Landowning and Labour in the Rural Economy 281
on a rescript of Valentinian III,82 and appears to acknowledge the needs of
these large landowners for flexibility in the utilization of their labour force.
Significantly, it directs that the right of these domini to distribute their servi
and originarii according to their needs cannot be challenged by any juridical
means, not even sub oppositione originis, “by the opposition of the origo”. This
laconic statement has been taken by some scholars as indicating the com-
plete dissolution of the origo as the basis for the obligation of originarii and its
replacement by a personal obligation to their dominus.83 However, elsewhere
in the same chapter it is observed that these individuals must be returned to
the estates (praedia) from whence they were originally moved at the pleasure
of their dominus. No temporal horizon is given for this requirement, and we
have no further means of explicating the oppositio originis. But it seems clear
that the connection with a particular unit of land is in fact preserved here.
It may therefore be the case that the intention here is to prevent third par-
ties from bringing a suit against domini with reference to the labour force on
their own estates, rather than to dissolve wholesale the connection to the land.
If so, the provisions of this chapter may be fruitfully connected with other
chapters in the Edictum Theoderici, which treat the reception, enticement, or
exploitation by domini of coloni, rustici, and servi belonging to another estate.84
At issue is the entitlement of individual domini to employ the labour of the
individuals who are under their potestas (in the case of slaves), or obligated to
their fields (in the case of originarii), as against the expectation among both
large landowners and other inhabitants of the countryside that they could
enjoy the advantages provided by a dynamic labour market, involving both
legally obligated and legally unobligated individuals.
We may imagine, for example, that some rustici owned small parcels of land
themselves, while also taking tenancies on fields belonging to another land-
owner (whether large or small) and undertaking seasonal or occasional labour
contracts with yet another. These individuals might in some circumstances be
called rustici or coloni, while in others they were denoted as originarii. The evi-
dent terminological messiness that we encounter here reminds us that legal
evidence always simplifies and misrepresents reality, and scholars of the late
and post-Roman period have long wrestled with questions about the analytical
weight that can be placed upon the appearance of particular words in the legal
and other sources. It would appear that the immense diversity in the vocabu-
lary used to denote registered tenancy in late Roman legislation had dissipated
82 Nov. Valent. 35.18.
83 Most recently: Schipp, weströmische Kolonat, pp. 285–6.
84 Edictum Theoderici 80; 84–6, with Schipp, weströmische Kolonat, pp. 280–4.