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administrative change 195
areas undoubtedly still benefited from the presence of coin-using soldiers
and official travellers. 138
If adaeratio in the absence of coin posed problems, it is unclear why it
was adopted sooner in the less monetized and controlled west than in the
east. Vera’s proposal – that adaeratio was no more than a monetary valuation
of tax which was still paid in kind – is not demonstrated by his questionable
interpretation of pope Gregory’s reference to the gold pensiones of
Sicilian church coloni (c. 600). 139 It is at variance with earlier evidence from
the east for payments nominally calculated in kind actually being made in
gold, and with the problems in Asiana recorded by Procopius and John
Lydus. Further, the payment of taxes in three instalments, trina illatio,
though made in kind in the 360s, was strongly linked by Majorian in 458
with the sale of produce to raise cash for taxes. 140 An alternative solution
is that adaeratio was favoured in particular by the larger landowners, the
people who had greatest access to cash reserves to see them through phases
of low prices and to the facilities for transporting surpluses to markets or
using commercial agents to dispose of produce as means to acquire coin.
A good harvest might, paradoxically, be a special disadvantage to peasants,
who would be forced to make hurried sales in a glutted market in order to
raise money for their taxes. 141 In such situations, adaeratio might mean the
slippage of land from the tax system, and ultimately from state control, into
the hands of the grand proprietors who could sustain their weaker neighbours
through periods of crisis: the dominance of gold within the state
economy ensured the pre-eminence in society of those with ready access
to gold, namely soldiers, senior officials and those with extensive connections.
142
One further consequence of adaeratio, undoubtedly unintended but of
vital importance in administrative terms, was the eclipse of the finance
ministries, the res privata and sacrae largitiones, by the praetorian prefectures
which now controlled greater monetary resources than all other departments;
this led in turn to an increase in the size of the prefectures, especially
that of the east, which became so unwieldy that some of its financial
functions were transferred to special logothetes who would eventually, in
the seventh century, overshadow the prefect. Logothetes tend to have the
same terminology applied to them by Justinian as the comes sacrarum largitionum
had done, and to perform similar roles in dispensing payments and
imperial largess; they were drawn from the prefecture, but were assigned
138 CJ xii.50.22; Mitchell, Anatolia ii ch. 19. 139 Vera (1986).
140 Liebeschuetz (1972) 88–90; Nov. Maj. 2.3; cf.C.Th. xi.1.15–16; 19.3; xii.6.15; v.15.20; but note
that the Breviary of Alaric’s interpretatio to xi.1.15 speaks only of payment in kind.
141 E.g. Sid. Ap. Ep. vi.12.6, and on tied trade in general, Whittaker (1983); Liebeschuetz (1987) 463
on possible disadvantages to the state. Banaji (1992) 113. Transport: Mitchell, Anatolia i.233, 247–8.
142 Anon. De Rebus Bellicis 2; Theodoret, Ep. 37; Barnish (1987) 166–8, arguing the case of the pigbased
economy of San Giovanni di Ruoti; Banaji (1992) ch. 6.
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