Barbarians and Taxes*

chapter 10 Barbarians and Taxes*

1 Introduction

One of the problems occupying scholars researching the Dark Ages to day is the extent of the specifically barbarian or Germanic contribution to the transformation of the Roman world. To day no scholar would argue that the barbarian successor kingdoms were totally or largely, Germanic. It is the opposite thesis, that the successor kingdoms were still in all essential Roman, that the transformation that took place was the result of natural evolution, and that Ostrogoths, Visigoths, Vandals and Franks contributed nothing, or practically nothing of their own traditions, which is very popular today.1 The study of what became of the Roman world system of taxation in the successor kingdoms can contribute to this discussion. The Later Roman Empire had an elaborate and very sophisticated system of taxation, which made use of coins, bureaucracy, and a great deal of written documentation. None of these things existed among the gentes before they entered the Empire. How did the Germanic kings deal with this situation? Nobody looking at the Later Roman could fail to observe that it had a com- plicated and highly sophisticated tax on land, and that while the greater part of the revenue from that tax was spent on the army, a not inconsiderable part was used to pay the large bureaucracy required for the administration of the tax. This land-tax and the large bureaucracy were features which sharply dis- tinguished the organisation of the Later Empire from both that of the early Empire and that of the barbarian successor kingdoms. In the course time the land tax2 and the bureaucracy disappeared from the barbarian kingdoms. But the decline of bureaucracy and of taxation did not take place at the same rate or at the same pace in the different kingdoms.

* This article was previously published in Archeologia e Società tra Tardo Antico e Alto Medioevo, eds. G.P. Brogiolo & A. Chavarría Arnau, Documenti di Archeologia 44 (2007), pp. 71–84. 1 For instance, if the barbarians had no recognisable characteristics, it would follow that they could not have made any contribution of their own to the world that was coming into being. 2 Here I accept the views of Goffart 1989, pp. 213–231 rather than Durliat 1990.

2 The Ostrogoths

The Roman system remained most nearly intact in the Ostrogothic kingdom. There the provincial, and a considerable part of the central bureaucracy, tax collecting by the curiales, and the technical vocabulary of taxation, seem to have survived. What was the part of the Goths in this? The Ostrogothic system for the distribution of state burdens was described as one in which the Goths fought and received donatives from their king, while the Romans paid tax.3 But this is a simplification. It is certain that some tax was also paid by Goths.4 Even the king’s private property, the divina domus, paid.5 Theoderic’s original followers were given land allotments (sortes).6 The question is whether the Goths paid tax on all land owned by them, or whether the original grant, the sors was exempt. The evidence is ambiguous. On the one hand the passages already quoted stating that Goths must be made to pay tax do not mention that this ruling does not apply to the sors. One would expect any exemption to be mentioned, if it existed. Jones concluded that the sortes did not enjoy gen- eral immunity.7 On the other hand the one document which relates directly to the grant of a sors, the granting by Theoderic of an estate to Butila in 507–511, almost certainly included immunity from taxation.8 Jones thought that Butila’s immunity was an extra privilege. But it also looks as if certain ‘ancient barbarians’ settled near Savia, that is presumably federates that had received landholdings before the arrival of the Ostrogoths, only began to pay tax when Theoderic made them liable for property they had acquired from their Roman wives.9 So it may be that these federates had not been made to pay tax on their original grant of land. Similarly we know that neither the Vandals nor

3 Cassiodorus, Variae VIII, 14 (279.10), VII, 5 (364.12–23), VIII, 26 (257.12). 4 Cassiodorus, Variae IV, 14 (507–11): qui enim debent ad fiscum celerius esse devoti, nisi qui capi- unt commoda donativi, quando amplius de nostra humanitate recipiunt quam stipendii iure praestetur, also I, 19 (507–511): quicumque Gothorum fiscum detractat implere, eum ad aequi- tatem redhibitionis artet. So also: IX, 9 (526–527). 5 Cassiodorus, Variae XII, 5 (364.32). 6 I do not accept the view that the barbarians received a share of the taxes rather than land as argued by Goffart 1980 and Durliat 1988; criticised by Liebeschuetz 1997, Barnish 1986 and Cesa 1982. 7 Jones 1964. 8 Cassiodorus, Variae II, 17. 9 Cassiodorus, Variae V, 14, but here too there is no reference to an original holding that would remain exempt. They must pay tax quolibet titulo praedia quaesiverunt.