LATE ROMAN SOCIETY AND ECONOMYrevenue for the state, and the scheme also involved elaborate matching of
need and supply. The main item of expenditure as before was on the army,
who were now paid in kind as well as money. Certain obvious consequences
followed: army units (themselves far more varied in type and organization
than previously) now tended, for instance, to be stationed near to the sources
of supply, and thus in or near towns, instead of on the frontiers. While by
the end of the fourth century more payments were made in cash, the central
role of the state in collecting and distributing the annona (the army supplies)
remained an important feature of the economy, in terms of both organization
and stimulus to production; accordingly the eventual cessation of this state
function was a major factor leading to economic fragmentation, as was the
end of the grain requisitions for the cities of Rome and Constantinople. Basi-
cally the same system was in force in the east as in the west, but apparently
with more success. A number of factors contributed to this. The east, for
instance, had been urbanized earlier and more successfully than the west and,
despite the ceaseless complaints of municipal councils and their spokesmen,
most of these cities continued in existence or even fl ourished into the later
sixth century and indeed beyond (Chapter 7). We hear a great deal about their
problems, not least because our written sources tend to come from just this
kind of milieu; thus Ammianus Marcellinus, Libanius, Julian and later Pro-
copius all took up the cause of the cities versus the central government. But
many of their complaints had an ideological basis; in practice, the fi fth and
early sixth centuries seem to have been a time of prosperity for many eastern
regions, especially parts of Syria and Palestine (Chapters 7). Another obvious
difference between east and west in economic terms relates to the constant
and in the end more serious military action in the west in the fi fth century; not
only was the economic base itself weaker than in the east, but the demands
on it were greater. As we have seen, the western government had great diffi -
culty in maintaining military forces adequate for their task. A deeper and more
structural difference also lay in the growth of an immensely rich and powerful
class of senatorial landowners in the west during the fourth century, whereas
wealth in the east was by comparison more evenly spread, at least until the
growth of the large estates of which we know in Egypt in the sixth century
(owned by families such as the Apiones with property in Constantinople and
land elsewhere as well).^17 The combination of a weak government and wealthy
and powerful landowners was crucial in determining the shape of the western
economy from the late fourth century onwards.
Thus east and west were both similar and dissimilar in this period, and local
factors are increasingly important from AD 395 onwards; yet many shared fea-
tures remain and some similar trends can be observed, even though the rate
of change may differ. The standard accounts of decline and collapse obscure
these real differences. In contrast, the present lively state of archaeological
investigation invites us to compare one site or area with another, and en-
courages the broader view; it also invites the question of how the traditional
textual evidence and the increasing amount of material evidence relate to each