542. The Result. The complete extinction of the old schools was not to come until the general cataclysm that followed the barbarian invasions in the next century; but it is undoubtedly true that those institutions were already being destroyed, or replaced by schools of infinitely lower character, for theological training only.

There is some consolation, perhaps, in the fact that the schools and Greek learning had already begun to decline in the third century (before the triumph of Christianity) along with the general decay in the Roman world; and it is possible to look upon their complete overthrow as a necessary step in the erection, centuries later, of a higher and nobler educational system. We shall have occasion, too, to notice that for centuries after the barbarian invasions the monasteries were the sole refuge of learning in the West. None the less it is shirking the facts not to recognize this hostile and bigoted attitude of the early Christians as one of the leading factors in the decline of Romano-Greek science and letters.

FOR FURTHER READING.-Laurie, Rise of Universities, 19-27; Mullinger, Schools of Charles the Great (early pages); Draper, I. 314–325 and 357; Compayré, History of Pedagogy, 62-64; West, Alcuin, 9-21.

VI. SOCIETY IN THE FOURTH CENTURY.

A.

INTRODUCTORY SURVEY.

543. Growing Exhaustion of the Empire. The three quarters of a century after the reunion of the Empire under Constantine were marked by a fair degree of outward prosperity, despite several brief wars for the throne. But the secret forces that were sapping the strength of society continued to work ceaselessly, and early in the coming century the Empire was to crumble under barbarian attacks. These inroads themselves will be treated farther on. We may notice now that they were at least no more formidable than those the Empire had so often rebuffed. Apparently, indeed, they were weaker. The barbarians, then, are not to be considered as the chief cause of the

"Fall." Those causes were internal. But when an empire is overthrown from internal causes, it is usually either by national revolt or by the personal rebellion of satraps. Not so the Roman Empire. The subject peoples had no desire to rebel, and the reforms of Diocletian guarded against rebellion by governors. The Roman Empire was overthrown from without by an ordinary attack, because it had grown weak within and had become a mere shell. This was not due, in any marked degree at least, to decline in discipline or bravery. The Roman army kept its superb organization, and to the last was so strong in its moral superiority that it was ready to face any odds unflinchingly.1 But more and more it became impossible to find men to fill the legions, or money to pay them. Dearth of men and of money was the cause of the fall of the state.

544. The Causes Political and Social rather than Moral. - The older writers explained the decay on moral grounds. Recent scholars are at one in recognizing, first, that the moral decay of society has been greatly exaggerated, and, secondly, that such decay operates only indirectly anyway upon a political society. The immediate causes seem to have been political and economic, especially the latter."

B. CLASSES.

545. General View. - To understand ever so faintly the causes of the decay of population and wealth, we must see more clearly the make-up of Roman society. At the top of the social system. was the emperor, to direct the machinery of government. At the bottom were the peasantry and artisans, the producers of food and of wherewithal to pay taxes. Between these two

1 Read Dill, 288-291, for examples, and see a quotation from the stout soldier Ammianus, in Sheppard, 139–141.

2 On the exaggeration of the moral decline, read Dill, bks. ii. and iii. (especially pp. 115-131 and 227-228); Seeley, especially 54-64; and Adams, 79-81. Kingsley, Lecture II., Roman and Teuton, gives graphic statement of the older but rather unhistorical view. If read, it should be corrected by Dill's treatment of the same authorities.

extremes were two aristocracies, the senatorial nobility and the curials, or civic nobility.

546. The Senatorial Nobility now included large numbers who never sat in the senate either at Rome or Constantinople. All high officials and the higher clergy belonged to this class. It had swallowed up the old senatorial class of Rome, and most of the knights. It was a nobility of office, hereditary for two or three generations; but if a family kept its rank it must furnish new imperial officials from time to time.' Its privileges consisted: (1) in its dignity; (2) in the fact that a member was a citizen of the whole Empire, not of one municipality only; and (3) in exemption from municipal taxes. Its burdens lay in heavy forms of imperial taxes, both direct and indirect. A noble might at any moment be called upon for ruinous expenses at the capital, or to assume some costly office at a distant frontier. But of course only a few were actually so burdened, and the lot of the majority was enviable.

3

547. The Curials. Below the imperial nobility was a local nobility. Each city had its senate, or curia. The curials were exempted from conscription and corporal punishment, and they had the management of the local finances; but they were liable for deficits and for many burdensome duties in connection with the corn supply and poor-relief. Those who rose to the higher magistracies had also to bear extravagant municipal expenses in providing festivals and shows. More crushing, however, were the imperial burdens. The curials became the collectors of the imperial land tax in their respective municipalities, and were made personally responsible for any deficit. The needs of the Empire caused the amount to be increased steadily, while the ability to pay, and the number of curials, as steadily decreased.

1 The principle seems to have been not unlike that of the modern Russian nobility. Advanced students may refer to Leroy-Beaulieu's Tsars and the Russians, I. bk. vi. 2 Dill, 249; Bury's Later Empire, 37-42.

8 Dill, 250-262 (excellent); Hodgkin, II. 585 ff.; Bury.

2

To secure this security for the revenue, the curials also were made an hereditary class and were bound to their function. They were forbidden to enter the Church, the army, or the law, to remove from their city, or even to travel without special permission. Various emperors in their legislation refer to the curials as the "sinews of the commonwealth," and strenuous attempts were made to reënforce their numbers. Between them and the laborers came a small middle class of petty traders, small landowners, and professional men. When any one of these acquired a certain amount of land, he was compelled by law to become a curial; but the general drift, as we shall note in the next sections, was for the small landowners to sink rather than rise, and they could furnish few recruits to fill the gaps.

A place in the senate of his city had once been the highest ambition of a wealthy non-noble citizen; but in the fourth century it had become almost an act of heroism to assume the duty. A story is told that, when in a Spanish municipality a public-spirited man voluntarily offered himself for a vacancy, his fellow-citizens erected a statue in his honor. In the growing exhaustion of the Empire, the position became more and more unendurable, until to the natural decrease in its numbers there were added desperate attempts to escape at any sacrifice. Of course the desirable escape was into the imperial nobility, but this was possible only to a few. Others, despite the prohibitions of legislation, sought refuge in the artisan guilds, in the Church, or even in serfdom, in a servile marriage, or in flight to the barbarians.

548. The Artisans were grouped in guilds, or colleges, each with its own organization. Each member was bound to his guild, as the curial to his office.

549. The Peasantry had become serfs. In the later days of the Republic, the system of great estates, which had blighted

The

1 Arnold, 161-163; Bury, I. 28-32 and III. 418-421; Dill, 262–266. teacher will see the need of guarding the students against thinking of serfdom as a result of the barbarian conquests and of the later feudalism.

Italy earlier (§§ 396-398), had begun to curse province after province outside Italy. Free labor disappeared before slave labor, or continued the conflict on unequal terms. As a result, grain culture declined and large areas went out of cultivation. To remedy this state of affairs in part, the emperors introduced a new system. After successful wars, they gave large numbers of barbarian captives to great landlords, - thousands in a batch,—not as slaves, but as coloni, or serfs. The purpose was to secure an hereditary agricultural class and so keep up the food supply. The coloni were really given not to the landlord, but to the land. They were not personal property, as slaves were. They were part of the real estate. They, and their children after them, were attached to the soil, and could not be sold off it. They had some civil rights, and could contract a legal marriage, as a slave could not. They had also some property rights. Each had his own plot of ground, of which he could not be dispossessed so long as he paid to the landlord a custom-fixed rent in labor and in produce.

Augustus began the system on a small scale in Italy, and it soon became a regular practice so to dispose of vanquished tribes. Of course this made it still more impossible for the free small-farmer to maintain himself. That class sank into serfs; but it had been on the high road to extinction anyway. On the other hand, the slaves rose into serfs, until nearly all cultivators of the soil were of this order. This institution of the Empire was to last for hundreds of years, under the name of serfdom, and it was to help make possible the transition from the ancient slave organization to the modern free-labor organization of industry. From the point of view of the slave, it was an immense gain. At the moment, however, it was one more factor in killing out the old middle class, in widening the gap between the noble classes and the small cultivators, and in making transition from class to class more impossible.

In the fourth century, too, the lot of these coloni had become miserable. They were crushed by imperial taxes, in addition to the rent due their landlord; and in Diocletian's time they