Colonus

   A hereditary tenant farmer whose status differed little from that of a slave. Though technically free and with some legal rights (e.g., they could not be ejected from their land), they were bound to the soil in perpetuity. Their freedom to marry was restricted, and they could not join the army. The origin of the colonus lies in the unsettled conditions of the second half of the third century. It was then that many free peasants sought the protection of wealthy landowners to whom they transferred the ownership of their land in return for physical protection and payment of their taxes. The state seems to have worked with magnates to make this informal process a legal one that made the coloni chattel who were tied to their land, all in the interest of securing a stable base of agricultural workers. Coloni were a fact of agricultural life throughout the empire from the fourth through the sixth centuries, their conditions varying from province to province. In the East, coloni disappear after the sixth century. In the West, the coloni became the serfs of the Middle Ages.