Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/144

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134
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134

134 On the Roman Coloiil an essential feature in the condition of a colonus^ nor ex- clusively confined to it, was yet regarded as regularly and ordinarily appertaining to it. Hence when the polltax was taken off in some of the provinces, it was thought necessary expressly to add that the condition of the coloni was never- theless to continue in other respects the same^^ The charge of answering for the polltax of the coloni was imposed on the landlord: it was entered into the registers along with the landtax of the estate : the landlord had to pay it to the collectors, and was left to recover it from his coloni at his own risk and cost. From this general liability of the coloni to pay the polltax, they derived the following appellations : tributariiy — which name therefore must by no means be derived from the rent they paid to their landlords ^^ — censiti or censibus obnoajii^% and those which occur so frequently, adscriptitii^ adscriptitiae conditionis^^j censibus adscripti'^'^. The latter do not refer, as one might be inclined to suppose, to the peculiar relation between the tax paid by the coloni and that paid by the estate, to which the other was a kind of supplement or appendage : they merely express generally that the coloni were registered in the tax-rolls, and so were (personally) liable to pay tax. For the term adscriptio is also applied to the estates them- selves ^^ ; so that in fact it is merely a general designation for the entering of any object in the taxbooks, in other words, for its liability to pay tax. This liability of the coloni to the polltax was one of the two reasons for which the state tried in every way to ^ L. un. C. J. de col. Thrac. (xi. 51). L. un. C. J. de col. lUyr. (xi. 52). 89 L. 3. C. J. ut nemo (xi. 53). L. 12. C. J. de agric. (xi. 47). L. 2. C. Th. si vagum (x. 12). That the name trihutarii does in fact come from the polltax paid to the state, not from the rent paid to the landlord, is incontrovertibly proved by the laws quoted in the preceding note, in which it is said that the coloni are to be freed from their trihutarius nexus, 90 L. 4, 6, 13. pr. C. J. de agric. (xi. 47). See above note 21. L. 1. C. J. de tiron. (xii. 44). They were also termed capite censi : Juliani epit. nov. const. 21. C. 12. Slaves also might from like reasons be censiti and be so called. L. 7. C. J. de agric. (xi. 47). L. 10. C. J. de re milit. (xii. 36). See note 60. 9^ L. 6, 21, 22, 23, 24. C. J. de agric. (xi. 47). L. 11. C.J. comm. utr. jud. (in. 38). 92 L. 19, 22. pr. 4. C. J. de agric. (xi. 47). L. 2. C. J. in quib. caus. col. (xi. 49). L. 20. C. J. de episc. (i. 3). ^^ For instance in L. 5. C. Th. ne collat. translatio (xi. 22).