The End of Empire

By E. A. THOMPSON

Tbook* at once challenges comparison with Rostovtzeff's famous social and eco- nomic histories of the Hellenistic world and of the earlier Roman Empire. But it is, if anything, better than Rostovtzeff. It is more compact, fuller of information, and deals with a period that has been less worked over by earlier histor- ians than the times which Rostovtzeff illumined.

Of Britain and northern France we know practically nothing during much of this period. There are hardly any sources of information. It is an impenetrably Dark Age. We therefore tend to think that the same is true of the rest of the Roman Empire. But that is not the case. The difficulty in studying the rest of the Empire is not the lack of sources of information but the overwhelming abundance of them and the ex- treme obscurity of the most valuable—the law codes of Theodosius II and Justinian, the Notitia Dignitatum, the hundreds of discon- nected papyri and the painfully confusing coinage. But Jones's mastery of these unmanageable sources is superb. On each page all the evidence appears to be taken into account, the last drop of information is wrung from it, and the con- clusions follow with an inevitability that im- mediately convinces the reader. His organisa- tion of the vast mass of information is beyond praise in its logical presentation.

There is no need to stress the importance of the period which stretches from the accession of Diocletian to the eve of the Arab invasions. It is the time of Constantine and Julian the Apostate, of Theodosius the Great and Justinian, of Alaric and Attila; the time of St. Athanasius and Arianism, of the Monophysites, of the birth of monasticism, and of the Gregories, Basil, and Pope Gregory the Great; the age of Ammianus Marcellinus and Procopius and Gregory of Tours. It saw the loss of Britain, the final dis- appearance of the Western Empire, the estab- lishment of the German kingdoms of Italy, Africa, Spain and France.

But what concerns Jones is not only these famous men and dramatic historical movements. His subtitle is important. For his purpose the conversion of Constantine is of less concern than Constantine's reconstruction of the administra- tion of the Empire. The teachings of Athanasius are of less concern than the finance of the Church, the campaigns of Belisarius than the organisation of the army. Every aspect of the economic and social life of the Empire is dealt with in turn, always with the same phenomenal knowledge of the sources and the same sureness of touch in interpreting them.

The chapters on the government, the adminis- tration and the civil service are brilliant. The desperately obscure problems raised by the financial reorganisation of the Empire with its three independent treasuries (each with its own revenues and administrative staff), and by the system and incidence of taxation, and by the administration of the law are unequalled in English or any other language. One could go on almost indefinitely. What could be better than the chapter on the army, its recruitment, pay, equipment, rations,' etc.? Or that on the land, the relative importance of agriculture and in-

* THE LATER ROMAN EMPIRE 284-602: A SOCIAL, ECONOMIC AND ADMINISTRATIVE SURVEY. By A. H. M. Jones. (Three volumes and a portfolio of maps; Blackwell, 14 gns.) dustry, and so on? Or those on Rome, Constan- tinople, and the cities in general, or on trade and industry, or on religion and morals, or on edu- cation and culture? How many of us knevi 1

that a rich Roman senator in this period might own estates covering several thousand square miles? After 450 such a man paid only a neg- ligible sum in taxes, although by Justinian's time the government was raising in taxation a sum equal to nearly one-third of the gross yield of the land. Again, we have learned from earlier writings of Jones that the number of UnprO' ductivc persons—absentee landlords, civil ser- vants, soldiers and the like—was too great for the available number of producers to support: how many of us knew that leaving monks out of account, the staffing of the church absorbed far more manpower than did the secular ad- ministration, and the church's salary bill Was far heavier than that of the empire' with its in* finitely elaborate civil service and its enormous army? Every page contains a discussion of great interest, sometimes on questions that have hare

ever been seriously raised before. For example, what became in the end of the Roman army in. the West, that military machine which had

dominated Europe for so many centuries? Ha and in what circumstances did it finally dis' integrate and disappear in the turmoil of the

fifth century? What of that age-old question,

the origin of the colonate? By what steps did agricultural slaves rise to the status of serfs while free tenants sank to a similar status? What

evidence, if any, exists for the obligatory labour by peasants on their lord's estate in this period!;

What was the relative importance of slave and

free labour? What is known of Church finances. the wealth of the Church, the numbers, pay and, social origins of the clergy? At what date did clerics become full-time salaried priests 13°,t dependent on a trade or craft for their income? Or again, what is known of the salaries of civil servants, their methods of appointment and promotion, their efficiency, their opportunities for graft? How much did it cost the government to collect the taxes? What pressure groups were able to influence imperial policy? (Oddly enough,' the Church as such was not one.) To what extent were the Emperor's laws enforced in daily practice? There is a host of smaller matters: how couldl the Emperor possibly get through his day's work.. Only, it seems, by signing far more document,!

than he could find time to read, .a fact that ht' clerks knew how to take advantage of: Vale

tinian Ill found that without his own knowledfe, he had been granting pardons to murderers, and emperors sometimes announced in their 10 that rescripts contrary to their provisions Were invalid even if they bore the Imperial signature' These and innumerable other matters are di?' 1 cussed by Jones in this tersely written book, 1,s which not a sentence, hardly even a word, it superfluous. This is really Roman history, no the collection of dates and battles, obiter dici„ and anecdotes to which we are usually treated' It must have taken many years of intense effort to accumulate and organise this knowledge The effort has been well worth while. The boc,'; is a landmark in the study of the Roman EMPili and of the transition from ancient to mediXv3 society.