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Social Mobility and the Theodosian Code

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Ramsay MacMullen
Ramsay MacMullen
Affiliation:
Brandeis University
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Extract

Until recent centuries, historians had to reckon with only limited social movement. I use the phrase in a very wide sense, to cover change of habitation, profession, or class; but even so defined, in a world dominated numerically by small farmers, people rarely moved around, or up or down, socially. This is as true of the thirteenth as of the third century.

But it is usual to say that, granted these limitations, social movement was still much more restricted after 250 than before. This has recently been challenged by A. H. M. Jones. ‘The late Roman empire is often conceived of as a rigid hierarchical society, in which every man was tied to the station in life to which he was born.’ But the laws directing this confess, in their repetitions and relaxations, that they could not really be applied. Society, he says, was actually less static after 250 than before. Despite what has become the almost canonical view of the question, Professor Jones is certainly in the right. Under three major headings, all perfectly well known, many people did change jobs and homes. Some fled from invasion, in numbers powerfully suggested by the thousands of coin hoards from Britain to the Black Sea—we must assume that for every treasure we find, a hundred are still hidden, and for every man who buried his money, a hundred took it with them—; another group, from one to two hundred thousand, joined an expanded army; an equal number in Egypt alone turned monk. If we say, then, that over the century 250–350, half a million people were taken from one life and newly rooted in another, we have a figure by no means fantastic, yet without parallel in any earlier era of the Empire.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 54 , Issue 1-2 , November 1964 , pp. 49 - 53
Copyright
Copyright ©Ramsay Macmullen 1964. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 In The Conflict Between Paganism and Christianity in the Fourth Century, ed. Momigliano, A. (1963), 34 f.Google Scholar, anticipated only occasionally and in certain limited respects by Petit, P., Libanius et la vie municipale à Antioche (1955), 362Google Scholar, citing the chief upholders of the traditional view; by Boak, A. E. R., Manpower Shortage and the Fall of the Roman Empire (1955), 51 and 76 f.Google Scholar; and by de Robertis, F. M., Il fenomeno associativo nel mondo romano (1955), 210–19.Google Scholar

2 Hardy, E. R., Christian Egypt (1952), 92.Google Scholar

3 On Displaced Persons, solitaries, beggars, deserters, etc., see Cod. Theod. 7.13. 6 (370); 8. 2. 3. (380); 7. 1. 12 (384); 7. 1. 16 (398); Symm., Ep. VII, 38; Theodoret, , H.E. IV, 10Google Scholar (ca. 367–71); id., Relig. hist. 13 (= PG LXXXII, 1404, a. 360–70); Greg. Nyssa, De pauper, amandis I (= PG XLVI, 457); Asterius Amasenus, Homil. III adv. avarit. (= PG XL, 209, a. 360–70); Synes., Ep. 67 (= PG LXVI, 1428); and passages in Basil, in Treucker, B., Politische u. sozialgeschichtliche Studien zu den Basilius-Briefen (1961), 97.Google Scholar The evidence for brigandage is too familiar, and too abundant, to be cited.

4 The bulk of the evidence is in Waltzing, J. P., Étude historique sur les corporations professionnelles chez les Romains (1895–1900) vol. IIGoogle Scholar, chap, ii, and de Robertis, o.c. (n.1), Section III, chap, iii; a recent short discussion in Nuyens, M., Rev. int. des droits de l'antiquité V (1958), 519 f.Google Scholar

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7 Liban., Or. XLII, 23–24; Amm. Marcel, XXII, 11, 4; XXVII, 3, 2; Seeck, O., Die Briefe des Libanius (1906), 125, 168Google Scholar; Eunapius, Vitae sophist. 463; Philostorgius, H.E. III, 15. Further examples in Petit, loc. cit. (n.I), and in Hopkins, M. K., ‘Social Mobility in the Later Roman Empire; the Evidence of Ausonius,’ Class. Quarterly 2 XI (1961), 239–49.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPetit, P., Les étudiants de Libanius (1957), 96, 193Google Scholar, shows a few men of poor families, but not of merchant, peasant, or artisan background, attaining the first steps in a rhetor's career.

8 Concentrations of specially valuable evidence lie in Libanius (see Seeck, o.c. (n.7); Petit, Libanius, esp. 297–390; id., Étudiants; id., ‘Les sénateurs de C'ple dans l'œuvre de Libanius,’ Antiquité classique XXVI, 1957, 357 f.; Pack, R., ‘Curiales in the Correspondence of Libanius,’ Trans. Am. Philol. Assoc. LXXXII, 1951, 184 f.)Google Scholar; in Ausonius (Hopkins, o.c., n. 7); in Ammianus (no general study, but see, on one aspect, Alföldi, A., A Conflict of Ideas, 1952, 14 f.)Google Scholar; and in St. Basil (Treucker, o.c., n. 3). Further good material in Lécrivain, C., ‘Le recrutement des avocats,’ Mél. Rome V (1885), 276 f.Google Scholar For the West, the best work is Stroheker's, o. c. (n. 6). I have not seen Jarrett, M. G., ‘A Study of the Municipal Aristocracy of the Roman Empire of the West’ (Diss. Durham, 1958).Google Scholar

9 Rostovtzeff, M., Soc. and Econ. Hist. of the Roman Empire 2 (1957), 11, 661Google Scholar; Harmand, L., Libanius, Discours sur les patronages (1955), 130–38.Google Scholar

10 [Sulpitius Severus], Ep. VII ad Salvium, ed. C. Halm (1866), which Halm, pp. Xii–Xiii, and later editors reject as spurious. Its real author is unknown. A similar and more important case is discussed by Harmand, o. c. (n. 9), 186 f.

11 Above, n. 7; Synes., Ep. 4 (= PG LXVI, 1329), peasants become sailors; Greg. Nyssa, Contra Eunomium I (= PG XLV, 260–61), a vine-trimmer becomes a smith; Acta S. Sereni I (in Ruinart, T., Acta martyrorum, 1859, 517Google Scholar), a traveller settles down in Sirmium and becomes a farmer.

12 Budge, E. A. W., The Paradise or Garden of the Holy Fathers (1907), 1, 120Google Scholar, a monk disguised as a farm labourer moves at will around Egypt, in the 390's; ibid., 125 and 139, marriages settled without bothering with any law. But there are many examples of unhindered marriages among the poor in the fourth century.

13 Greg. Nyssa, De pauper. amandis I (= PG XLVI, 457); for other parts of the East, Asterius Amasenus, PG XL, 212; Callinicus, Vita S. Hypatii 9; Budge, o. c. (n. 12) 1, 168.

14 Cod. Theod. 14. 18. 1 (382).

15 P. Cair. Isidor. 126 (308/9), with commentary, P. 396.

16 Theodoret, Ep. 144, 1 (= PG LXXXIII, 1369).

17 Greg. Nyssa, Ep. 17 (= PG XLVI, 1065).

18 Budge, o. c. (n. 12) 1, 108.

19 Cod. Theod. 13. 5. 8 (326). On shipmasters' land being inalienable from the owners' duties, ibid. 13. 6. 1 (326). The law apparently was enforced, Augustine, , Sermo 355, 4Google Scholar (= PL XXXIX, 1572).

20 A good instance, both for facts and tone, is the description of Gregory's brother when a young man (Greg. Naz., Or. VII passim).

21 Philostorgius, , H. E. III, 15Google Scholar, ὅσα παθεῖν εἰκός τὸν ἀπατεῶνα καὶ κλέπτην; Greg. Nyssa, Contra Eunomium I (= PG XLV, 260–61).

22 BGU 1073 (274); Prentice, W. K., ‘Officials charged with the conduct of public works in Roman and Byzantine Syria,’ Trans. Am. Philol. Assoc. XLIII (1912), 120Google Scholar, on Waddington 1916, προνοησαμένων χρυσοχ(όων) προβά(των) παρὸ τῶν δημοτ(ικῶν) .

23 Malalas 12.

24 ILS 7047; CIL XIII 6763.

25 Sozom., H. E. III, 15 (= PG LXVII, 1256–57); cf. Lact., de mort. persecut. VII, 8–9, erection of buildings, including arms factories; and Amm. Marcel. XXI, 6, 6.

26 3, 2 (ed. E. A. Thompson, 1952, p. 95).

27 Symm., Rel. 14, 29, and 44; Ep. IX, 103 and 105; Soc., H. E. V, 18, kidnapping of strangers in Rome, to run the mills.

28 Symm., Ep. IX, 103; Rel. 44; Cod. Theod. 14. 8. 1 (315); cf. an Egyptian weaver's apprentice who ‘contributes much to the tax in kind in uniforms (anabolicum),’ kidnapped by the builders' guild, in Pap. Ryl. 654 (first half of the fourth century). All this, needless to say, was quite illegal (Cod. Theod. 14. 3. 2 [355]).

29 A ναύκληρος θαλαττίου ναυκληρίου in Pap. Oxy. 87 (342). This is an instance where Egypt touches on Rome; but governmental supervision of trade and manufacture was far deeper rooted and complete in Egypt than anywhere else, and most of the system existed before the Romans came. See a clear summary in Préaux, C., ‘Restrictions à la liberté du travail dans l'Égypte grecque et romaine,’ Chron. d'Égypte IX (1934), 338–45.Google Scholar I have thus tried not to rely on the papyrus texts dealing with the topic of the present paper, though even here, where the system of corporate compulsion and responsibility seemed most advanced, it was not really applied very thoroughly. See Mickwitz, G., ‘Die Kartellfunktionen der Zünfte,’ Soc. Sci. Fennica, Comm. Hum. Litt. VIII, 3 (1936), 179 f.Google Scholar

30 Official difficulties are evident in the Theodosian Code. See Waltzing, o. c. (n. 4) 11, 316–46 passim.

31 Sulpitius Severus, Vita S. Mart. 2 (ca. 330); Bell, H. I., Martin, V., et al., The Abinnaeus Archive (1962), 64–65Google ScholarPubMed, on a text of about the 340's and Cod. Theod. 7. 22. 4–10 (332–80), on draft laws applied to veterans' sons.

32 Greg. Nyssa. Ep. 25 (= PG XLVI, 1097); cf. Cod. Just. 6. 1. 5 (319) and Cod. Theod. 12. 19. 1 (400).

33 Cod. Theod. 12. 1. 49 (361, ‘as was formerly established,’ so the regulation goes back further); 59 (364); 63 (373, specifying Egyptian hermits); 115 (386).

34 My argument focuses on the earlier codification. The Justinian Code was more in line with the conditions of its own time (de Robertis, o.c., n. 1, 234 f.).

35 Liban., Or. XL, 37–38; Anon., de rebus bell. 21.