The abolition of the poll tax in Illyricum and Thrace made automatically the estate owner’s guarantee for this void and with that the census registration and the colonate. To prevent loss of labour in these war-stricken provinces the emperors introduced in 371 and 398 the rule that, although now free from subjection, former coloni had to remain on the estate and render services. This ‘free’ colonate, which must have existed before, was also introduced in Palestine in 386. The status of the ‘free’ coloni in Byzantium looks very similar to the status of the serfs, villeins, or Hörigen in medieval West-Europe, who also were tied to a plot of land. But there were differences too: unlike in some cases there, these coloni were not in any way subjected to the jurisdiction of their masters, nor required to ask permission for marriage, etc. Further, as far as we know, there is no link between the two phenomena. If we would call them nevertheless serfs, it should always be with the adjective Byzantine.

A construction like the colonate is known in the Heroninos archive (249–268). It is the paramonè agreement, where the estate owner grants credit and the debtor provides labour at the wish of the creditor, as a kind of interest. For the period from 364 to 293 constitutions are considered as issued originally. Retrogradely, several additions become visible. In the middle of the fourth century the coniugium non aequale is applied to coloni and some groups of workers, as is the senatusconsultum Claudianum. In 319 the coloni on imperial estates may be recalled: the essential mark of subjection. The same is shown in 332 for coloni on private lands: they are alieni iuris, may be recalled, and tax must be paid for them. Connected with the similar condicio for monetarii in 319, the colonate may have existed essentially in the beginning of the fourth century and can now be connected with a rescript of 293/4.

In the fourth and fifth centuries, the emperors had to combat the patrocinium: the protection offered by powerful persons to towns and individuals. This protection was often used for evading public law duties. The title in the Code deals only with Egypt, where it seems to have been rampant or been most detrimental, notwithstanding that it is also attested for Syria. It must have existed in other provinces as well. Yet, it does not seem in the west to have required legislation. Also coloni took advantage of it, offering patrons entire hamlets. As a result they seem to have neglected to work for their estate owners. In this context the coloni homologi turn up. Connecting this with CTh 13.10.7, it concerns most probably coloni registered on one tax list. They had to provide the aggregate of the poll tax, regardless of the number of present coloni. The solution was to combine lists and correct by cross-linking fiscal accounts.

The purpose of this book is twofold. On one hand it intends to provide a survey and analysis of the colonate in the Roman Empire from the legal point of view, embedded as much as necessary in the social and economic context of Roman society. On the other hand, it is meant to show how to approach the sources in a case like this and, in general, how to work with the codes of Theodosius and Justinian, in a way that does justice to the place of the texts in the whole of these codifications, that is, taking account of their function within a codification. The individual texts have their value as historical sources, yet one must be aware how they have come to us, in which context and to which purpose they were selected and edited, or else their historical value might diminish or even disappear.

Historians must tread carefully when they deal with both modern and ancient slavery, for every time they brand the practice as an archaic form of domination, it reappears adapted to new ages. Although most of the modern world, since the nineteenth century, has strived to make the ownership of one human being by another illegal, slavery keeps returning in the most insidious ways. At the turn of the century, when modern societies claimed to have finally gotten rid of it, slavery began to resurface, masquerading as free labour all across the globe (and not just in the Global South), bringing the need to discuss and to enforce policies against ‘practices similar to slavery’ back to international forums. It is striking that while this notion of an ‘insidious return’ has recently appeared in studies on rural slavery in the ancient world, it seems not to have influenced ones focused on late Roman Gaul.