How did wealthy landowners react to economic reforms by diocletian and Constantine?

Answer 1

Diocletian's main economic reforms were the introduction of new coins and price controls to try to solve the problem of hyperinflation. Neither of these worked. Hyperinflation and the economic crisis continued and the large landowners continued to deal with it has they had already being doing. They switched from commercial production to supply the cities to production for barter on the local market and turned migrants to the countryside from the impoverished towns and impoverished tenant peasants into servile workers.

Diocletian imposed burdensome taxes. The large landowners could not do much about this because Diocletian had created an autocracy by enormously enlarging the imperial bureaucracy which became very powerful. Moreover due to the low value of the coins, Diocletian resorted to taxation through confiscations of goods. He turned requisition into taxation and it was difficult to avoid this. Tax collectors were made to pay for what they failed to collect from their own pockets. Moreover, the empire was still affected by wars and there was too much instability for political opposition.

Constantine resolved the hyperinflation problem by abandoning the useless silver coins and amassing large quantities of gold which he used to issue a new gold currency which actually had value and was viable. This improved the economic situation of the rich, but not that of the poor who could not afford gold coins and still had to rely on a worthless copper token currency. Constantine also reformed taxation, making it less burdensome and reduced the top heavy bureaucracy. Constantine's economic policies were popular with the wealthy classes.