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Diocletian and Constantine, laid the foundations of the Late Roman Empire. A major change in the Roman Empire was that the political capital of the Empire was no longer in the West, in Italy. It was moved to the much more prosperous and more populous Aegean area. Diocletian chose the city of Nicomedia on the northwest coast of Turkey as his capital. Constantine chose a site across the Bosporos from Nicomedia where the ancient Greeks had established a colony named Byzantium. Constantine built fortifications and several other aspects of the city to conform to the pattern of Western Rome. Constantine dedicated it in 330 as the "New Rome". But after Constantine's death the city came to be known as Constantinople, although frequently simply designated as "the city". Today it carries the name Istanbul, given it by the Ottomans who conquered "the city" and made it their capital in the fifteenth century. I am told this name doesn't mean anything in Turkish, it is merely the Turkish pronunciation of a Greek phrase eis ton polin, "to the city". This phrase was evidently used frequently with reference to Constantinople's sovereignty and authority when the Ottomans first came to Turkey in the later middle ages.
Another characteristic of the Late Roman Empire was the deliberate separation of civic and military authority. Only the Emperor combined civil and military authority. He was both the highest judge and highest commander of troops. The Palatine troops at Constantinople were kept distinct from the lower ranking forces stationed elsewhere. From the days of Constantine the Palatine troops were commanded by the Emperor himself, but before the beginning of the fifth century the Commanding General of the Palace had emerged. The chain of command from the Emperor down on the military side was kept entirely separate from the chain of command from the Emperor down on the civil side. No civil governor was given military command.
The civil and military commands were regionalized and ranked in descending order. The largest regions, with the greatest power and authority, next to that of the Emperor himself were at first two, then three and finally four civil Prefectures that became standardized about 400. Civil authority in each Prefecture was in the hands of a separate Praetorian Prefect. Each Praetorian Prefect had his own capital-headquarters. These capitals were at Treves in Gaul, Milan in Italy, and Sardica in the Balkans, with the entire eastern region served by Constantinople, the residence of the Imperial Palace after Constantine.
Prefectures were subdivided into regions known as Dioceses. Each Diocese in the Prefecture except one, which was supervised directly by the local Praetorian Prefect, was assigned to a separate vice-Praetorian Prefect or Vicar. Each Diocese was further subdivided into Provinces, each one under the control of an appointed civil governor. Each Province was subdivided into cities, each one under the supervision of an appointed administrator. Military wise, the mobile, Prefectural or Praetorian armies were camped in a centralized point in the Prefecture and could be deployed under their commanders to any of these sub-regions within the Prefecture. The troops permanently stationed in city regions along the frontiers were the lowest ranking troops under the lowest ranking commanders.
Theoretically all military commanders and civil officials were appointed and personally commissioned by the Emperor, but in practice they were subject to the next higher-ranking official in the chain of command above them.
Each of the civil officials had a corps of assistants, all of which were on the government payroll. Armies were kept on active duty continuously at governmental expense. Having these huge civil and military hierarchies all supported by the Government greatly increased the cost of government. All of that cost was to be paid by the lower classes through taxes on the land as well as on commercial and industrial activity. A further look at the Late Roman government's socio-economic policies, below.
The Emperors of the Late Empire beginning with Diocletian typically took colleagues in the imperial power. There were four emperors under Diocletian, three under Constantine, and then by the end of the century things had stabilized at two, each supervising two Prefectures apiece. However that condition did not prevail beyond the decade of the 470's of the fifth century.
From 480 and following the theory was that there was only one emperor over the entire Empire. By that time, however, the administration of the western region had been surrendered to a group of separate states subject to the Emperor, states in which the ruling classes consisted of peoples tracing their heritage to the Barbarians of central Europe.
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While all the legitimate Emperors beginning with Jovian were recognized as Christians the Imperial religious policies during this period become progressively more proscriptive as religious freedom was ultimately denied. All outward public expressions of paganism or religious Hellenism were suppressed in several ways while public expressions of Christianity were encouraged. The government terminated the traditional public subsidies supporting pagan temples, priesthoods and shrines of all sorts. Imperial decrees were issued making it illegal to engage publicly in any type of worship either pagan or Hellenist. However, these steps did not immediately eliminate the pagan or Hellenist attitudes, ideas and understandings from the hearts and minds of law-abiding citizens. Other decrees made it illegal for Christians to worship or express their Christian beliefs in any way other than in ways the government deemed acceptable. Penalties for such activities or expressions by Christians or pagans continued to increase in severity throughout the fifth century.
There were cogent reasons for depriving the inhabitants of the Empire of religious freedom in the later fourth century. After the military disaster at Adrianople in 378, the sense of impending danger along the northern frontier increased. Memories of the third century crisis were not dim, and the imperial leadership felt the need to seek unity in the Empire at all costs. The religious rationale was even more persuasive! Christianity was the only true religion. Other gods were no gods at all but only demons if they existed at all. Already by 365 the Emperors were adopting the public role of aggressively advocating Christianity. After 381, as we have seen in the previous lecture, when the most divisive controversies among the orthodox catholic Christians were laid to rest for the moment by the broad acceptance of the Nicene Creed, the orthodox catholic variety of Christianity emerged as the largest single segment of the Christian movement. Threats and rebellions against the Christian Emperors Gratian, Valentinian II and Theodosius I were almost always lead by pagan leaders. Paganism was rapidly becoming a subversive political movement whose basic intent was to overthrow the government of Christian rulers.
After the overthrow of the pagan usurper Eugenius, Emperor Theodosius I began in 394 issuing a series of edicts. These edicts rendered illegal all religious practices and teachings (Jewish, Pagan, and Christian) except those of orthodox catholic Christianity as defined by the Nicene Creed and other definitions issued by the Council of Constantinople of 381. This made orthodox catholic Christianity the only religion legally permitted in the Roman Empire. More than eighty years after Constantine's "conversion" this action of Theodosius I now definitively "established" orthodox catholic Christianity as the (one and only) religion of the Roman Empire.
Persecution of unfavored (i.e., illegal) religions for the first time became the Empire's official ongoing religious policy. Never before had the central government of the Empire taken a social and ideological engineering action of such a magnitude, so conscientiously and consistently. The persecution of the Christians during the third century was nothing compared to this! There had never been in all Roman history any religious persecution orchestrated by such clear cut and redundant imperial laws and enforced by Emperor after Emperor and carried out by imperial officials at every level. This persecution was inaugurated and carried out by Christians ostensibly for Christian reasons, namely: to impose the Gospel on the civilized world. Popular violence against non-Christians was frequently reported in the late fourth and early fifth century. The most striking example was in Alexandria, Egypt, where a mob, presumably Christian, destroyed the Serapeum and the attached Museum--dedicated to the Hellenistic god Serapis and the Muses--and murdered the greatest mathematician-scholar of that day, a woman! It may well have been this mob that destroyed most of the greatest library collection of Ancient times housed in the Museum, although today some try to blame it on the Muslims who did not come to Alexandria for about another 240 years.
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It is true that the government since the days of Constantine had taken sides in Christian controversies, almost always siding with some segment of the orthodox catholic tradition against those labeled schismatic and heretical by that orthodox catholic group. It had become a general rule with the Christian Emperors since Constantine to withhold patronage from alleged schismatic and heretical congregations. The state's interference in the Church's affairs increased in the period after 363 so that penal laws appeared on the books against all schismatic and heretical brands of Christianity even before there were laws against paganism and Hellenism. The government regularly banished those leaders accused by the orthodox clergy of heresy or schism to regions far from their congregations of supporters. These "wayward" congregations were placed under strong, government supported leadership and thus preserved as part of the orthodox catholic movement, the contrary beliefs of surviving individuals and groups notwithstanding. The student needs to remember that this rather wide variety of types of religious expression had to one degree or another participated in, and contributed to, the development of Christianity and the Christian tradition, broadly speaking, up to the fourth century. This included all the schismatic Christian sects among the Jews as well as the variety of expressions of those quasi-Christian movements we label Gnosticism and Manichaeism.
It is clearly manifest that becoming the exclusive state religion had an enormous impact not only on the growth of the Christian movement, but also on its doctrinal and organizational development. The suppression of non-uniform doctrines and practices and the attempted absorption of these misguided masses radically changed the character and public image of surviving Christianity in later centuries. Without the aggressive and continued action of the government it is debatable whether Christianity would have developed as it did or whether Christianity would ever have "won" over Hellenism and paganism if the citizens of the Empire had indeed remained free to choose! Nevertheless, the concerted actions of government and church proved to be unsuccessful in eradicating many of those condemned ideas, as later centuries will reveal.
The growth in number of churches and converts within the Empire accelerated rapidly in the late fourth and early fifth centuries especially after 395 when it was illegal to publicly practice any type of paganism. In 438 Emperor Theodosius II issued a decree calling for the confiscation of property and execution of any individual privately engaging in pagan rites or encouraging anyone else to engage in private pagan rites. Metropolitan bishops and their clergy encouraged one another to plan and systematically carry out the evangelization of every community in every ecclesiastical parish. Yet, it would take several centuries before the last vestiges of paganism in the Mediterranean world would regain respectability by being given some Christian interpretation.
The conversion of pagans sometimes employed the strategy of appropriating pagan temples as meeting places for churches. Popular and traditional pagan rites were sometimes Christianized by infusing them with a Christian meaning. The worship of martyrs and angels replaced the worship of local pagan deities who were displaced by being interpreted by the Christians as demons.
In other cases segments of the population were targeted. For example, in the province of Midland Dacia (now western Rumania and eastern Serbia), Niceta, Bishop of Romesiana (c.370-414), established work among communities of Goths and other groups of barbarian culture resident in his parochia. Niceta was an important orthodox scholar in the struggle against survivng Arian Christianity among the barbarians and the author of the traditional hymn Te Deum Laudamus. Likewise, Bishop John (398-407) of Constantinople, established work among the residents of Gothic descent there in a similar attempt to suppress the Arian heresy.
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The biggest question for Christians in the fifth and following centuries was how to reject paganism and religious Hellenism without rejecting the total heritage of civilization with it. Some felt profoundly guilty for the moments of "weakness" when they sincerely appreciated the securities, enjoyments and education civilization afforded them. For some--as we shall see--the total rejection of civilization and culture was the proper answer. That response no doubt often resulted in examples of neglect and / or destruction of some cultural traditions and artifacts. Earlier, non-Christians had expressed misgivings about Christians being professional teachers of the liberal arts; now Christians felt similar misgivings about studying or enjoying the literary and artistic heritage. Few Christians escaped the agony of a personal struggle arising from their ambivalence toward contemporary culture and its historic but pagan heritage. In the eighteenth century the great English pioneer in the study of antiquity, Edward Gibbon, saw the Christian rejection of the pagan past as the Fall of Rome.
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The Barbarians beyond the Imperial frontiers continued to advance culturally during the fourth century experiencing something of a population explosion and land shortage in the more advanced region adjacent to the Roman frontier. This was clearly the result of their adoption of more productive, stable and sedentary life styles. Loosely structured states based on regional military confederations of each region's mixture of ethnic elements (regardless of kinship) began to emerge along the Danube-Black Sea frontier. Further north toward the Baltic Sea in the interior the socio-political conditions were still at the more primitive stages. Among the more advanced, the Ostrogothic confederation was beside the Black Sea extending as far to the east as the Don River. The Visigothic confederation was north of the lower Danube. Further to the west other tribal states were emerging by the middle of the fourth century. All these new regional state organizations had developed a heightened respect for one another and tended to entertain an imperialistic policy toward the less culturally advanced barbarian groups to the north.
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Since the crisis of the third century small groups of Barbarians had been settled inside the Empire in isolated areas, particularly to replenish the decimated military forces defending the more vulnerable provincial areas along the frontiers marked by the Danube River, and to a lesser extent along the Rhine River. These barbarians were acculturated only enough to serve in the Roman Army while maintaining much of their barbarian culture. Since many of them and their descendants were exemplary soldiers, they rose through the ranks to the command level more and more frequently as the fourth century passed. They are very noticeable because unlike earlier barbarians assimilated into the imperial population these now retained their barbarian names. (For much of this discussion on the barbarians see especially P. J. Geary, Before France and Germany.)
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The band of culturally advanced barbarian peoples outside the northern Roman frontier were suddenly terrorized in 375 by the fearsome reputation of a newly organized military state between the Don and the Volga Rivers. We used to declare that these nomadic warriors had come directly from western China in the last quarter of the fourth century. It now seems better to understand that the immigrants represented only a small part of the warriors inhabiting that area. These recent arrivals had settled their camp on the west bank of the Volga, but they had doubtless been preceded by peoples of a somewhat similar culture; indeed the name "Hun" seems to appear in a surviving record dating two centuries earlier. It was the arrival of this latest contingent, however, that was the catalyst in the formation of the new state. Rather than exercise its military might on the defenseless peoples to the north, the leaders of the new Hun state decided the greater wealth was to be found in the west. On their road west across the Don River, their first encounter was with the confederated forces of the Ostrogothic state. The Hun's triumph over the Ostrogothic army was complete and the king took his own life. The great majority of the surviving warrior families now became warriors in the Hun army. A few, however, opted for flight rather than participation. These refugees now migrated westward alerting and disrupting the subjects of the Visigothic state.
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One substantial contingent of warriors marshaled under the Visigothic banner asked the Eastern Roman Emperor Valens (364-378) for permission to cross the Danube and find lands inside the Roman Empire. We must be wary of interpreting their request as an indication that they wanted vacant lands to farm. Some portion of these migrants may have been actual farmers, but surely the majority were looking for land already being farmed by dependent farmers where they could establish themselves as the land-lords. Although permission to cross the Danube was granted, the Romans confiscated all Visigothic weapons and implements and confined them in a detention camp requiring them to barter with their guards for all needed food and supplies. They eventually overpowered their guards and succeeded in rearming themselves and moving toward Constantinople. When the Emperor Valens rushed his Palatine Army out from Constantinople against this threat in 378 serious tactical blunders on the part of the Romans coupled with the arrival of additional Visigoths from north of the Danube resulted in the destruction of the Roman army and the death of the Emperor and most of the high command at the Battle of Adrianople.
Emperor Gratian (376-383), nephew of Valens and son of Valentinian (364-375), now named a competent military commander from Spain as Emperor over the Eastern Empire, Theodosius I (379-395). The army of barbarian warriors increased substantially in size as more refugees from beyond the Danube arrived. The deluge of barbarians now pouring across the Danube proved too powerful for the residue of the Roman forces in the Balkans to expel. When the forces of the Huns approached the Danube Theodosius allied with a Visigothic prince, Alaric, and his people in 382 to defend the frontier. These allied Visigoths were settled in a Roman province beside the lower Danube.
In 383 Gratian was assassinated by a pagan usurper, Emperor Magnus, who came to power in Gaul. That same year Theodosius recognized Magnus as Emperor in Gaul, and Gratian's younger brother Valentinian II as Emperor in Italy, he elevated his own son Arcadius as co-Emperor in the East.
When Magnus invaded Italy in 387, Theodosius took the Visigoths and went west to help Valentinian II. Together they invaded Gaul and eliminated Magnus by 390. Valentinian II made Treves his Capital, but was soon assassinated by the Commanding General of the Western Roman Army, a barbarian named Arbogast, who favored another pagan usurper, Eugenius. Again Theodosius I came from the East, defeated and executed Arbogast and Eugenius, and made his younger son Honorius (395-423) Emperor in the West. He also appointed another barbarian, Stilicho, as Commanding General of the Roman Army of the West.
So from the beginning of the fifth century the Roman Empire had both an Eastern and a Western Emperor for about 80 years. During those years the western regions of the Empire were transformed from a region of Roman provinces to a region of Barbarian realms. Although the situations are all different, it is not safe to report this transformation as the result of a barbarian conquest. After the death of Theodosius I, the Huns had expanded their control over more and more peoples outside the Empire. Under that pressure larger numbers of barbarians took flight and tried desperately to find security inside the Roman Empire. The upper Danube frontier was breached in several places, and the provinces on the south bank of the upper Danube were nearly swamped with migrating refugees between 400 and 406 AD. Stilicho, the commanding General of the West concentrated his western troops to oppose them, called in the Visigothic allies from the East and pushed them back across the Danube. The Danube frontier was reestablished by stationing numbers of the invading Barbarian warriors as Roman federated allies in the provinces along the river. Meanwhile, Stilicho's redeployment of troops to northern Italy had left the upper Rhine short-manned. With the southern escape route through the Empire now blocked the barbarians dashed westward across southern Germany and breached the upper Rhine fanning out across Gaul to the southwest and not stopping until they poured into the Spanish provinces by 409.
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The Romans eventually employed the Visigoths to subdue various groups of barbarians and defeat usurpers trying to become Emperor. When Western Emperor Honorius' repeatedly failed to live up to his promise to provide the Visigoths living supplies, the Visigoths sacked Rome in 410, and they sacked several cities in southwestern Gaul and northern Spain in 413, before the government finally settled them in southwestern Gaul.
Once the migrations were over, now the government in the west had to subdue the new barbarian inhabitants and contain them to their assigned places. The native Roman General Aėtius leading an allied army of Huns and other barbarians subdued the several unruly tribes in Gaul from 435-447, while the Vandal barbarian army migrated from Spain to northwest Africa. The Vandals made a peace settlement with Rome and then broke it to conquer Carthage over the protest of the Romans.
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Another of the significant characteristics of the Late Roman Empire that has so many ramifications for the future was the taxation and service obligation policies coupled with the regimentation and classification of society. Beginning with Diocletian and Constantine the practices began to be implemented of legally boxing in the various socio-economic classes from the bottom to the top of society. No longer was it legally possible for the lowly peasant to rise to be a great general or even emperor. Even though they made class membership hereditary and legislated several prohibitions, there were always people in the classes above you that would gladly take your bribe to facilitate an escape from your hereditary lot.
The cultivators of the soil, coloni, were bound to the soil. The stated reason was to prevent these lowly farmers from escaping their tax obligation. The colonate included the poorest landowners as well as the tenent farmers. They were legally prohibited from either leaving their lands, or joining the army or the civil service.
The lower class menial craftsmen in the cities were also organized by craft into hereditary classes called collegia and forced to work at least part of the time for the government for a wage below normal pay, in addition to paying taxes levied specifically upon them. Even those employed by the huge civil service bureaucracy were made a hereditary cast of this type; however, they were on the government payroll so they didn't pay any taxes.
The prosperous landowners of the cities, the curiales, on whose lands the coloni labored were likewise not permitted legally to escape their class. This class was responsible for collecting and paying the land tax owed to the government.
Above the curiales class was the military class. These landowners were generally richer than the curiales but not as rich as the Senatorial class. What the curiales class did for the local cities, the senatorial class did for the higher levels of imperial government, and the military class served typically in the defense of the local region. Consequently the lands owned by senatorial and military families were also exempt from imperial taxation. The coloni, i.e., dependant farmers, on their lands paid tax to the these senatorial and military class landlords, making it possible for the senators and soldiers to serve in relatively expensive civil and military positions at a lower cost to the imperial government.
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Meanwhile the Hun leadership had organized all virtually all the peoples north of the Danube and between the Rhine and the Volga into a vast empire. Their headquarters were just a little east of the point where the Danube turns south to flow through Budapest. In 434 the Huns and the Eastern Emperor Theodosius II (416-450) made a deal. Theodosius II would pay 700 pounds of gold annually to the Huns so that their warriors could be paid without having to continue pillaging. But that deal was jacked up to 2100 pounds of Gold annually after a catch-up payment of 6000 pounds in 643. Then in 447 the Huns sacked 70 Roman towns in the Balkans as far south as northern Greece. Even then the Roman government continued to pay the annual subsidies to the Huns.
When in 450 the new Emperor of the east, Marcian, flatly refused to continue paying the Huns, the Huns didn't retaliate. Instead the Hun leadership was distracted by events in the West. The sister of the Western Emperor Valentinian III sent a request to Attila, the Hun leader, to come marry her and become western Emperor. Attila and a composite army of barbarian allies crossed the Rhine in 451 and pillaged settlements all the way to Orleans. Aėtius confronted him with an equally diverse army of barbarian allies. The battle was a draw. Attila withdrew from Gaul but showed up the next year in northern Italy sacking several northeastern Italian sites and most of the cities in the Po Valley. There as he and his predecessors had done for several years he just sat down to wait for the government to pay him to withdraw or to attack him. The bankruptcy of the western government is revealed by that fact they did neither. It was the approach of the Eastern Emperor's armies and deadly outbreaks of dysentery that finally moved Attila to withdraw. Attila died of a nosebleed in his sleep before the next fighting season and the vast Hun confederation collapsed and disintegrated within months of his death. Surviving Huns (descendants of original Hun families) sought and found refuge inside the Roman Empire.
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The famous events of 476 that for many people symbolize "the fall of Rome" were hardly unusual. A Roman army commander of barbarian (Scirian? or perhaps a Rugian?) origin named Odovacar conspired with some Roman Senators to end the reign of the current western Emperor Romulus Augustulus. So Odovacar executed the Commanding General of the Army (his own superior). The Senators and Odovacar then forced Romulus to abdicate but they didn't kill him because of his youth. The Senators then took the symbols of the imperial office to Constantinople with the explanation that the Empire really needed only one Emperor.
The Eastern Emperor Zeno who was just recovering his throne from a usurper could do nothing for the moment but recognize Odovacar as the protector of the Romans. So Italy was ruled by Odovacar from 476 to 493.
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Now as to the cultural "Fall of Rome" in the West, it began with the gradual decimation and loss of the curiales class, i.e., the well established landowners ranking beneath the military class. The curiales class in Roman society had for centuries served as the foundation of Roman literacy and culture. Their civic service as a class made Roman civilization viable at the local city level. They supported local schools to train their sons with the valued literacy skills. Some of the more promising students in every community prepared themselves to serve as teachers. As their numbers had declined and their ability to support Roman civilization was eroded by a number of pressures, the Roman taxing policies bankrupted family after family. As their numbers declined some of the surviving families amassed even more wealth and power merging during the fifth century with what was left of the equally beleaguered western Senatorial and military classes to be known as the potentiores, the "more powerful". Also as members of the more talented and self-educated imperial barbarian (military class) families inside the Empire began reaching the top echelon's of power and influence by the end of the fourth century they were competing with Romans for the prominent positions particularly in the military.
In the middle of the fourth century the accumulated wealth and property of the wealthiest classes of families had been concentrated most densely in the European lands next to the Rhine and Danube frontiers and along the Mediterranean coast. The Rhine and Danube lands were repeatedly the prime targets of the destructive and violent barbarian looting in Western Europe in the early fifth century. Hence, some of the more powerful Roman families in the west were displaced, ruined financially or destroyed by the violence. Perhaps more significantly, the supply of troops from the Roman military class families in that region declined precipitously.
The crisis of the fifth century migrations and the settlements of new barbarians in the west saw the subordination of civil government personnel in many parts of the west to military commanders whether Roman, imperial-barbarian or immigrating barbarian chiefs allied to Rome. The surviving educated Roman potentiores, including the descendants of the more literate curiales continued to seek civic service in the administrations of the new military governors as literate assistants and advisors. Meanwhile as many of the civic service opportunities had either disappeared or were no longer very inviting, a number of these highly cultured potentiores began to opt for careers in the clergy.
The imperial government addressed the various problems posed by the migrations and, whether by design or default, ended up bringing most of the immigrating barbarians into European society at the level of the potentiores, that is, as landlords with military obligation. We know only that in regions of Gaul "settled" by the barbarians they laid claim as landlords to 2/3 of the improved (cleared and cultivatable) farmlands. We can only guess at how much of that claimed territory had been abandoned by its earlier landlords in the chaos of the previous half-century. Remember we are talking about landlords, what happened to the lower class farmers, the coloni, is another story. The new barbarian landlords have no Roman tradition of civic service and, so far as we know, followed their own customary practices rather than Roman law. Even though they did provide military service their units were still distinct from those of the traditional Roman.
Now the government has even given away substantial portions of the lands formerly owned by Roman potentiores to the barbarian warriors. The Barbarian landlords now collected for themselves the tax paid by the coloni on the barbarian owned lands as compensation for their military service to the Empire. Even though the barbarians showed some interest in nurturing the Roman culture, there was no compulsion or pressing reason they should since they were already part of the privileged, the ruling class.
Only a few of the immigrant barbarians actually became farmers. The coloni population actually doing the farm labor was in most cases the direct descendants of the Romans of the fourth century. In certain regions, namely along the lower Rhine, and to a lesser extent, along the upper Danube and in the mountains of southeast France, there were some barbarians who were coloni. So this variegated agricultural force were governed and taxed under the supervision of their landlords whether those landlords were barbarians or Romans.
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