BMCR 2025.01.40

The colonate in the Roman Empire

, The colonate in the Roman Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. Pp. 360. ISBN 9781009172608.

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Sirks devotes his new monograph to the problem of the colonate, the culmination of his long-standing research on Roman law in late antiquity. The existence of a group of semi-slave agricultural workers raises many questions regarding the transformation of the Roman empire’s agricultural economy, demographic changes, and the position of the slave in wider society. The subject of the colonate is interdisciplinary, requiring contributions from a number of discrete fields (political and administrative history, social and agrarian history, etc.). Nevertheless, the colonate was, above all, a legal institution, so a meticulous analysis of Roman legal texts on the position of a colonus is an essential part of the work under review. Among these texts, we primarily find the imperial constitutions contained in the Codex Theodosianus and the Codex Justinianus, and to a lesser extent, the texts of the other parts of the Corpus Iuris Civilis (Digesta, Institutiones, Novellae), as well as papyrological and literary sources.

The monograph consists of an introduction and five chapters, each concluded with a very useful synthetic summary. The primary content of the book is a detailed discussion of the legal norms on various aspects of the functioning of the coloni over time. Chapter one is devoted to the colonate in the East under Justinianic law. Chapter two discusses the colonate in light of the texts of the Code of Theodosius and those constitutions from the Justinian Code that were issued before 438. A concise chapter three discusses the relatively few and minor legal changes to the position of the coloni made by the emperors of the East between the promulgation of the Code of Theodosius and the Justinian Code. Chapter four examines the evolution of the legal status of the coloni in the Western Empire following the enactment of the Code of Theodosius. It situates the temporal boundary at 506, the date of the Breviarium Alarici, which was accompanied by a set of explanatory texts known as the interpretationes. The authorship of these interpretationes—Roman or Visigothic—remains a subject of debate. Chapter five puts forward hypotheses regarding the genesis of the colonate in Roman law before and during the reign of Diocletian, while also providing a summary of the monograph as a whole.

In contrast with the traditional chronological approach, Sirks has chosen to adopt a retrospective perspective. He begins by discussing the legal situation of the coloni arising from Justinianic law, then moves on to the Code of Theodosius and later normative acts separately for the East and West. Finally, he attempts to reconstruct the origins of the colonate during the period of Diocletian’s reforms. This composition is an explicit reflection of Sirks’ methodological assumptions concerning the interpretation of imperial constitutions (pp. 12-24). He rightly points out that the Codes of Theodosius and Justinian are, in fact, the results of the thoughtful work of editors and compilers. Their task was to review the texts of earlier imperial laws, select the most important ones, and edit them into the desired form. In this manner, texts that were originally utilized in disparate contexts were integrated into a novel entity that reflected the state of the law as of 438 for the Code of Theodosius and as of 534 for the Code of Justinian. The transmission of the Justinian Code’s text is in a significantly better state than that of the Code of Theodosius. Sirks argues that it is not logical to begin the study in the traditional manner with an examination of the oldest imperial constitution on the colonate, which was enacted by Constantine the Great in 332, but survives only in the Code of Theodosius (CTh. 5.17.1). An analysis of this constitution in isolation from its normative context would be fruitless. It is indeed challenging for a researcher to refrain from imposing the more comprehensive representation of the colonate given in the better-preserved texts of the later Justinian Code. Sirks proposes a retrospective method as a potential solution, suggesting that we should initially read the texts of Theodosius’ and Justinian’s compilations in the context of their selection, compilation, and editing, and only then in the context of their original sources. This perspective undoubtedly represents a novel and thought-provoking approach to the subject. While the necessity of double interpretation (duplex interpretatio) has long been a standard practice among historians of Roman law, this shift in focus to the moment of redaction of the imperial collections is a notable sign of the growing appreciation for late antiquity in recent research. Furthermore, this may signify the ultimate rejection of the long-standing myth that the Justinianic compilation is valuable primarily as just a repository of “classical” Roman law from the Principate. However, it should be noted that this proposed approach may render the work somewhat unclear and difficult to read, particularly for the non-specialist reader, of whom a strong knowledge of Roman legal sources is required from the outset.

Sirks successfully accomplishes identifying and describing the key features of the legal position of coloni in their historical development. Of particular interest is the hypothesis that the prototype of the colonate was the paramonè contract, which was practiced in Egypt as early as the first century AD. This contract consisted of a personal surrender to another person in exchange for the guarantor’s payment of a debt, including tax obligations. Sirks postulates that the true genesis of the colonate as an institution under Diocletian was the transplantation of this private law contract into the public law domain, whereby the element of recording the legal relationship between the parties in an official register (adscriptio) was introduced. Consequently, the fundamental characteristics of the colonate were personal legal subordination to the proprietor of the estate and the entry of the colonate into the register of the relevant estate. This subordination was modeled on the relationship of children to their pater familias. From this dependency arose the “guardianship” of the colonus, whereby the current owner of the estate guaranteed the payment of his tax dues and imposed various obligations and restrictions on him. These were regulated by successive acts and related to property capacity, freedom of movement, the ability to marry, and the legal status of children.

What was the subsequent fate of the colonate in the East? The answer to this question poses a number of difficulties. As the title of the first chapter indicates (The Colonate in the East under Justinian, 527/534- 565/642), the text presents a detailed account of the colonate in the East during the rule of Justinian and beyond. It is challenging to ascertain why the year 642 is taken as the conclusion of the period. Sirks notes that he refrains from discussing the history of the empire following the period of calamity, which commenced around 540 CE, as it was up to this point that the majority of legislation pertaining to the colonate was enacted (p. 32). It may be the case that 642 is the result of Sirks’ occasional reference to the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, which suggests a terminus ad quem of the Arab conquest of Egypt. In any case, this framework presents an inaccurate depiction, suggesting either that the colonate in the East ended in the year 642, or there was a radical break in the continuity of the Roman state after 642. As regards the institution of the colonate, it seems more promising to take up the thread of continuity. One can see, therefore, that the retrospective perspective has certain inherent limitations, in that it does not permit one to accurately view the end of the colonate. As such, the work only covers the imperial and late Roman period. Examining the subsequent sources for Byzantine legislation doubtlessly would have been beneficial. To illustrate, the well-known Farmer’s Law of the 8th century curiously fails to make any reference to coloni.[1] Conversely, the anonymous treatise Ῥομαικαὶ ἀγωγαί, on various types of lawsuits, contains several references to coloni, which serve to demonstrate the continued relevance of this issue in later law.[2]

The monograph under review presents a meticulous and comprehensive analysis of ancient Roman normative texts, primarily drawn from the Codes of Theodosius and Justinian, pertaining to the institution of the colonate. It will undoubtedly serve as a valuable reference for those engaged in research on late antiquity, in particular thanks to the insights it offers into the economic and social changes of the period through its application of new historical-legal methods.

 

Notes

[1] Recently translated in: M. Humphreys, The Laws of the Isaurian Era. The Ecloga and its Appendices, Liverpool 2017, pp. 129-139.

[2] R. Meijering, Ῥομαικαὶ ἀγωγαί. Two Byzantine Treatises on Legal Actions in: L. Burgmann et al. (ed.), Lexica Iuridica Byzantina, Frankfurt am Main 1990, p. 48-49, 97, 134, 140. The content may suggest that in Greek terminology, coloni were simply referred to as farmers (γεωργòς).That would explain the surprising silence of the Farmer’s Law.