The Inheritance of Rome

Taxation thus underpinned imperial unity itself, for it was the most evident single element in the state’s impact on the population at large, as well as the mainstay of the army, the administration, the legal system and the movement of goods throughout the Mediterranean and elsewhere, all the elements which linked such a large land area together. If it failed, the empire would simply break up. But in fact the empire broke up for other reasons, as we shall see in Chapter 4. After it did so, taxation was a casualty in the West, but survived in the East. This contrast cannot be underestimated, and it underpins many of the events described in later sections of this book. All the same, fiscal breakdown was not yet predictable in 400, or even 500 in some places. In 400 the stability, and relative homogeneity, of the imperial system was not yet seen by anyone to be at risk.

Above all, perhaps, when local élites in the fifth-century West ceased to believe that their traditional patrons in central and provincial government were capable of helping them, they could turn to the new military leaders of ‘barbarian’ tribes in their localities instead, and a major political shift resulted.

Tax is always unpopular, and takes work to exact; if it is not essential, this work tends to be neglected.

Tax was, that is to say, no longer the basis of the state. For kings as well as armies, landowning was the major source of wealth from now on.

The shift from taxation to landowning as the basis of the state in the West was the clearest sign that the post-Roman kingdoms would not be able to re-create the Roman empire in miniature, however much their rulers would have liked to.