Page:General History of Europe 1921.djvu/244

 172 General History of Europe were not free to leave or go where they pleased. The great villas once worked by slaves were now cultivated chiefly by these coloni (plural of colonus), the forerunners of the medieval serfs ( 405, 406), while the older type of slavery gradually disappeared. Hosts of the country people, unwilling to become coloni, for- sook their fields and turned to the city for relief. Great stretches of unworked and weed-grown fields were no uncommon sight. As the amount of land under cultivation decreased, the ancient world was no longer raising enough food to sustain itself properly. The scarcity was felt most severely in the great centers of popu- lation like Rome, where prices had rapidly gone up. Our own generation is not the first to complain of the "high cost of living." The destruction of the small farmers was perhaps the chief cause among a whole group of causes which brought about the decline and fall of this great Empire. 272. Decline of Business. At the same time the business in the cities was also falling off. The country communities no longer possessed a numerous purchasing population. Hence the city manufacturers could not dispose of their products in the coun- try. Their business rapidly declined, and they discharged their workmen, who began to increase the masses of the unemployed. The cities became filled with shiftless people scrambling for a place in the waiting lines of the poor to whom the government distributed free grain, wine, and meat. In order to pay for this the taxes had constantly to be raised, and the methods of collect- ing them became harsher and harsher. Marriages decreased, and the population of the Empire shrank. 273. Lack of a Law of Succession : Barrack Emperors. The discipline in the Roman armies relaxed. There was no law deter- mining the succession of the emperors, and the various divisions of the army learned that they could set up emperors to suit them- selves. Rude and barbarous soldiers, few of whom were citizens, thus became the chief controlling power. There were often sev- eral of these barrack candidates for the throne fighting among themselves. At last (A.D. 212) citizenship was granted to all free men within the Empire, and the various provinces felt