>>20517755Large Roman landowners increasingly relied on Roman freemen, acting as tenant farmers to provide labor.
The status of these tenant farmers, eventually known as coloni, steadily eroded. Because the tax system implemented by Diocletian (reigned 284–305) assessed taxes based both on land and on the inhabitants of that land, it became administratively inconvenient for peasants to leave the land where the census counted them.[61]
Starting in 332 AD, Emperor Constantine issued legislation that greatly restricted the rights of the coloni and tied them to the land. Coloni and lower-ranking plebeians were no longer allowed to change their occupation. Ultimately, with the Fall of Rome, non-Patrician Roman citizens themselves would find themselves displaced and would become serfs.
By the Late Empire, curiales referred to the merchants, businessmen, and mid-level landowners who served in their local curia as local magistrates and decurions. Curiales were expected to procure funds for public building projects, temples, festivities, games, and local welfare systems. They would often pay for these expenses out of their own pocket, to gain prestige. From the mid-third century, this became an obligation, as Constantine I confiscated the cities' endowments, local taxes and dues, rent on city land and buildings. Julian returned these, but Valentinian I (363-375) and Valens (364-378) confiscated the resources. They did return one-third to the cities which was paid out by the Crown Estates which set aside city assets as separate line-items in the budget. Eventually management of these were returned to the cities. Not only were the curiales squeezed from the 4th century, but also the cities were hard put to maintaining their public infrastructure and public amenities even with help from the imperial government.
In the course of the 4th and 5th centuries, membership in the curial class became financially ruinous to all but the most wealthy among them.
