278 Grey
accessed by both the powerful and the relatively powerless as part of their cus-
tomary economic regimes.67
The frequent incidence in the Edictum Theoderici of the term originarius to
denote agriculturalists invites a connection with the tax system instituted in
the late 3rd century under Diocletian and his colleagues in the Tetrarchy. The
intricacies of this tax system need not detain us here, although it seems likely
that as in other post-Roman kingdoms it continued under the Ostrogoths, at
least in some form.68 Scholars generally agree that as a consequence of this
new tax system there developed over the course of the 4th and 5th centuries a
legal category of registered tenancy that placed obligations on both the coloni
and the domini of the land upon which the coloni were registered, their origo.
On the strength of this, an historical narrative has developed whereby there
was progressive decline both in independent small landowners or tenants and
in rural slaves in the period, and the rise of a form of dependent, obligated
tenancy, the so-called “colonate of the late Roman Empire”.69 It is tempting
to interpret rural labour relations under the Ostrogoths with reference to this
historical narrative.
This temptation should be resisted. In recent scholarship, the coherence
and centrality to the fiscal process of this phenomenon have been questioned.
It has been proposed that registered tenancy may be best interpreted not as an
end in itself for the late Roman state or aristocratic landowners, but rather as
a product of the heavy weight placed upon the origo as the cornerstone of the
fiscal system of the period.70 The project of legal codification itself has come
under scrutiny and it has been observed that the decisions made by the com-
pilers of the Codex Theodosianus and the Codex Justinianus to include consti-
tutions or fragments of constitutions under particular headings has given an
impression of unity of purpose that might only be valid in hindsight or in the
context of the codification process.71 It has in addition been argued that our
view of the 4th- and 5th-century legislation concerning the position of coloni
has been further coloured by the later Interpretationes that were attached
67 For elaborations of these principles, Grey, Constructing Communities, p. 54; Grey,
“Concerning Rural Matters”, pp. 636–7.
68 Bjornlie, “Law, Ethnicity, and Taxes”, p. 148 offers brief comments. Also Costambeys,
“Condition of the Peasantry”, p. 109. For continuation of the tax system under the
Visigothic realm in Gaul see Grey, “Two Young Lovers”, pp. 296–7, with note 49.
69 Carrié “Roman des Origines” remains seminal. Grey, “Contextualizing colonatus”, pp. 156–
61, explores the debate since Carrié. For an application of the concept in the Ostrogothic
context: Schipp, weströmische Kolonat, pp. 272–310.
70 Grey, “Contextualizing colonatus”, pp. 170–5.
71 Humfress, “Cracking the Codex”, p. 243.