superior to that of a slave, but the distinction was so little practical that the lawyers of the period were unable to discriminate the difference.[1] Any freeman who settled in a neighbourhood to work for hire on an estate lost his liberty and became a serf bound to the soil, unless he migrated again before the expiration of thirty years.[2] The use and possession of arms was interdicted to private persons throughout the Empire, and only such small knives as were useless for weapons of war were allowed to be exposed for sale.[3]
In every department of the State the same principle of hereditary bondage was applied to the lower grades of the service, and even in some cases to officials of considerable rank. Here, however, a release was conceded to those who could provide an acceptable substitute, a condition but rarely possible to fulfil.[4] Armourers, mintmen, weavers, dyers, purple-gatherers, miners, and muleteers, in government employ[5] could neither resign their posts nor even intermarry[6]
- [Footnote: antiquity; cf. Savigny, Römische Colonat u.s.w. Berlin Acad., 1822-3.
The name of modern works on slavery and serfdom is legion.]*
- ↑ Cod., XI, xlvii, 21.
- ↑ Ibid., 18, 23.
- ↑ Cod. Theod., X, xv, and Godefroy ad loc.; Pand., XLVII, vi; Novel., xvii, 17; lxxxv, 4, etc. This general disarmament of the industrial classes often left them defenceless against the barbarian raiders, as is instanced practically by Synesius, Epist. 107. Yet in an age of non-explosives peasants armed only with agricultural implements could become terrible, as was shown in Paphlagonia (359), when the incensed Novatian sectaries routed the legionaries sent against them with their hatchets, reaping-hooks, etc.; Socrates, ii, 30; Sozomen, iv, 21.
- ↑ Cod. Theod., X, xx, 16.
- ↑ Ibid., X, xx, xxi, xxii; Cod., XI, viii, ix, x. To be a public baker (manceps) was a particular sort of punishment; Cod. Theod., XIV, lii, 22, etc.
- ↑ Ibid., X, xx, 3, 5, 10, 15. Male and female alike, as well as their offspring, became bound to the sodality into which they married. The addicti were branded on the arm like recruits; ibid., X, xxi, 4;
