THE CAMBRIDGE MEDIEVAL HISTORY I 028
The Centralized Corruption of the Empire
2-16. The Centralized Corruption of the Empire
So far the machinery of the new government in its several parts has been described. We must now consider in outline what was its total effect upon the inhabitants of the Empire. The inability of the ruler to assure good government to his subjects was made conspicuous by the frequent creation of new offices, whose object was to curb the corruption of the old. The multiplication of the functionaries in close touch with the population rendered oppression more certain and less punishable than ever. Lactantius declares, with pardonable exaggeration, that the number of those who lived on the taxes was as great as the number who paid them. The evidence of official rapacity is abundant. The laws thundered against it in vain. Oftentimes it happened that illegitimate exactions were legalised in the empty hope of keeping them within bounds. Penalties expressed in laws were plain enough and numerous enough. For corruption in a province not only the governor but his whole officium were liable to make heavy recompense. And the comparative powerlessness of the governor is shewn by the fact that the officium is more heavily mulcted than its head. But a down-trodden people rarely will or can bring legal proof against its oppressors. Nothing but extensive arbitrary dismissal and punishment of his servants by the emperor, without insistence on forms of law, would have met the evil.
As it was, corruption reigned through the Empire with little check, and the illicit gains of the emperor's servants added to the strain imposed by the heavy imperial taxation. Thus the benefit which the provincials had at first received by the substitution of Imperial for Republican government was more than swept away. Their absorption into the Roman polity on terms of equality with their conquerors, brought with it degradation and ruin.
During the fourth century that extraordinary development was completed whereby society was reorganised by a demarcation of classes so rigid that it became extremely difficult for any man to escape from that condition of life into which he was born. In the main, but not altogether, this result was brought about by the fiscal system. When the local Senates or their leaders were made responsible for producing to the government the quota of taxation imposed on their districts, it became necessary to prevent the members (decuriones or curiales) from escaping their obligations by passing into another path of life, and also to compel the sons to walk in their fathers' footsteps. But the maintenance of the local ordo was necessary also from the local as well as the imperial point of view. The magistracies involved compulsory as well as voluntary payments for local objects, and therefore those capable of filling them must be thrust into them by force if need were.
Every kind of magistracy in every town of the Empire, and every official position in connexion with any corporate body, whether priestly college or trade guild or religious guild, brought with it expenditure for the benefit of the community, and on this, in great part, the ordinary life of every town depended. The Theodosian Code shews that the absconding decurio was in the end treated as a runaway slave; five gold pieces were given to any one who would haul him back to his duties.
In time the members also of all or nearly all professional corporations (collegia or corpora) were held to duties by the State, and the burden of them descended from father to son. The evolution by which these free unions for holding together in a social brotherhood all those who followed a particular occupation were turned into bodies with the stamp of caste upon them, is to be traced with difficulty in the extant inscriptions and the legal literature Here as everywhere the fiscal system instituted by Diocletian was a powerful agent. A large part of the natural fruits of the earth passed into the hands of government, and a vast host of assistants was needed for transport and distribution. And the organisation for maintaining the food-supply at Rome and Constantinople became more and more elaborate. For the annona alone many corporations had to give service, in most cases easily divined from their names, as navicularii, frumentarii, mercatores, olearii, suarii, pecuarii, pistores, boarii, porcinarii and numerous others. Similar bodies were connected with public works, with police functions, as the extinction of fires, with government operations of numerous kinds, in the mints, the mines, the factories for textiles and arms and so on.
In the early Empire the service rendered to the State was not compulsory, and partly by rewards, such as immunity from taxation, partly by pay, the government was willingly served. But in time the burdens became intolerable. State officers ultimately controlled the minutest details connected with these corporations. And the tasks imposed did not entirely proceed from the imperial departments. The curiales of the towns could enforce assistance from the local collegia within their boundaries. And the tentacles of the great octopus of the central government were spread over the provinces. In the fourth and later centuries the restrictions on the freedom of these corporations were extraordinarily oppressive. Egress from inherited membership was inhibited by government except in rare instances. Ingress, as into the class of curiales, was, directly or indirectly, compulsory. The colleges differed greatly in dignity. In some, as in that of the navicularii, even senators might be concerned, and office-holders might obtain, among their rewards, the rank of Roman knight. On the other hand, the bakers (pistores) approached near the condition of slavery. Marriage, for instance, outside their own circle was forbidden, whereas, in other cases, it was only rendered difficult. Property which had once become subject to the duties required of a collegium could hardly be released.
The end was that collegiati or corporati all over the Empire took any method they could find of escaping from their servitude, and the law's severest punishments could not check the movement. If we may believe some late writers, thousands of citizens found life in barbarian lands more tolerable than in the Roman Empire.
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