under Constantine, he speaks of the Diocletian or Galerian persecution
as a contemporary. The passage[1730] to be cited here describes the
appalling cruelty of the fiscal exactions ordered by Galerius to meet
the pressing need of the government for more money. It was after the
abdication of Diocletian and Maximian in 305. The troubles that ensued
had no doubt helped to render financial necessities extreme. The remark,
that he now practised against all men the lessons of cruelty learnt
in tormenting the Christians, must refer to Galerius. The account of
the census[1731], presumably that of 307, is as follows. ‘What brought
disaster on the people and mourning on all alike, was the sudden letting
loose of the census on the provinces and cities. Census-officers, sparing
nothing, spread all over the land, and the scenes were such as when an
enemy invades a country and enslaves the inhabitants. There was measuring
of fields clod by clod, counting of vines and fruit trees, cataloguing
of every sort of animals, recording of the human[1732] heads. In the
municipalities (_civitatibus_) the common folk of town and country put
on the same[1733] footing, everywhere the market-place crammed with the
households assembled, every householder with his children and slaves.
The sounds of scourging and torturing filled the air. Sons were being
strung up to betray parents; all the most trusty slaves tortured to give
evidence against their masters, and wives against husbands. If all these
means had failed, men were tortured for evidence against themselves,
and when they broke down under the stress of pain they were credited
with admissions[1734] never made by them. No plea of age or infirmity
availed them: informations were laid against the invalids and cripples:
the ages of individuals were recorded by guess, years added to those
of the young and subtracted from those of the old. All the world was
filled with mourning and grief.’ In short, Romans and Roman subjects
were dealt with as men of old dealt with conquered foes. ‘The next
step was the paying[1735] of moneys for heads, a ransom for a life.
But the whole business was not entrusted to the same body of officials
(_censitoribus_); one batch was followed by others, who were expected to
make further discoveries: a continual doubling of demands went on, not
that they discovered more, but that they made additions arbitrarily, for
fear they might seem to have been sent to no purpose. All the while the
numbers of live stock were falling, and mankind dying; yet none the less
tribute was being paid on behalf of the dead, for one had to pay for
leave to live or even to die. The only survivors were the beggars from
whom nothing could be wrung, immune for the time from wrongs of any sort
by their pitiful destitution.’ He goes on to declare that, in order to
prevent evasion of the census on pretence of indigence, a number of these
poor wretches were taken out to sea and drowned.
In this picture[1736] we may reasonably detect high colouring and perhaps
downright exaggeration. Probably the grouping together of horrors
reported piecemeal from various quarters has given to the description
as a whole a somewhat deceptive universality. That the imperial system,
though gradually losing ground, held its own against unorganized
barbarism for several more centuries, seems proof positive that no
utter destruction of the economic fabric took place in the census to
which Lactantius refers. But that the pressure exerted by the central
power, and the responsive severity of officials, were extreme, and
that the opportunities for extortion were seized and cruelly used, may
fairly be taken for fact on his authority. This was not the beginning
of sufferings to the unhappy tillers of the soil, nor was it the end.
One census might be more ruinous to their wellbeing than another: it
was always exhausting, and kept the farmers in terror. But they had
not as yet reached the stage of thinking it better to bear the yoke of
barbarian chieftains than to remain under the corrupt and senseless
maladministration of imperial Rome.
LVIII. SULPICIUS SEVERUS.
The life and doings of the famous saint of Gaul, Martin of Tours, a
Pannonian by birth, were chronicled by =Sulpicius Severus=, writing soon
after 400, in an enthusiastic biography still in existence. In another
work occurs a passage[1737] narrating one of his hero’s many miracles;
and the story is too artlessly illustrative of the behaviour of the
military and the state of things on the public roads, not to be mentioned
here. Martin was travelling on his ecclesiastical duties, riding on an
ass with friends in company. The rest being for a moment detained, Martin
went on alone for a space. Just then a government car (_fiscalis raeda_)
occupied by a party of soldiers was coming along the road. The mules
drawing it shied at the unfamiliar figure of the saint in his rough and
dark dress. They got entangled in their harness, and the difficulty of
disentangling them infuriated the soldiers, who were in a hurry. Down
they jumped and fell upon Martin with whips and staves. He said not a
word, but took their blows with marvellous patience, and his apparent
indifference only enraged them the more. His companions picked him up all
battered and bloody, and were hastening to quit the scene of the assault,
when the soldiers, on trying to make a fresh start, were the victims
of a miracle. No amount of beating would induce the mules to stir.
Supernatural influence was suspected and made certain by discovery of the
saint’s identity. Abject repentance was followed by gracious forgiveness,
and mules and soldiers resumed their journey. Now the point of interest
to us is the matter-of-fact way in which this encounter is narrated. That
a party of the military should bully peaceful civilians on the high road
is too commonplace an event to evoke any special comment or censure.
But it is clearly an edifying fact that violence offered to a holy man
did not escape divine punishment. There is no suggestion that similar
brutality to an ordinary rustic would have met with any punishment human
or divine. Laws framed for the protection of provincials[1738] against
illegal exactions and to prevent encroachments of the military[1739]
remained on the statute-book, but in remote country parts they were dead
letters. It is interesting to recall that Martin had in his youth served
for some years as a soldier. As the son of a veteran, his enrolment[1740]
came in the ordinary course. But, though he is said to have been
efficient, he did not like the profession and got his discharge with
relief. His life covered about the last three quarters of the fourth
century.
LIX. SALVIAN.
The calamities that befel the Roman world in the fourth century led
to much recrimination between Pagan and Christian, each blaming the
other for misfortunes generally regarded as the signal expression of
divine wrath. Symmachus had been answered by Ambrose, and Christian
interpretation of the course of human history produced its classic in
Augustine’s great work _de civitate Dei_ early in the fifth century.
About the same time Orosius wrote his earnest but grotesque _historiae
adversus paganos_, an arbitrary and superficial distortion of history,
interesting as a specimen of partisan composition. But it is not till
the middle of the century that we come upon a Christian author who gives
us a graphic picture of the sufferings of the people in a Province of
the empire, and a working theory of their causes, strictly from a pious
Christian’s point of view. This is =Salvian=, an elder of the Church at
Massalia. His evidence is cited by all historians, and must be repeated
here. The main thesis is that all the woes and calamities of the age
are judgments of God provoked by the gross immorality[1741] of the
Roman world. So far from imputing all vices and crimes to the Heathen
and the Pagan, he regards them as shared by all men: but he draws a
sharp line between those who sin in ignorance, knowing no better, and
those who profess the principles of a pure Christianity and yet sin
against the light that is in them. For the barbarians are either Heathen
or Heretics (he is thinking of the Arians), while in the empire the
Orthodox church prevails. And yet the barbarians prosper, while the
empire decays. Why? simply because even in their religious darkness the
barbarians are morally superior to the Romans. For our present purpose
it is the economic and social phenomena as depicted by Salvian that are
of interest, and I proceed to give an abstract of the passage[1742] in
which he expounds his indictment of Roman administration and the corrupt
influences by which it is perverted from the promotion of prosperity and
happiness to a cause of misery and ruin.
The all-pervading canker is the oppression of the poor by the rich. The
heavy burdens of taxation are thrown upon the poor. When any relief is
granted, it is intercepted by the rich. Franks Huns Vandals and Goths
will have none of these iniquities, and Romans living among those
barbarians also escape them. Hence the stream of migration sets from us
to them, not from them to us. Indeed our poor folk would migrate in a
body, but for the difficulty of transferring their few goods their poor
hovels and their families. This drives them to take another course. They
put themselves under the guardianship and protection of more powerful
persons, surrendering[1743] to the rich like prisoners of war, and
so to speak passing under their full authority and control. But this
protection is made a pretext for spoliation. For the first condition
of protection is the assignation[1744] of practically their whole
substance to their protectors: the children’s inheritance is sacrificed
to pay for the protection of their parents. The bargain is cruel and
one-sided, a monstrous and intolerable wrong. For most of these poor
wretches, stripped of their little belongings and expelled from their
little farms, though they have lost their property, have still to bear
the tribute on the properties lost: the possession is withdrawn, but
the assessment[1745] remains: the ownership is gone, but the burden
of taxation is crushing them still. The effects of this evil are
incalculable. The intruders (_pervasores_) are settled down (_incubant_)
on their properties, while they, poor souls, are paying the tributes on
the intruders’ behalf. And this condition passes on to their children. So
they who have been despoiled by the intrusion[1746] of individuals are
being done to death by the pressure of the state (_publica adflictione_),
and their livelihood is taken from them by squeezing as their property
was by robbery. Some, wiser or taught by necessity, losing their homes
and little farms through intrusions or driven by the tax-gatherers to
abandon them through inability to keep them, find their way to the
estates of the powerful, and become[1747] serf-tenants (_coloni_) of
the rich. Like fugitives from the enemy or the law, not able to retain
their social birthright, they bow themselves[1748] to the mean lot of
mere sojourners: cast out of property and position, they have nothing
left to call their own, and are no longer their own masters. Nay, it is
even worse. For though they are admitted (to the rich men’s estates) as
strangers (_advenae_), residence operates to make them[1749] natives of
the place. They are transformed as by a Circe’s cup. The lord of the
place, who admitted them as outside[1750] aliens, begins to treat them
as his own (_proprios_): and so men of unquestioned free birth are being
turned into slaves. When we are putting our brethren into bondage, is it
strange[1751] that the barbarians are making bondsmen of us?
This is something beyond[1752] mere partisan polemic. It finds the source
of misery and weakness in moral decay. Highly coloured, the picture is
surely none the less true. The degradation of the rustic population
presents itself in two stages. First, the farmer, still owning his
little farm (_agellus_, _rescula_), finds that, what with legal burdens
and illegal extortions, his position is intolerable. So he seeks the
protection[1753] of a powerful neighbour, who exploits his necessities.
Apparently he acquires control of the poor man’s land, but contrives
to do it in such a form as to leave him still liable to payment of the
imperial dues. That this iniquity was forbidden[1754] by law mattered
not: corrupt officials shut their eyes to the doings of the rich. From
the _curiales_ of the several communities no help was to be looked for.
Salvian declares[1755] that they were tyrants to a man. And we must not
forget that they themselves were forced into office and held responsible
for paying in full the dues they were required to collect. The great
machine ground all, and its cruel effects were passed on from stronger
to weaker, till the peasant was reached and crushed by burdens that he
could not transmit to others. The second stage is the inevitable sequel.
The poor man’s lot is more intolerable than before. His lesson is learnt,
and he takes the final step into the status of a rich man’s _colonus_.
Henceforth his lord is liable[1756] for his dues, but he is himself the
lord’s serf, bound to the soil on which his lord places him, nominally
free, but unable to stir from the spot[1757] to which his labour gives a
value. If he runs away, the hue and cry follows him, and he is brought
ignominiously back to the servile punishment that awaits him—unless he
can make his way to some barbarian tribe. Whether he would find himself
so much better off in those surroundings as Salvian seems to imply, must
be left doubtful. Any family that he might leave behind would remain in
serfage under conditions hardly improved by his desertion.
LX. APOLLINARIS SIDONIUS.
The last of our array of witnesses is =Apollinaris Sidonius=[1758] (about
430-480), a writer whose life is singularly illustrative of the confused
period in which the Roman empire was tottering and the series of luckless
emperors was ended in the West. Britain had been finally lost in the time
of Honorius. The Armorican provinces had rebelled, and even now the hold
of Rome on them was slight and precarious. The rest of Gaul and much
of Spain and Africa had been subject to barbarian inroads, and numbers
of the invaders were settled in the country: for instance, the Western
Goths were fully established in Aquitania. But the Roman civilization
was by no means wiped out. Roman landlords still owned large estates:
Romans of culture still peddled with a degenerate rhetoric and exchanged
their compositions for mutual admiration. Panegyrics on shadowy emperors
were still produced in verse and prose, and the modern reader may often
be amazed to note the way in which the troubles of the time could be
complacently ignored. Above all, there was the Church, closely connected
with Rome, claiming to be Catholic and Orthodox, a stable organization,
able to make itself respected by the barbarians. That the latter were
Arian heretics was indeed a cause of friction, though the Arians were
destined to go under. The conversion of the Franks under the Catholic
form did not give Roman Christianity the upper hand till 496. But the
power of bishops, ever growing[1759] since the days of Constantine, was
throughout a powerful influence holding the various communities together,
maintaining law and order, and doing much for the protection of their own
people. A native of Lugudunum, the chief city of Gaul, Sidonius came of a
noble and wealthy family, and his social position evidently helped him in
his remarkable career. In 468 he was city prefect at Rome, barely eight
years before Odovacar removed the last of the titular Western emperors.
We find him anxiously concerned[1760] with the old food-question, like
his predecessor Symmachus, and not less endeavouring to cooperate
harmoniously with the _praefectus annonae_. For a hungry rabble, no doubt
fewer in number, still hung about the Eternal city, though its services
in the way of applause were no longer in appreciable demand.
From about 471 Sidonius was bishop[1761] of Arverni (Clermont in
Auvergne), and performed his difficult duties with efficiency and
dignity, a sincerely pious man with a good deal of the _grand seigneur_
about him. Moving about on duty or seeking restful change, he was
often visiting country houses, his own or those of friends, receiving
or returning hospitality. His references to these visits lead to
descriptions[1762] of many pleasant places, and pictures of life in the
society of cultivated gentlemen to which he belonged. There is hardly any
mention of the suffering farmers of whom Salvian speaks so eloquently.
Yet I hesitate to charge Salvian with gross exaggeration and imaginative
untruth. Not only do the two men look from different points of view.
Sidonius is writing some twenty years later than Salvian, and much had
happened in the meantime. The defeat of Attila in 451 by the armies of
the Romans and Western Goths had not only saved Gaul from the Huns, but
had greatly improved the relations between Goth and Roman. And it is to
be noted that, in a passage[1763] mentioning the victory of the allies
and the reception of Thorismund the Gothic king as a guest at Lugudunum,
Sidonius praises his correspondent[1764] for his share in lightening the
burdens of the landowners. Now Salvian knows nothing of the battle of
451, and indeed does not regard the Huns as being necessarily enemies of
Rome. It seems certain that for the rustics things were changed for the
better. Not that the farmer was his own master, but that the great Roman
taxing-machine was no longer in effective action. A great part of Gaul
had passed under Teutonic lords. If the subjects were exposed to their
caprice, it was of a more personal character, varying with individuals
and likely to be modified by their personal qualities. This was a very
different thing from the pressure of the Roman official hierarchy, the
lower grades of which were themselves squeezed to satisfy the demands
of the higher, and not in a position to spare their victims, however
merciful their own inclinations might be.
But though the establishment of barbarian kingdoms, once the raiding
invasions were over, had its good side from the working farmer’s point
of view, much of the old imperial system still lingered on. The power
of the Catholic Church stood in the way of complete revolution, and the
Church was already[1765] a landowner. Roman traditions died hard, and
among them it is interesting to note the exertion of private interest
on behalf of individuals and causes in which an honourable patron felt
some concern. Thus we find Sidonius writing[1766] on behalf of a friend
who wants to buy back an ancestral estate with which recent troubles
have compelled him to part. Great stress is laid on the point that the
man is not grasping at pecuniary profit but actuated by sentimental
considerations: in short, the transaction proposed is not a commercial
one. The person addressed is entreated to use his influence[1767] in
the applicant’s favour; and we can only infer that he is asked to put
pressure on the present owner to part with the property, probably to take
for it less than the market price. Another letter[1768] is to a bishop,
into whose district (_territorium_) the bearer, a deacon, fled for refuge
to escape a Gothic raid. There he scratched a bit of church-land and
sowed a little corn. He wants to get in his crop without deductions.
The bishop is asked to treat him with the consideration usually shewn
to the faithful[1769]; that is, not to require of him the season’s
rent[1770]. If this favour is granted him, the squatter reckons that he
will do as well as if he were farming in his own district, and will be
duly grateful. Very likely a fair request, but Sidonius does not leave
it to the mere sense of fairness in a brother bishop. To another bishop
he writes a long letter[1771] of thanks for his thoughtful munificence.
After the devastation of a Gothic raid, further damage had been suffered
by fires among the crops. The ensuing distress affected many parts of
Gaul, and to relieve it this worthy sent far and wide bountiful gifts
of corn. The happy results of his action have earned the gratitude of
numerous cities, and Sidonius is the mouthpiece of his own Arverni. The
affair illustrates the beneficence of good ecclesiastics in troubled
times. For Gaul was not enjoying tranquil repose. The barbarians were
restless, and the relations[1772] between their kings and the failing
empire were not always friendly. Religious differences too played a part
in preventing the coalescence of Gallo-Roman and Teuton. The good bishop
just referred to is praised by Sidonius as a successful converter of
heretics.
The fine country houses with their vineyards and oliveyards and general
atmosphere of comfort and plenty shew plainly that the invasions and
raids had not desolated all the countryside. The first need of the
invaders was food. Wanton destruction was not in their own interest,
and the requisitioning of food-stuffs was probably their chief offence,
naturally resented by those who had sown and reaped for their own
consumption. If we admit this supposition, it follows that their
operations, like those of other successful invaders, would be directed
mainly to the lowland districts, where most of the food-stuffs were
produced. Now the country houses of Sidonius and his friends were, at
least most of them, situated in hilly country, often at a considerable
distance from the main[1773] roads, among pleasant surroundings which
these kindly and cultivated gentlemen were well qualified to enjoy. It
is evident that some, perhaps many, of these snug retreats were not
seriously[1774] molested, at all events in southern and south-eastern
Gaul. Roughly speaking, the old and most thoroughly Romanized provinces,
the chief cities of which were Lugudunum and Narbo, were still seats
(indeed the chief seats) of Roman civilization. It was there that the
culture of the age survived in literary effort sedulously feeding on the
products and traditions of the past. Sidonius thinks it a pity[1775] that
men of education and refinement should be disposed to bury their talents
and capacity for public service in rural retreats, whether suburban or
remote. The truth probably was that town life had ceased to be attractive
to men unconcerned in trade and not warmly interested in religious
partisanship. The lord of a country manor, surrounded by his dependants,
could fill his store-rooms and granaries[1776] with the produce of their
labour. He still had slaves[1777] to wait on him, sometimes even to work
on the land. With reasonable kindliness and care on his part, he could be
assured of comfort and respect, the head of a happy rustic community. The
mansions of these gentry, sometimes architecturally[1778] fine buildings,
were planted in spots chosen for local advantages, and the library was
almost as normal a part of the establishment as the larder. Some of the
owners of these places gave quite as much of their time and attention to
literary trifling as to the management of their estates. The writing of
letters, self-conscious and meant for publication, after the example of
Pliny the younger, was a practice of Sidonius. The best specimen of this
kind is perhaps the long epistle[1779] in which he describes minutely
a place among the foot-hills of the Alps. Every attraction of nature
seconded by art is particularized, down to the drowsy tinkling of the
bells on the mountain flocks accompanied by the shepherd’s pipe. No doubt
the effective agriculture[1780] of Gaul had little in common with these
Arcadian scenes. The toiling _coloni_, serfs of a barbarian chief or a
Roman noble, were all the while producing the food needed to support
the population; and it is a convincing proof of the superficiality of
Sidonius as an observer of his age that he practically ignores them.