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THE TRANSITION FROM THE CLASSICAL TO THE MEDIÆVAL PERIOD
ANCIENT civilisation used to be considered as the direct parent of modern society, with nothing between them but a chaos of merely negative lapse of time, as is sufficiently indicated by the name given to the latter period—the Middle Ages.
But it is now recognised that this supposed chaos had an order of its own, and was an integral and necessary part of the evolution of primitive into modern life. And it may here be said that the close resemblance on many points between the pre-classical period of antiquity, the epoch of the Homeric poems, and the 49 Middle Ages is very noteworthy. We have now to inquire into the transition which brought about the change from the one system to the other.
first as to the economical side. The classical system of production was founded on chattel-slavery, the mediæval on serfdom, and it was the change from the one labour-system to the other which was the special characteristic of the transition.
Agriculture was the dominating industry of the classical world, and this part of labour was almost entirely the work of chattel-slaves, the property of the great landowners. As long as the Empire was at peace about its great centres, this system went on without serious check, since the servile insurrections belong to the times of civil brawl before the Empire;