Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/84

 68 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

great natural transformations. These do not appear in the form of cataclysms, except to superficial observers who consider only results.

The emperors had fringed the frontiers with castles, strong- holds encircled by a fosse, and limes, especially where there was no river to serve as a barrier. The neighboring lands were the collective property of the bodies of troops, always accompanied by their women and children, with their counts and their dukes as military chieftains. They were literally marches. Lampridius says that Alexander Severus (222-35), after his wars in Mauri- tania, Illyria, and Armenia, "gave the lands taken from the enemy to the chiefs and the soldiers of the frontiers, on condition that their heirs should be soldiers, and that these lands should never pass into the possession of men who were not soldiers." Likewise Vopiscus says that Probus (276-82) "gave to his veterans certain lands in Isauria, adding that their male children should be under obligation to become soldiers at the age of eighteen years." Here is evidently one of the origins of the feudal contract, which was destined to reorganize the law of property by putting it in connection with military service and sovereignty.

Nevertheless, the Theodosian code 6 contains a law of Hono- rius which justifies the supposition that the obligation of military service, even in his time, was not always strictly observed, and that chiefs of military colonies tended to make themselves inde- pendent. Thus as the law expresses it, "the lands which the far-seeing goodness of our early predecessors ceded to soldiers called gentiles [genuine military clans and an apparent return to primitive forms], to protect the frontiers of the empire, are according to reports that reach us, sometimes alienated to men who are not soldiers, but care must be taken that such holders of land shall perform their proper service in protecting the frontiers. If they fail in this duty, they must leave their lands and make them over to the gentiles and to the veterans." Failure to per- form military duty accordingly resulted, as in later feudal times, in breaking the contract which was later a part of the tenure in

Book VII. title 15.