Each class has its burdens, and, though the severest of these were ultimately to fall on the curiales, the municipal law of the Digest calls on all members of the communes to do their duties to their state and to the Empire. Each class has its appropriate duties; to the decurions belong the higher branches of administration, but every category of citizens has its munera congruentia.[1] The legal writers divide the burdens of public life into two categories. The munera personalia are those that demand the activity of the person; the munera patrimonii those that are incumbent on wealth.[2] To the former belong the functions of public officials such as those concerned with the finances of the state, with the inspection of the market, roads, buildings and aqueducts, with the maintenance of the peace or the representation of the interests of the city. But municipal duties by no means exhausted the category of such burdens. The state finally saddled the municipalities with the returns for the census and the raising of the revenue in corn or money, and made the collectors responsible for any deficit.[3] The cost of the imperial transport and post had also become a municipal burden.[4] These last obligations introduce us to the idea of the patrimonial burdens, which existed wherever by law or custom expense was incurred by the individual undertaking them. There were few in which such expenditure was not incurred, and the policy of the dying Principate was to lay heavy imposts on capital, which increased in proportion to the diminution in number of the wealthier classes. When exertion was met with this reward it tended to relax, and a decaying agriculture and an enfeebled commerce were the results of the oppression of the government. Whatever the primary cause of these evils was, whether military, social, or economic, they were doubtless aggravated by the relentless system of imperial administration, which marshalled citizens as though they were soldiers, treated all classes as the fitting instruments of official life, and regarded the subject as existing for the Empire rather than the Empire for the subject.
- ↑ Dig. 50, 2, 1.
- ↑ ib. 50, 4, 1, 3 "Illud tenendum est generaliter personale quidem munus esse, quod corporibus labore cum sollicitudine animi ac vigilantia sollemniter extitit, patrimonii vero, in quo sumptus maxime postulatur." But the two ideas were often inseparable. Hence the recognition of mixta munera by Arcadius (50, 4, 18). For a complete enumeration of munera see Kuhn Verfassung i. pp. 35 ff.
- ↑ Dig. 50, 4, 1, 2; 50, 4, 18, 8, 16 and 26.
- ↑ ib. 50, 4, 1, 1.
