same thing as the Alemanian genealogiae. Whether this is really the gens or the household community, must be settled by further investigation.
The language records leave us in doubt, whether all the Germans had a common expression for gens or not, and as to what this term was.
Etymologically, the Gothic, kuni, middle High German kuenne, corresponds to the Grecian genos and the Latin gens, and is used in the same sense.
We are led back to the time of matriarchy by the terms for "woman" which are derived from the same root: Greek gyne, Slav zena, Gothic qvino, Norse kona, kuna.
Among Langobards and Burgundians, I repeat, we find the term fara which Grimm derives from the hypothetical root fisan, to beget. I should prefer to trace it to the more obvious root faran, German fahren, to ride or to wander, in order to designate a certain well defined section of the wandering corps, composed quite naturally of relatives. As a result of centuries of wanderings from West to East and back again, this term was gradually applied to the sex group itself.
There is furthermore the Gothic sibja, Anglosaxon sib, old High German sippia, sippa, High German sippe. Old Norse has only the plural sifjar, the relatives; the singular occurs only as the name of a goddess, Sif.
Finally, another expression occurs in the Hildebrand Song, where Hildebrand asks Hadubrand "who is your father among the men of the nation...or what is your kin?" (eddo huellihhes cnuosles du sis).
If there was a common German term for gens, it was presumably the Gothic kuni. This is not only indicated by its identity with the corresponding term in related languages, but also by the fact that the word kuning, German Koenig, English king, is derived from it, all of which originally signified chief of gens or tribe. Sibja, German Sippe (relationship), does not appear worthy of consideration. In old Norse, at least, sifjar signifies not alone kin by blood, but also kin through marriage; hence it comprises the members of at least two gentes, and the term sif cannot have been applied to the gens itself.
In the order of battle, the Germans, like the Mexicans and Greeks, arranged the horsemen as well as the wedge-like columns of the troops on foot by gentes. Tacitus' indefinite expression, "by families and kinships," is explained by the fact that at his time the gens had long ceased to be a living body in Rome.
Another passage of Tacitus is decisive. There he says: "The mother's brother regards his nephew as his son; some even hold that the bond of blood between the maternal uncle and the nephew is more sacred and close than that between father and son, so that when persons are demanded as securities, the sister's son is considered a better security than the natural son of the man whom they desire to place under bonds." Here we have a living proof of the matriarchal, and hence natural, gens, and it is described as a characteristic mark of the Germans.[28] If a member of such a gens gave his own son as a security for the fulfillment of a vow and this son became the victim of his father's breach of faith, that was the concern of the father alone. But when the son of a sister was sacrificed, then the most sacred gentile law was violated. The next relative who was bound above all others to protect the boy or young man, was held responsible for his death; either he should not have given the boy in bail or he should have kept the contract. If we had no other trace of gentile law among the Germans, this one passage would be sufficient proof of its existence.
But there is another passage in the Old Norse song of the "Dawn of the Gods" and the "End of the World," the Voeluspa, which is still stronger evidence, because it is 800 years younger. In this "Vision of the Seeress," in which Bang and Bugge have now demonstrated the existence of Christian elements, also, the description of the time of general degeneration and corruption inaugurating the great catastrophe contains this passage: Broedbr munu berjask ok at boenum verdask Munu systrungar sifjum spilla.
"Brothers will wage war against one another and become each other's murderers, and sisters' children will break the bonds of blood."
Systrungr means the son of the mother's sister, and an abnegation of the blood kinship from that side surpasses in the eyes of the poet even the crime of fratricide. There is a deliberate climax in that systrungar, emphasizing the maternal kinship. If the term syskina-boern, brother's and sister's children, or syskina-synir, brother's and sister's sons, had been used, there would have been a weakening of the effect, instead of a climax. That shows that even at the time of the Vikings, when the Voeluspa was composed, the recollection of maternal law was not yet blotted out.
Among the Germans with whom Tacitus was familiar maternal law had already given way to paternal lineage. The children were the next heirs of the father; in the absence of children, the brothers and uncles on both sides were next in line. The admission of the mother's brother to the inheritance is a relic of maternal law and proves that paternal law had only recently been introduced by the Germans. Traces of maternal law were preserved until late in the middle ages. It seems that even at this late date people still felt certain misgivings about the reliability of fatherhood, especially among serfs. For when a feudal lord demanded the return of a fugitive serf from a city, it was first required, for instance in Augsburg, Basel and Kaiserslautern, that the fact of his serfdom should be established by the oaths of six of his next blood relations, all of whom had to belong to his mother's kin. (Maurer, Staedteverfassung, I, page 381.)
Another relic of declining matriarchy was the (from the Roman standpoint) almost inexplicable respect of the Germans for the female sex. Young girls of noble family were considered the safest bonds to secure the keeping of contracts with Germans. In battle, nothing stimulated their courage so much as the horrible thought that their wives and daughters might be captured and carried into slavery. A woman was to them something holy and prophetical, and they listened to her advice in the most important matters. Veleda, the Bructerian priestess on the river Lippe, was the soul of the insurrection of the Batavians, in which Civilis at the head of German and Belgian tribes shook the foundations of Roman rule in Gaul. The women held undisputed sway in the house. If we may believe Tacitus, they, together with the old men and children, had to do all the work, for the men went hunting, drank and loafed. But as Tacitus does not say who cultivated the fields, and as according to his explicit statement the slaves paid only tithes, but did not work under compulsion, it seems that the adult men would have had to do what little agricultural work was required.
The form of marriage, as stated above, was the pairing family in gradual transition to monogamy. It was not yet strict monogamy, for polygamy was permitted for the wealthy. Chasteness of the girls was in general carefully maintained, different from the custom of the Celts. Tacitus speaks with special ardor of the sacredness of the matrimonial bond among the Germans. Adultery of the woman is alone quoted by him as a reason for a divorce. But his treatment of this subject leaves many a flaw and besides, it too openly holds up the mirror of virtue to the dissipated Romans. So much is certain: Granted that the Germans were such exceptional models of virtue in their forests, it required only a short contact with the outer world to bring them down to the level of the other average Europeans. In the whirl of Roman life the last trace of pure morals disappeared even faster than the German language. Just read Gregorius of Tours. It is obvious that in the primeval forests of Germany no such hyper-refined voluptuousness could exist as in Rome.
That implies fully enough superiority of the Germans over the Roman world, and there is no necessity for ascribing to them a moderation and chastity that have never been the qualities of any nation as a whole.
A result of gentile law is the obligation to inherit the enmities as well as the friendships of one's father and relatives; so is furthermore the displacement of blood revenge by the Wergeld, a fine to be paid in atonement of manslaughter and injuries. A generation ago this Wergeld was considered a specifically German institution, but it has since been found that hundreds of nations introduced this mitigation of gentile blood revenge. Like the obligatory hospitality, it is found, for instance, among the American Indians. Tacitus' description of the manner in which hospitality was observed (Germania, chapt. 21) is almost identical with Morgan's.
The hot and ceaseless controversy as to whether or not the Germans had already made a definite repartition of the cultivated land at Tacitus' time, and how the passages relating to this question should be interpreted, is now a thing of the past. After the following facts had been established: that the cultivated land of nearly all nations was tilled collectively by the gens and later on by communistic family groups, a practice which Cesar still found among the Suebi; that as a result of this practice the land was re-apportioned periodically; and that this periodical repartition of the cultivated land was preserved in Germany down to our days--after such evidence we need not waste any more breath on the subject. A transition within 150 years from collective cultivation, such as Cesar expressly attributes to the Suebi, to individual cultivation with annual repartition of the soil, such as Tacitus found among the Germans, is surely progress enough for any one.
The further transition from this stage to complete private ownership of land during such a short period and without any external intervention would involve an absolute impossibility. Hence I can only read in Tacitus what he states in so many words: They change (or re-divide) the cultivated land every year, and enough land is left for common use. It is the stage of agriculture and appropriation of the soil which exactly tallies with the contemporaneous gentile constitution of the Germans.
I leave the preceding paragraph unchanged, just as it stood in former editions. Meantime the question has assumed another aspect. Since Kovalevsky has demonstrated that the patriarchal household community existed nearly everywhere, perhaps even everywhere, as the connecting link between the matriarchal communistic and the modern isolated family, the question is no longer "Collective property or private property?" as discussed between Maurer and Waitz, but "What was the form of that collective property?" Not alone is there no doubt whatever, that the Suebi were the collective owners of their land at Cesar's time, but also that they tilled the soil collectively. The questions, whether their economic unit was the gens, or the household, or an intermediate communistic group, or whether all three of these groups existed at the same time as a result of different local conditions, may remain undecided for a long while yet. Kovalevsky maintains that the conditions described by Tacitus were not founded on the mark or village community, but on the household community, which developed much later into the village community by the growth of the population.
Hence the settlements of the Germans on the territory they occupied at the time of the Romans, and on territory later taken by them from the Romans, would not have consisted of villages, but of large co-operative families comprising several generations, who cultivated a sufficient piece of land and used the surrounding wild land in common with their neighbors. If this was the case, then the passage in Tacitus regarding the changing of the cultivated land would indeed have an agronomic meaning, viz., that the co-operative household cultivated a different piece of land every year, and the land cultivated during the previous year was left untilled or entirely abandoned. The scarcity of the population would have left enough spare wild lands to make all dispute about land unnecessary. Only after the lapse of centuries, when the members of the family had increased so that the collective cultivation became incompatible with the prevailing conditions of production, the household communities were dissolved. The former common fields and meadows were then divided in the well-known manner among the various individual families that had now formed. The division of farm lands was first periodical, but later final, while forest, pasture and watercourses remained common property.
It seems that this process of development has been fully established for Russia by historical investigation. As for Germany and, in the second place, for other German countries, it cannot be denied that this view affords in many instances a better interpretation of historical authorities and a readier solution of difficulties than the idea of tracing the village community to the time of Tacitus. The oldest documents, e. g. of the Codex Laureshamensis, are easier explained by the help of the household than of the village community. On the other hand, new difficulties now arise and new questions pose themselves. It will require further investigations to arrive at definite conclusions.
However, I cannot deny that the probability is very much in favor of the intermediate stage of the household community.[29] While the Germans of Cesar's time had either just taken up settled abodes, or were still looking for them, they had been settled for a full century at the time of Tacitus. As a result there is a manifest progress in the production of necessities. The Germans lived in block houses; their clothing was still as primitive as their forests, consisting of rough woolen cloaks, animal skins and linen underclothing for the women and the wealthy. They lived on milk, meat, wild fruit and, as Pliny adds, oatmeal porridge which is the Celtic national dish in Ireland and Scotland to-day. Their wealth consisted in cattle of an inferior race.
The kine were small, of unattractive appearance and without horns; the horses, little ponies, were not fast runners. Money, Roman coin only, was rarely used. They did not make ornaments of gold and silver, nor did they value these metals. Iron was scarce and, at least among the tribes on the Rhine and the Danube, was apparently only imported, not mined by themselves. The Runen script (imitations of Greek and Latin letters) was only used as a cipher and exclusively for religious sorcery. Human sacrifices were still in vogue. In short, they were a nation just emerged out of the middle stage of barbarism into the upper stage. But while the tribes whose immediate contact with the Romans facilitated the import of Roman products, were thereby prevented from acquiring a metal and textile industry of their own, there is not the least doubt that the tribes of the Northeast, on the Baltic, developed these industries. The pieces of armor found in the bogs of Sleswick--a long iron sword, a coat of mail, a silver helmet, etc., together with Roman coins from the close of the second century--, and the German metal ware spread by the migrations represent a peculiar type of a superior finish, even such as were modeled after Roman originals. With the exception of England, the emigration into the civilized Roman empire everywhere put an end to this home industry. How simultaneously this industry arose and developed, is shown e. g. by the bronze spangles. The specimens found in Burgundy, in Roumania and on the Sea of Asow, might have been manufactured in the same shop with those found in England or Sweden and are of undoubted German origin.
The German constitution was also in keeping with the upper stage of barbarism. According to Tacitus, the council of chiefs (principes) universally decided matters of minor importance and prepared important matters for the decision of the public meetings. So far as we know anything of the public meeting in the lower stage of barbarism, viz., among the American Indians, it was only held by gentes, not by tribes or leagues of tribes. The chiefs of peace (principes) were still sharply distinguished from the chiefs of war (duces), just as among the Iroquois. The peace chiefs were already living in part on honorary donations of the gentiles, such as cattle, grain, etc. They were generally elected from the same family, analogous to America. The transition to paternal law favored, as in Greece and Rome, the gradual transformation of office by election into hereditary office. A "noble" family was thus gradually raised in each gens. Most of this hereditary nobility came to grief during the migrations or shortly after. The military leaders were elected solely on their merits. They had little power and were obliged to rely on the force of their example. The actual disciplinary power in the army was held by the priests, as Tacitus implicitly states. The public meeting was the real executive. The king or chief of the tribe presided. The people decided. A murmur signified "No," acclamation and clanging of weapons meant "Yes." The public meeting was at the same time a court of justice. Complaints were here brought forth and decided, and death sentences pronounced. Only cowardice, treason and unnatural lust were capital crimes. The gentes and other subdivisions decided in a body under the chairmanship of the chief, who in all original German courts was only the manager of the transactions and questioner. Among Germans, the sentence has ever and everywhere been pronounced by the community.
Leagues of tribes came into existence since Cesar's time. Some of them already had kings. The first chief of war began to covet the usurper's place, as among Greeks and Romans, and sometimes succeeded in obtaining it. Such successful usurpers were by no means absolute rulers. But still they began to break through the bonds of the gens. While freed slaves generally occupied an inferior position, because they could not be members of any gens, they often gained rank, wealth and honors as favorites of the new kings. The same thing took place after the conquest of the Roman empire by those military leaders who had now become kings of great countries. Among the Frankons, slaves and freed slaves of the king played a leading role first at the court, then in the state. A large part of the new nobility were descended from them.
There was one institution that especially favored the rise of royalty: the military following. We have already seen, how among the American redskins private war groups were formed independently of the gens. Among the Germans, these private groups had developed into standing bodies.
The military leader who had acquired fame, gathered around his person a host of booty loving young warriors. They were pledged to personal faithfulness by their leader who in return pledged himself to them. He fed them, gave them presents and organized them on hierarchic principles: a body guard and a troop for immediate emergencies and short expeditions, a trained corps of officers for larger enterprises. These followings must have been rather insignificant, in fact we find them so later under Odoaker in Italy, still they portended the decay of the old gentile liberty, and the events during and after the migrations proved that military retainers were heralds of evil. For in the first place, they fostered the growth of royalty. In the second place, Tacitus affirms that they could only be held together by continual warfare and plundering expeditions. Robbery became their life purpose. If the leader found nothing to do in his neighborhood, he marched his troops to other countries, where a prospect of war and booty allured him. The German auxiliaries, many of whom fought under the Roman standard even against Germans, had been largely recruited among such followings. They represent the first germs of the "Landsknecht" profession, the shame and curse of the Germans. After the conquest of the Roman empire, these retainers of kings together with the unfree Roman courtiers formed the other half of the nobility of later days.
In general, then, the German tribes combined into nations had the same constitution that had developed among the Greeks of the heroic era and the Romans at the time of the so-called kings: public meetings, councils of gentile chiefs and military leaders who coveted actual royal power.
It was the highest constitution which the gentile order could produce; it was the standard constitution of the higher stage of barbarism. If society passed the limits for which this constitution sufficed, then the end of the gentile order had come. It collapsed and the state took its place.
FOOTNOTES: [27] Author's note to the fourth edition.
During a few days passed in Ireland, I once more became conscious to what extent the rural population is still living in the conceptions of the gentile period. The great landholder, whose tenant the farmer is, still enjoys a position similar to that of a clan chief, who has to supervise the cultivation of the soil in the interest of all, who is entitled to a tribute from the farmer in the form of rent, but who also has to assist the farmer in cases of need. Likewise everyone in comfortable circumstances is considered under obligation to help his poorer neighbors whenever they are in need. Such assistance is not charity, it is simply the prerogative of the poor gentile, which the rich gentile or the chief of the clan must respect. This explains why the professors of political economy and the jurists complain of the impossibility of imparting the idea of the modern private property to the Irish farmers. Property that has only rights, but no duties, is absolutely beyond the ken of the Irishman. No wonder that so many Irishmen who are suddenly cast into one of the modern great cities of England and America, among a population with entirely different moral and legal standards, despair of all morals and justice, lose all hold and become an easy prey to demoralization.
[28] Author's note.
The Greeks know this special sacredness of the bond between the mother's brother and his nephew, a relic of maternal law found among many nations, only in the mythology of heroic times. According to Diodorus IV., 34, Meleagros kills the sons of Thestius, the brother of his mother Althaia. The latter regards this deed as such a heinous crime that she curses the murderer, her own son, and prays for his death. "It is said that the gods fulfilled her wish and ended the life of Meleagros."
According to the same Diordorus, IV., 44, the Argonauts under Herakles land in Thracia and there find that Phineus, at the instigation of his second wife, shamefully maltreats his two sons, the offspring of his first deserted wife, the Boread Kleopatra. But among the Argonauts there are also some Boreads, the brothers of Kleopatra, the uncles of the maltreated boys. They at once champion their nephews, set them free and kill their guards.
The household community is still a distinct stage of production in Georgia (South Russia). The northern boundary of Georgia is the Caucasus. The Georgians, a people of high intelligence, have for centuries maintained their independence against Persians, Arabs, Turcs and Tartars. Dr. Philipp Gogitshayshvili gives the following interesting description of their condition in an article, entitled "Das Gewerbe in Georgien" (Zeitschrift fuer die gesammte Staatswissenschaft, Ergaenzungsheft I., Tuebingen, 1901). "The Swanians (a district of Georgia is called Swania) have all the necessities of life. They weave their own clothing, make their own weapons, powder and even silver, and gold ornaments. There is no modern trading...They are acquainted with exchange, but only of products for products. Money does not circulate and there are neither shops nor markets...There is not a single beggar, not a single man who asks for charity. With the exception of iron, salt and chintz, the Swanians produce all they need themselves.
They prepare their linen from hemp, their clothing from skins of wild animals and wool, their footwear from hides and leather. They make feltcaps, household goods, weapons, saddles, bridles and agricultural implements."
CHAPTER VIII.
THE RISE OF THE STATE AMONG GERMANS.
According to Tacitus the German nation was very strong in numbers. An approximate idea of the strength of individual German nations is given by Caesar. He states that the number of Usipetans and Tencterans who crossed over to the left bank of the Rhine amounted to 180,000, including women and children. About 100,000[30] members to a single nation is considerably more than e. g. the Iroquois numbered in their prime, when 20,000 of them became the terror of the whole country, from the Great Lakes to the Ohio and Potomac. If we attempt to place the better known nations of the Rhine country by the help of historical reports, we find that a single nation occupies on the map the average area of a Prussian government district, about 10,000 square kilometers[31] or 182 German geographical square miles.[32] The Germania Magna of the Romans, reaching to the Vistula, comprised about 500,000 square kilometers. Counting an average of 100,000 for any single nation, the total population of Germania Magna would have amounted to five millions. This is a rather high figure for a barbarian group of nations, although 10 inhabitants to the square kilometer or 550 to the geographical square mile is very little when compared to present conditions. But this does not include the whole number of Germans then living. We know that German nations of the Gothic race, Bastarnians, Peukinians and others, lived all along the Carpathian mountains away down to the mouth of the Danube. They were so numerous that Pliny designated them as the fifth main division of the Germans. As much as 180 years B. C. they were mercenaries of the Macedonian King Perseus, and during the first years of Augustus they were still pushing their way as far as the vicinity of Adrianople. Assuming them to have been one million strong we find that at least six millions was the probable population of Germany at the beginning of the Christian era.
After the final settlement in Germany, the population must have grown with increasing rapidity. The industrial progress mentioned above would be sufficient to prove it. The objects found in the bogs of Sleswick, to judge by the Roman coins found with them, are from the third century.
Hence at that time the metal and textile industry was already well developed on the Baltic, a lively traffic with the Roman empire was carried on, and the wealthier class enjoyed a certain luxury--all of which indicates that the population had increased. But at the same time the general war of aggression against the Romans commenced along the whole line of the Rhine, of the Roman wall and of the Danube, a line stretching from the North Sea to the Black Sea. This is another proof of the ever growing outward pressure of the population. During the struggle which lasted three centuries, the whole main body of the Gothic nations, with the exception of the Scandinavian Goths and the Burgundians, marched to the Southeast and formed the left wing of the long line of attack. The High Germans (Herminonians) on the Upper Danube fought in the center, and the Iskaevonians on the Rhine, now called Franks, advanced on the right wing. The conquest of Brittany fell to the lot of the Ingaevonians.[33] At the end of the fifth century, the exhausted, bloodless, and helpless Roman empire lay open to the Germans.
In former chapters we stood at the cradle of antique Greek and Roman civilization. Now we are standing at its grave. The equalizing plane of Roman world power had been gliding for centuries over all the Mediterranean countries. Where the Greek language did not offer any resistance, all national idioms had been crushed by a corrupted Latin.
There were no longer any distinctions of nationality, no more Gauls, Iberians, Ligurians, Noricans; they had all become Romans. Roman administration and Roman law had everywhere dissolved the old gentile bodies and thus crushed the last remnant of local and national independence. The new type of Romans offered no compensation for this loss, for it did not express any nationality, but only the lack of a nationality. The elements for the formation of new nations were present everywhere. The Latin dialects of the different provinces differentiated more and more. But the natural boundaries that had once made Italy, Gaul, Spain, Africa independent territories, were still present and made themselves felt. Yet there was no strength anywhere for combining these elements into new nations. Nowhere was there the least trace of any capacity for development, nor any power of resistance, much less any creative power. The immense human throng of that enormous territory was held together by one bond alone: the Roman state. But this state had in time become the worst enemy and oppressor of its subjects. The provinces had ruined Rome. It had become a provincial town like all others, privileged, but no longer ruling, no longer the center of the world empire, no longer even the seat of the emperors and subregents who lived in Constantinople, Treves and Milan. The Roman state had become an immense complicated machine, designed exclusively for the exploitation of its subjects. Taxes, state imposts and tithes of all sorts drove the mass of the people deeper and deeper into poverty. By the blackmailing practices of the regents, tax collectors and soldiers, the pressure was increased to such a point that it became insupportable. This was the outcome of Rome's world power. The right of the state to existence was founded on the preservation of order in the interior and the protection against the barbarians outside. But this order was worse than the most disgusting disorder, and the barbarians against whom the state pretended to protect its citizens, were hailed by them as saviors.
The condition of society was no less desperate. During the last years of the republic, the Roman rulers had already contrived the pitiless exploitation of the conquered provinces. The emperors had not abolished, but organized this exploitation. The more the empire fell to pieces, the higher rose the taxes and tithes, and the more shamelessly did the officials rob and blackmail. Commerce and industry had never been a strong point of the domineering Romans. Only in usury they had excelled all other nations before and after them. What commerce had managed to exist, had been ruined by official extortion. Only in the East, in the Grecian part of the empire, some commerce still vegetated, but this is outside of the scope of our study. Universal reduction to poverty, decrease of traffic, of handicrafts, of art, of population, decay of the towns, return of agriculture to a lower stage--that had been the final result of Roman world supremacy.
But now agriculture, the most prominent branch of production in the whole Old World, was again supreme, and more than ever. In Italy, the immense estates (latifundiae) that comprised nearly the whole country since the end of the republic, had been utilized in two ways: either as pastures on which the population had been replaced by sheep and oxen, the care of which required only a few slaves; or as country seats, on which masses of slaves carried on horticulture on a large scale, partly for the luxury of the owner, partly for sale on the markets of the towns. The great pastures had been preserved and even extended in certain parts. But the country seats and their horticulture had gone to ruin through the impoverishment of their owners and the decay of the towns. Latifundian economy based on slave labor was no longer profitable; but in its time it had been the only possible form of agriculture on a large scale. Now, however, small production had again become the only lucrative form. One country seat after the other was parceled and leased in small lots to hereditary tenants who paid a fixed rent, or to partiarii, more administrators than tenants who received one-sixth or even only one-ninth of a year's product in remuneration for their work. But these little lots were principally disposed of to colonists who paid a fixed sum annually and could be transferred by sale together with their lots. Although no slaves, still these colonists were not free; they could not marry free citizens, and marriages with members of their own class were not regarded as valid, but as mere concubinages like those of the slaves. The colonists were the prototypes of the medieval serfs.
The ancient slavery had lost its vitality. Neither in the country in large scale agriculture, nor in the manufactories of the towns did it yield any more returns--the market for its products had disappeared. And small scale production and artisanship, to which the gigantic production of the flourishing time of the empire was now reduced, did not leave any room for numerous slaves. Only house and luxury slaves of the rich were still retained by society. But this declining slavery was as yet sufficiently strong to brand productive labor as slave work, as below the dignity of free Romans; and everybody was now a free Roman. An increasing number of superfluous slaves who had become a drug on their owners were dismissed, while on the other hand the number of colonists and of beggared free men (similar to the poor whites in the slave states of America) grew continuously. Christianity is perfectly innocent of this gradual decline of ancient slavery. For it had taken part in the slavery of the Roman empire for centuries. It never prevented the slave trade of Christians later on, neither of the Germans in the North, nor of the Venetians on the Mediterranean, nor the negro traffic of later years.[34] Slavery died, because it did not pay any longer. But it left behind its poisonous sting by branding as ignoble the productive labor of free men. This brought the Roman world into a closed alley from which it could not escape. Slave labor was economically impossible and the labor of free men was under a moral ban. The one could exist no longer, the other could not yet be the fundamental form of social production. There was no other help but a complete revolution.
The provinces were not any better off. The most complete reports on this subject are from Gaul. By the side of the colonists, free farmers still existed there. In order to protect themselves against the brutal blackmail of the officials, judges and usurers, they frequently placed themselves under the protectorate of a man of influence and power. Not only single individuals did so, but whole communities, so that the emperors of the fourth century often issued decrees prohibiting this practice. But what good did protection do to the clients? The patron