at the _latifundia_ were not
produced by economic causes, but by vanity and ostentation. The owners
did not look to the land for revenue. He asks[828] how a strictly
scientific system of grand culture with plenty of labor could ruin any
country. Rodbertus[829] thinks that the _latifundia_ went from a grand
system to a petty system between the times of the elder and the younger
Pliny by the operation of the law of rent. He thinks that there must
have been garden culture in Italy at the beginning of the empire, and
that the colonate arose from big estates with petty industry and from
the law of mortgage. He thinks, further, that the colons, until the
fourth century, were slaves, and that their status was softened by the
legislation of the fourth century. Heisterbergk thinks that the colonate
began in the corn provinces, and that it was, at the beginning of the
fourth century, on the point of passing away, but the legislation of the
fourth century perpetuated it. He thinks that it was injured, as an
institution, by the great increase of taxation after Diocletian. Then
legislation was necessary to keep the colons on the land.[830]

+299. Summary on Roman slavery.+ Chrysostom describes the misbehavior of
all classes, about 400 A.D.[831] The colons were overburdened. When they
could not pay they were tortured. A colon was flogged, chained, and
thrown into prison, where he was forgotten. His wife and child were left
in misery to support themselves, and get something for him if they
could. The Roman system, after consuming all the rest of the world,
began to consume itself. The Roman empire at last had only substituted
one kind of slaves for another. Artisans and peasants were now slaves of
the state. Slavery was at first a means. By it the subjugated countries
were organized into a great state. Then it developed its corruption. It
was made to furnish gladiators and harlots. Nowhere else do we see how
slavery makes cowards of both slaves and owners as we see it at Rome in
the days of glory. Slavery rose to control of the mores. The free men
who discussed contemporary civilization groaned over the effects of
slavery on the family and on private interests, but they did not see any
chance of otherwise getting the work done. Then all the other social
institutions and arrangements had to conform to slavery. It controlled
the mores, prescribed the ethics, and made the character. In the last
century of the Western empire the protest ag