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130 130 On the Roman Coloni. not be deprived of this benefit after his death, he orders that official statements of the rate of the whole rent should be made out and given to them. Now this rent certainly seems to be incomprehensibly low : this appearance however may be explained in some measure by the following remarks. In the first place the above-mentioned prohibition of extra charges is not to be construed too literally : so that we do not know how many such were still to continue ; and by these the rate fixt was unquestionably raised somewhat higher. Thus for instance every colonus had to pay a certain sum to the farmer for permission to marry, which however was not to amount to more than a solidus (p. 535). More- over the pope with great indignation forbids the levying the rent by an imaginary modius larger than the common one (p. 533)^ and adds that no more than eighteen seoctani to the modius must be demanded at the utmost. Now as the common modius contained only sixteen sextarii " he at all events here allows an arbitrary addition, though without doubt one sanctioned by usage, of two sextarii to the modius^ that is, of an eighth of the whole rent ; so that he does not prohibit every kind of abuse, but merely the carrying it too far. Of still greater importance however is it that the coloni had to discharge the landtax to which their plots were liable. Now if we assume, what is very probable on other grounds, that the landtax at that period was very high'^, we shall easily understand that a high rent could not be paid at the same time to the landlord. The important fact, that the coloni really had to pay the landtax for their plots to the treasury, results from the following passage of the letter referred to (p. 535), The pope says that the first payment of the tax prest especially hard on the coloni; for since at the time of payment they had not sold their produce yet'^ ■73 Volusius Maecianus de Asse, at the end of the treatise. 74 See the fourth section of my Dissertation on the Roman Finances under the Em- perors : [a translation of which wiU be inserted in a future Number of the Philological Museum.] 75 The landtax for the year was levied in three payments made on the first of January, of May, and of September : see the third section of my Dissertation on the Roman Finances. Now on the first of these days the olive-harvest was hardly over ; and the oil, the sale of which must probably have been the chief resource for procuring money, could not be disposed of, unless the coloniy as the pope says, to get out of