It is now generally admitted that indirectly, at least, the Roman conquest of German territory--the extension of the Roman province beyond the Rhine and along the Danube--added greatly to the number of semi-servile tenants upon the Roman provincial estates, and so tended more and more to increase during the later empire the manorial character of the 'villa;' whilst at the same time the pressure of Roman taxation within the old province of Gaul, and beyond it, was so great as steadily to force more and more of the free tenants on the _Ager Publicus_ to surrender their freedom and swell the numbers of the semi-servile class on the greater estates; so that not only was the villa becoming more and more manorial itself, but also it was becoming more and more the prevalent type of estate. As regards the first point, during the later empire there was direct encouragement given to landowners to introduce barbarians taken from recently conquered districts, and to settle them on their estates as _coloni_, and not as slaves. These foreign coloni became very numerous under the name of _tributarii_ and perhaps 'læti;' so that the proportion of coloni to [p269] slaves was probably, during the later period of Roman rule, always increasing, and the Roman villa under its _villicus_ was becoming more and more like a later manor, with a semi-servile village community of _coloni_ or _tributarii_ upon it in addition to the slaves.[379] As regards the second point, the evidence will be given at a later stage of the inquiry. * * * * * Confining our attention at present to the Roman villa, and the slaves and semi-servile tenants upon it, we have finally to add to the fact of close resemblance to the later manor and manorial tenants proof of actual historical connexion and continuity in districts where the evidence is most complete. A clear and continuous connexion can be traced in many cases, at all events in Gaul, between the Roman villa and the later manor. «German lords of villas.»