The Social Consequences of Financial Pressures

To try to control inflation and support his huge army, Diocletian imposed price and wage controls and a new taxation system. These measures failed because they imposed great financial pressures on both rich and poor. Diocletian also placed restrictions on many people’s rights to choose their occupations.

Diocletian was desperate to reduce the hyperinflation resulting from the third-century crisis. As prices escalated, people hoarded whatever they could buy. “Hurry and spend all my money you have; buy me any kinds of goods at whatever prices they are available,” wrote one official to his servant. Hoarding only worsened the inflation.

In 301, the inflation was so severe that Diocletian imposed harsh price and wage controls in the worst-hit areas. This mandate, which blamed high prices on merchants’ “unlimited and frenzied avarice,” forbade hoarding of goods and set cost ceilings for about a thousand goods and services. The mandate failed to change people’s behavior, despite penalties of exile or death. Diocletian’s price and wage controls thus only increased financial pressure on everyone. (See “Document 7.1: Diocletian’s Edict on Maximum Prices and Wages.”)

The emperors increased taxes mostly to support the army, which required enormous amounts of grain, meat, salt, wine, vegetable oil, military equipment, horses, camels, and mules. The major sources of revenue were a tax on land, assessed according to its productivity, and a head tax on individuals. To supplement taxes paid in coin, the emperors began collecting some payments in goods and services.

The empire was too large to enforce the tax system uniformly. In some areas both men and women ages twelve to sixty-five paid the full tax, but in others women paid only half the tax assessment, or none at all. The reasons for such differences are not recorded. Workers in cities periodically paid “in kind,” that is, by laboring without pay on public works projects such as cleaning municipal drains or repairing buildings. People in commerce, from shopkeepers to prostitutes, still paid taxes in money, while members of the senatorial class were exempt from ordinary taxes but had to pay special levies.

The new tax system could work only if agricultural production remained stable and the government kept track of the people who were liable for the head tax. Diocletian therefore restricted the movement of tenant farmers, called coloni (“cultivators”), whose work provided the empire’s economic base. Now male coloni, as well as their wives in areas where women were assessed for taxes, were increasingly tied to a particular plot of land. Their children, too, were bound to the family plot, making farming a hereditary obligation. (See “Taking Measure: Peasants’ Use of Farm Produce in the Roman Empire.”)

The government also regulated other occupations deemed essential. Bakers, who were required to produce free bread for Rome’s poor, a tradition begun under the republic to prevent food riots, could not leave their jobs. Under Constantine, the sons of military veterans were obliged to serve in the army. However, conditions were not the same everywhere in the empire. Free workers who earned wages apparently remained important in the economy of Egypt in the late Roman Empire, and archaeological evidence suggests that some regions may actually have become more prosperous.

The emperors also decreed oppressive regulations for the curials, the social elite in the cities and towns. During this period, many men in the curial class were obliged to serve as decurions (unsalaried members of their city Senate) and to spend their own funds to support the community. Their financial responsibilities ranged from maintaining the water supply to feeding troops, but their most expensive duty was paying for shortfalls in tax collection. The emperors’ demands for revenue made this a crushing obligation.

The empire had always depended on property owners to fill local offices in return for honor and the emperor’s favor. Now this tradition broke down as some wealthy people avoided public service to escape financial ruin. Service on a municipal council could even be imposed as punishment for a crime. Eventually, to prevent curials from escaping their obligations, imperial policy decreed that they could not move away from the town where they had been born. Members of the elite sought exemptions from public service by petitioning the emperor, bribing imperial officials, or taking up an occupation that freed them from curial obligations (the military, imperial administration, or church governance). The most desperate simply abandoned their homes and property.

These restrictions eroded the communal values motivating wealthy Romans. The drive to increase revenues also produced social discontent among poorer citizens: the tax rate on land eventually reached one-third of the land’s gross yield, impoverishing small farmers. Financial troubles, especially severe in the west, kept the empire from ever regaining the prosperity of its Golden Age.