence of every villager was required in his _idia_. The crushing weight of taxation, added to the other obligations of the peasantry caused many of them to flee from their _idia_, and this led to an increasing amount of unleased state land. As a large number of private estates had developed, chiefly because of the encouragement extended to those who brought waste land under cultivation, the government forced the property holders to assume the contracts for the vacant public lands in their districts. With the introduction of the municipal councils in the course of the third century, these were made responsible for the collection of the taxes of each nome. To enable the councillors, who were property holders, to fulfill this obligation, their tenants were forbidden to leave their holdings. And so, as state or private tenants, the peasants came to be bound to the soil.

The development in Asia Minor was similar. There the royal lands of the Seleucids became the public land of Rome, and out of this the Roman magnates of the later Republic developed vast estates which in turn were concentrated in the hands of Augustus. These imperial domains were cultivated by peasants, who lived in village communities and paid a yearly rental for the land they occupied. The rest of the land of Asia formed the territories dependent upon the Greek cities, and was occupied by a native population who were in part free peasants settled in villages. On the imperial domains the village came to be the _idia_ to which the peasant was permanently attached for the performance of his liturgies or obligatory services, while on the municipal territories the agricultural population was bound to the soil as tenants of the municipal landholders, the local senators, upon whom had been placed the responsibility for the payment of the taxes of their municipalities.

*Africa.* In Africa the transformation was effected differently. There, at the opening of the principate, outside of the municipal territories, the land fell into _ager publicus_, private estates of Roman senators and imperial domains. Under the early emperors, particularly Nero, the bulk of the private estates passed by legacy and confiscation into the control of the princeps, who also took over the administration of the public domain in so far as it was not absorbed in new municipal areas. This domain land was divided into large districts (_tractus_, _regiones_) which were directly administered by imperial procurators. Each district comprised a number of estates (_saltus_, _fundi_). Whatever slave labor had at one time been used in African agricultural operations was, by the early principate, largely displaced by free laborers, called _coloni_. These _coloni_ were either Italian immigrants or tributary native holders of the public land.

The estates were usually managed as follows. The procurators leased them to tenant contractors (_conductores_), who retained a part of their lease holds under their own supervision, and sublet the remainder to tenant farmers (_coloni_). The relation of these _coloni_ to the contractors as well as to the owners of private estates or their bailiffs (_vilici_), was regulated by an edict of a certain Mancia, apparently a procurator under the Flavians. By this edict the _coloni_ were obliged to pay a definite proportion of their crop as rental, and in addition to render a certain number of days’ work, personally and with their teams, on the land of the person from whom they held their lease. The _coloni_ comprised both landless residents on the estates and small landholders from neighboring villages. They were encouraged to occupy vacant domain land and bring it under cultivation. Over plough land thus cultivated they obtained the right of occupation for life, but orchard land became an hereditary possession, while in both cases the occupant was required to pay rental in kind to the state. Hadrian also tried to further the development of peasant landholders by permitting the _coloni_ to occupy any lands not tilled by the middlemen, and giving them rights of possession over all types of land. However, the forced services still remained and these constituted the chief grievance of the _coloni_. And here the government was on the horns of a dilemma, for if the middlemen were restrained from undue exactions often large areas remained untilled, and if the _coloni_ were oppressed they absconded and left their holdings without tenants.

It was in the course of the third century that the failure to create an adequate class of independent small farmers caused the state to fall back upon the development of large private estates as the only way of keeping the land under cultivation and maintaining the public revenues. As a result of this change of policy the middlemen were transformed from tenants into proprietors, and, like the landholders of Egypt, they were forced to assume the lease of vacant public land adjacent to their estates. But to make it possible for the proprietors to fulfill this obligation the state had to give them control over the labor needed to till the soil. Hence the _coloni_ were forbidden to leave the estates where they had once established themselves as tenants. In Africa the estate became the _idia_ or _origo_ corresponding to the village in Egypt. In the municipal territories the landholders of the towns played the rôle of the middlemen on the imperial domains.

*Italy.* In Italy, unlike Africa, conditions upon the private, rather than the imperial, domains determined the rise of the colonate. At the close of the Republic the land of Italy was occupied by the _latifundia_ and peasant holdings, the former of which were by far the most important factor in agricultural life. It will be recalled that the _latifundia_ were great plantations and ranches whose development had been facilitated by an abundant supply of cheap slave labor. However, even in the first century B. C. these plantations were partly tilled by free peasants, either as tenants or day laborers, and under the principate there was a gradual displacement of slaves by free _coloni_. The causes for this transformation lay in the cutting off of the main supply of slaves through the suppression of the slave-trading pirates and the cessation of aggressive foreign wars, the decrease in the number of slaves through manumissions, the growth of humanitarian tendencies which checked their ruthless exploitation, and the realization that the employment of free labor was in the long run more profitable than that of slaves, particularly when the latter were becoming increasingly expensive to procure. The _coloni_ worked the estates of the landowners for a certain proportion of the harvest. As elsewhere, in Italy it was fiscal necessity which converted the free _coloni_ into serfs. With the spread of waste lands, due partly to a decline of the population, the state intervened on behalf of the landlords as it had in the provinces and attached the peasants to the domain where they had once been voluntary tenants. Elsewhere throughout the empire, although the process cannot be traced in detail, a similar transformation took place.

Perhaps the ultimate responsibility for the development of the colonate may rest upon the attempt of the imperial government to incorporate within the empire vast territories in a comparatively low state of civilization, and upon the fiscal system whereby it was designed that the expenses imposed by this policy should be met. In the West the administration strove to develop a strong class of prosperous peasants as state tenants; in the East its object was to maintain this class which was already in existence. But the financial needs of the state caused such a heavy burden to be laid upon the agricultural population that the ideal of a prosperous free peasantry proved impossible of realization. The ravages of war and plague in the second and third centuries also fell heavily upon the peasants. As a last resource to check the decline of agriculture the government placed the small farmer at the disposal of the rich landlord and made him a serf. The results were oppression, poverty, lack of initiative, a decline in the birth rate, flight and at the end an increase of uncultivated, unproductive land. The transplanting of conquered barbarians within the empire swelled the class of the _coloni_ but proved only a partial palliative to the general shrinkage of the agricultural elements. But the converse to the development of the colonate was the creation of a powerful class of landholders who were the owners of large domains exempt from the control of municipal authorities.