colonus, tenant farmer of the late Roman Empire and the European Middle Ages. The coloni were drawn from impoverished small free farmers, partially emancipated slaves, and barbarians sent to work as agricultural labourers among landed proprietors. For the lands that they rented, they paid in money, produce, or service. Some may have become coloni in order to gain protection from the proprietor against the state tax collector or against invaders and aggressive neighbours. Although technically freemen, the coloni were bound to the soil by debts that were heritable and by laws limiting their freedom of movement. By ad 332 landlords were permitted to chain coloni suspected of planning to leave. Coloni were forbidden to transfer their property without consent of the landlord and to sue the landlord except for increasing their rent. The colonus could not lose his land as long as he paid the rent, but he was forbidden to leave or change his occupation. If the land was sold, he went with it; his children held it after him on the same terms.
The descendants of the coloni, along with other dependent peasants, became the serfs of the European Middle Ages.