LATE ROMAN SOCIETY AND ECONOMYhad rights which can look very like the rights of owner over slave. It was for
instance possible to be described as servus et colonus (both a slave and a colonus),
and slaves could also be tenants.
Recent historiography, under the infl uence of the reinterpretation of late
Roman legislation on the subject, has radically questioned the traditional view
of the coloni, which seemed to suggest a move towards a tied peasantry in the
later Roman empire and thus underpinned ideas of immobility and decline;
such a view was fundamental to Marxian ideological approaches to the pe-
riod.^21 In contrast, according to a recent discussion, ‘the ‘colonate’ was not a
generalized condition of rural dependency’, but rather arose in the context of
the late Roman tax system and the desire by the authorities to track not only
the ownership of the land itself but also the labour force. The state was inter-
ested in maximizing tax revenue and restricting any reduction in the agricul-
tural labour force.^22 Coloni were registered by their landlords for tax purposes
and the state had an interest in ensuring that tax liabilities were met. Hence, as
we can see from the fi fth-century Theodosian Code and the Justinianic Code
a century later, late Roman emperors passed a mass of legislation which on
the face of it sought to restrict the freedom of movement of coloni and tie them
to the land; they also tended to use the familiar language of slavery. If these
laws are taken at face value and were successful, we would have to conclude
that the late empire was a time of real repression, in which the population was
reduced to virtual serfdom.^23 Indeed, the concept of being ‘free’ became diffi -
cult to defi ne, and the difference between slave and free may often have been
slight or non-existent in practical terms: by the time of Justinian, for instance,
tenants known as adscripticii (bound to the soil) were treated in the legal texts
more or less as if they were slaves.^24 Yet the impression we get of these classes
from other sources is far from being one of total repression and alienation,^25
and social mobility was surprisingly common at higher levels. There was thus
evidently a large gap between theory and practice.
It is important to realize that late Roman law often followed, rather than led,
social practice. The frequently repeated and often contradictory pronounce-
ments of emperors do not signify authoritarian intrusions on the lives of indi-
viduals so much as vain attempts to regulate a situation which might in prac-
tice be beyond their control. Complexities and inconsistencies abound, not
to mention those caused by the very processes of recording and codifi cation.
The legislation on coloni grew out of the diffi culties experienced in collecting
tax, and the state legislated essentially to control and trace the labour force
on which the tax was due. Not surprisingly, given the ways of late Roman
government, this legislation developed only gradually, and piecemeal, during
the fourth century, and uncertainty as to the relation of slave and colonus in in-
dividual areas, and inconsistency between geographical regions, were among
the results of the untidy process that was adopted. Legislation dealing with the
status of coloni was also introduced at differing rates in different geographical
areas, in Illyricum and Palestine not until the end of the fourth century. Fur-
thermore, as the evidence of the Egyptian papyri suggests, there were many