Page:Constantinople by Brodribb.djvu/67

 partly to impress the people with the spectacle of outward magnificence. But for all this the cultivator of the soil had to pay heavily in the shape of a land-tax; and though the greed of tax-gatherers was restrained by a number of laws devised by Constantine for the protection of his subjects, the fact remained that a useful class of the community was grievously oppressed for the benefit and enrichment of the emperor's household. Matters were made worse by legislative attempts to bind a man down to the condition in which he happened to be born. The son of a farmer or landed proprietor was obliged to abide in his father's calling, unless he had a brother to take his place and to pay the land-tax. In fact, the rural population was tied to the soil, and reduced to serfdom. These people, which had been the strength of Rome's armies, had now to be disarmed, lest they should rise in rebellion. They could not become soldiers, and thus the soldier-class became a distinct one, quite apart from the rest of the community. The military profession almost became hereditary. The result was that emperor and army and the whole machinery of government were out of sympathy with the people. But the system had some compensating advantages. Of patriotic and political virtue there could be but little in a state of things in which the people had no voice and could express no opinion about public affairs; but there is reason to believe that the lower orders had an easier and more comfortable existence than in the periods which we associate with the greatest glories of Greece and of Rome.