THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD IN LATE ANTIQUITYpossible variations at the level of actual arrangements between landlord and
tenant; loans, effectively mortgages, from large landowners to small were com-
mon, and defaulting borrowers were subjected to coercive measures from the
lenders which were of more immediate concern than any imperial legislation.
In general, it seems questionable whether conditions for the lower classes had
in practice signifi cantly deteriorated since the early empire. The condition of
the poor, whether urban or rural, remained hard at all times. There had indeed
been over the imperial period a progressive intensifi cation of penalties applied
to those convicted under the law, with an ever-widening division between the
treatment of the rich and powerful and the cruel treatment (torture, chains,
mutilation) meted out to the poor.^26 But the same process coincided during
our period with a new consciousness of ‘the poor’ as a class, no doubt inspired
by Christian teaching, which found expression, as far as the urban poor were
concerned, in various forms of Christian charity,^27 while saints’ lives attest
to the role of the local bishop in alleviating economic distress in the country
areas, and especially in providing food in times of famine.
The economic changes which took place in the late empire were not of a
revolutionary nature. This was still a basically agrarian society, and much of
the land was owned by large landowners and worked by tenants, whether
slave or free. Again, though comparisons with medieval feudalism have been
tempting, and important for Marxist historians, there was no simple chrono-
logical transition from late Roman coloni to serfdom.^28 It would also be a mis-
take to suppose that peasants in earlier centuries had had much possibility or
inclination de facto to move away from their area, or that they had not also
been dependent. As for the lower classes in the towns, it is equally diffi cult to
get a fair picture of their lot when so much evidence is anecdotal and when so
many of the literary sources are liable to exaggerate for their own purposes.
Naturally it is easy, as in most periods, to fi nd evidence in the sources of
both urban and rural poverty, especially in relation to tax debts, but again one
should be cautious about generalizing too much on the basis of this evidence.
On the whole, change was slow: local and unforeseen factors such as famine,
pestilence or the like constantly threatened an agrarian economy with few
obvious technological advances, but were also part of the expected range of
possibilities and could therefore be contained; external factors such as warfare
were of course another matter.
We hear many complaints in this period from the town councillors, the
curiales, about their diffi culties in continuing to fi nance urban life, and a proc-
ess of increased imperial intervention in the affairs of cities, especially their
fi nancial affairs, has generally been seen; this went along with corresponding
changes in the traditional ways of urban government (further, Chapter 7).^29
This was another example of how in trying to deal with a situation, imperial
legislation actually made it worse; emperors attempted to prevent the curi-
als from leaving their duties while giving them the opportunities to do just
that. The ‘fl ight of the curials’ was an indicator that the old style of urban
administration was giving way. It is less clear when or exactly how this change