12. LATE ROMAN SOCIETY AND ECONOMY

It is difficult to characterize late Roman society, in part because the two halves of the empire were no different. On the one hand, it appears that society was rigid and hierarchically arranged: harsh laws seemed to fix everyone in his place. Many have seen this as the origin of medieval social and economic institutions. On the other hand, especially in the East, there was considerable social and political mobility, and the economic restraints were much less. Nevertheless, even in the East, the economy was controlled by the state and there were serious difficulties.

A. The Traditional Senatorial Aristocracy

1. These were the old landowning families, many of whom could trace their ancestry back to the earlier years of Roman history.

a. They all shared a common culture--classical, essentially pagan culture.

b. These families were stronger in the West, where they were responsible for an important revival of Latin culture in the late fourth and early fifth century.

2. Traditional aristocratic families were essentially independent of the emperor.

a. They did not owe their power or prestige to the emperor; in fact, they considered themselves superior to the emperor in most ways. (Remember, most emperors came from lowly social origins, primarily from the army.)

b. Generally the aristocrats lived on their estates and paid little attention to contemporary problems and politics.

3. The traditional aristocracy represented an important group, especially since they controlled the cultural life of at least the western part of the empire, but they had little real power.

B. The New Imperial Aristocracy

1. These were people who derived their position and power from imperial favor.

a. They rose either because of their military or their administrative ability, but they owed everything to the emperor; frequently these people were of humble origin.

b. This group thus represented an aristocracy of office, as opposed to the hereditary, landowning aristocracy in the West.

2. This new aristocracy dominated the East, where the old Roman social system had never been fully accepted.

3. This group was given land and money and power, but it constantly turned over, as new blood was brought into it by the will of the emperor.

a. In a sense the members of this aristocracy were less refined than those of the traditional aristocracy in the West.

b. Its ideas, however, were not stultified and it developed a determined attachment to the ideas and ideals of the Constantinian monarchy and formed the backbone of early Byzantine society.

4. The imperial aristocracy was naturally largely Christian in sentiment and Greek in outlook.

C. The latifundia

1. In the West at least it was customary for land to be concentrated in the hands of a few individual landowners.

a. They farmed this land with half-free persons called coloni.

b. The use of coloni was apparently a change from the slave system of the earlier empire, since the coloni were essentially subsistence farmers who lived on and managed their own small plots of land, as sharecroppers.

c. The rise of this system probably represented an absolute decrease in the agricultural productivity of the land, since land now had to be used for crops that did not produce the largest yields; this whole question is a very difficult one to understand fully.

2. Owners of latifundia were powerful individuals who could frequently defy the authority of the state.

a. They frequently had private armies of their own.

b. Tax collectors could rarely collect taxes from farmers on the latifundia since the landowners could defy the power of the state.

c. Thus, large territories passed outside the effective control of the Roman state.

d. It is difficult to know whether this was a cause or an effect of the weakness of the state.

3. In any case, it is clear that the institution of the latifundia was much more widespread in the West than it was in the East.

D. Social and Economic Conditions in the Cities--the collegia and the curiales.

1. Collegia-- or guilds--were characteristic of late Roman society.

a. They were associations of business owners and workers in a given "industry."

b. The function of the collegia was originally social or fraternal, but they came to be used by the government to assure services or the production of goods.

2. We know most about the collegia from the Codex Theodosianus (compiled in 438 under Theodosius II), which lists many of the restrictions of members of the guilds.

a. They had to preform certain tasks, as a kind of corvée labor, and they frequently had to supply goods for sale at a price below what their costs of production had been.

b. Frequently individuals were bound to their guild; normally a man could not escape membership and a father was succeeded by his son.

c. Again, the purpose of this was not to make life difficult, but simply to make sure that essential goods and services were produced and that the state was not left in the lurch.

3. This system is one of the reasons for seeing society as a rigid and fixed system, but close analysis shows that it we not quite so inflexible as one might think.

a. The regulations in the codes suggest that the restrictions were frequently ignored.

b. Tight control of the guilds was apparently more common in the West than in the East.

4. The cities of the East continued to be run by the old traditional local aristocracy: the curiales.

a. These families supplied members to the curia, or local senate, which ran the cities.

b. The decuriones, as members of the local senate, were called . frequently had heavy financial responsibilities: they had to cover whatever expenses were not made up through taxation and state endowment.

c. Many of the civil endowments had been destroyed, either through barbarian invasion, change through time, or the confiscation of the temples (which were state property), and burdens on the curiales became heavier and heavier.

d. Many curiales attempted to flee their civic duties, either by entering the imperial aristocracy or the Christian clergy, or by fleeing society altogether; some left the cities and went to live in the desert.

E. Economy and Taxes

1. The reformed gold coinage (solidus) from the time of Constantine stabilized the currency most used by the state.

2. Bronze coinage, however, apparently continued to be devalued, at least until the reign of Anastasius I.

3. The main tax continued to be the annona (the tax on land).

a. There were also taxes on tradesmen (including prostitutes: the chrysargyron), custom duties, a tax on senators (collatio lustralis), and a few others.

b. As time went on the annona was normally commuted to be a payment in money--a sign of recovery for the eastern economy.

4. How sound was the economy, however: What were its bases?

Return to Chronology main page.