A single pair of oxen was, as we have seen, allotted under Saxon rules as outfit to the yard-land of thirty acres, of which, under the three-field or three-course system, ten acres would be in wheat, ten in oats or pulse, and ten in fallow. With the single pair of oxen was allotted to the veteran fifty modii of wheat seed, and fifty of oats or pulse. Five modii of wheat seed, according to the Roman writers on agriculture, commonly went to the jugerum;392 so that the veteran with a single yoke of oxen had seed for ten jugera of wheat, and thus was apparently assumed to be able to cultivate, if farming on the three-course system, about thirty jugera in all, like the holder of the Saxon yard-land. The veteran to whom was assigned the double yoke of four oxen and 200 modii of seed—100 modii of each kind—would have about 60 jugera in his double holding.

Of course, too much stress should not be placed upon any close correspondence in the number of jugera; but it is, on the other hand, perfectly natural [p276] that, in the theory of these outfits, seed should be given for a definite area, and that this should be some actual division of the centuria of the Agrimensores.

Siculus Flaccus, who wrote about A.D. 100, and chiefly of Italy, describes how, in the regular allotments by the Agrimensores, one settler, according to his military rank, would receive a single modus, another one and a half, and another two modii, whilst sometimes a single allotment was given to several people jointly. He mentions also that the centuriæ varied in size, being sometimes 200 jugera and sometimes 240; the smaller lots also sometimes varying in size, even in the same centuria, according to the fertility or otherwise of the land.393

All we can say is that the centuria of 240 jugera would be divisible into single and double holdings of thirty and sixty jugera respectively, just as the English double hide of 240 acres, or single hide of 120 acres, was divisible into yard-lands of thirty acres. The centuria of 200 jugera would be divisible into holdings of fifty and twenty-five jugera respectively.394

Passing from the outfit and the holdings, it may [p277] be asked, what was the system of cultivation? was it an open field husbandry?

It is obvious that formal centuriation in straight lines and rectangular divisions, by the Agrimensores, produced something entirely different from the open field system as we have found it in England. But Siculus Flaccus records that in some cases, when vacant districts were occupied by settlers without this formal centuriation, as 'agri occupatorii'—the settlers taking such tracts of land as they had the means or expectation of cultivating—the boundaries were irregular, and followed no rules but those of common sense and the custom of the country.395 And he gives as an instance of such a common-sense rule the custom about 'supercilia,' or linches, the sloping surface of which, where they formed boundaries between the land of two owners, should be kept the same number of feet in width, the slope always belonging to the upper owner, because otherwise it would be in the power of the lower owner, by ploughing into the slope, to jeopardise the upper owner's land.396 This, he says, is the reason of the rule that the land of the owner of the upper terrace generally descends to the bottom of the slope.397

Here, in this mention of linches and irregular boundaries, traces seem to turn up of an open-field husbandry; and a few pages further on the same writer makes another observation which shows clearly that frequently the holding, like the yard-land, was [p278] composed of scattered pieces in open fields, and that this scattered ownership, as in England, was the result of an original joint occupation, and probably of a system of co-operative ploughing.

He says398 that in many districts were to be found possessores whose lands were not contiguous, but made up of little pieces scattered in different places, and intermixed with those of the others, the several owners having common rights of way over one another's land to their scattered pieces, and also to the common woods, in which the vicini only have common rights of cutting timber and feeding stock.

This reference to the common woods and rights of way belonging only to the 'vicini' seems to show that the scattering of the pieces in the holdings had arisen as in the later open-field system, from an original co-operation of ploughing or other cultivation.

Connecting these statements with the previous one, that sometimes land was assigned to a number of settlers jointly, and that sometimes settlers took possession, without centuriation, of so much land as they could cultivate, and transferring these same methods from Italy, where Flaccus observed them, to transalpine provinces, where larger teams were [p279] needful for ploughing, it would seem that we may rightly picture bodies of free settlers on the 'ager publicus' as frequently joining their yokes of oxen together to plough their allotments on the open-field system. And if this was done by retired veterans on public land, they were probably only following the common method adopted by the coloni on the villas of the richer Roman landowners in the provinces. If they did so, they probably simply adopted the custom of the country in which they settled, and followed a method common not only to Gaul and Germany, but also to Europe and Asia.399

Even in the case of the regular centuriation, there was an opportunity, apparently, for joint occupation, and probably often a necessity for joint ploughing.

Hyginus, describing the mode of centuriation, speaks first of the two broad roads running north and south and east and west; and then he says the 'sortes' were divided, and the names recorded in tens (per decurias, i.e. per homines denos), the subdivision among the ten being left till afterwards.400 It does not follow, perhaps, that the subdivision was always made in regular squares. There may sometimes have been a common occupation and joint ploughing; but of this we know nothing.

The retired veterans were a privileged class, and specially exempted from many public burdens;401 but in other respects there is no reason to suppose that in their methods of settlement and agriculture, and [p280] in the size of their holdings proportioned to their single or double yokes, they differed from other free settlers or ancient original tenants on the ager publicus. We may add that, following the usual Roman custom, these settlers probably as a rule lived in towns and villages, and not on their farms. We may assume that, having single or double yokes of oxen and outfits of two kinds of seed, they were arable and not pasture farmers, with their homesteads in the village and their land in the fields around it—in some places under the three-field system, in others with a rectangular block of land on which they followed the three-course or other rotation of crops for themselves.

Groups of settlers may therefore be regarded as sometimes forming something very much like a free village community upon the public land of the Empire, with no lord over it except the fiscal and judicial officers of the Emperor.

V. THE SMALLER TENANTS ON THE 'AGER PUBLICUS'
(continued)—THE LÆTI.

In the second place, there were settlers of quite another grade—families of the conquered tribes of Germany, who were forcibly settled within the limes of the Roman provinces, in order that they might repeople desolated districts or replace the otherwise dwindling provincial population—in order that they might bear the public burdens and minister to the public needs, i.e. till the public land, pay the [p281] public tribute, and also provide for the defence of the empire. They formed a semi-servile class, partly agricultural and partly military; they furnished corn for the granaries and soldiers for the cohorts of the empire, and were generally known in later times by the name of 'Læti,' or 'Liti' 402 They were somewhat in the same position as the Welsh 'taeogs' or 'aillts.' They were foreigners, without Roman blood, and hence a semi-servile class of occupiers distinct from, and without the full rights of, Roman citizens403—a class, in short, upon whom the full burden of taxation and military service could be laid.

Probably this system had been followed from the time of Augustus, as a substitute for the earlier and more cruel course of sending tens of thousands of vanquished foes to the Roman slave market for sale; but it became a more and more important part of the imperial defensive policy of Rome during the later empire, as the inroads of barbarians became more and more frequent.

There is clear evidence, from the third century, of the extension of this kind of colonisation over a wide district. It is important to realise both its extent and locality.

In order fully to comprehend the meaning and consequences of this German colonisation of Roman provinces, it must be borne in mind that the rich lands on the left bank of the Rhine, between the Vosges mountains and the river, had been settled [p282] by Germans before the time of Tacitus. Strabo404 distinctly says that the Suevic tribes, who in his day dwelt on the east bank of the Rhine, had driven out the former German inhabitants, and that the latter had taken refuge on the west bank. Tacitus describes three German tribes as settled in this district (now Elsass).405 Further, the large extent of country to the east of the Rhine, within the Roman lines, reaching from Mayence to Regensburg, included in the Agri Decumates and the old province of Rhætia (i.e. what is now Baden, Wirtemberg, and Bavaria), had by the third century become filled with straggling offshoots from various German and mostly Suevic tribes who had crossed the 'Limes'—a mixed population of Hermunduri, Thuringi, Marcomanni, and Juthungi, with a sprinkling of Franks, Vandals, Longobards, and Burgundians,—some of them friendly, some of them hostile to the empire and gradually becoming absorbed in the greater group of the 'Alamanni.'

Further, it should be remembered that in the third century offshoots from the Alamanni and the Franks attempted to spread themselves over the country on the Gallic side of the Rhine, assuming, during periods of Roman weakness, a certain independence and even over-lordship, so that Probus found sixty cities under their control. Probus completely reduced them once more into obedience, and again made the Roman authority supreme over the 'Agri Decumates,' and Rhætia as far as the 'Limes.' 406 [p283]

A few years before, Marcus Antoninus, after he had conquered the Marcomanni in this district, had deported many of them into Britain.407

Probus followed his example, and deported also into Britain such of the Burgundians and Vandals from the 'Agri Decumates' as he could secure alive as prisoners, 'in order that they might be useful as security against revolts in Britain.' 408

He also colonised large numbers of Germans in the Rhine valley (where he introduced, it is said, the vine culture), and some of them in Belgic Gaul. In his report to the Senate he described his victory as the reconquest of all Germany. He boasted of the subjection of the numerous petty kings, and declared that the Germans now ploughed, and sowed, and fought for the Romans. And, as he himself had deported Germans into Britain, his words cover the British as well as the Gallic and German provinces.409 This victory over the Alamannic tribes and colonisation of them in Britain and Gaul, by Probus, was in A.D. 277.

Very soon afterwards the same policy was again followed in dealing with the Franks, who were plundering and depopulating the Belgic provinces of Gaul further to the north, and ravaging the coasts of Britain. [p284] In 286, Carausius, who was put in charge of the Roman fleet, and whose business it was to guard the Gallic and British shores infested by the Saxons and Franks, revolted and proclaimed himself Emperor, defending himself successfully against the Emperor Maximian, and leaguing himself with the Franks and Saxons. In 291, Maximian, after directing his arms against the Franks, deported a number of them and settled them as læti on the vacant lands of the Nervii and Treviri, in Belgic Gaul and in the valley of the Moselle.410

The further steps taken by his co-Cæsar Constantius to put an end to the revolt of Carausius are very instructive. He first recovered the haven of Gesoriacum (Boulogne), and cut off the connexion of the British fleet with Gaul. Then he turned northward again upon the districts from whence the Frankish and Saxon pirates had been accustomed to make their ravages upon Britain and Gaul. They were, as has been said, in league with the British usurper, but succumbed to the arms of Constantius. The first use he made of his victory over them was to repeat the policy of his predecessors—to deport a great multitude into those very Belgic districts which they had depopulated by their ravages. This was the time when the districts around Amiens and Beauvais, once inhabited by the Bellovaci, and further south around Troyes and Langres, where the Tricassi and Lingones had dwelt, were colonised by Franks, [p285] Chamavi, and Frisians; and Eumenius,411 in his Panegyric, represented them, as Probus had described the Alamanni, as now tilling the fields they had once plundered, and supplying recruits to the Roman legions. A 'pagus Chamavorum' existed in the ninth century in this district, and so bore witness to the extent and permanence of this colony of Chamavi.412 Similar evidence for the other districts, as we shall have occasion to see hereafter, is possibly to be found in the names of places with a Teutonic termination remaining to this day, though the language spoken is French.

A recent German writer, in a sketch of the reign of Diocletian, makes the pregnant remark that when account is taken of all the masses of Germans thus brought into the Roman provinces, partly as colonists and partly as soldiers, it becomes clear that the northern districts of Gaul were already half German before the Frankish invasion. These German settlers were valuable at the time as tillers of the land, payers of tribute, and as furnishing recruits to the legions; but in history they were more than this, for they were, partly against their will, the pioneers of the German 'Völkerwanderung.' 413

We have seen that Probus had deported Alamanni into Britain in pursuance of this continuous [p286] policy. It is curious to observe that when Constantius soon after (in A.D. 306) died at York, and Constantine was proclaimed Emperor in Britain, one of his supporters was Crocus or Erocus,414 a king of the Alamanni, proving that there were Alamannic soldiers in Britain under their own king—probably, more properly speaking, a sept or clan under its own chief—at that date.

But it was not long before both the Alamanni and the Franks again became troublesome in the Rhine valley. Under the year 357, in the history of Ammianus Marcellinus, there is a vivid description of the struggle of Julian to regain from the Alamanni the cities on the Lower Rhine which the latter had occupied, as in the time of Probus, within the Roman province of Lower Germany. After the decisive battle of Strasburg, Julian crossed the Rhine at Mayence and laid waste the country between the Maine and the Rhine, 'plundering the wealthy farms of their crops and cattle, and burning to the ground all the houses, which latter in that district were built in the Roman fashion.' 415 He then restored the fortress of Trajan which protected this part of the 'Limes.' The next year, the Salian Franks having taken possession of Toxandria, on the Scheldt, Julian pounced down upon them and recovered possession, and then set himself 'to restore the fortifications of the cities of the Lower Rhine, and to establish afresh the granaries which had been burned, in which to stow [p287] the corn usually imported from Britain.' 416 This was the occasion on which, according to Zosimus, 800 vessels, more than mere boats, were employed in going backwards and forwards bringing over the British corn, thus proving both the extent of British agriculture and the close connexion between Britain and the province of Lower Germany.

The aggressions of the Alamanni, however, continued, and again we find Ammianus Marcellinus describing how, at the close of a campaign, Valentinian, in A.D. 371, deported into Britain the Bucenobantes, a tribe of the Alamanni from the east banks of the Rhine, immediately north of Mayence. He made them elect Fraomarius as their chief, and then, giving him the rank of a tribune, sent him with his tribe of Alamannic soldiers to settle in Britain, as probably Crocus or Erocus had been sent before him.417

This policy of planting colonies of German colonists—even whole clans under their petty chiefs—in the Belgic provinces and Britain, with the double object of keeping up the supply of corn for the empire and soldiers for the legions, was therefore steadily adhered to for several generations. And a further proof of the extent to which the system was carried turns up later in the numerous cohorts of Læti mentioned by Ammianus,418 and in the 'Notitia,' 419 as having been drawn from these colonies [p288] and placed as garrisons all over Gaul and Germany, but especially on the banks of the Rhine.

It has been necessary to dwell upon this subject because it is needful for the present purpose that it should be fully understood that throughout the German provinces of Rhætia, the Agri Decumates, Upper and Lower Germany, in Belgic Gaul, and in Britain, there were large numbers of German semi-servile settlers upon the Ager Publicus interspersed among the free coloni and veterans; and that most of the settlers, whether free coloni, veterans, or læti, were engaged in agriculture. Some of them, no doubt, especially since the encouragement said to have been given by Probus to vine culture, may have occupied vineyards in Southern Gaul, or in the valleys of the Rhine and its tributaries.

Lastly, it must also be remembered that there may have been intermixed among the privileged veterans and the overburdened 'læti,' on the public lands, dwindling remains of original Gallic inhabitants, and other free coloni or tenants, not privileged like the veterans, but subject to the various public burdens. Some of these were scarcely to be distinguished, perhaps, in point of law and right from the owners of villas. They may have been holders of slaves, and have had possibly sometimes even free coloni of their own, though varying very much in the size of their holdings, and falling far below the owners of latifundia in social importance. Be this as it may, we shall presently find the free class of landholders, whoever they might be, sinking steadily into a semi-servile condition under the oppression of the Imperial fiscal officers and the burden of the taxation and services [p289] imposed upon them—the tributum and sordida munera—the oppressive exaction of which during the later empire was forcing them gradually to surrender their freedom, and to seek the shelter of a semi-servile position under the patrocinium, sometimes of the fiscal officer himself, sometimes of the lord of a neighbouring 'villa.'

VI. THE 'TRIBUTUM' OF THE LATER EMPIRE.

Passing now to the system of taxation and forced services during the later empire, it will be found to be of peculiar importance, not only because of its connexion with the growing manorial tendencies, but also because the taxation resembled so closely the system of 'hidation' prevalent afterwards in Saxon England, and some of the forced services actually survived in the manorial system.

The system of taxation was modified by the Emperor Diocletian at the very time when the policy of forced colonisation described in the last chapter was being carried out.

It was known as the taxation 'jugatione vel capitatione'—the tribute or stipendium of so much for every jugum or caput.

'Jugum' and 'caput' were names for a hypothetically equal, if not always the same, unit of taxation.420

The 'jugum' was probably originally taken from the area which could be cultivated by the single or double yoke of oxen allotted to the settler, and may [p290] have been a single or double one accordingly. But a person holding a fraction of a jugum or caput was said to hold only a 'portio,' 421 and paid, in consequence, a proportion only of the burdens assessed upon the whole jugum.

Now, if the taxation had continued at actually so much per yoke of oxen, the system would have been simple enough; and it would be easy to understand how, whilst the jugum represented the unit of taxation for land, the caput might be the unit corresponding in value with the jugum, but applying to other kinds of property, such as slaves and cattle, and including the capitation tax levied in respect of wives and children. And this, probably, may be the meaning of the double nomenclature—jugum vel caput. At any rate, we know from the Theodosian Code, that the members of a veteran's family were constituent parts of his 'caput.' 422

The subject is obscure, but the reform of Diocletian seems to have aimed at an equalisation of the taxation according to the value of property.

This seems to have involved an assessment of various kinds of land in hypothetical juga, of the same value (said to be fixed at 2,000 solidi); and this involved a variation in the acreage of the hypothetical jugum, according to the richness or otherwise of the land, just as according to Flaccus was the case also as regards the actual centuriæ and allotments.

In one instance in which the figures have been [p291] preserved, viz. for Syria, under the Eastern Empire, the assessment was as follows under the system of Diocletian:423—

In the east, therefore, sixty jugera, or 120 Greek plethra or half-acres, of ordinary arable land, were assessed as a jugum.

This instance makes it clear that while originally the actual allotment to a single or double yoke of oxen may have been taken as the basis of taxation, the 'jugum' had already become a hypothetical unit of assessment, just as, by a similar process, was the case with the English hide. Property had come to be assessed at so many juga under the jugation, without any attempt to make the assessment accord with the actual number of yokes employed.

The assessment was revised every fifteen years at what was called the Indiction.424

We have seen that the nominal acreage of the typical holding assigned to the single yoke of two oxen under Roman law on the Continent resembled very closely that of the Saxon yard-land, which also had two oxen allotted with it.425 [p292]

We have also seen that the twenty-five or thirty jugera of the single yoke were probably fixed as an eighth of the Roman centuria, as the yard-land was the eighth of a double hide.

The common acreage of the centuria was, as we have seen, 200 or 240 jugera. The latter number may be the simple result of the use of the long hundred of 120; or it may have resulted, as suggested above, from the necessity of making the centuria of the free citizen's typical estate divisible into four double holdings of 60 acres, or eight single holdings of 30 acres each.

Be this as it may, the centuria, or typical estate of a free citizen in a regularly constructed Roman colony, seems to have stood to the single or double holding of the common and often semi-servile settler in the same arithmetical relation as the Saxon larger hide of 240 acres did to the yard-land.426

We have, then, two kinds of holdings:—

1. The one or more centuriæ embraced in the [p293] latifundia or villas of the large landowners, which, however, when tilled by their coloni, and not by slaves, might well be subdivided into holdings of sixty or thirty acres each.

2. The double and single holdings of the smaller settlers on the 'ager publicus' of fifty or sixty and twenty-five or thirty acres each.

And we may conclude that the system of taxation called the 'jugatio' was founded upon these facts, though in order to equalise its burden the assessment of an estate or a territory in juga became, under Diocletian, a hypothetical assessment, corresponding no longer with the actual number of yokes, just as the Saxon hide ad geldam, at the date of the Domesday Survey, no longer corresponded with the actual carucate ad arandum.

Another resemblance between the Roman jugation and the Saxon hidage was to be found in the method adopted when it became needful to reduce the taxation of a district.

Thus, the land of the Ædui had been ravaged and depopulated. It had paid the tributum on 32,000 juga; 7,000 juga were released from taxation. In future it was assessed at 25,000 juga only; and so relief was granted.427

Further, as the English manorial lord paid the hidage for the whole manor, so the lord of the villa, under Roman law, paid the tributum not only for his own demesne land, but also for the land of his coloni and tenants. Just as the servile tenants of a Saxon thane were called his 'gafol gelders,' so the [p294] semi-servile tenants of a Roman lord were called his tributarii. In both cases they paid their tribute to their lord, whilst the lord paid the imperial tributum for himself and for them.428

In a decree of the year 319, issued by Constantine to the 'Vicar of Britain,' words are used which prove that there were coloni and tributarii429 on British estates.430

Putting all these things together, the analogy between the Roman 'jugation' and the later English hidage can hardly be regarded as accidental.

But to return, at present, to the tribute and the service due from each jugum or caput.

The tribute was generally paid part in money and part in produce, and was, in fact, a tax. It was a separate thing from the tithe of produce, rendered as rent to the State on the tithe-lands of the Agri decumates and of Sicily, though all these various annual payments in produce may have been confused together under the term annonæ. The tribute proper survived probably, as we shall see, in the later manorial 'gafol.' The tithe, or other proportion taken as rent—for the proportion was not always a tenth431—more nearly resembled the manorial 'gafol-yrth.' [p295] But we are not quite ready yet to trace the actual connexion between these Roman and later manorial payments.

VII. THE 'SORDIDA MUNERA' OF THE LATER EMPIRE.

In addition to the payments in kind or rents in produce, called annonæ, there were other personal services demanded from settlers in the provinces. They were called 'sordida munera,' and strangely resembled the base services of later manorial tenants.

There is a special title of the 'Codex Theodosianus' on the 'base services' exacted under Roman law;432 so that there is evidence of the very best kind as to what they were.

By an edict of A.D. 328 there was laid upon the rectores of provinces the duty of fixing the burden of the services according to three grades of holdings—those of the greater, the middle, and the lowest class—as well as the obligation of seeing that the services were not exacted at unreasonable times, as during the collection of crops. Further, the rectores were also ordered to record with their own hand 'what is the service and how to be performed for every "caput" [or jugum], whether so many angariæ or so many operæ, and in what way they are to be rendered for each of the three grades of holdings.' 433 [p296]

Certain privileged classes were specially exempted from these 'base services,' and it happens that edicts expressly mentioning Rhætia specify from what services they shall be exempt, and so reveal in detail what the services were.

The province of Rhætia lay to the south of the Roman Limes, and east of the 'Agri decumates' of Tacitus, whilst also extending into the Alpine valleys of the present Graubunden. The chief city in North Rhætia, of which we speak (Vindelicia), was Augusta Vindelicorum (Augsburg), and Tacitus describes the German tribes of the Hermunduri, north of the Limes, as engaged in friendly commerce with the Romans, and as having perfectly free access not only to the city, but also to the Roman villas around it.434

We have seen that in this district south of the Danube, and in the Agri decumates between the Danube and the Rhine, there were large numbers of German as well as Roman settlers, occupying land probably as free 'coloni' and 'læti,' paying tribute to the State, in addition to the usual tenth of the produce and personal services, according to their grades of holding. Edicts of A.D. 382 and 390435 represent the tenants and settlers in this Roman province as liable with others to render, in addition to the tithe of the produce in corn, &c. (annonæ), inter alia, the following 'base services' (sordida munera), viz.:— [p297]

(1) The 'cura pollinis conficiendi, excoctio panis, and obsequium pistrini,' i.e. the preparation of flour, making of bread, and service at the bakehouse.

The supply of so many loaves of bread is a very common item of the later manorial services everywhere.

(2) The præbitio paraveredorum et parangariarum. These also were services found surviving, in fact and in name, amongst the later manorial services. The angariæ436 and the veredi437 were carrying services, with waggons and oxen or with pack-horses, on the main public Roman roads. The parangariæ and paraveredi were extra carrying services off the main road. There is a special title of the Codex Theodosianus 'De Cursu Publico, Angariis et Parangariis,' 438 in which, by various edicts, abuses are checked and the services restrained within reasonable limits, both as to the weight to be carried and the number of oxen or horses required.

Carrying services also are familiar in manorial records under the name of 'averagium.' In the Hundred Rolls and the Cartularies, and in the Domesday Survey, they occur again and again; and in the Anglo-Saxon version of the 'Rectitudines,' in describing the services of the 'geneat' or 'villanus,' the Latin words 'equitare vel averiare et summagium [p298] ducere,' are rendered 'ridan auerian lade lædan.' Also, in the record of the services of the Tidenham 'geneats' the words run, 'ridan, and averian, and lāde lædan, drāfe drīfan,' &c.439 At the same time, on the Continent the word 'angariæ' became so general a manorial phrase as to be almost equivalent to 'villein services' of all kinds.440

The carrying and post-horse services, more strictly included in the manorial angariæ and averagium, extended over Britain, Gaul, and the German provinces.

(3) The 'obsequia operarum et artificum diversorum'—the doing all sorts of services and labour when required—like the Saxon 'boon-work,' which formed so constant a feature of manorial services in addition to the gafol and regular week-work. How could the words be better translated than in the Anglo-Saxon of the Tidenham record—'and sela ōdra [p299] þinga dón,' 'and shall do other things,' qualified by the previous words, 'swá him man byt,' 'as he is bid.'?441

(4) The 'obsequium coquendæ calcis'—lime-burning. This was one of the specially mentioned services of the servi of the Church in Frankish times, under the Bavarian laws, in this very district of Rhætia, as we shall see by-and-by.

(5) The 'præbitio materiæ, lignorum, et tabulorum; cura publicarum vel sacrarum ædium construendarum atque reparandarum; cura hospitalium domorum et viarum et pontium'—the supply of material, wood, and boarding for building, repairing, or constructing public and sacred buildings, and the keeping up of inns, roads, and bridges. Here we have two out of the 'three needs' marking in England the higher service of the Saxon thane.

Such were the chief 'sordida munera' of the settlers in Rhætia and other Roman provinces. But servile as they were, and like as they were to the later manorial services, we must not therefore conclude that the settlers from whom they were due—whether German or Roman, in Romano-German provinces—were under Roman law necessarily serfs. They were, as we have said, 'free coloni' or 'læti,' and below them were the 'servi.' The three grades in which they were classed, 'ditiores, mediocres, atque infimi,' marked gradations of wealth,—probably according to the number of yokes of oxen held, or the size of their holdings—not necessarily degrees of freedom.442 [p300]

VIII. THE TENDENCY TOWARDS A MANORIAL MANAGEMENT OF THE 'AGER PUBLICUS,' OR IMPERIAL DOMAIN.

Having now examined into the character of the holdings, tribute, and 'sordida munera' of the tenants on what may be called the great provincial manor of the Roman emperor, it may perhaps be possible to trace some steps in the process by which these tenants became in some districts practically serfs on the royal villas or manors of the Teutonic conquerors of the provinces.

The beginning of the process can be traced apparently at work during the later empire.