fruit. The barbarians decided that it was more profitable to fight for themselves than for a
Roman master. Nevertheless it served its purpose for over a century. Diocletian's administrative
reforms were equally successful for a time, and equally disastrous in the long run. The Roman
system was to allow local self-government to the towns, and to leave their officials to collect
the taxes, of which only the total amount due from any one town was fixed by the central
authorities. This system had worked well enough in prosperous times, but now, in the exhausted
state of the empire, the revenue demanded was more than could be borne without excessive
hardship. The municipal authorities were personally responsible for the taxes, and fled to escape
payment. Diocletian compelled well-to-do citizens to accept municipal office, and made flight
illegal. From similar motives he turned the rural population into serfs, tied to the soil and
forbidden to migrate. This system was kept on by later emperors.
Constantine's most important innovation was the adoption of Christianity as the State religion,
apparently because a large proportion of the soldiers were Christian. * The result of this was
that when, during the fifth century, the Germans destroyed the Western Empire, its prestige
caused them to adopt the Christian religion, thereby preserving for western Europe so much of
ancient civilization as had been absorbed by the Church.
The development of the territory assigned to the eastern half of the Empire was different. The
Eastern Empire, though continually diminishing in extent (except for the transient conquests of
Justinian in the sixth century), survived until 1453, when Constantinople was conquered by the
Turks. But most of what had been Roman provinces in the east, including also Africa and Spain
in the west, became Mohammedan. The Arabs, unlike the Germans, rejected the religion, but
adopted the civilization, of those whom they had conquered. The Eastern Empire was Greek,
not Latin, in its civilization; accordingly, from the seventh to the eleventh centuries, it was the
Arabs who preserved Greek literature and whatever survived of Greek, as opposed to Latin,
civilization. From the eleventh century onward, at first through Moorish influences, the west
gradually recovered what it had lost of the Grecian heritage.
* See Rostovtseff, History of the Ancient World, Vol. II, p. 332.