T HEMES IN W ORLD H ISTORY the father died. Rural indebtedness was even more widespread; to take just one example, in the great Jewish revolt of CE * the revolutionaries destroyed the moneylenders’ bonds to win popular support. Again, we should be careful not to conclude that the bulk of labour was coerced in these ways. The late-fifth-century emperor Anastasius built the eastern frontier city of Dara in less than three weeks by attracting labour from all over the East by offering high wages.
From the papyri we can even form some estimate of how widespread wage labour had become in parts of the Mediterranean by the sixth century, especially in the East.