Page:Bury J B The Cambridge Medieval History Vol 1 1911.djvu/517

Rh certainly have led to some disturbance, of which we can find no evidence in any part of the country, another circumstance renders such a con- clusion unreasonable. This is that neither Odovacar’s soldiers, nor Theodoric’s, were in reality sufficiently numerous to occupy a third part of the land in Italy. Greek chronicles, it is true, speak of the rptrrjfioptov rtov &ypG>v, Latin writers of the tertiae. But what are we to understand by these expressions ? Among the few scholars who have attempted to dispute the current theory, some, like de Roziere, believe that the chronicler's words denote an act of confiscation for which compensation was made to the owners by a tax levied at the rate of one-third of the annual value. Others, like Lécrivain, consider that they mean a surrender of unappropriated land, in return for which a tribute was’ exacted equal to a third of the annual produce. At no period, not even during the agrarian troubles in the far away days of the Republic, had it ever been the custom to eject legal proprietors from their estates. On the contrary, on every occasion when land had been required for the purpose of making grants to the plebeians, to veterans or praetorians, or even to barbarians, it had invariably been taken from land owned by the community, that is to say from the land around the temples, from unoccupied land, or from the property of the Treasury. Whenever indeed a distribution of land took place, it was made exclusively from the lands belonging to the Treasury, which, at certain periods, multiplied exceedingly owing to escheated successions or confiscations. In our own opinion, it was a third of these state lands, this ager publicus, that was assigned to the barbarians during the reigns of Odovacar and Theodoric. In addition to the fact that not one of the texts actually contradicts this theory, it appears to be sufficiently proved by the following words, addressed by Ennodius to Liberius, when the latter was ordered to allot the land of Liguria to the Goths: “Have you not enriched innumerable Goths with liberal grants, and yet the Romans hardly seem to know what you have been doing." Even the courtier-like Ennodius would not have expressed himself in this manner in a private letter, or even in an official communication, if private estates had been attacked for the benefit of the conquerors.

During the early years of the Roman Empire, the annual food supply of Italy had always been one of the government's chief anxieties; and the writings of Cassiodorus constantly shew us that Theodoric was not free from a similar care. His orders to his officials, however, on this subject, appear to have been attended with excellent results. During his reign, according to the Anonymus, sixty measures of wheat might be purchased for a solidus, and thirty amphorae of wine might be had for a like sum. Paul the Deacon has remarked the joy with which the Romans received Theodoric’s order for an annual distribution of twenty thousand measures of grain among the people. It was, moreover, with a view to making the yearly food supply more