to the military authorities; the residue was sent to the chest of the Praetorian Prefect.85 These chests seem also to have paid the salaries of the provincial governors and their staffs.
The administration of the Imperial domains, which were extensive and were increased from time to time by the confiscation of the property of persons convicted of treason, demanded a separate department and a whole army of officials. At the head of this department was the Count of the Private Estates.86 The Private Estate (res privata) had originally been organised by Septimius Severus, who determined not to incorporate the large confiscated estates of his defeated rivals in the Patrimony but to have them separately administered.87 In the fourth century the Patrimony and the Private Estate were combined and placed under a minister of illustrious rank. His officials administered the domains and collected the rent from the colons. The greater part of the Imperial lands were treated as State property of which the income was used for public purposes. But certain domains were set aside to furnish the Emperor’s privy purse. Thus the domains in Cappadocia were withdrawn from the control of the Count of Private Estates and placed under the control of the Grand Chamberlain.88 And in the same way, in the west, certain estates in Africa (fundi domus divinae per Africam) were appropriated to the personal disposition of the Emperor, although they remained under the control of the Count.
What were the relations between the fisc or treasury of the Count of the Sacred Largess on one hand, and the chests of the Praetorian Prefects and the treasury of the Count of the Private Estates on the other? We may conjecture that the Prefects paid out of the treasuries directly the salaries of all the officials, both central and provincial, who were under their control; that in the same way the Count of the Private Estates paid out of the monies that came in from the domains all the officials who were employed in their administration; and that all that remained over, after the expenses of the departments had been defrayed, was handed over to the treasury of the Count of the Sacred Largess.89 This was the public treasury which had to supply the money required for all purposes with the four exceptions of the Emperor’s privy purse, the upkeep of the administration of the Imperial domains, the maintenance of the civil service under the Praetorian Prefects, and the payment of the army.
It has already been observed that no figures are recorded either for the annual revenue or for the annual expenditure. We have no data to enable us to conjecture, however roughly, the yield of the mines or of the rents of the Imperial domains. There is some material for forming a minimum estimate of the money value of the land-tax in Egypt, but even here there is much uncertainty.90 Turning to expenditure, we find that the evidence points to 500,000 or thereabouts as the lowest figure we can assume for the strength of the army in the time of Theodosius the Great. The soldiers were paid from the annona. When this payment in kind was commuted into coin, it was valued at 25 or 30 solidi a year for each soldier.91 The annual value of the annona must then have exceeded 12½ million solidi or nearly 8 million sterling. Of the salaries paid to the civil and military officials and their staffs we can only say that the total must have exceeded, and may have far exceeded, £400,000.92
From the general consideration that the population of the Empire at the lowest estimate must have been 50 millions, we might assume as the minimum figure for the revenue 50 million solidi, on the ground that in a state which was severely taxed the taxation could not have been less than 1 solidus per head.93 That would be about £31,250,000. It is probably much under the mark.
Of the financial problems with which Diocletian and Constantine had to deal, one of the most difficult was the medium of exchange. In the third century the Empire suffered from scarcity of gold. The yield of the mines had decreased; and a considerable quantity of the precious metals was withdrawn from circulation by private people, who during that troubled period buried their treasures. But the chief cause of the scarcity was the drain of gold to the east in exchange for the Oriental wares which the Romans required. In the first century A.D. the annual export of gold to the east is said to have amounted (at the least) to a million pounds sterling.94 The Emperors resorted to a depreciation of the coinage, and up to a certain point this perhaps was not particularly disadvantageous so far as internal trade was concerned, since the value of the metals had risen in consequence of the scarcity. When Diocletian came to the throne there was practically nothing in circulation but the double denarius, which ought to have been a silver coin equivalent to about 1s. 9d.), but was now made of copper, with only enough silver in it to give it a whitish appearance, and worth about a halfpenny. Both Aurelian and Diocletian made attempts to establish a stable monetary system, but the solution of the problem was reserved for Constantine. The Constantinian gold solidus or nomisma remained the standard gold coin and maintained its proper weight, with little variation, till the eleventh century. Seventy-two solidi went to the pound of gold, so that its value was about twelve shillings and sixpence.95 But the solidus was not treated as a coin in the proper sense; and it was not received as interchangeable into so many silver or copper pieces. The pound of gold was really the standard, and, when solidi were used in ordinary transactions, they were weighed. In the payment of taxes they were accepted at their nominal value, but for other purposes they were pieces of metal, of which the purity, not the weight, was guaranteed by the mint.96
§ 4. Compulsory Social Organisation
Diocletian and Constantine had to seek solutions not only of political but also of more difficult economic problems. The troubles of the third century, the wars both domestic and foreign, the general disorder of the State, had destroyed the prosperity of the Empire and had rapidly developed sinister tendencies, which were inherent in ancient civilisation, and legislators whose chief preoccupation was the needs of the public treasury applied methods which in some ways did more to aggravate than to mitigate the evils. We find the State threatened with the danger that many laborious but necessary occupations would be entirely abandoned, and the fields left untilled for lack of labourers. The only means which the Emperors discovered for averting such consequences was compulsion. They applied compulsion to the tillers of the soil, they applied compulsion to certain trades and professions, and they applied it to municipal service. The results were serfdom and hereditary status. The local autonomy of the municipal communities,97 the cities and towns which were the true units in the structure of the Empire, had been undermined in some ways under the Principate, but before Diocletian no attempt had been made to impose uniformity, and each community lived according to its own rules and traditions. The policy of uniform taxation, which Diocletian introduced, led to the strict control of the local bodies by the Imperial Government. The senates and the magistrates became the agents of the fisc; the municipalities lost their liberties and gradually decayed.
(1) For some centuries there had been a general tendency to substitute free for servile labour on large estates. The estate was divided into farms which were leased to free tenants, coloni, on various conditions, and this system of cultivation was found more remunerative.98 But towards the end of the third century the general conditions of the Empire seem to have brought about an agrarian crisis. Many colons found themselves insolvent. They could not pay the rent and defray the heavy taxes. They gave up their farms and sought other means of livelihood. Proprietors themselves some sold their lands, and the tenants declined to hold their farms under the new owners. Thus land fell out of cultivation and the fiscal revenue suffered. Constantine’s legislation, to solve this agrarian problem, created a new caste. He made the colons compulsory tenants. They were attached to the soil, and their children after them. They continued to belong legally to the free, not to the servile, class; they had many of the rights of freemen, such as that of acquiring property. But virtually they were unfree and were regarded as chattels. Severe laws prevented them from leaving their farms, and treated those who ran away as fugitive slaves. The conception of a colon as the chattel of his lord comes out clearly in a law which describes his flight as an act of theft; “he steals his own person.”99 But the Emperors, whose principal aim in their agrarian legislation was to guard the interests of the revenue, protected the colons against exorbitant demands of rent on the part of the proprietors.
