The code of laws promulgated by the emperor Theodosius II provides much incidental information about social and economic conditions in the Late Roman Empire. The code was promulgated in 438, but much of the legislation contained in it dates back to the time of Diocletian (284-305) and Constantine (306-337). Coloni were half-free peasants. Decurions were municipal councillors. In earlier times the position of decurion had been much sought after as a mark of distinction.
 

1,5,11. All persons who govern provinces shall exact payment of the delinquent taxes for their term of office when they have laid aside their administration. Those landlords whom no sense of shame can move to fulfill their public obligations shall be notified three times within a year, and if they do not complete all such public obligations, they shall pay double the amount of the debt through the office of Your Magnificence.

V, 17, 1. Any person in whose possession a colonus that belongs to another is found not only shall restore the aforesaid colonus to his birth status but also shall assume the capitation tax for his man for the time that he was with him.
1. Coloni also who meditate flight must be bound with chains and reduced to a servile condition, so that by virtue of their condemnation to slavery, they shall be compelled to fulfill the duties that befit freemen.

V, 19, 1. There is no doubt that coloni do not have the right to alienate the fields that they cultivate, to the extent that even if they have any belongings of their own, they may not transfer them to others without the advice and knowledge of their patrons.

VI, 2,14. We order that exemption from the payment of the glebal tax shall be granted to all those persons from Macedonia who have been added to the Most August Order of the City of Constantinople [the Senate], according to the precedent of the Senators who were chosen from Thrace.

VII, 2, 2. If any man should desire to take the oaths of imperial service, first of all, in that city in which he was born or in which he has established residence he shall execute formal records and shall thus prove that neither his father nor his grandfather was a decurion and that he is completely free from obligations to the compulsory services of the municipal senate. If he should not do this, he shall know that he will be recalled to perpetual service as a decurion.

XI, 2, 4. Whenever, in accordance with custom, payment is demanded in the case of regular taxes or of taxes due, not the prices of natural products demanded shall be paid, but t11e natural products themselves.

XI, 24, 3. If any person from your office or from any order of men should be discovered to have received villages into his protection, he shall suffer the established penalties. Moreover, landholders shall be duly coerced to obey the imperial statutes, even against their will, and they shall be forced to satisfy the compulsory public services. But if it should appear that any villages, depending on the power of their protectors or on their own numbers, have resisted the performance of their compulsory public services, they must be subjected to the retribution that is dictated by reason itself.

XII, 1, 13. Since we have learned that the municipal councils are being left desolate by those persons who are obligated to them through birth status and who are requesting imperial services for themselves through supplications to the Emperor and are running away to the legions and various governmental offices, We order all municipal councils to be admonished that if they should apprehend any persons with less than twenty terms of service in governmental offices  they shall drag such persons back to the municipal councils...

XII, 1,62. If a decurion should steal into a guild of artisans for the purpose of evading other duties, he shall be restored to his pristine status, and in the future no person who derives his birth status from decurions shall dare to aspire to the duties of such a guild.

XIV, 3, 8. The office of Your Sincerity shall be on guard that if any man should once and for all be assigned to the guild of breadmakers, he shall not be granted the opportunity alld power in any way to withdraw, even if the assent of all the breadmakers should strive to obtain his release and their assembly should appear to have agreed. Not even this privilege shall be granted to any breadmaker, namely, that he may pass from one breadmaking establishment to another.

XIV, 3,14. If a daughter of a breadmaker should marry any man and afterward, when her fortune had been squandered, he should suppose that she may be released from the guild, We command that he shall be bound to the compulsory duties and guild of breadmaking by the same law and reason as if he were held by the bond of birth service to such compulsory status.
 

[From The Theodosian Code and Novels and the Sirmondian Constitutions, translated by Clyde Pharr (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952), Pp. 17,115,117,158,296,316,344, 407,408. Copyright 1952 by Clyde Pharr, copyright renewed 1980. Reprinted by permission of Princeton University Press.]