Agricola (part 3 of 5)

Agricola (part 3 of 5)

But before proceeding further it is well to inquire in what sense the Georgics can be called didactic. What is the essential teaching of the poem, and to whom is that teaching addressed? In outward form it professes to instruct the bewildered farmers, suffering at the time from effects of the recent civil wars as well as from economic difficulties of old standing; and to convey sound precepts for the conduct of agriculture in its various branches. But there is little doubt that the precepts are all or most of them taken directly from earlier[867] writers, Roman or Greek; and we may reasonably suppose that most of them (and those the most practical ones) were well known to the very classes most concerned in their application. It is absurd to suppose that agricultural tradition had utterly died out. The real difficulty was to put it in practice. Now, what class of farmers were to be benefited by the new poem? Was the peasant of the uplands, soaked in hereditary experience, to learn his business over again with the help of the poet-laureate’s fascinating verse? Surely he spoke a rustic[868] Latin, and sometimes hardly that. Was it likely that he would gradually absorb the doctrines of the Vergilian compendium, offered in the most refined language and metre of literary Rome? It is surely inconceivable. Nor can we assume that any remaining intensive farmers of the Campanian plain were in much need of practical instruction: what was needed there was a respite from the unsettling disturbances of the revolutionary period. To suggest that a part of the poet’s design was to supply much-needed teaching to the new coloni from the disbanded armies, would be grotesque in any case, and above all in that of Vergil. If we are to find a class of men to whom the finished literary art of the Georgics would appeal, and who might profit by the doctrines so attractively conveyed, we must seek them in social strata[869] possessed of education enough to appreciate the poem and sympathize with its general tone. Now all or most of such persons would be well-to-do people, owners of property, often of landed property: people of more or less leisure: in short, the cultured class, whose centre was Rome. These people would view with favour any proposal for the benefit of Italian agriculture. Many landowners at the time had got large estates cheaply in the time of troubles, and to them anything likely to improve the value of their lands, and to draw a curtain of returning prosperity over a questionable past, would doubtless be welcome. They would applaud the subtle grace with which the poet glorified the duty and profit of personal labour. But that they meant to work with their own hands I cannot believe. In the true spirit of their age, they would as a matter of course take the profit, and delegate the duty to others.

Two alternatives[870] presented themselves to a landowner. He might let his estate whole or in parcels to a tenant or tenants. Or he might work it for his own account, either under his own resident direction, or through the agency of a steward. All the evidence bearing on the revolutionary period tends to shew that the resident landlord of a considerable estate, farming his own land, was a very rare type indeed. It was found most convenient as a general rule to let an out-of-the-way farm to a cultivating tenant at a money rent or on a sharing system. A more accessible one was generally put under a steward and so kept in hand by the owner. The dwelling-house was in such cases improved so as to be a fit residence for the proprietor on his occasional visits. Growing luxury often carried this change to an extreme, and made the villa a ‘place in the country,’ a scene of intermittent extravagance, not of steady income-producing thrift. True, it seems that the crude and wasteful system of the earlier latifundia had been a good deal modified by the end of the Republic. A wealthy man preferred to own several estates of moderate size situated near main routes of traffic. But this plan required more stewards. And the steward (vilicus), himself a slave, was the head of a slave-staff proportioned to the size of the farm. Now the public effectually reached by the Georgics may be supposed to have included the landowners of education and leisure, whether they let their land to tenants or kept it in hand. I cannot believe that the coloni farming hired land[871] came under the poet’s influence. In other words, the Georgics, in so far as the poem made its way beyond purely literary circles, appealed chiefly if not wholly to a class dependent on slave-labour in every department of their lives.

Maecenas, to whom the poem is in form addressed, had put pressure on Vergil to write it. At the back of Maecenas was the new Emperor, anxious to enlist all the talents in the service of the new dispensation. The revival of rural Italy was one of the praiseworthy projects of the Emperor and his confidential minister. It was indeed on every ground manifestly desirable. But was it possible now to turn Romans of property into working farmers? Would the man-about-Rome leave urban pleasures for the plough-tail? Not he! Nor are we to assume that Augustus was fool enough to expect it. Then what about Maecenas? His enjoyment of luxurious ease[872] was a byword: that he retained his native commonsense under such conditions is one of his chief titles to fame. No one can have expected him to wield the spade and mattock or spread manure. The poet writing with such a man for patron and prompter was not likely to find his precepts enjoining personal labour taken too seriously. His readers were living in a social and moral atmosphere in which to do anything involving labour meant ordering a slave to do it. That the Emperor wished to see more people interested in the revival of Italian agriculture was well understood. But this interest could be shown by investing capital in Italian land; and this is what many undoubtedly did. Recent proscriptions and confiscations had thrown numbers of estates on the market. It was possible to get a good bargain and at the same time win the favour of the new ruler by a well-timed proof of confidence in the stability of the new government. Now it is to say the least remarkable that Dion Cassius, doubtless following earlier authorities, puts into the mouth of Maecenas some suggestions[873] on this very subject. After advising the Emperor to raise a standing army by enlisting the able-bodied unemployed men in Italy, and pointing out that with the security thus gained, and the provision of a harmless career for the sturdy wastrels who were at present a cause of disorders, agriculture and commerce would revive, he proceeds as follows. For these measures money will be needed, as it would under any government: therefore the necessity of some exactions must be faced. ‘The very first thing[874] then for you to do is to have a sale of the confiscated properties, of which there are many owing to the wars, reserving only a few that are specially useful or indispensable for your purposes: and then to employ all the money so raised by lending it out at moderate interest. If you do this, the land will be under cultivation (ἐνεργός), being placed in the hands of owners who themselves work (δεσπόταις αὐτουργοῖς δοθεῖσα): they will become more prosperous, having the disposal of capital: and the treasury will have a sufficient and perpetual income.’ He then urges the necessity of preparing a complete budget estimate of regular receipts from the above and other sources, and of the prospective regular charges both military and civil, with allowance for unforeseen contingencies. ‘And your next step should be to provide for any deficit by imposing a tax on all properties whatsoever that bring a profit (ἐπικαρπίαν τινὰ) to the owner, and by a system of tributary dues in all our subject provinces.’

That this long oration attributed by Dion to Maecenas is in great part made up from details of the policy actually followed by the Emperor, is I believe generally admitted. But I am not aware that the universal income-tax suggested was imposed. The policy of encouraging agriculture certainly formed part of the imperial scheme, and the function of the Georgics was to bring the power of literature to bear in support of the movement. The poet could hardly help referring in some way to the crying need of a great agricultural revival. He did it with consummate skill. He did not begin by enlarging on the calamities of the recent past, and then proceed to offer his remedies. Such a method would at once have aroused suspicion and ill-feeling. No, he waited till he was able to glide easily into a noble passage in which he speaks of the civil wars as a sort of doom sanctioned by the heavenly powers. No party could take offence at this way of putting it. Then he cries aloud to the Roman gods, not to prevent the man of the hour (hunc iuvenem) from coming to the relief of a ruined generation. The needs of the moment are such that we cannot do without him. The world is full of wickedness and wars: ‘the plough is not respected as it should be; the tillers of the soil have been drafted away, and the land is gone to weeds; the crooked sickles are being forged into straight swords.’ The passage comes at the end of the first book, following a series of precepts delivered coolly and calmly as though in a social atmosphere of perfect peace. The tone in which the words recall the reader to present realities, and subtly hint at the obvious duty of supporting the one possible restorer of Roman greatness, is an unsurpassed feat of literary art. It is followed up at the end of the second book in another famous passage, in which he preaches with equal delicacy the doctrine that agricultural revival is the one sure road not only to personal happiness but to the true greatness of the Roman people.

That this revival was bound up with the return to a system of farming on a smaller scale, implying more direct personal attention on the landlord’s part, is obvious. But the poet goes further. His model farmer is to be convinced of the necessity and benefit of personal labour, and so to put his own hand to the plough. The glorification of unyielding toil[875] as the true secret of success was (and is) a congenial topic to preachers of the gospel of ‘back to the land.’ It may well be that the thoughtful Vergil had misgivings as to the fruitfulness of his doctrine. A cynical critic might hint that it was easy enough for one man to urge others to work. But a man like Maecenas would smile at such remarks. To set other people to do what he would never dream of doing himself was to him the most natural thing in the world. So the pressure of the patron on the poet continued, and the Georgics were born.

Let me now turn to certain passages of the poem in which farm-labour is directly referred to, and see how far the status of the labourers can be judged from the expressions used and the context. And first of aratores. In I 494 and II 513 the agricola is a plowman; free, for all that appears to the contrary. In II 207, where he appears as clearing off wood[876] and ploughing up the land, the arator is called iratus: this can hardly apply to an indifferent slave. The arator of I 261, represented as turning the leisure enforced by bad weather to useful indoor work, odd jobs in iron and wood work etc, may be one of a slave-staff whom his master will not have idle. Or he may be the farmer himself. The scene implies the presence of a staff of some kind, driven indoors by the rain. And that the poet is not thinking of a solitary peasant is further indicated by mention of sheep-washing, certainly not a ‘one-man-job,’ in line 272. Why Conington (after Heyne) takes agitator aselli in 273 to be ‘the peasant who happens to drive the ass to market,’ and not an asinarius doing his regular duty, I cannot say. On III 402, a very similar passage, he takes the pastor to be probably the farm-slave, not the owner, adding ‘though it is not always easy to see for what class of men Virgil is writing.’ A remark which shews that my present inquiry is not uncalled for. To return, there is nothing to shew whether the ass-driver is a freeman or a slave. Nor is the status of messores[877] clear. In I 316-7 the farmer brings the mower on to the yellow fields; that is, he orders his hands to put in the sickle. What is their relation to him we do not hear. So too in II 410 postremus metito is a precept addressed to the farmer as farmer, not as potential labourer. On the other hand the messores in the second and third eclogues seem to be slaves, for there is reference to domini in both poems.

The fossor is in literature the personification of mere heavy manual labour. In default of evidence to the contrary, we must suppose him to be normally[878] a slave. Thus the fossor of Horace odes III 18 is probably one of the famuli operum soluti of the preceding ode. But the brawny digger of Georgics II 264, who aids nature’s work by stirring and loosening the caked earth, is left on a neutral footing. Nothing is said. The reader must judge whether this silence is the result of pure inadvertency. That pastores very often means slave-herdsmen, is well known. But Vergil seems to attribute to them a more real and intelligent interest in the welfare of their charge than it is reasonable to expect from rustic slaves. The pastores of IV 278, who gather the medicinal herb used in the treatment of bees, may be slaves: if so, they are not mere thoughtless animals. And the scene is in the Cisalpine, where we have noted that slavery was probably of a mild type. In III 420 the pastor is called upon to protect his beasts from snakes. But we know[879] that it was a part of slave-herdsmen’s duty to fight beasts of prey, and that they were commonly armed for that purpose. In III 455 we find him shrinking from a little act of veterinary surgery, which the context suggests he ought to perform. But we know that the magister pecoris on a farm was instructed[880] in simple veterinary practice, and it is hardly likely that other slaves, specially put in charge of beasts, had no instructions. The pastores (if more than one, the chief,) appear as pecorum magistri (II 529, III 445, cf Buc III 101), a regular name for shepherds: they are not the same as the magistri of III 549, who are veterinary specialists disguised under mythical names. In II 529-31 we have a holiday scene, in which the farmer (ipse) treats the pecoris magistri to a match of wrestling and throwing the javelin. If slaves are meant, then Vergil is surely carrying back rustic slavery to early days as part and parcel of the ‘good old times’ to which he points in the following lines hanc olim veteres vitam coluere Sabini etc. The ipse will then be a genial farmer of the old school, whose slaves are very different from the degraded and sullen chattels of more recent years. But in this as in other cases the poet gives us no clear sign.

A passage[881] in which the reticence of which I am speaking has a peculiar effect occurs in the description of the grievous murrain that visited northern Italy some time before. One of a pair of oxen falls dead while drawing the plough. The tristis arator[882] unyokes the other, sorrow-stricken at the death of its fellow; he leaves the plough where it stopped, and goes his way. Then follows a piece of highly-wrought pathos[883] describing the dejection and collapse of the surviving ox. ‘What now avail him his toil or his services, his past work in turning up the heavy land with the ploughshare?’ And the hardness of the poor beast’s lot is emphasized by the reflexion that disease in cattle is not induced by gluttony and wine-bibbing, as it often is in the case of mankind, nor by the worries (cura) that rob men of refreshing sleep. This much-admired passage may remind us of the high value set upon the ox in ancient Italy, traditionally amounting to a kind of sanctity; for it is said[884] that to kill an ox was as great a crime as to kill a man. We may wonder too what the luxurious but responsible Maecenas thought of the lines contrasting the simple diet and untroubled life of the ox with the excesses and anxieties of man. But, if civilization owed much to the labours of the ox, and if gratitude was due to man’s patient helper, what about the human slave? Is it not a remarkable thing that the Georgics contain not a word of appreciative reference to the myriads of toiling bondsmen whose sweat and sufferings had been exploited by Roman landlords for at least 150 years? Can this silence on the part of a poet who credits an ox with human affection be regarded as a merely accidental omission?

Of poets in general it may I think be truly said that the relation between the singer and his vocabulary varies greatly in various cases. Personal judgments are very fallible: but to me, the more I read Vergil, the more I see in him an extreme case of the poet ever nervously on his guard[885] against expressing or suggesting any meaning or shade of meaning beyond that which at a given moment he wishes to convey. This is no original discovery. But in reaching it independently I have become further convinced that the limitations of his vocabulary are evidence of nice and deliberate selection. The number of well-established Latin words, adaptable to verse and to the expression of ideas certain to occur, that are used by other poets of note but not by him, is considerable. I have a long list: here I will mention only one, the adjective vagus. The word may have carried to him associations below the pure dignity of his finished style. Yet Horace used it freely in the Odes, and Horace was surely no hasty hack careless of propriety, and no mean judge of what was proper. Now, when I turn to the Georgics, Vergil’s most finished work, I am struck by the absence of certain words the presence of which would seem natural, or even to be expected, in any work professedly treating of agriculture in Roman Italy. Thus servus does not occur at all, serva in the Aeneid only, and servitium in the strict sense only Buc I 40 and Aen III 327. In Georg III 167-8 ubi libera colla servitio adsuerint he is speaking of the breaking-in of young oxen[886] in figurative language. So too dominus and domina occur in the Bucolics and Aeneid but not in the Georgics. The case of opera and the plural operae may seem to be on a somewhat different footing in so far as the special sense of opera = ‘the average day’s work[887] of a labourer’ would perhaps have too technical and prosaic a flavour. In the single instance (Aen VII 331-2), where it occurs in the familiar phrase da operam, it is coupled with laborem, which rather suggests a certain timidity in the use of a colloquial expression. The plural, frequent in the writers on agriculture, he does not use at all, whether because he avoids the statistical estimates in which it most naturally comes, or from sheer fastidiousness due to the disreputable associations of operae in political slang. Perhaps neither of these reasons is quite enough to account for the absence of the word from the Georgics. That famulus and famula occur in the Aeneid only is not surprising, for they represent the δμῶες and δμωαὶ of Greek heroic poetry. But famula appears in the Moretum, of which I will speak below.

That Vergil is all the while pointing the way to a system of small farms and working farmers, though some topics (for instance stock-keeping) seem to touch on a larger scale of business, may be gathered from his references to coloni. The word is in general used merely as the substantive corresponding to colere, and its place is often taken by agricola (I 300, II 459) or rusticus (II 406) or other substitutes. In II 433 homines means much the same as the agrestis of I 41, only that the former need stimulus and the latter guidance. The typical picture of the colonus comes in I 291-302, where the small farmer and his industrious wife are seen taking some relaxation in the winter season, but never idle. It is surely a somewhat idealized picture. The parallel in Horace (epode II) is more matter-of-fact, and clearly includes slaves, an element ignored by Vergil. The colonus is not a mere tenant farmer, but a yeoman tilling his own land, like the veteres coloni of the ninth eclogue, a freeman, and we may add liable to military service, like those in I 507 whose conscription left the farms derelict. A curious and evidently exceptional case is that of the Corycius senex (IV 125-46), said to be one of Pompey’s pirate colonists. The man is a squatter on a patch of unoccupied land, which he has cultivated as a garden, raising by unwearied industry quite wonderful crops of vegetables fruit and flowers, and remarkably successful[888] as a bee-keeper. Perhaps this transplanted Oriental had no slave, at least when he started gardening. But I note that his croft was more than a iugerum (pauca relicti iugera ruris) at the time when Vergil saw it, and I imagine the process of reclaiming the waste to have been gradual. When this small holding was complete and in full bearing, would the work of one elderly man suffice to carry it on? I wonder. But we get no hint of a slave or a hireling, or even of a wife. All I can venture to say is that this story is meant to be significant of the moral and material wellbeing of the small cultivator. It is curious that just above (118, cf 147-8) the poet is at pains to excuse his omission to discuss in detail the proper management of horti, on the pretext of want of space. For he was no mean antiquary, and Pliny tells[889] us that in the Twelve Tables hortus was used of what was afterwards called villa, a country farm, while heredium stood for a garden; and adds that in old time per se hortus ager pauperis erat. But hortus is to Vergil strictly a garden, and the old Corycian is cited expressly as a gardener: his land, we are told, was not suited for growing corn or vines.

The mention of gardening invites me to say a few words on the short descriptive idyll Moretum which has been regarded as a youthful composition of Vergil (perhaps from a Greek original) with more justice than some other pieces attributed to him. I see no strong objection to admitting it as Vergilian, but it is of course crude and far removed from the manner and finish of the mature Georgics. The peasant Simylus, exigui cultor rusticus agri, is a poor small farmer whose thrift and industry enable him to make a living ‘in a humble and pottering way,’ as Gilbert puts it. His holding is partly ordinary arable land, but includes a hortus as well. In the latter he skilfully grows a variety of vegetables, for which he finds a regular market in the city. Poor though he is, and accustomed to wait on himself, apparently unmarried, he yet owns a slave (famulam, 93) and she is a negro, fully described (31-5), woolly hair, thick lips, dark skin, spindle shanks, paddle feet, etc. She probably would do the house-work, but the preparation of food is a duty in which her master also bears a part. We hear of no male slave, and the ploughing of fields and digging the garden are apparently done by himself singlehanded. The yoke of oxen are mentioned in the last lines. The picture is such as may have been true of some humble homesteads in Italy, but the tradition of a Greek original, and the names Simylus and Scybale, must leave us in some doubt as to whether the scene be really Italian. The position is in fact much the same as it is in regard to the Bucolics.

Whatever may be the correct view as to the authorship and bearing of the Moretum, there are I think certain conclusions to be drawn from an examination of the Georgics, which it is time to summarize. First, the tendency of the poem is to advocate a system of smaller holdings and more intensive cultivation than had for a long period been customary in a large part of Italy. This reform is rather suggested by implication than directly urged, though one precept, said to be borrowed[890] from old Cato, recommends it in plain words. For the glorification of labour in general is all the while pointing in this direction. Secondly, the policy of the new Emperor, who posed as Restorer and Preserver rather than Reformer, finds a sympathetic or obedient expression in this tendency. For it is delicately conveyed that the reform of an evil agricultural present virtually consists in the return to the ways of a better past. And the poet, acting as poet simply, throws on this better past the halo of a golden age still more remote. The virtues of the Sabines of old[891] are an example of the happiness and honour attainable by a rustic folk. But to Vergil, steeped in ancient legend, the historic worthies of a former age are not the beginning of things. They come ‘trailing clouds of glory’ from the mythical origin[892] of mankind, from a world of primeval abundance and brotherly communism, a world which he like Lucretius pauses to portray. Thirdly, the reaction of Augustus against the bold cosmopolitanism of Julius Caesar has I think left a mark on the Georgics in the fact that the poem is, as Sellar says, so thoroughly representative of Italy. Roman Italy was not yet ready to become merely a part of an imperial estate. If people were to acquiesce in a monarchy, it had to be disguised, and one important disguise was the make-believe that the Roman people were lords of the world. A very harmless method of ministering to Roman self-complacency was excessive praise of Italy, its soil, its climate, its natural features, its various products, its races of men and their works, and all the historic associations of the victorious past. It is a notable fact that this panegyric[893] breaks out in the utterances of four very dissimilar works that still survive: for beside the Georgics I must place[894] the so-called Roman Antiquities of Dionysius, the Geography of Strabo, and the de re rustica of Varro. These four are practically contemporaries. It seems to me hardly credible that there was not some common influence operative at the time and encouraging utterances of this tone.

The actual success or failure of the attempt to revive Roman agriculture on a better footing is not only a question of fact in itself historically important: its determination will throw light on the circumstances in which Vergil wrote, and perhaps help somewhat in suggesting reasons for his avoidance of certain topics. If we are to believe Horace[895], the agricultural policy of Augustus was a grand success: security, prosperity, virtue, good order, had become normal: fertility had returned to the countryside. I had better say at once that I put little faith in these utterances of a court poet. Far more significant is the statement, preserved by Suetonius[896], of the evils dealt with by Augustus in country districts. Parties of armed bandits infested the country. Travellers, slaves and freemen alike, were kidnapped and ergastulis possessorum supprimebantur. He checked the brigandage by armed police posted at suitable spots, and ergastula recognovit. But it is not said that he did away with them: he cleared out of them the persons illegally held in bondage (suppressi). Not only is rustic slavery in full swing in the treatise of Varro: some 80 years later the ergastulum is adopted as a matter of course by Columella, and appears as a canker of agriculture in the complaints of Pliny. The neglect of rustic industry is lamented by all three writers, and to the testimony of such witnesses it is quite needless to add quotations from writers of merely literary merit. There is no serious doubt that the reconstruction of agriculture on the basis of small farms tilled by working farmers was at best successful in a very moderate degree; and this for many a long year. Organized slave-labour remained the staple appliance of tillage until the growing scarcity of slaves and the financial policy of the later Empire brought about the momentous change by which the free farmer gradually became the predial serf.

Another point to be noted in the Georgics is the absence of any reference to coloni as tenants under a landlord. Yet we know that this relation existed in Cicero’s time, and tenant farmers appear in Varro[897] and Columella[898]. Vergil, but for a stray reference in the Aeneid, might seem never to have heard of the existence of such people. It is easy to say that the difference between an owner and a tenant is a difference in law, and unsuited for discussion in a poem. But it also involves economic problems. The landlord wants a good return on his capital, the tenant wants to make a good living, and the conditions of tenancy vary greatly in various cases. The younger Pliny[899] had to deal with awkward questions between him and his tenants, and there is no reason to suppose that his case was exceptional. Surely the subject was one of immediate interest to an agricultural reformer, quite as interesting as a number of the details set forth here and there in the Georgics; that is, assuming that the author meant his farmer to be economically prosperous as well as to set a good example. It may be argued that the operations enjoined on the farmer would greatly improve the farm and enhance the value of the land, and that no man in his senses would do this unless the land were his own: there was therefore no need to discuss tenancy, ownership being manifestly implied. The argument is fair, so far as it goes. But it does not justify complete silence on what was probably at the moment a question of no small importance in the eyes of landowners.

Some passages of Horace may serve to shew that circumstances might have justified or even invited some reference to this topic. In the seventh epistle of the first book he tells the story of how Philippus played a rather scurvy trick on a freedman in a small way of business as an auctioneer. As a social superior, his patronage turned the poor man’s head. Taking him for an outing to his own Sabine country place, he infected him with desire of a rustic life. He amused himself by persuading him to buy a small farm, offering him about £60 as a gift and a loan of as much more. The conversion of a regular town-bred man into a thoroughgoing farmer was of course a pitiful failure. Devotion and industry availed him nothing. The losses and disappointments incidental to farming were too much for him. He seems to have had no slave: he probably had not sufficient capital. He ended by piteously entreating his patron to put him back into his own trade. The story is placed about two generations before Horace wrote. But it would be pointless if it were out of date in its setting, which it surely is not; it might have happened to a contemporary, nay to Horace himself. It is addressed to his own patron Maecenas, the generous donor of his own Sabine estate. Here we have a clear intimation that to buy a little plot and try to get a living out of it by your own labour was an enterprise in which success was no easy matter. In the second satire of the second book we have the case of Ofellus, one of the yeomen of the old school. He had been a working farmer on his own land, but in the times of trouble his farm had been confiscated and made over to a discharged soldier. But this veteran wisely left him in occupation as cultivator on terms. Whether he became a sort of farm-bailiff, working for the new owner’s account at a fixed salary, or whether he became a tenant, farming on his own account and paying a rent, has been doubted. I am strongly of the second opinion. For it was certainly to the owner’s interest that the land should be well-farmed, and that his own income (the endowment of his later years) should be well-secured by giving the farmer every motive for industry. These considerations do not suit well with the former alternative, which also makes colonus hardly distinguishable from vilicus. Again, the colonus is on the farm[900] cum pecore et gnatis. The pecus, like the children, is surely the farmer’s own, and it is much more likely that the live-stock should belong to a rent-paying tenant than to a salaried bailiff. Moreover, there is no mention of slaves. The man works the farm with the help of his family. Is it likely that he would turn them into a household of serfs? Therefore I render line 115 fortem mercede colonum ‘a sturdy tenant-farmer sitting at a rent’; that is, on a holding that as owner he formerly occupied rent-free. He can make the farm pay even now: as for the mere fact of ground-landlordship, that is an idle boast, and in any case limited by the span of human life. I claim that these two passages are enough to prove the point for which I am contending; namely, that questions of the tenure under which agriculture could best be carried on were matters of some interest and importance about the time when Vergil was writing the Georgics.

But the help of Horace is by no means exhausted. He refers to a story of a wage-earning labourer (mercennarius) who had the luck to turn up a buried treasure, a find which enabled him to buy the very farm on which he was employed, and work it as his own. There is no point in this ‘yarn’ unless it was a well-known tale, part of the current stock of the day. The famous satire in which it occurs (II 6) seems to be almost exactly contemporary with the appearance of the Georgics. In it the restful charm of country life is heartily preferred to the worries and boredom of Rome. His Sabine estate, with its garden, its unfailing spring of water, and a strip of woodland, is of no great size, but it is enough: he is no greedy land-grabber. When in Rome he longs for it. There he can take his ease among spoilt young slaves, born[901] on the place, keeping a sort of Liberty Hall for his friends. The talk at table is not de villis domibusve alienis but of a more rational and improving kind: envy of other men’s wealth is talked out with an apposite fable. Here we have mention of wage-earning, land-purchase, and slaves. And the poet’s estate is evidently in the first place a residence, not a farm worked on strict economic lines. That the number of slave hands (operae) employed there on the Home Farm[902] was eight, we learn from another satire (II 7 118). To the smart country seats, which advertise the solid wealth of rich capitalists, he refers in express terms in epistles I 15 45-6, and by many less particular references. The land-grabbers are often mentioned, and the forest-lands (saltus) used for grazing, in which much money was invested by men ‘land-proud,’ as a sign of their importance. In short, the picture of rural Italy given by Horace reveals to us a state of things wholly unfavourable to the reception of the message of the Georgics. When he speaks of pauper ruris colonus or of inopes coloni he is surely not betraying envy of these toilers’ lot. Far from it. When enjoying a change in his country place, he may occasionally divert himself with a short spell[903] of field-work, at which his neighbours grin. On the other hand the spectacle of a disreputable freedman, enriched by speculations in time of public calamity, and enabled through ill-gotten wealth to become a great landlord, is the cause of wrathful indignation (epode IV). And these and other candid utterances come from one whose father was a freedman in a country town, farming in quite a small way, to whose care and self-denial the son owed the education that equipped him for rising in the world. Horace indeed is one of the best of witnesses on these points.

There are points on which Vergil and Horace are agreed, though generally with a certain difference of attitude. Thus, both prefer the country to the town, but Horace frankly because he enjoys it and likes a rest: he does not idealize country life as such, still less agricultural labour. Both disapprove latifundia, but Horace on simple commonsense grounds, not as a reformer. Both praise good old times, but Horace without the faintest suggestion of possible revival of them, or anything like them. Both refer to the beginnings of civilization, but Vergil looks back to a golden age of primitive communism, when in medium quaerebant and so forth; a state of things ended by Jove’s ordinance that man should raise himself by toil. Horace, less convinced of the superiority of the past, depicts[904] the noble savage as having to fight for every thing, even acorns; and traces steps, leading eventually to law and order, by which he became less savage and more noble. Horace is nearer to Lucretius here than Vergil is. Neither could ignore the disturbing effect of the disbanding of armies and ejectment of farmers to make way for the settlement of rude soldiers on the land. But to Horace, personally unconcerned, a cool view was more possible. So, while hinting at public uneasiness[905] as to the detailed intentions of the new ruler in this matter, he is able to look at the policy in general merely as the restoration of weary veterans to a life of peace and the relief of their chief’s anxieties. Vergil, himself a sufferer, had his little fling in the Bucolics, and was silent[906] in the Georgics. Again, Vergil shuns the function of war as a means of supplying the slave-market. He knows it well enough, and as a feature of the ‘heroic’ ages the fate of the captive appears in the Aeneid. Horace makes no scruple[907] of stating the time-honoured principle that a captive is to the conqueror a valuable asset: there is a market for him as a serviceable drudge, and not to spare his life is sheer waste. That there may be sarcasm underlying the passage does not impair its candour. And it distinctly includes rustic slavery in the words sine pascat durus aretque. Lastly, while both poets praise the restfulness of the countryside with equal sincerity, it is Horace who recognizes[908] that the working farmer himself, after his long labours at the plough, looks forward to retirement and ease when he has saved enough to live on. His is a real rustic, Vergil’s an ideal.

It will be admitted that all writers are, as sources of evidence, at their best when they feel free to say or to leave unsaid this or that according to their own judgment. If there is in the background some other person whom it is necessary to please, it is very hard to divine the reason of an author’s frankness, and still more of his reticence. For instance, the omission of a topic naturally connected with a subject need not imply that a patron forbade its introduction. I cannot believe that such a man as Maecenas[909] banned the free mention of slavery in the Georgics. But, if a whole subject is proposed for treatment under conditions of a well-understood tendency, the writer is not unlikely to discover that artistic loyalty to that tendency will operate to render the introduction of this or that particular topic a matter of extreme difficulty. If the task of Vergil was to recommend a return to a more wholesome system of agriculture, reference to the labour-question or to land-tenure bristled with difficulties. My belief is that the poet shirked these topics, relevant though they surely were, because he did not see how to treat them without provoking controversy or ill-feeling; a result which Maecenas and the Emperor were undoubtedly anxious to avoid. It was simpler and safer not to refer to these things. True, the omission was a restraint on full-blooded realism. An indistinct picture was produced, and modern critics have some reason to complain of the difficulty of understanding many places of the Georgics.

Whether chronological considerations may throw any light on the influences to which this indistinctness is due, and, if so, what is their exact significance, are very difficult questions, to which I cannot offer a definite answer. The completion of the Georgics is placed in the year 30 BC, after seven years more or less spent on composition and revision. Now it was in that year that the new ruler, supreme since the overthrow of Antony, organized the great disbandment of armies of which he speaks in the famous inscription[910] recording the events of his career. He tells us that he rewarded all the discharged men, either with assignations of land or with sums of money in lieu thereof. The lands were bought by him (not confiscated) and the money-payments also were at his cost (a me dedi). Below he refers to the matter again, and adds that to pay for lands taken and assigned to soldiers was a thing no one had ever done before. That he paid in all cases, and paid the full market value, he does not expressly say; Mommsen shews cause for doubting it. The only remark I have to make is that in the years between Philippi and Aetium there was plenty of fighting and negotiations. Maecenas was for most of the time in a position of great trust, and pretty certainly in touch with all that went on. The fact that a wholesale discharge of soldiers was surely coming, and that the future of agriculture in Italy was doubtful, was perhaps not likely to escape the forecast of so far-sighted a man. Is it just possible that Vergil may have had a hint from him, to stick to generalities and avoid controversial topics? We are credibly informed[911] that Maecenas was well rewarded by his master for his valuable services, and it has been pointed out[912] that his position of authority offered many opportunities of profitable transactions on his own account. There is even an express tradition that he was concerned in the liquidation of one estate. In short, he was one of the land-speculators of the time. To such a man it would seem not untimely to praise the virtues of the rustic Romans of old and to recommend their revival in the coming age; but to call attention to the uncertainties of the present, involving many awkward problems, would seem imprudent. In suggesting, doubtfully, that a patron’s restraining hand may have had something to do with the poet’s reticence, I may be exaggerating the pressure exercised by the one on the other. But that Maecenas interested himself in the slowly-growing poem is hardly to be doubted. Early in each of the four books he is addressed by name. His haud mollia iussa (III 41) may imply nothing more than the general difficulty of Vergil’s task: but may it not faintly indicate just the least little restiveness under a guidance that could not be refused openly?

To reject the suggestion of actual interference on Maecenas’ part is not to say that the Georgics exhibits no deference to his wishes. That many a veiled hint could be given by a patron in conversation is obvious. That Maecenas would be a master of that judicious art, is probable from what we know of his character and career. But, while it is plain that questions of land-tenure would from his point of view be better ignored, how would his likes and dislikes affect the mention of slavery and the labour-question? Here I must refer to the three great writers on agriculture. Cato, about 150 years earlier, and Columella, about 80 years later, both contemplate the actual buying of land, and insist on the care necessary in selection. The contemporary Varro seems certainly to assume purchase. All three deal with slave-labour, Cato like a hard-fisted dominus of an old-Roman generation just become consciously imperial and bent on gain, Columella as a skilful organizer of the only regular supply of labour practically available: Varro, who makes more allowance[913] for free labour beside that of slaves, reserves the free man for important jobs, where he may be trusted to use his wits, or for unhealthy work, in which to risk slaves is to risk your own property. All the ordinary work in his system is done by slaves. The contemporary Livy[914] tells us that in his time large districts near Rome had scarce any free inhabitants left. The elder Pliny, reckoning up the advantages of Italy for the practice of agriculture, includes[915] among them the supply of servitia, though no man knew better than he what fatal results had issued from the plantation-system. It is to be borne in mind that this evidence relates to the plains and the lower slopes of hills, that is to the main agricultural districts. It is to these parts that Gardthausen[916] rightly confines his remarks on the desolation of Italy, which began before the civil wars and was accelerated by them. Other labour was scarce, and gangs of slaves, generally chained, were almost the only practicable means of tillage for profit. Speaking broadly, I think the truth of this picture is not to be denied. If then the word had gone forth that a return to smaller-scale farming was to be advocated as a cure for present evils, it was hardly possible to touch on slavery without some unfavourable reference to the plantation-system. Now surely it is most unlikely that Maecenas, a cool observer and a thorough child of the age, sincerely believed in the possibility of setting back the clock. The economic problem could not be solved so simply, by creating a wave of ‘back-to-the-land’ enthusiasm. I suggest that he saw no good to be got by openly endeavouring to recreate the race of small working farmers by artificial means. Would it be wise to renew an attempt in which the Gracchi had failed? Now to Vergil, who had passed his youth in a district of more humane agriculture, the mere praise of farming, with its rich compensations for never-ending toil and care, would be a congenial theme. The outcome of their combination was that a topic not easily idealized in treatment was omitted. The realistic value of the picture was impaired to the relief of both poet and patron. But what the poem gained as a beautiful aspiration it lost as a practical authority.

Can we suppose that Vergil did not know how important a place in contemporary agriculture was filled by slave-labour? I think not: surely it is inconceivable. What meets us at every turn in other writers cannot have been unknown to him. Macrobius[917] has preserved for us a curious record belonging to 43 BC, when the great confiscations and assignations of land were being carried out in the Cisalpine by order of the Triumvirs. Money and arms, needed for the coming campaign of Philippi, were being requisitioned at the same time. The men of property threatened by these exactions hid themselves. Their slaves were offered rewards and freedom if they would betray their masters’ hiding-places, but not one of them yielded to the temptation. The commander who made the offer was Pollio. No doubt domestics are chiefly meant, but there were rustic slaves, and we have reason to think that they were humanely treated in those parts. Dion Cassius[918] tells us that in 41 BC Octavian, under great pressure from the clamorous armies, saw nothing to be done but to take all Italian lands from present owners and hand them over to the soldiers μετά τε τῆς δουλείας καὶ μετὰ τῆς ἄλλης κατασκευῆς. Circumstances necessitated compromise, which does not concern us here. But it is well to remember that it was just the best land that the soldiers wanted, and with it slaves and other farm-stock. For it was a pension after service, not a hard life of bodily drudgery, that was in view. The plan of letting the former owner stay on as a tenant has been referred to above.

I hold then that Vergil’s silence on the topics to which I have called attention, however congenial it may have been to him, was intentional: and that the poem, published in honorem Maecenatis[919], was limited as to its practical outlook with the approval, if not at the suggestion, of the patron. It is essentially a literary work. In it Vergil’s power of gathering materials from all quarters and fusing them into a whole of his own creation is exemplified to a wonderful degree. His own deep love of the country, with its homely sights and sounds, phenomena of a Nature whose laws he felt unable to explore, helped him to execute the task of recommending a social and economic reform through the medium of poetry. By ignoring topics deemed unsuitable, he left his sympathies and enthusiasm free course, and without sympathies and enthusiasm the Georgics would not have been immortal. Even when digressing from agriculture, as in his opening address to the Emperor, there is more sincerity than we are at first disposed to grant. He had not been a Republican, like Horace, and probably had been from the first attached to the cause of the Caesars.

I can discover no ground for thinking[920] that Vergil was ever himself a farmer. That Pliny and Columella cite him as an authority is in my opinion due to the predominance of his works in the literary world. As writers of prose dealing with facts often of an uninspiring kind, it would seem to raise the artistic tone of heavy paragraphs if the first name in Latin literature could be introduced with an apposite quotation in agreement with their own context. Vergil-worship began early and lasted long; and indeed his admirers in the present day are sometimes so absorbed in finding[921] more and more in what he said that they do not trouble themselves to ask whether there may not be some significance[922] in his silences. Rightly or wrongly, I am persuaded that this question ought at least to be asked in connexion with the Georgics. I have reserved till the last a passage[923] of Seneca, in which he challenges the authority of Vergil in some points connected with trees, speaking of him as Vergilius noster, qui non quid verissime sed quid decentissime diceretur aspexit, nec agricolas docere voluit sed legentes delectare. Now Seneca was devoted to the works of Vergil, and is constantly quoting them. He has no prejudice against the poet. The view of the Georgics set forth in these words implies no literary dispraise, but a refusal to let poetic excellence give currency to technical errors. Seneca is often tiresome, but in this matter his criticism is in my opinion sound. In the matter of labour my contention is not that the poet has inadvertently erred, but that he has for some reason deliberately dissembled.

XXX. THE ELDER SENECA AND OTHERS.

The comparatively silent interval, between the Augustan circle and the new group of writers under Claudius and Nero, furnishes little of importance. The one writer who stands out as giving us a few scraps of evidence is the =elder Seneca=, the earliest of the natives of Spain who made their mark in Latin literature. But the character of his work, which consists of examples of the treatment of problem-cases in the schools of rhetoric, makes him a very peculiar witness. When he tells us how this or that pleader of note made some point neatly, the words have their appropriate place in the texture of a particular argument. Often they contain a fallacious suggestion or a misstatement useful for the purpose of ex parte advocacy, but having as statements no authority whatever. Still there are a few references of significance and value. Thus, when the poor man’s son refuses the rich man’s offer to adopt him, and his own father approves the proposal, one rhetorician made the young man[924] say ‘Great troops of slaves whom their lord does not know by sight, and the farm-prisons echoing to the sound of the lash, have no charm for me: my love for my father is an unbought love.’ Again, a poor man, whose property has been outrageously damaged by a rich neighbour, protests[925] against the whims of modern luxury. ‘Country districts’ he says ‘that once were the plough-lands of whole communities are now each worked by a single slave-gang, and the sway of stewards is wider than the realms of kings.’ Now, we cannot cite the old rhetorician as an authority on agriculture directly: but he gives us proof positive that references to estates worked by gangs[926] of slaves, and the ergastula in which the poor wretches were shut up after the hours of labour, would not in his time sound strange to Roman audiences. Another passage[927] touches on a very typical lecture-room theme, an unnatural son. A father is banished for unintentional homicide. The law forbids the sheltering and feeding of an exile. But the father contrives to return and haunt an estate adjoining the main property, now controlled by his son. The son hears of these visits, flogs the vilicus for connivance, and compels him to exclude the old man. The piece is one of which only a brief abstract remains, but there is enough to shew that, while the gist of it was a casuistic discussion of a moral problem, it assumes as a matter of course the liability of a trusted slave to the lash. The faithful and kindly slave is contrasted with the unnatural son. There are in these curious collections other utterances indicative of the spread of humanitarian notions. Thus in the piece first cited[928] above, the poor man’s son in refusing the rich man’s offer of adoption, as a situation to which he could never accommodate himself, is made to add ‘If you were selling a favourite slave, you would inquire whether the buyer was a cruel man.’ Such ideas come from the later Greek philosophies, chiefly Stoic, the system on which Seneca brought up his more famous son. In one place[929] we find an echo of an earlier Greek sentiment, when a rhetorician propounds the doctrine that Fortune only, not Nature, distinguishes freemen from slaves.

Indeed it is evident, from the many passages that touch on slavery and expose some of its worst horrors, that the subject was at this time beginning to attract more general attention than heretofore. And the relations of patron and freedman, also discussed in these artificial school-debates, are a further illustration of this tendency. Milder and more humane principles were germinating, though as yet they had not found expression in law. In arguing on a peculiarly revolting case (the deliberate mutilation of child-beggars) a speaker incidentally refers[930] to wealthy landowners recruiting their slave-gangs by seizing freemen. The hearers are supposed to receive this reference to kidnapping as no exceptional thing extravagantly suggested. We have seen that both Augustus and Tiberius had to intervene to put down this suppressio. One little note of interest deserves passing mention. In a discussion on unequal marriages the question is raised whether even the very highest desert on a slave’s part could justify a father in taking him as a son-in-law. A speaker cites the case[931] of Old Cato, who married the daughter of his own colonus. Here we clearly have the tenant farmer in the second century BC In Plutarch the man appears as a client. Neither writer makes him a freedman in so many words. But it is probably the underlying fact. That the daughter was ingenua does not rule out this supposition.

=Velleius= and =Valerius Maximus= also belong to the reign of Tiberius. The former in what remains of his history supplies nothing to my purpose. Valerius made a collection of anecdotes from Roman and foreign histories illustrating various virtues and vices, classifying the examples of good and bad action under heads. They are ‘lifted’ from the works of earlier writers: many are taken from Livy, already used as a classic quarry. The book is pervaded by tiresome moralizing, and points of interest are few. There is the story of the farm[932] of Regulus, of the patriotic refusal[933] of M’ Curius to take more than the normal seven iugera of land as a reward from the state, of the horny-handed rustic voter[934] being asked whether he walked on his hands; also reference to the simple habits of the famous Catos, and a passing remark that the men of old had few slaves. Those of the above passages that are of any value at all have been noticed in earlier sections. The freedman =Phaedrus= gives us next to nothing in his fables, unless we care to note the items[935] of a farm-property, agellos pecora villam operarios boves iumenta et instrumentum rusticum, and a fable specially illustrating the fact that a master’s eye sees what escapes the notice of the slave-staff, even of the vilicus.

XXXI. SENECA THE YOUNGER.

The chief literary figure of the reigns of Claudius and Nero was =L Annaeus Seneca=, a son of the rhetorician above referred to, and like his father born in Spain. His life extended from 4 BC to 65 AD. For the purpose of the present inquiry his surviving works are mainly of interest as giving us in unmistakeable tones the point of view from which a man of Stoic principles regarded slavery as a social institution. The society of imperial Rome, in which he spent most of his life, was politically dead. To meddle with public affairs was dangerous. Even a senator needed to walk warily, for activity was liable to be misinterpreted by the Emperor and by his powerful freedmen[936], who were in effect Imperial Ministers. To keep on good terms with these departmental magnates, who had sprung from the slave-market to be courted as the virtual rulers of freeborn Roman citizens, was necessary for all men of note. Under such conditions it is not wonderful that the wealthy were tempted to assert themselves in ostentatious luxury and dissipation: for a life of careless debauchery was on the face of it hardly compatible with treasonable conspiracy. The immense slave-households of Rome were a part and an expression of this extravagance; and the fashion of these domestic armies was perhaps at its height in this period. Now, nothing kept the richer Romans in subjection more efficiently than this habit of living constantly exposed to the eyes and ears of their menials. Cruel laws might protect the master from assassination by presuming[937] the guilt of all slaves who might have prevented it. They could not protect him from the danger of criminal charges, such as treason[938], supported by servile evidence: indeed the slave was a potential informer, and a hated master was at the mercy of his slaves. Under some Emperors this possibility was a grim reality, and no higher or more heartfelt praise could be bestowed[939] on an Emperor than that he refused to allow masters to be done to death by the tongue of their slaves.

Meanwhile the slave was still legally[940] his (or her) master’s chattel, and cases of revolting cruelty[941] and other abominations occurred from time to time. Yet more humane and sympathetic views were already affecting public sentiment, chiefly owing to the spread of Stoic doctrines among the cultivated classes. Of these doctrines as adapted to Roman minds Seneca was the leading preacher. Thus he cites the definition of ‘slave’ as ‘wage-earner for life,’ propounded[942] by Chrysippus: he insists on the human quality common to slave and free alike: he reasserts the equality of human rights, only upset by Fortune, who has made one man master of another: he sees that the vices of slaves are very often simply the result of the misgovernment of their owners: he reckons them as humble members[943] of the family circle, perhaps even the former playmates of boyhood: he recommends a kindly consideration for a slave’s feelings, and admits[944] that some sensitive natures would prefer a flogging to a box on the ear or a harsh and contemptuous scolding. We need not follow up his doctrines in more detail. The general tone is evident and significant enough. But it is the relations of the domestic circle that he has primarily in view. His references to agriculture and rustic labour are few, as we might expect from the circumstances of his life. But we are in a better position to judge their value having considered his attitude towards slavery in general. It should be noted, as a specimen of his tendency to Romanize Greek doctrine, that he lays great stress on the more wholesome relations[945] of master and slave in the good old times of early Rome,—here too without special reference to the rustic households of the rude forefathers round which tradition centred.

Judged by a modern standard, a defect in Stoic principles was the philosophic aloofness from the common interests and occupations of ordinary workaday life. To the Wise Man all things save Virtue are more or less indifferent, and in the practice of professions and trades there is little or no direct connexion with Virtue. Contempt for manual labour, normal in the ancient world and indeed in all slaveowning societies, took a loftier position under the influence of Stoicism. Hence that system, in spite of its harsh and tiresome features, appealed to many of the better Romans of the upper class, seeming as it did to justify their habitual disdain. Seneca’s attitude towards handicrafts is much the same as Cicero’s, only with a touch of Stoic priggishness added. Wisdom, he says[946], is not a mere handworker (opifex) turning out appliances for necessary uses. Her function is more important: her craft is the art of living, and over other arts she is supreme. The quality of an artist’s action[947] depends on his motive: the sculptor may make a statue for money or to win fame or as a pious offering. Arts, as Posidonius[948] said, range from the ‘liberal’ ones to the ‘common and mean’ ones practised by handworkers: the latter have no pretence of moral dignity. Indeed many of these trades are quite unnecessary, the outcome of modern[949] extravagance. We could do without them, and be all the better for it: man’s real needs are small. But to work for a living is not in itself a degradation: did not the Stoic master Cleanthes draw water[950] for hire? In short, the Wise Man may be a king or a slave, millionaire or pauper. The externals cannot change his true quality, though they may be a help or a hindrance in his growth to perfect wisdom.

In his references to agriculture and country matters it is to be remarked that Seneca confirms the impression derived from other sources, that the letting of land to tenant farmers was on the increase. Discoursing on the greedy luxury of the rich, their monstrous kitchens and cellars, and the toiling of many to gratify the desires of one, he continues ‘Look at all the places where the earth is being tilled, and at all the thousands[951] of farmers (colonorum) ploughing and digging; is this, think you, to be reckoned one man’s belly, for whose service crops are being raised in Sicily and in Africa too?’ The coloni here mentioned may be merely ‘cultivators’ in a general sense. But I think they are more probably tenants of holdings on great estates. In speaking of his arrival at his Alban villa, and finding nothing ready for a meal, he philosophically refuses to let so small an inconvenience make him angry with his cook and his baker. ‘My baker[952] has got no bread; but the steward has some, and so have the porter and the farmer.’ A coarse sort of bread, no doubt, but you have only got to wait, and you will enjoy it when you are really hungry. Here we seem to have an instance of what was now probably an ordinary arrangement: the villa, homestead with some land round it, kept as a country ‘box’ for the master by his steward, who would see to the garden and other appurtenances, while the rest of the land is let to a humble tenant farmer. In another passage we have an interesting glimpse of a tenant’s legal position[953] as against his landlord. ‘If a landlord tramples down growing crops or cuts down plantations, he cannot keep his tenant, though the lease may be still in being: this is not because he has recovered what was due to him as lessor, but because he has made it impossible for him to recover it. Even so it often happens that a creditor is cast in damages to his debtor, when he has on other grounds taken from him more than the amount of the debt claimed.’ I gather from this passage that damage done by the lessor to the lessee’s interest in the farm deprived him of right of action against the lessee, in case he wanted to enforce some claim (for rent or for some special service) under the terms of the existing contract[954] of lease. If this inference be just, the evidence is important. For the colonus is conceived as a humble person, whose interest a brutal inconsiderate landlord would be not unlikely to disregard, and to whom a resort to litigation would seem a course to be if possible avoided.

To this question of the rights of landlord and tenant Seneca returns later, when engaged in reconciling the Stoic thesis that ‘all things belong to the Wise Man’ with the facts of actual life. The Wise Man is in the position of a King to whom belongs the general right of sovranty (imperium) while his subjects have the particular right of ownership (dominium). Illustrating the point he proceeds[955] thus. ‘Say I have hired a house from you. Of its contents some belong to you and some to me. The thing (res) is your property, but the right of user (usus) of your property is mine. Just so you must not meddle with crops, though grown on your own estate, if your tenant forbids it; and in a season of dearness or dearth you will be like the man in Vergil wistfully gazing at another’s plenteous store, though the land where it grew, the yard where it is stacked, and the granary it is meant to fill, are all your own property. Nor, when I have hired a lodging, have you a right to enter it, owner though you be: when a slave of yours is hired for service by me, you have no right to withdraw him: and, if I hire a trap from you and give you a lift, it will be a good turn on my part, though the conveyance belongs to you.’ I have quoted this at some length, in order to make the farm-tenant’s position quite clear. His rights are presumed to be easily ascertainable, and his assertion of them will be protected by the law. His contract, whether a formal lease or not, is also presumed to guarantee him complete control of the subject for the agreed term. Whether encroachments by landlords and legal proceedings for redress by tenants were common events in rural Italy, Seneca need not and does not say. I suspect that personal interest on both sides was in practice a more effective restraint than appeals to law.

There are other references to agricultural conditions, which though of less importance are interesting as confirming other evidence as to the latifundia of this period. A good specimen is found in his denunciation of human greed as the cause of poverty, by bringing to an end the happy age of primitive communism, when all shared the ownership of all. Cramped and unsatisfied, this avaritia can never find the way back to the old state of plenty and happiness. ‘Hence, though she now endeavour to make good[956] what she has wasted; though she add field to field by buying out her neighbours or wrongfully ejecting them; though she expand her country estates on the scale of provinces, and enjoy the sense of landlordism in the power of touring mile after mile without leaving her own domains; still no enlargement of bounds will bring us back to the point from whence we started.’ Again, in protesting against the luxurious ostentation of travellers and others, he shews that they are really in debt. ‘So-and-so is, you fancy, a rich man ... because he has arable estates[957] in all provinces of the empire ... because his holding of land near Rome is on a scale one would grudge him even in the wilds of Apulia.’ Such a man is in debt to Fortune. In these as in other passages the preacher illustrates his sermon by references calculated to bring home his points. Naturally he selects for the purpose matters familiar to his audience; and it is this alone that makes the passages worth quoting. The same may be said of his sympathetic reference[958] to the hard lot of a slave transferred from the easy duties of urban service to the severe toil of farm labour. In general it may be remarked that the evidence of Seneca and other literary men of this period is to be taken in connexion with the treatise of Columella, who is the contemporary specialist on agriculture. The prevalence of slave labour and the growth of the tenant-farmer class are attested by both lines of evidence.

XXXII. LUCAN, PETRONIUS, AND OTHERS.

=Lucan=, Seneca’s nephew, has a few interesting references in his poem on the great civil war. Thus, in the eloquent passage[959] lamenting the decay of Roman vital strength, a long process to be disastrously completed in the great Pharsalian battle, he dwells on the shrinkage of free Roman population in Italy. The towns and the countryside alike are empty, houses deserted, and it is by the labour of chained[960] slaves that Italian crops are raised. Elsewhere[961] he looks further back, and traces this decay to the effect of luxury and corruption caused by the influx of vast wealth, the spoils of Roman conquests. Among the symptoms of disease he notes the latifundia, which it was now becoming the fashion to denounce, the land-grabbing passion that prompted men to monopolize great tracts of land and incorporate in huge estates, worked by cultivators unknown[962] to them, farms that once had been ploughed and hoed by the rustic heroes of old. But all such utterances are merely a part of a declaimer’s stock-in-trade. We may fairly guess that they are echoes of talk heard in the literary circle of his uncle Seneca. That they are nevertheless consistent with the land-system of this period, is to be gathered from other sources, such as Petronius and Columella. It remains to note that the word colonus is used by Lucan in the senses of ‘cultivator’ and ‘farmer,’ rather suggesting ownership, and of ‘military colonist,’ clearly implying it. That of ‘tenant’ does not occur: there was no need for it in the poem. Again, he has servire servilis and servitium, but servus occurs only in a suspected[963] line, and as an adjective. His regular word for ‘slave’ is famulus.

The bucolic poems of this period are too manifestly artificial to serve as evidence of value. For instance, when =Calpurnius= declares[964] that in this blessed age of peace and prosperity the fossor is not afraid to profit by the treasure he may chance to dig up, we cannot infer that a free digger is meant, though it is hardly likely that a slave would be suffered to keep treasure-trove.

=Petronius=, in the curious mixed prose-verse satire of which part has come down to us, naturally says very little bearing directly on agriculture. But in depicting the vulgar freedman-millionaire Trimalchio he refers pointedly to the vast landed estates belonging to this typical figure of the period. He owns estates ‘far as the kites[965] can fly.’ This impression is confirmed in detail by a report delivered by the agent for his properties. It is a statement[966] of the occurrences in a domain of almost imperial proportions during a single day. So many children, male and female, were born: so many thousand bushels of wheat were stocked in the granary: so many hundred oxen broken in: a slave was crucified for disloyalty to his lord: so many million sesterces were paid in to the chest, no opening for investment presenting itself. On one park-estate (hortis) there was a great fire, which began in the steward’s house. Trimalchio cannot recall the purchase of this estate, which on inquiry turns out to be a recent acquisition not yet on the books. Then comes the reading of notices issued by officials[967] of the manors, of wills[968] made by rangers, of the names of his stewards; of a freedwoman’s divorce, the banishment of an atriensis, the committal of a cashier for trial, and the proceedings in court in an action between some chamberlains. Of course all this is not to be taken seriously, but we can form some notion of the state of things that the satirist has in mind. Too gross an exaggeration would have defeated his purpose. The book is full of passages bearing on the history of slavery, but it is domestic slavery, and that often of the most degrading character.

XXXIII. COLUMELLA.

The great interest taken in agriculture after the establishment of the Roman peace by Augustus is shewn by the continued appearance of works on the subject. The treatise of =Celsus=, who wrote in the time of Tiberius, was part of a great encyclopaedic work. It was probably one of the most important books of its kind: but it is lost, and we only know it as cited by other writers, such as Columella and the elder Pliny. It is from the treatise of =Columella=, composed probably under Nero, that we get most of our information as to Roman husbandry (rusticatio, as he often calls it) in the period of the earlier Empire. The writer was a native of Spain, deeply interested, like other Spanish Romans, in the past present and future of Italy. It is evident that in comparing the present with the past he could not avoid turning an uneasy eye to the future. Like others, he could see that agriculture, once the core of Roman strength, the nurse of a vigorous free population, was in a bad way. It was still the case that the choicest farm-lands of Italy were largely occupied by mansions and parks, the property of non-resident owners who seldom visited their estates, and hardly ever qualified themselves to superintend their management intelligently. The general result was hideous waste. In modern language, those who had command of capital took no pains to employ it in business-like farming: while the remaining free rustics lacked capital. Agriculture was likely to go from bad to worse under such conditions. The Empire would thus be weakened at its centre, and to a loyal Provincial, whose native land was part of a subject world grouped round that centre, the prospect might well seem bewildering. Columella was from the first interested in agriculture, on which his uncle[969] at Gades (Cadiz) was a recognized authority, and his treatise de re rustica is his contribution to the service of Rome.

The serious consequences of the decay of practical farming, and the disappearance of the small landowners tilling their own land, had long been recognized by thoughtful men. But the settlement of discharged soldiers on allotted holdings had not repopulated the countryside with free farmers. The old lamentations continued, but no means was found for solving the problem how to recreate a patient and prosperous yeoman class, firmly planted on the soil. Technical knowledge had gone on accumulating to some extent, though the authorities on agriculture, Greek Carthaginian or Roman, appealed to by Columella are mainly the same as those cited by Varro some eighty years before. The difficulty at both epochs was not the absence of knowledge but the neglect of its practical application. Columella, like his forerunners, insists on the folly[970] of buying more land than you can profitably manage. But it seems that the average wealthy landowner could not resist the temptation to round off[971] a growing estate by buying up more land when a favourable opportunity occurred. It is even hinted that ill-treatment[972] of a neighbour, to quicken the process by driving him to give up his land, was not obsolete. Moreover, great estates often consisted of separate holdings in different parts of the country. For owners of vast, and sometimes[973] scattered, estates to keep effective control over them was an occupation calling for qualities never too common, technical skill and indefatigable industry. The former could, if combined with perfect honesty, be found in an ideal deputy; but the deputy, to be under complete control, must be a slave: and, the more skilled the slave, the better able he was to conceal dishonesty. Therefore, the more knowledge and watchful attentiveness was needed in the master. Now it is just this genuine and painstaking interest in the management of their estates that Columella finds lacking in Roman landlords. They will not live[974] in the country, where they are quickly bored and miss the excitements of the city, and My Lady detests country life even more than My Lord. But they will not even take the trouble to procure good[975] Stewards, let alone watching them so as to keep them industrious and honest. Thus the management of estates has generally passed from masters to vilici, and the domestic part of the duties even more completely from house-mistresses to vilicae. As to the disastrous effect of the change upon rustic economy, the writer entertains no doubt. But the evil was no new phenomenon. It may well be that it was now more widespread than in Varro’s time; but in both writers we may perhaps suspect some degree of overstatement, to which reformers are apt to resort in depicting the abuses they are wishing to reform. I do not allow much for this consideration, for the picture, confirmed by general literary evidence, is in the main unquestionably true.

So much for the case of estates administered by slave stewards for the account of their masters. But this was not the only way of dealing with landed properties. We have already noted the system of letting farms to cultivating tenants, and commented on the fewness of the references to it in literature. This plan may have been very ancient in origin, but it was probably an exceptional arrangement even in the time of Cicero. The very slight notice of it by Varro indicates that it was not normal, indeed not even common. In Columella we find a remarkable change. In setting out the main principles[976] of estate management, and insisting on the prime importance of the owner’s attention (cura domini), he adds that this is necessary above all things in relation to the persons concerned (in hominibus). Now the homines are coloni or servi, and are unchained or chained. After this division and subdivision he goes on to discuss briefly but thoroughly the proper relations between landlord and tenant-farmer, the care needed in the selection of satisfactory tenants, and the considerations that must guide a landlord in deciding whether to let a piece of land to a tenant or to farm it for his own account. He advises him to be obliging and easy in his dealings with tenants, and more insistent in requiring their work or service (opus)[977] than their rent (pensiones): this plan is less irritating, and after all it pays better in the long run. For, barring risks of storms or brigands, good farming nearly always leaves a profit, so that the tenant has not the face to claim[978] a reduction of rent. A landlord should not be a stickler for trifles or mean in the matter of little perquisites, such as cutting firewood, worrying his tenant unprofitably. But, while waiving the full rigour of the law, he should not omit to claim his dues in order to keep alive his rights: wholesale remission is a mistake. It was well said by a great landowner that the greatest blessing for an estate is when the tenants are natives[979] of the place, a sort of hereditary occupiers, attached to it by the associations of their childhood’s home. Columella agrees that frequent changes of tenant are a bad business. But there is a worse; namely the town-bred[980] tenant, who prefers farming with a slave staff to turning farmer himself. It was a saying of Saserna, that out of a fellow of this sort you generally get not your rent but a lawsuit. His advice then was, take pains to get country-bred farmers[981] and keep them in permanent tenancy: that is, when you are not free to farm your own land, or when it does not suit your interest to farm it with a slave staff. This last condition, says Columella, only refers to the case of lands derelict[982] through malaria or barren soil.

There are however farms on which it is the landlord’s own interest to place tenants rather than work them by slaves for his own account. Such are distant holdings, too out-of-the-way for the proprietor to visit them easily. Slaves out of reach of constant inspection will play havoc with any farm, particularly one on which corn is grown. They let out the oxen for hire, neglect the proper feeding of live stock, shirk the thorough turning of the earth, and in sowing tending harvesting and threshing the crop they waste and cheat you to any extent. No wonder the farm gets a bad name thanks to your steward and staff. If you do not see your way to attend in person to an estate of this kind, you had better let it to a tenant. From these remarks it seems clear that the writer looks upon letting land to tenant farmers as no more than an unwelcome alternative, to be adopted only in the case of farms bad in quality or out of easy reach. Indeed he says frankly that, given fair average conditions, the owner can always get better returns by managing a farm himself than by letting it to a tenant: he may even do better by leaving the charge to a steward, unless of course that steward happens to be an utterly careless or thievish fellow. Taking this in connexion with his remarks about stewards elsewhere, the net result seems to be that a landlord must choose in any given case what he judges to be the less of two evils.

A few points here call for special consideration. In speaking of the work or service (opus) that a landlord may require of a tenant, as distinct from rent, what does Columella precisely mean? It has been held[983] that he refers to the landlord’s right of insisting that his land shall be well farmed. This presumably implies a clause in the lease under which such a right could be enforced. But there are difficulties. In the case of a distant farm, let to a tenant because it has ‘to do without the presence[984] of the landlord,’ the right would surely be inoperative in practice. In the case of a neighbouring farm, why has the landlord not kept it in hand, putting in a steward to manage it? This interpretation leaves us with no clear picture of a practical arrangement. But this objection is perhaps not fatal. The right to enforce proper cultivation is plainly guaranteed to landlords in Roman Law, as the jurists constantly assert in discussing tenancies. And opus is a term employed[985] by them in this connexion. It is therefore the safer course to take it here in this sense, and to allow for a certain want of clearness in Columella’s phrase. At the same time it is tempting to accept another[986] view, namely this, that the writer has in mind service rendered in the form of a stipulated amount of auxiliary labour on the landlord’s ‘Home Farm’ at certain seasons. That a corvée arrangement of this kind existed as a matter of course on some estates, we have direct evidence[987] in the second century, evidence that suggests an earlier origin for the custom. True, it implies that landlords were in practice able to impose the burden of such task-work on their free tenants, in short that they had the upper hand in the bargain between the parties. But this is not surprising: for we read[988] of a great landlord calling up his coloni to serve on his private fleet in the great civil war, a hundred years before Columella. Still, it is perhaps rash to see in this passage a direct reference to the custom of making the supply of auxiliary labour at certain seasons a part of tenant’s obligations. Granting this, it is nevertheless reasonable to believe that the first beginnings of the custom may belong to a date at least as early as the treatise of Columella. For it is quite incredible that such a practice should spring up and become prevalent suddenly. It has all the marks of gradual growth.

Another point of interest is the criticism of the town-bred colonus. He prefers to work the farm with a slave staff, rather than undertake the job himself. I gather from this that he is a man with capital, also that he means to get a good return on his capital. He fears to make a loss on a rustic venture, being well aware of his own inexperience. So he will put in a steward with a staff of slaves. The position of the steward will in such a case be peculiarly strong. If he is slack and thievish and lets down the farm, he can stave off his master’s anger by finding fault with the soil or buildings, and involve the tenant and landlord in a quarrel over the rent. To devise pretexts would be easy for a rogue, and a quarrel might end in a lawsuit. That Saserna, writing probably about 100 BC, laid his finger on this possible source of trouble, is significant. It is evidence that there were tenant-farmers in his time, and bad ones among them: but not that they were then numerous, or that their general character was such as to make landlords let their estates in preference to managing them through their own stewards for their own account. And this agrees with Columella’s own opinion some 150 years later. If you are to let farms to tenants, local men who are familiar with local conditions are to be preferred, but he gives no hint that such tenants could readily be found. His words seem rather to imply that they were rare.

One point is hardly open to misunderstanding. In Columella’s system the typical tenant-farmer, the colonus to be desired by a wise landlord, is a humble person, to whom small perquisites are things of some importance. He is not a restless or ambitious being, ever on the watch for a chance of putting his landlord in the wrong or a pretext for going to law. Such as we see him in the references of Seneca, and later in those of the younger Pliny and Martial, such he appears in Columella. For the landlord it is an important object to keep him—when he has got him—and to have his son ready as successor in the tenancy. From other sources we know[989] that the value of long undisturbed tenancies are generally recognized. But we have little or nothing to shew whether the tenant-farmers of this age usually worked with their own hands or not. That they employed slave labour is not only a priori probable, but practically certain. We have evidence that at a somewhat later date it was customary[990] for the landlord to provide land farmstead (villa) and equipment (instrumentum), and we know that under this last head slaves could be and were concluded. It is evident that the arrangement belongs to the decisive development of the tenancy system as a regular alternative to that of farming by a steward for landlord’s own account. The desirable country-bred tenant would not be a man[991] of substantial capital, and things had to be made easy for him. It is not clear that a tenant bringing his own staff of slaves would have been welcomed as lessee: from the instance of the town-bred colonus just referred to it seems likely that he would not.

While Columella prescribes letting to tenants as the best way of solving the difficulties in dealing with outlying farms, he does not say that this plan should not be adopted in the case of farms near the main estate or ‘Home Farm.’ I think this silence is intentional. It is hard to believe that there were no instances of landlords either wholly non-resident or who so seldom visited their estates that they could not possibly keep an eye on the doings of stewards. In such cases there would be strong inducement to adopt the plan by which they could simply draw rents and have no stewards to look after. That stewards needed to be carefully watched was as clear to Columella as to Cato or Varro. True, letting to tenants was a policy liable to bring troubles of its own. We shall see in the case of the younger Pliny what they were and how he met them. Meanwhile he may serve as an example of the system. It is also plain that a large continuous property could be divided[992] into smaller parcels for convenience of letting to tenants. Whether the later plan of keeping a considerable Home Farm in hand under a steward, and letting off the outer parcels of the same estate to tenants, was in vogue already and contemplated by Columella, is not easy to say. In connexion with this question it is to be noted that he hardly refers at all to free hired labour[993] as generally available. The migratory gangs of wage-earners, still known to Varro, do not appear, nor do the itinerant medici. When he speaks of hiring hands at any price, or of times when labour is cheap, he may mean hiring somebody’s slaves, and probably does. Slave labour is undoubtedly the basis of his farm-system, and its elaborate organization fills an important part of his book. Yet two marked consequences of the Roman Peace had to be taken into account. Fewer wars meant fewer slaves in the market, and a rise of prices: peace and law in Italy meant that big landowners could add field to field more securely than ever, while great numbers of citizens were settling in the Provinces, taking advantage of better openings[994] there. To keep some free labour within call as an occasional resource was an undeniable convenience for a large owner with a farm in hand. Small tenants[995] under obligation to render stipulated service at certain seasons would obviously supply the labour needed. And, if we picture to ourselves a Home Farm round the lord’s mansion, worked by steward and slave staff, with outlying ‘soccage’ tenants on holdings near, we are already in presence of a rudimentary Manor. As time went by, and the system got into regular working order, the landlord had an opportunity of strengthening his hold on the tenants. By not pressing them too severely for arrears of rent, and occasionally granting abatements, he could gradually increase their services. What he thus saved on his own labour-bill might well be more than a set-off against the loss of money-rents. More and more the tenants would become dependent on him. Nominally free, they were becoming tied to the soil on onerous terms, and the foundation was laid of the later relation of Lord and Serf.

Such I conceive to be the rustic situation the beginnings of which are probably to be placed as early as Columella’s time, though we do not find him referring to it. He says nothing of another point, which was of importance[996] later, namely the admission of slaves or freedmen as tenants of farms. It has all the appearance of a subsequent step, taken when the convenience of services rendered by resident tenants had been demonstrated by experience. It is no great stretch of imagination to suggest that, as the supply of slaves fell off, it was the policy of owners to turn their slave-property to the best possible account. When a steward or a gang-foreman was no longer in his prime, able (as Columella enjoins) to turn to and shew the common hands how work should be done, how could he best be utilized? A simple plan was to put him on a small farm with a few slave labourers. This would secure the presence of a tenant whose dependence was certain from the first, while a younger man could be promoted to the arduous duties of the big Home Farm. Be this as it may, it is certain that problems arising from shortage of slaves were presenting themselves in the middle of the first century AD. For slave-breeding, casual in Cato’s day and incidentally mentioned by Varro, is openly recognized by Columella, who allows for a larger female element in his farm staff and provides rewards for their realized fertility.

If the system of farm-tenancies was already becoming a part of land-management so important as the above remarks may seem to imply, why does the management of a landed estate for landlord’s account under a steward occupy almost the whole of Columella’s long treatise? I think there are several reasons. First, it is management of tillage-crops and gardens and live stock with which he is chiefly concerned, not tenures and labour-questions: and technical skill in agriculture is of interest to all connected with it, though the book is primarily addressed to landlords. Secondly, the desirable tenant was (and is) a man not much in need of being taught his business: as for an undesirable one, the sooner he is got rid of the better. Thirdly, the plan of steward-management was still the normal one: the only pity was that the indolence of owners led to appointment of bad stewards and left them too much power. Only sound knowledge can enable landlords to choose good stewards and check bad management. Seeing agriculture in a bad way, Columella writes to supply this knowledge, as Cato Varro and others had done before him. Accordingly he begins with the general organization of the normal large estate, and first discusses the choice and duties of the vilicus, on whose character and competence everything depends. To this subject he returns in a later part of the treatise, and the two passages[997] enforce the same doctrine with very slight variations in detail.

The steward[998] must not be a fancy-slave, a domestic from the master’s town house, but a well-tried hardy rustic, or at the very least one used to hard labour. He must not be too old, or he may break down under the strain; nor too young, or the elder slaves will not respect him. He must be a skilled farmer (this is most important)[999], or at least thoroughly painstaking, so as to pick up the business quickly: for the functions of teaching and giving orders cannot be separated. He need not be able to read and write, if his memory be very retentive. It is a remark of Celsus, that a steward of this sort brings his master cash more often than a book: for he cannot make up false accounts himself, and fears to trust an accomplice. But, good bad or indifferent, a steward must have a female partner[1000] allotted him, to be a restraining influence on him and in some respects a help. Being[1001] his master’s agent, he must be enjoined not to live on terms of intimacy with any of the staff, and still less with any outsider. Yet he may now and then invite a deserving worker to his table on a feast-day. He must not do sacrifice[1002] without orders, or meddle with divination. He must attend markets only on strict business, and not gad about, unless it be to pick up wrinkles[1003] for the farm, and then only if the place visited be close at hand. He must not allow new pathways to be made on the farm, or admit as guests any but his master’s intimate friends. He must be instructed to attend carefully[1004] to the stock of implements and tools, keeping everything in duplicate and in good repair, so that there need be no borrowing from neighbours: for the waste of working time thus caused is a more serious item than the cost of such articles. He is to see to the clothing[1005] of the staff (familiam) in practical garments that will stand wet and cold: this done, some work in the open is possible in almost any weather. He should be not only an expert in farm labour, but a man of the highest mental and moral character[1006] compatible with a slave-temperament. For his rule should be sympathetic but firm: he should not be too hard[1007] upon the worse hands, while he encourages the better ones, but aim at being feared for his strictness rather than loathed for harshness. The way to achieve this is to watch and prevent, not to overlook and then punish. Even the most inveterate rogues are most effectively controlled by insisting on performance[1008] of their tasks, ensuring them their due rights, and by the steward being always on the spot. Under these conditions the various foremen[1009] will take pains to carry out their several duties, while the common hands, tired out, will be more inclined to go to sleep than to get into mischief. Some good old usages tending to promote content and good feeling are unhappily gone beyond recall, for instance[1010] the rule that a steward must not employ a fellow-slave’s services on any business save that of his master. But he must not suffer them to stray off the estate unless he sends them on errands; and this only if absolutely necessary. He must not do any trading[1011] on his own account, or employ his master’s cash in purchase of beasts etc. For this distracts a steward’s attention, and prevents the correct balancing of his accounts at the audit, when he can only produce goods instead of money. In general, the first[1012] requisite is that he should be free from conceit and eager to learn. For in farming mistakes can never be redeemed: time lost is never regained: each thing must be done right, once for all.

The above is almost a verbal rendering of Columella’s words. At this point we may fairly pause to ask whether he seriously thought that an ordinary landlord had much chance of securing such a paragon of virtue as this pattern steward. That all these high bodily mental and moral qualities combined in one individual could be bought in one lot at an auction[1013] must surely have been a chance so rare as to be hardly worth considering as a means of agricultural development. I take it that the importance of extreme care in selecting the right man, and in keeping him to his duties, is insisted on as a protest against the culpable carelessness of contemporary landlords, of which he has spoken severely above. If, as I believe, in the great majority of cases a new steward required much instruction as to the details of his duties and as to the spirit in which he was both to rule the farm-staff and to serve his master, surely the part to be played by the master himself[1014] was of fundamental importance: indeed little less so than in the scheme of old Cato. To Columella I am convinced that his recommendations stood for an ideal seldom, if ever, likely to be realized. To say this is not to blame the good man, but rather to hint that his precepts in general must not be taken as evidence of a state of things then normally to be found existing on farms. To express aspirations confesses the shortcomings of achievement.

To return to our author’s precepts. He goes on to tell us of his own way of treating[1015] his farm-hands, remarking that he has not regretted his kindness. He talks to a rustic slave (provided he is a decent worker) more often, and more as man to man (familiarius) than he does to a town slave. It relieves the round of their toil. He even exchanges pleasantries with them. He discusses new work-projects with the skilled hands and so tests their abilities: this flatters them, and they are more ready to work on a job on which they have been consulted. There are other points of management on which all prudent masters are agreed, for instance the inspection[1016] of the slaves in the lock-up. This is to ascertain whether they are carefully chained, and the chamber thoroughly secured, and whether the steward has chained or released any of them without his master’s knowledge. For he must not be permitted to release the chained on his own responsibility. The paterfamilias should be all the more particular in his inquiries as to slaves of this class, to see that they are dealt with fairly in matters of clothing and rations, inasmuch as they are under the control[1017] of several superiors, stewards foremen and warders. This position exposes them to unfair treatment, and they are apt to be more dangerous through resenting harshness and stinginess. So a careful master should question them as to whether they are getting[1018] their due allowance. He should taste their food and examine their clothes etc. He should hear and redress grievances, punish the mutinous, and reward the deserving. Columella then relates[1019] his own policy in dealing with female slaves. When one of them had reared three or more children she was rewarded: for 3 she was granted a holiday, for 4 she was manumitted. This is only fair, and it is a substantial increment[1020] to your property. In general, a landlord is enjoined to observe religious duties, and to inspect the whole estate immediately on his arrival from Town, checking all items carefully. This done regularly year after year, he will enjoy order and obedience on his estate in his old age.

Next comes a general statement of the proper classification of the slave staff according to varieties[1021] of function. For departmental foremen you should choose steady honest fellows, watchfulness and skill being needed rather than brute strength. The hind or plowman must be a big man with a big voice, that the oxen may obey him. And the taller he is the better will he throw his weight on the plough-tail. The mere unskilled labourer[1022] only needs to be fit for continuous hard work. For instance, in a vineyard you want a thickset type of labourer to stand the digging etc, and if they are rogues it does not matter much, as they work in a gang under an overseer (monitore[1023]). By the by, a scamp is generally more quick-witted than the average, and vineyard work calls for intelligence: this is why chained hands[1024] are commonly employed there. Of course, he adds, an honest man is more efficient than a rogue, other things being equal: don’t charge me with a preference for criminals. Another piece of advice is to avoid[1025] mixing up the various tasks performed by the staff on the plan of making every labourer do every kind of work. It does not pay in farming. Either what is every one’s business is felt to be nobody’s duty in particular; or the effort of the individual is credited to the whole of the gang. This sets him shirking, and yet you cannot single out the offender; and this sort of thing is constantly happening. Therefore keep plowmen vineyard-hands and unskilled labourers apart. Then he passes to numerical[1026] divisions. Squads (classes) should be of not more than ten men each, decuriae as the old name was, that the overseer may keep his eye on all. By spreading such squads over different parts of a large farm it is possible to compare results, to detect laziness, and to escape the irritating unfairness of punishing the wrong men.

The general impression left on a reader’s mind by Columella’s principles of slave-management is one of strict control tempered by judicious humanity. It pays not to be harsh and cruel. Whether we can fairly credit him with disinterested sympathy on grounds of a common human nature, such as Seneca was preaching, seems to me very doubtful. That he regarded the slave as a sort of domesticated animal, cannot so far as I know be gathered from direct statements, but may be inferred by just implication from his use of the same language in speaking of slaves and other live stock. Thus we find[1027] the ‘labouring herd,’ and ‘draught-cattle when they are putting in a good spell of work.’ So too the steward is to drive home his slave-gang at dusk ‘after the fashion[1028] of a first-rate herdsman,’ and on arrival first of all to attend to their needs ‘like a careful shepherd.’ The motive of this care is to keep the staff in good working order. Both steward and stewardess are required to pay great attention to the health of the staff. Not only are there prescriptions given for treatment of ailments and injuries, but the slave really stale from overwork is to have a rest; of course malingering must be checked. For the sick there is a special[1029] sick-room, always kept clean and aired, and the general sanitation of the farmstead is strictly enforced. This too is dictated by enlightened self-interest, a part of the general rule[1030] that upkeep is as important as acquisition. The position of the female staff of the farm has also a bearing on this subject. They do not appear to be numerous, though perhaps proportionally more so than in the scheme of Varro. The vilica has a number of maids under her for doing the various house-work[1031] and spinning and weaving. We have already noted the rewards of fertility on their part. For the production of home-bred slaves (vernae), always a thing welcomed by proprietors, is most formally recognized by Columella. Why it needed encouragement may perhaps receive some illustration from remarks upon the behaviour of certain birds in the matter of breeding. Thus peafowl do well in places where they can run at large, and the hens take more pains to rear their chicks, being so to speak[1032] set free from slavery. And other birds there are that will not breed in captivity. The analogy of these cases to that of human slaves can hardly have escaped the notice of the writer.

The distinction between the slaves who are chained and those who are not appears the more striking from Columella’s references to the lock-up chamber or slave-prison. His predecessors pass lightly over this matter, but he gives it the fullest recognition. The ergastulum should be a chamber[1033] below ground level, as healthy as you can get, lighted by a number of slits in the wall so high above the floor as to be out of a man’s reach. This dungeon is only for the refractory slaves, chained and constantly inspected. For the more submissive ones cabins (cellae) are provided in healthy spots near their work but not so scattered as to make observation difficult. There is even a bath house[1034], which the staff are allowed to use on holidays only: much bathing is weakening. Whether on an average farm the chained or unchained slaves are assumed to be the majority is not quite clear; probably the unchained, to judge by the general tone of the precepts. But that a lock-up is part of the normal establishment is clear enough. And it is to be noted that in one passage[1035] ergastula are mentioned in ill-omened juxtaposition with citizens enslaved by their creditors. Whether it is implied that unhappy debtors were still liable to be locked up as slaves in creditors’ dungeons as of old, is not easy to say. Columella is capable of rhetorical flourishes now and then. It is safer to suppose that he is referring to two forms of slave-labour; first, the working off arrears of debt[1036] by labour of a servile kind; second, the wholesale slave-gang system suggested by the significant word ergastula. Or are we to read into it a reference to the kidnapping[1037] of wayfarers which Augustus and Tiberius had striven to put down? Before we leave the subject of the slave-staff it is well to note that no prospect of freedom is held out, at least to the males. Fertility, as we have seen, might lead to manumission of females. But we are not told what use they were likely to make of their freedom, when they had got it. My belief is that they stayed on the estate as tolerated humble dependants; for they would have no other home. Some were natives of the place, and the imported ones would have lost all touch with their native lands. Perhaps the care of poultry[1038] is a specimen of the various minor functions in which they could make themselves useful. At all events they were free from fetters and the lash. And the men too may have been occasionally manumitted on the same sort of terms. Silence does not prove a negative. For instance, we hear of peculium, the slave’s quasi-property, only incidentally[1039] as being derived from pecus. Yet we are not entitled to say that slaves were not free to make savings under the system of Columella.

Though the vilicus appears in this treatise as the normal head of the management, there are signs that this was not the last word in estate-organization. That he is sometimes[1040] referred to as being the landlord’s agent (actor), but usually not, rather suggests that he could be, and often was, confined to a more restricted sphere of duty, namely the purely agricultural superintendence of the farm in hand. This would make him a mere farm-bailiff, directing operations on the land, but with little or no responsibility for such matters as finance. And in a few passages we have mention of a procurator. This term must be taken in its ordinary sense[1041] as signifying the landlord’s ‘attorney’ or full legal representative. He is to keep an eye on the management, for instance[1042] the threshing-floor, if the master is not at hand. The position of his quarters indicates his importance: as the steward’s lodging is to be where he can watch goings-out and comings-in, so that of the procurator is to be where[1043] he can have a near view of the steward as well as doings in general. Judging from the common practice of the day, it is probable that he would be a freedman. Now, why does Columella, after referring to him thus early in the treatise, proceed to ignore him afterwards? The only reasonable explanation that occurs to me is that the appointment of such an official would only be necessary in exceptional cases: in short, that in speaking of a procurator he implies an unexpressed reservation ‘supposing such a person to be employed.’ Circumstances that might lead to such an appointment are not far to seek. The landlord might be abroad for a long time on public duty or private business. There might be large transactions pending (purchases, sales, litigation, etc) in connexion with the estate or neighbourhood; in the case of a very large estate this was not unlikely. The estate might be one of several owned by the same lord, and the procurator intermittently resident on one or other as from time to time required. Or lastly the services of an agent with full legal powers may have been desirable in dealing with free tenantry. If a landlord had a number of tenant farmers on his estates, it is most unlikely that his vilici, slaves as they were, would be able to keep a firm hand[1044] on them: and the fact of his letting his farms surely suggests that he would not desire to have much rent-collecting or exaction of services to do himself.

One point in which Columella’s system seems to record a change from earlier usage may be found in the comparative disuse of letting out special jobs to contractors. In one passage[1045], when discussing the trenching-work required in pastinatio, and devices for preventing the disputes arising from bad execution of the same, he refers to conductor as well as dominus. The interests of the two are liable to clash, and he tries to shew a means of ensuring a fair settlement between the parties without going to law. I understand the conductor to be a man who has contracted for the job at an agreed price, and exactor operis just below to be the landlord, whose business it is to get full value for his money. Thus conductor here will be the same as the redemptor so often employed in the scheme of Cato. I cannot find further traces of him in Columella. Nor is the sale of a hanging[1046] crop or a season’s lambs to a speculator referred to. But we have other authority for believing that contracts of this kind were not obsolete, and it is probable that the same is true of contracts for special operations. That such arrangements were nevertheless much rarer than in Cato’s time seems to be a fair inference. The manifest reluctance[1047] to hire external labour also points to the desire of getting, so far as possible, all farming operations performed by the actual farm-staff. If I have rightly judged the position of tenant farmers, it is evident that their stipulated services would be an important help in enabling the landlord to dispense with employment of contractors’ gangs on the farm. This was in itself desirable: that the presence of outsiders was unsettling to your own slaves had long been remarked, and in the more elaborate organization of Columella’s day disturbing influences would be more apprehensively regarded than ever.

It is hardly necessary to follow out all the details of this complicated system and enumerate the various special functions assigned to the members of the staff. To get good foremen even at high prices was one of the leading principles: an instance[1048] is seen in the case of vineyards, where we hear of a thoroughly competent vinitor, whose price is reckoned at about £80 of our money, the estimated value of about 4½ acres of land. The main point is that it is a system of slave labour on a large scale, and that Columella, well aware that such labour is in general wasteful, endeavours to make it remunerative by strict order and discipline. He knows very well that current lamentations over the supposed exhaustion[1049] of the earth’s fertility are mere evasions of the true causes of rural decay, neglect and ignorance. He knows that intensive cultivation[1050] pays well, and cites striking instances. But the public for whom he writes is evidently not the men on small holdings, largely market-gardeners[1051], who were able to make a living with or without slave-help, at all events when within reach of urban markets. He addresses men of wealth, most of whom were proud of their position as landlords, but presumably not unwilling to make their estates more remunerative, provided the effort did not give them too much trouble. This condition was the real difficulty; and it is hard to believe that Columella, when insisting on the frequent presence of the master’s eye, was sanguine enough to expect a general response. His attitude towards pastoral industry seems decidedly less enthusiastic than that of his predecessors. Stock[1052] must be kept on the farm, partly to eat off your own fodder-crops, but chiefly for the sake of supplying manure for the arable land. In quoting Cato’s famous saying on the profitableness of grazing, he agrees that nothing pays so quickly as good grazing, and that moderately good grazing pays well enough. But if, as some versions have it, he really said that even bad grazing was the next best thing for a farmer, Columella respectfully dissents. The breeding and fattening of all manner of animals for luxurious tables[1053] remains much the same as in the treatise of Varro. A curious caution is given[1054] in discussing the fattening of thrushes. They are to be fed with ‘dried figs beaten up with fine meal, as much as they can eat or more. Some people chew the figs before giving them to the birds. But it is hardly worth while to do this if you have a large number to feed, for it costs money to hire[1055] persons to do the chewing, and the sweet taste makes them swallow a good deal themselves.’ Now, why hire labour for such a purpose? Is it because slaves would swallow so much of the sweet stuff that your thrushes would never fatten?

It is well known that importation of corn from abroad led to great changes in Italian agriculture in the second century BC. The first was the formation of great estates worked by slave-gangs, which seems to have begun as an attempt to compete with foreign large-scale farming in the general production of food-stuffs. If so, it was gradually discovered that it did not pay to grow cereal crops for the market, unscrupulous in slave-driving though the master might be. Therefore attention was turned to the development on a larger scale of the existing culture of the vine and olive and the keeping of great flocks and herds. Food for these last had to be found on the farm in the winter, and more and more it became usual only to grow cereals as fodder for the stock, of course including the slaves. No doubt there was a demand for the better sorts, such as wheat, in all the country towns, but the farms in their immediate neighbourhood would supply the need. That Columella assumes produce of this kind to be normally consumed on the place, is indicated by his recommending[1056] barley as good food for all live-stock, and for slaves when mixed with wheat. Also by his treating the delicate[1057] white wheat, much fancied in Rome, as a degenerate variety, not worth the growing by a practical farmer. His instructions for storage shew the same point of view. The structure and principles of granaries[1058] are discussed at length, and the possibility of long storage[1059] is contemplated. The difficulties of transport by land had certainly been an important influence in the changes of Roman husbandry, telling against movements of bulky produce. Hence the value attached[1060] to situations near the seaboard or a navigable stream (the latter not a condition often to be realized in Italy) by Columella and his predecessors. Military roads served the traveller as well as the armies, but took no regard[1061] of agricultural needs. Moreover they had special[1062] drawbacks. Wayfarers had a knack of pilfering from farms on the route, and someone or other was always turning up to seek lodging and entertainment. Thus it was wise not to plant your villa close to one of these trunk roads, or your pocket was likely to suffer. But to have a decent approach[1063] by a country road was a great convenience, facilitating the landlord’s periodical visits and the carriage of goods to and from the estate.

Certain words call for brief notice. Thus opera, the average day’s work of an average worker, is Columella’s regular labour-unit in terms of which he expresses the labour-cost[1064] of an undertaking. In no other writer is this more marked. Occasionally operae occurs in the well-known concrete sense[1065] of the ‘hands’ themselves. The magistri mentioned are not always the foremen spoken of above, but sometimes[1066] directors or teachers in a general sense or even as a sort of synonym for professores. To recur once again to colonus, the word, as in other writers, often means simply ‘cultivator,’ not ‘tenant-farmer.’ The latter special sense occurs in a passage[1067] which would be useful evidence for the history of farm-tenancies, if it were not doubtful whether the text is sound.

There remains a question, much more than a merely literary problem, as to the true relation of Columella to Vergil. That he constantly quotes the poet, and cites him as an authority on agriculture, is a striking fact. One instance will shew the deep veneration with which he regards the great master. In speaking[1068] of the attention to local qualities of climate and soil needed in choosing an estate, he quotes lines from the first Georgic, the matter of which is quite traditional, common property. But he speaks of Vergil (to name the poet[1069] was unnecessary) as a most realistic[1070] bard, to be trusted as an oracle. Nay, so irresistible is to him the influence of Vergil, that he must needs cast his own tenth book into hexameter verse: the subject of that book is gardens, a topic on which Vergil had confessedly[1071] not fully said his say. And yet in the treatment of the land-question there is a fundamental difference between the two writers. Columella’s system is based on slave labour organized to ensure the completest efficiency: Vergil practically ignores slavery altogether. Columella advises you to let land to tenant farmers whenever you cannot effectively superintend the working of slave-organizations under stewards: Vergil ignores this solution also, and seems vaguely to contemplate a return to the system of small farms owned and worked by free yeomen in an idealized past. Columella is concerned to see that capital invested in land is so employed as to bring in a good economic return: Vergil dreams of the revival of a failing race, and possible economic success and rustic wellbeing are to him not so much ends as means. The contrast is striking enough. In the chapter on Vergil I have already pointed out that the poet had at once captured the adoration of the Roman world. It was not only in quotations or allusions, or in the incense of praise, that his supremacy was held in evidence so long as Latin literature remained alive. His influence affected prose style also, and subtle reminiscences of Vergilian flavour maybe traced in Tacitus. But all this is very different from the practice of citing him as an authority on a special subject, as Columella did and the elder Pliny did after him.

I would venture to connect this practice with the Roman habit of viewing their own literature as inspired by Greek models and so tending to move on parallel lines. Cicero was not content to be a Roman Demosthenes; he must needs try to be a Roman Plato too, if not also a Roman Aristotle. Now citation of the Homeric poems as a recognized authority on all manner of subjects, not to mention casual illustrations, runs through Greek literature. Plato and Aristotle are good instances. It is surely not surprising that we find Roman writers patriotically willing to cite their own great poet, more especially as the Georgics lay ready to hand. In the next generation after Columella, Quintilian framed his criticism[1072] of the two literatures (as food for oratorical students) on frankly parallel lines. Vergil is the pair to Homer: second to the prince of singers, but a good second: and he is quoted and cited throughout the treatise as Homer is in Aristotle’s Rhetoric. True, the cases are not really parallel. Whatever preexistent material may have served to build up the Homeric poems, they are at least not didactic poems, made up of precepts largely derived from technical writers, and refined into poetic form with mature and laborious skill. To quote the Georgics, not only for personal observation of facts but for guiding precepts, is often to quote a secondary authority in a noble dress, and serves but for adornment. But in such a consideration there would be nothing to discourage Roman literary men. To challenge Vergil’s authority on a rustic subject remained the prerogative of Seneca.

Additional note to page 263

Varro de lingua Latina VII § 105 says liber qui suas operas in servitutem pro pecunia quadam debebat dum solveret nexus vocatur, ut ab aere obaeratus. This antiquarian note is of interest as illustrating the meaning of operae, and the former position of the debtor as a temporary slave.

AGE OF THE FLAVIAN AND ANTONINE EMPERORS

XXXIV. GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

It is not easy to find a satisfactory line of division between the period of the Flavian emperors and that of the adoptive series that came after them. The Plebeian Flavians had no family claim, through birth or adoption, to a preeminent position in the Roman world, and the rise of Vespasian to power was indeed a revolution. Henceforth, though outward forms and machinery remained, the real control of the empire rested with those supported directly or indirectly by the great armies. But the sound administrative policy set going by the common sense of Vespasian long maintained the imperial fabric in strength, and it is commonly held that from 69 to 180 AD was the Empire’s golden age. Nevertheless its vitality was already ebbing, and the calamities that beset it in the days of Marcus Aurelius found it unable to renew its vigour after holding in check its barbarian invaders. The Flavian-Antonine period must be treated as one, and from the point of view of the present inquiry certain significant facts must always be borne in mind. The Italian element in the armies was becoming less and less. Military policy consisted chiefly in defence of the frontiers, for the annexations of Trajan were not lasting, and they exhausted strength needed for defence. It was an ominous sign that the Roman power of assimilation was failing. Mixed armies of imperfectly Romanized soldiery, whether as conquerors or as settlers, could not spread Roman civilization in the same thorough way as it had become at length established in Spain or southern Gaul. To spread it extensively and not intensively meant a weakening of Roman grasp; and at some points[1073] it seems as if the influx of barbarism was felt to be a menace in time of peace, not effectively counteracted by the peaceful penetration of Rome.

Now, if the protection of Italy by chiefly alien swords was to relieve the imperial centre from the heavy blood-tax borne by it in the old days of Roman expansion, surely it remained an Italian function or duty to provide carriers[1074] of Roman civilization, that is, if border lands were to be solidly Romanized as a moral bulwark against barbarism. But this duty could only be performed by a healthy and vigorous Italy, and Italy[1075] was not healthy and vigorous. Internal security left the people free to go on in the same ways as they had now been following for generations, and those ways, as we have seen, did not tend to the revival of a free rural population. Country towns were not as yet in manifest decay, but there were now no imperial politics, and municipal politics, ever petty and self-regarding, offered no stimulus to arouse a larger and common interest. Municipalities looked for benefactors, and were still able to find them. In this period we meet with institutions of a charitable kind, some even promoted by the imperial government, for the benefit of orphans and children of the poor. This was a credit to the humanity of the age, but surely a palliative of social ailments, not a proof of sound condition. In Rome there was life, but it was cosmopolitan life. Rome was the capital of the Roman world, not of Italy. In the eyes of jealous patriots it seemed that what Rome herself needed was a thorough Romanizing. It was not from the great wicked city, thronged with adventurers[1076] of every sort, largely Oriental Greeks, and hordes of freedmen, that the better Roman influences could spread abroad. Nor were the old Provinces, such as Spain and southern Gaul, where Roman civilization had long been supreme, in a position to assimilate[1077] and Romanize the ruder border-lands by the Rhine and Danube. They had no energies to spare: moreover, they too depended on the central government, and the seat of that government was Rome.

Italy alone could have vitalized the empire by moral influence, creating in the vast fabric a spiritual unity, and making a great machine into something more or less like a nation,—that is, if she had been qualified for acting such a part. But Italy had never been a nation herself. The result of the great Italian war of 90 and 89 BC had been to merge Italy in Rome, not Rome in Italy. Italians, now Romans, henceforth shared the exploitation of the subject countries and the hatred of oppressed peoples. But under the constitution of the Republic politics became more of a farce the more the franchise was extended, and the most obvious effect of Italian enfranchisement was to increase the number of those who directly or indirectly made a living out of provincial wrongs. The Provinces swarmed with bloodsuckers of every kind. The establishment of the Empire at length did something to relieve the sufferings of the Provinces. But it was found necessary to recognize Italy as a privileged imperial land. In modern times such privilege would take the form of political rights and responsibilities. But political life was dead, and privilege could only mean local liberties, exemption from burdens, and the like. And in the long run the maintenance or abolition of privilege would have to depend on the success or failure of the system. Now the emperors of the first two centuries of the Empire did their best to maintain the privileged position of Italy. But even in the time of Augustus it was already becoming clear that Romanized Italy depended on Rome and that Rome, so far as the Senate and Magistrates were concerned, could not provide for the efficient administration of Italy or even of Rome itself. Then began the long gradual process by which Italy, like the rest of the empire, passed more and more under the control of the imperial machine. In the period we are now considering this was steadily going on, for brief reactions, such as that under Nerva, did not really check it, and Italy was well on the way to become no more than a Province.

The feature of this period most important in connexion with the present inquiry is the evidence[1078] that emperors were as a rule painfully conscious of Italian decay. Alive to the dangers involved in its continuance, they accepted the responsibility of doing what they could to arrest it. Their efforts took various forms, chiefly (a) the direct encouragement of farming (b) relief of poverty (c) measures for providing more rural population or preventing emigration of that still existing. It is evident that the aim was to place and keep more free rustics on the land. In the numerous allotments of land to discharged soldiers a number of odd pieces[1079] (subsiciva), not included in the lots assigned, were left over, and had been occupied by squatters. Vespasian, rigidly economical in the face of threatened state-bankruptcy, had the titles inquired into, and resumed and sold those pieces where no valid grant could be shewn. Either this was not fully carried out, or some squatters must have been allowed to hold on as ‘possessors,’ probably paying a quit-rent to the treasury. For Domitian[1080] found some such people still in occupation and converted their tenure into proprietorship, on the ground that long possession had established a prescriptive right. Nerva tried to go further[1081] by buying land and planting agricultural colonies: but little or nothing was really effected in his brief reign. In relief of poverty it was a notable extension to look beyond the city of Rome, where corn-doles had long existed, and continued to exist. The plan adopted was for the state to advance money at low rates of interest to landowners in municipal areas, and to let the interest received form a permanent endowment for the benefit of poor parents and orphans. We must remember that to have children born did not imply a legal obligation to rear them, and that the prospect of help from such funds was a distinct encouragement to do so. Whether any great results were achieved by this form of charity must remain doubtful: flattering assurances[1082] to Trajan on the point can no more be accepted without reserve than those addressed to Augustus on the success of his reforms, or to Domitian on his promotion of morality. But it seems certain that private charity was stimulated by imperial action, and that the total sums applied in this manner were very large. Begun by Nerva, carried out[1083] by Trajan, extended by Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, the control of these endowments was more centralized by Marcus. In his time great dearth in Italy had made distress more acute, and the hour was at hand when the inner disorders of the empire would cause all such permanent foundations to fail and disappear. They may well have relieved many individual cases of indigence, but we can hardly suppose their general effect on the Italian population to have been a healthy one. They must have tended to deaden enterprise and relax self-help, for they were too much after the pauperizing model long established in Rome. The provision of cheap loan-capital for landowners may or may not have been a boon in the long run.

The increase of rustic population through excess of births over deaths could not be realized in a day, even if the measures taken to promote it were successful. So we find Trajan[1084] not only founding colonies in Italy but forbidding colonists to be drawn from Italy for settlement in the Provinces; a restriction said to have been[1085] disregarded by Marcus. But one important sequel of the frontier wars of Marcus, in which German mercenaries were employed, was the transplanting[1086] of large numbers of German captives into Italy. Such removals had occurred before, but seldom and on a small scale. This wholesale transplantation under Marcus made a precedent for many similar movements later on. It may be taken for granted that the emperor did not turn out Italians in order to find room for the new settlers. It is also probable that these were bound to military service. The great military colonies of later date, formed of whole tribes or nations settled near the frontiers, certainly held their lands on military tenure. Such was the system of frontier defence gradually forced upon Rome through the failure of native imperial forces sufficient for the purpose: and this failure was first conspicuous in Italy. Among the various measures taken by emperors to interest more persons in promoting Italian agriculture we may notice Trajan’s[1087] ordinance, that Provincials who aspired to become Roman Senators must shew themselves true children of Rome by investing one third of their property in Italian land. The order seems to have been operative, but the reduction[1088] of the fixed minimum proportion from ⅓ to ¼ by Marcus looks as if the first rule had been found too onerous. There is no reason to think that the state of rural Italy was materially bettered by these well-meant efforts. And the introduction of barbarian settlers, who had to be kept bound to the soil in order to be readily available when needed for military service, tended to give the rustic population a more and more stationary character. It was in fact becoming more usual to let farms to free coloni; but the coloni, though personally free, were losing freedom of movement.

NOTE ON EMIGRATION FROM ITALY.

In the Journal of Roman Studies (vol VIII) I have discussed the question whether the emigration from Italy to the Provinces was to a serious extent agricultural in character, and in particular whether we can believe it to have carried abroad real working rustics in large numbers. Are we to see in it an important effective cause of the falling-off of the free rustic population of Italy? That the volume of emigration was large may be freely granted; also that settlements of discharged soldiers took place from time to time. Nor does it seem doubtful that many of the emigrants became possessors of farm-lands[1089] in the Provinces. But that such persons were working rustics, depending on their own labour, is by no means clear. And, if they were not, the fact of their holding land abroad does not bear directly on the decay of the working farmer class in Italy. That commerce and finance and exploitation in general were the main occupations of Italian[1090] emigrants, I do not think can be seriously doubted. And that many of them combined landholding with their other enterprises is probable enough.

Professor Reid kindly reminds me that soldiers from Italy, whose term of service expired while they were still in a Province, were apt to settle down there in considerable numbers. The case of Carteia in Spain is well known, and that of Avido, also in Spain, was probably of the same nature. These were not regular Colonies. So too in Africa Marius seems to have left behind him communities of soldiers not regularly organized[1091] as coloniae. When the town of Uchi Maius received the title of colonia from the emperor Severus, it called itself[1092] colonia Mariana, like the one founded by Marius in Corsica. And the same title appears in the case[1093] of Thibari. With these African settlements we may connect the law carried by Saturninus in 100 BC to provide the veterans of Marius with allotments of land in Africa, on the scale of 100 iugera for each man. If this record[1094] is to be trusted (and the doubtful points cannot be discussed here), the natural inference is that farms of considerable size are meant, for the working of which no small amount of labour would be required. Nor is this surprising, for the soldiers of Marius were at the time masters of the situation, and not likely to be content with small grants. Whether the allotments proposed were in Africa or in Cisalpine Gaul[1095] is not quite certain. Marius seems to have left Africa in the winter of 105-4 BC. Since then he had been engaged in the war with the northern barbarians, and the lands recovered from the invaders were in question. Still, the proposal may have referred to Africa, for it is certain that the connexion of Marius with that Province was remembered[1096] long after. The important point is that the persons to be gratified were not civilian peasants but discharged veterans of the New Model army, professionalized by Marius himself. Neither the retired professional mercenaries of Greco-Macedonian armies, nor the military colonists of Sulla, give us reason to believe that such men would regard hard and monotonous labour with their own hands as a suitable reward for the toils and perils of their years of military service. Surely they looked forward to a life of comparative ease, with slaves to labour under their orders. If they kept their hold on their farms, they would become persons of some importance in their own provincial neighbourhood. Such were the milites or veterani whom we find often mentioned under the later Empire: and these too were evidently not labourers but landlords and directors.

Therefore I hold that the class of men, many of them Italians by descent, whom we find holding land in various Provinces and living on the profits of the same, were mostly if not all either soldier-settlers or persons to whom landholding was one of several enterprises of exploitation. That the mere Italian peasant emigrated in such numbers as seriously to promote the falling-off of the free rustic population of Italy, is a thesis that I cannot consider as proved or probable.

XXXV. MUSONIUS.

In earlier chapters I have found it necessary to examine the views of philosophers on the subject of agriculture and agricultural labour, holding it important to note the attitude of great thinkers towards these matters. And indeed a good deal is to be gleaned from Plato and Aristotle. Free speculations on the nature of the State included not only strictly political inquiries, but social and economic also. But in the Macedonian period, when Greek states no longer enjoyed unrestricted freedom of movement and policy, a change came over philosophy. The tendency of the schools that now shewed most vital energy, such as the Epicurean and Stoic, was to concern themselves with the Individual rather than the State. The nature of Man, and his possibilities of happiness, became more and more engrossing topics. As the political conditions under which men had to live were now manifestly imposed by circumstances over which the ordinary citizen had no control, the happiness of the Individual could no longer be dependent on success in political ambitions and the free play of civic life. It had to be sought in himself, independent of circumstances. The result was that bold questioning and the search for truth ceased to be the prime function of philosophic schools, and the formation of character took the first place. Hence the elaboration of systems meant to regulate a man’s life by implanting in him a fixed conception of the world in which he had to live, and his relation to the great universe of which he and his immediate surroundings formed a part. And this implied a movement which may be roughly described as from questioning to dogma. The teacher became more of a preacher, his disciples more of a congregation of the faithful; and more and more the efficiency of his ministrations came to depend on his own personal influence, which we often call magnetism.

When Greek literature and thought became firmly established in Rome during the second century BC, it was just this dogmatic treatment of moral questions that gave philosophy a hold on a people far more interested in conduct than in speculation. The Roman attempts, often clumsy enough, to translate principle into practice were, and continued to be, various in spirit and success. Stoicism in particular blended most readily with the harder and more virile types of Roman character, and found a peculiarly sympathetic reception among eminent lawyers. The reigns of the first emperors were not favourable to moral philosophy; but the accession of Nero set literature, and with it moralizing, in motion once more. A kind of eclectic Stoicism came into fashion, a Roman product, of which Seneca was the chief representative. A touch of timeserving was needed to adapt Greek theories for practical use in the world of imperial Rome. Seneca was both a courtier and a wealthy landowner, and was one of the victims of Nero’s tyranny. We have seen that while preaching Stoic doctrine, for instance on the relations of master and slave, he shews little interest in agriculture for its own sake or in the conditions of agricultural labour. It is interesting to contrast with his attitude that of another Stoic, a man of more uncompromising and consistent type, whose life was partly contemporaneous with that of Seneca, and who wrote only a few years later under the Flavian emperors.

=Musonius[1097] Rufus=, already a teacher of repute in Nero’s time, seems to have kept himself clear of conspiracies and intrigues, recognizing the necessity of the monarchy and devoting himself to his profession of moral guide to young men. But any great reputation was dangerous in Nero’s later years, and a pretext was found for banishing the philosopher in 65. Under Galba he returned to Rome, still convinced of the efficacy of moral suasion, witnessed the bloody successions of emperors in 69, and risked his life in an ill-timed effort to stay the advance of Vespasian’s soldiery by discoursing on the blessings of peace. Vespasian seems to have allowed him to remain in Rome, and he is said to have been tutor to Titus. Yet he had not shrunk from bringing to justice an informer guilty of the judicial murder of a brother Stoic, and he was generally regarded as the noblest of Roman teachers, both in principles and in practice. He has been spoken of as a forerunner of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. Evidently no timeserver, he seems to have made allowance for human needs and human weakness in the application of strict moral rules. It is a great pity that we have no complete authentic works of his surviving: but some of the reports by a pupil or pupils have come down to us. One of these extracts[1098] is so complete in itself, and so striking in its view of agriculture and agricultural labour, that I have translated it here. We are to bear in mind that the opinions expressed in it belong to a time when a small number of great landlords owned a large part (and that the most attractive) of Italy, and vast estates in the provinces as well. It is the luxurious and slave-ridden world of Petronius and Seneca that we must keep before us in considering the advice of Musonius; advice which we cannot simply ignore, however much we may see in this good man a voice crying in the wilderness.

‘There is also another resource[1099], nowise inferior to the above, one that might reasonably be deemed superior to it, at least for a man of strong body: I mean that derived from the land, whether the farmer owns it or not. For we see that there are many who, though cultivating land owned by the state[1100] or by other persons, are yet able to support not only themselves but wives and children; while there are some who by the devoted industry of their own hands[1101] attain to great abundance in this way of life. For the earth responds most fairly and justly to the care bestowed upon her, returning manifold what she receives and providing a plenty of all things necessary to life for him that will labour; and she does it consistently with a man’s self-respect and dignity. For nobody, other than an effeminate weakling, would describe any of the operations of husbandry as disgraceful or incompatible with manly excellence. Are not planting ploughing vine-dressing honourable works? And sowing reaping threshing, are not these all liberal pursuits, suited to good men? Nay, the shepherd’s life, if it did not degrade Hesiod or hinder him from winning divine favour and poetic renown, neither will it hinder others. For my part, I hold this to be the best of all the tasks comprised in husbandry, inasmuch as it affords the soul more leisure for pondering and investigating what concerns mental culture. For all tasks that bend the body and keep it fully on the strain do at the same time force the soul to give them its whole attention, or nearly so, sharing as it does the strain of the body: but all those that permit the body to escape excessive strain do not prevent the soul from reasoning out important questions and from improving its own wisdom by such reasonings, a result which is the special aim of every philosopher. This is why I set such special value on the art of shepherds. If however a man does[1102] combine tillage with philosophy, I hold no other life comparable with this, and no other means of livelihood preferable to it. Surely it is more according to nature to get your sustenance from Earth, our nurse and mother, than from some other source. Surely it is more manly[1103] to live on a farm than to sit idle in a city. Surely out-of-door pursuits are healthier than sheltered retirement. Which, pray, is the freeman’s choice, to meet his needs by receiving from others, or by contrivance of his own? Why, it is thought far more dignified to be able to satisfy your own requirements unaided than with aid of others. So true is it that to live by husbandry, of course with due respect[1104] to what is good and honourable, is beautiful and conducive to happiness and divine favour. Hence it was that the god (Delphic Apollo) proclaimed[1105] that Myson of Chenae was a wise man and greeted Aglaus of Psophis as a happy one; for these both led rustic lives, working with their own hands and not spending their time in cities. Surely then it is a worthy ambition to follow these men’s example and devote ourselves to husbandry in earnest.

‘Some may think it a monstrous notion that a man of educative power, qualified to lead youths on to philosophy, should till the soil and do bodily labour like a rustic. And, if it had been the fact that tilling the soil hinders the pursuit of philosophy or the lending help to others in that pursuit, the notion would have been monstrous indeed. But, as things are, if young men could see their teacher at work in the country, demonstrating in practice the principle to which reason guides us, namely that bodily toil and suffering are preferable to dependence on others for our food, I think it would be more helpful to them than attendance at his lectures in town. What is to hinder the pupil, while he works at his teacher’s side, from catching his utterances on self-control or justice or fortitude? For the right pursuit of philosophy is not promoted by much talking, and young men are under no necessity to learn off the mass of speculation on these topics, an accomplishment of which the Professors[1106] are so vain. For such discourses are indeed sufficient to use up a man’s lifetime: but it is possible to pick up the most indispensable and useful points even when one is engaged in the work of husbandry, especially as the work will not be unceasing but admits periods of rest. Now I am well aware that few will be willing to receive instruction by this method: but it is better that the majority of youths who profess the pursuit of philosophy should never attend a philosopher at all, I mean those unsound effeminate creatures whose presence at the classes is a stain upon the name of philosophy. For of those that have a genuine love of philosophy not one would be unwilling to spend his time with a good man on a farm, aye though that farm were one most difficult[1107] to work; seeing that he would reap great advantages from this employment. He would have the company of his teacher night and day; he would be removed from the evils of city life, which are a stumbling-block to the pursuit of philosophy; his conduct, good or bad, could not escape notice (and nothing benefits a pupil more than this); moreover, to be under the eye of a good man when eating and drinking and sleeping is a great benefit.’

At this point the writer digresses for a moment to quote some lines of Theognis and to interpret them in a sense favourable to his own views. He then continues ‘And let no one say that husbandry is a hindrance to learning or teaching. Surely it is not so, if we reflect that under these conditions the pupil enjoys most fully the company of his teacher while the teacher has the fullest control of his pupil. Such then being the state of the case, it is clear that of the philosopher’s resources none is more useful or more becoming than that drawn from husbandry.’

In this extract three points simply stand for principles dear to all sincere Stoics; (1) the duty and benefit of living ‘according to Nature,’ (2) the duty and benefit of self-sufficiency and not depending on the support of others, (3) the duty and satisfaction of continued self-improvement. Consistent practice on these lines would go far to produce the Stoic ideal, the Wise Man, happy and perfect in his assurance and dignity. But the attempt to combine all these in a ‘back to the land’ scheme of moral betterment has surely in it a marked personal note. It is the dream of a singular man in the surroundings of a rotten civilization; a civilization more rotten, and a dream more utopian, than the dreamer could possibly know. Aspirations towards a healthy outdoor life had been felt by many before Musonius. Admiration of rustic pursuits was no new thing, but it was generally freedom from worries, with the occasional diversions of the chase, that were attractive to the town-bred man. Ploughing and digging, and the responsible charge of flocks and herds, had long been almost entirely left to slaves, and Musonius is driven to confess that few youths of the class from which he drew pupils would be willing to undertake such occupations. It was useless to urge that bodily labour is not degrading: that it is exhausting, and engrosses the whole attention, he could not deny. He falls back on pastoral duties as light and allowing leisure for serious discourse. The suggestion seems unreal, though sincere, when we remember that Italian shepherds had to fight wolves and brigands. Moreover, the preference of grazing to tillage was in no small degree due to the fewer persons employed in it, and the stockmen were a notoriously rough class. Even the idealized shepherds of the bucolic poets exhibit a coarseness not congenial to conversation savouring of virtue. But to a Stoic preacher who could try to pacify a licentious soldiery the notion of using pastoral pursuits as a means to moral excellence may well have seemed a reasonable proposal.

It is at least clear that the futility of philosophy as administered by lecturers in Rome had made a strong impression on Musonius. The fashionable company to whom the discourses were addressed, whether they for the moment shed some of their self-satisfaction or not, were seldom or never induced to remodel their worthless lives. So Musonius urges them to break away from solemn trifling and take to rustic labour. He probably chose this remedy as one specially Roman, following the tradition of the heroes of ancient Rome. But no artificial revival of this kind was possible, whatever his generous optimism might say. His contemporary the elder Pliny, who was content to glorify the vanished past and deplore the present, had a truer appreciation of the facts. Farm-work as a means of bringing personal influence to bear, treating body and mind together, a sort of ‘Wisdom while you dig,’ was in such a society a merely fantastic proposal. The importance of farming and food-production was a commonplace, but the vocation of Musonius was moralizing and character-production. There is no reason to think that he had any practical knowledge of agriculture. His austere life proves nothing of the kind. The only remark that shews acquaintance with conditions of landholding is his reference to the farmers who make a living on hired land. And this is in too general terms to have any historical value.

XXXVI. PLINY THE ELDER.

Among the writers of this period who refer to agricultural matters the most important is the =elder Pliny=, who contrived in a life of public service[1108] in various departments to amass a prodigious quantity of miscellaneous learning and to write many erudite works. His naturalis historia, an extraordinary compilation of encyclopaedic scope, contains numerous references to agriculture, particularly in the eighteenth book. He collected and repeated the gleanings from his omnivorous reading, and the result is more remarkable for variety and bulk than for choice and digestion. As a recorder he is helpful, preserving as he does a vast number of details, some not otherwise preserved, others of use in checking or supplementing other versions. Far removed as the book is from being a smooth and readable literary work, the moralizing rhetoric of the age shews its influence not only in the constant effort to wring a lesson of some kind out of the topic of the moment, but in the longer sermonizing passages that lead up to some subject on which the writer feels deeply. One of these[1109] occurs in introducing agriculture, and in pursuing the subject he loses no opportunity of contrasting a degenerate present with a better past. We need not take his lamentations at their full face-value, but that they were in the main justified is not open to doubt. It has been so often necessary to cite him in earlier chapters, that we shall not have to dwell upon him at great length here.

The functions of compiler and antiquarian are apt to coincide very closely, and it is in his picture of the earlier conditions of Roman and Italian farming that Pliny’s evidence is most interesting. The old traditions[1110] of the simple and manly yeomen, each tilling his own little plot of ground, content with his seven iugera of land or even with two in the earliest times, Cincinnatus and the rest of the farmer-heroes, to whom their native soil, proud of her noble sons, responded[1111] with a bounteous fertility that she denies to the heartless labour of slave-gangs on modern latifundia,—these are the topics on which he enlarges with a rhetorical or even poetic warmth. The ruin of Italy, nay of Provinces too, through the land-grabbing and formation of vast estates, is denounced[1112] in a classic passage. He sees no end to the process. Six landlords held between them half the Province of Africa in the time of Nero. Wanting money, the emperor put them to death for the sake of their property. He does not add, but doubtless reflected, that such measures only added to the resources controlled by a tyrant ruler, not a desirable object. We may add further that such iniquities inevitably disposed virtuous emperors to leave the land-monopolizers a free hand, perhaps unwillingly; but these gentry were not breaking the law by buying land, and an emperor conscious of the burden of administration, and desiring to carry on his work undisturbed by internal disloyalty, had strong reasons for not provoking wealthy capitalists. To conciliate them, and if possible to engage their cooperation in schemes designed for the public good according to the ideas of the time, was to proceed on the line of least resistance.

Among the traditional precepts handed on by Pliny from Cato and others are many with which we are already familiar. Such is the rule of Regulus[1113], that in buying a farm regard must be had to the healthiness of the situation as well as to the richness of the soil. Another is the need of keeping a due proportion[1114] between farm-house and farm. Great men of the late Republic, Lucullus and Scaevola, erred on this point in opposite directions: Marius on the other hand laid out a villa so skilfully that Sulla said ‘here was a man at last with eyes in his head.’ The value of the master’s eye is another old friend. We have also seen above that Mago’s[1115] advice, when you buy a farm, to sell your town house, was not a policy to be followed by Romans of quality, who felt it a duty not to cut themselves off from touch with public affairs. Another tradition is that of the sentiment of the olden time, holding it criminal[1116] to slay man’s fellow-worker, the ox. In referring to the technical skill required in a steward, a favourite topic of Cato, Pliny gives his own view[1117] briefly, ‘the master ought to set the greatest store by his steward, but the fellow should not be aware of it.’ The calculation of labour-cost[1118] in terms of operae, as with others, so with him, is a regular way of reckoning. And we meet once more the saying that, while good cultivation is necessary, too high farming does not pay. He illustrates this by an instance[1119] of comparatively modern date. A man of very humble origin, who rose through military merit to the consulship, was rewarded by Augustus with a large sum of money: this he spent on buying land[1120] in Picenum and fancy-farming. In this course he ran through his property, and his heir did not think it worth his while to claim the succession. The general tendency of all these precepts and anecdotes is to commend moderation and to rebuke the foolish ambition of land-proud capitalists of his own day. His praise of the ancient ways and regret for their disappearance do not suggest any hope of their revival. To Pliny as to others it was only too clear that legends of conquering consuls setting their own hands to the plough had no practical bearing on the conditions of the present age.

Thoughtful men[1121] could not ignore the fact that the decline in production of cereal crops left Italy exposed to risk of famine. At any moment storms might wreck the corn-fleets from Egypt or Africa, and the strategic value of Egypt[1122] as a vital food-centre had been shewn quite recently in strengthening the cause of Vespasian. No wonder Pliny is uneasy, and looks back regretfully[1123] to the time when Italy was not fed by the Provinces, when thrifty citizens grew their own staple food-stuffs, and corn was plentiful and cheap. He quotes some prices from the time of the great Punic wars and earlier, which shew the remarkable cheapness of wine oil dried figs and flesh, as well as of various grains. This result was not due to great estates owned by individual landlords[1124] who elbowed out their neighbours, but to the willing work of noble citizens tilling their little holdings. To look for similar returns from the task-work of chained and branded slaves is a sheer libel on Mother Earth. That he treats at great length of agricultural details, not only of grain-crops in their various kinds, but fruits, vegetables, indeed everything he can think of, and all the processes of cultivation, is due to his encyclopaedic bent, and need not detain us here. When he tells us[1125] that vine-growing was a comparatively late development among the Romans, who long were content with grain-growing, it is a passing sigh over a vanished age of simple life. The meaning of words changes and records the change of things. When the Twelve Tables[1126] spoke of hortus, it was not a garden in the modern sense, a place of pleasure and luxury, that was meant, but a poor man’s small holding. By that venerable code it was made a criminal offence[1127] to cut or graze off under cover of night the crops raised on a man’s plough-land. A man whose farm was badly cultivated was disgraced by the censors. For, as Cato[1128] said, there is no life like the farmer’s for breeding sturdy men to make efficient soldiers and loyal citizens. The gist of these utterances, picked out of the mass, is that Pliny would like to see Italy able to provide for her own feeding and her own defence, but knows very well that no such ideal is within the range of hope.

His interest in agriculture such as he saw it around him is shewn in recording recent or contemporary doings, such as that of the man mentioned above who squandered a fortune on ill-judged farming. A more successful venture[1129] was that of Remmius Palaemon, apparently in the time of Claudius. He was a freedman, not a farmer, but a school-master (grammaticus) of repute, a vainglorious fellow. He bought some land, not of the best quality and let down by bad farming. To farm this he engaged another freedman, one Acilius Sthenelus, who had the vineyards thoroughly overhauled (pastinatis de integro). Before eight years were out, he was able to sell a hanging crop for half as much again as it had cost him to buy the land, and within ten years he sold the land itself to Seneca (not a man for fancy prices) for four times as much as he had given for it. Truly a fine speculation. Sthenelus had carried out another of the same kind[1130] on his own account. We must note that both were in the vine-culture, not in corn-growing, and the appearance of freedmen, probably oriental Greeks, as leaders of agricultural enterprise in Italy. There is nothing to shew that these undertakings were on a large scale: the land in Sthenelus’ own case is stated as not more than 60 iugera. But no doubt he was, like many of his tribe, a keen man of business[1131] and not too proud or preoccupied to give close attention to the matter in hand. Such a man would get the utmost out of his slaves and check waste: he would keep a tight grip on a slave steward if (which we are not told) he found it necessary to employ one at all. For Pliny, as for most Romans, a profitable speculation had great charms. He cannot resist repeating the old Greek story[1132] of the sage who demonstrated his practical wisdom by making a ‘corner’ in olive-presses, foreseeing a ‘bumper’ crop. Only he turns it round, making it a ‘corner’ in oil, in view of a poor crop and high prices, and tells it not of Thales but of Democritus.

There were of course many principles of agriculture that no economic or social changes could affect. The ‘oracle’ of Cato, as to the importance[1133] of thorough and repeated ploughing followed by liberal manuring, was true under all conditions. But just for a moment the veil is lifted to remind us that in the upland districts there was still an Italy agriculturally, as socially, very different from the lowland arable of which we generally think when speaking of Italian farming. ‘Ploughing on hillsides[1134] is cross-wise, and so toilsome to man that he even has to do ox-team’s work: at least the mountain peoples[1135] use the mattock for tillage instead of the plough, and do without the ox.’ It is to be regretted that we have so little evidence as to the condition of the dalesmen, other than the passages of such writers as Horace and Juvenal, who refer to them as rustic folk a sojourn among whom is a refreshing experience after the noise and bustle of Rome. For it seems certain that in these upland retreats there survived whatever was left of genuine Italian life, and we should like to be able to form some notion of its quantity; that is, whether the population of freemen on small holdings, living mostly on the produce of their own land, was numerically an important element in the total population of Italy. That great stretches of hill-forest were in regular use simply as summer pastures, and that the bulk of the arable lands were held in great estates, and slaves employed in both departments, we hear in wearisome iteration. But to get a true picture of the country as a whole is, in the absence of statistics, not possible.

I have not been able to discover in Pliny any definite repugnance to slavery as a system. It is true that he is alive to the evils of the domestic slavery prevalent in his day. The brigades of slaves (mancipiorum legiones)[1136] filling the mansions of the rich, pilfering at every turn, so that nothing is safe unless put under lock and seal, are a nuisance and a demoralizing influence. They are an alien throng (turba externa) in a Roman household; a sad contrast[1137] to the olden time, when each family had its one slave, attached to his master’s clan, when the whole household lived in common, and nothing had to be locked up. But this is only one of Pliny’s moralizing outbreaks, and it is the abuse and overgrowth of slavery, not slavery in itself, that he is denouncing. In speaking of agriculture he says ‘to have farms cultivated by slave-gangs[1138] is a most evil thing, as indeed are all acts performed by those who have no hope.’ Here the comparative inefficiency of workers who see no prospect of bettering their condition is plainly recognized; but it is the economic defect, not the outrage on a common humanity, that inspires the consciously futile protest. And at the very end of his great book, when he breaks out into a farewell panegyric[1139] on Italy, and enumerates the various elements of her preeminence among the countries of the world, he includes the supply of slave-labour[1140] in the list. Spain perhaps comes next, but here too the organized employment[1141] of slaves is one of the facts that are adduced to justify her praise. Now I do not imagine that Pliny was a hard unkindly man. But he evidently accepted slavery as an established institution, one of the economic bases of society. He saw its inferiority to free labour, but a passing protest seemed to him enough. Had he been asked, Why don’t you recommend free labour directly? I think he would have answered, Where are you going to find it in any quantity? And it is obvious that, slave labour once assumed, the great thing was to have enough of it. Nor again have I found him using colonus in the sense of tenant farmer. In that of ‘cultivator’ it occurs several times, as in the quotation[1142] from Cato, that to call a man bonum colonum was of old the height of praise. Figuratively it appears in comparisons, as when the guilt of the slayer of an ox is emphasized[1143] by the addition ‘as if he had made away with his colonus.’ So of the fertilizing Nile he says ‘discharging the duty[1144] of a colonus.’ In the passage where he warns his readers against too high farming[1145] he remarks ‘There are some crops that it does not pay to gather, unless the owner is employing his own children or a colonus of his own or hands that have on other grounds to be fed—I mean, if you balance the cost against the gain.’ Here it is just possible that he means ‘a tenant of his own,’ that is a tenant long attached to the estate, like the coloni indigenae of Columella: but I think it is quite neutral, and probably he has in mind either a relative or a slave. The ‘persons for whose keep he is responsible’ sums up to the effect that if you have mouths to fill you may as well use their labour, for it will add nothing to your labour-bill. So far as I have seen, the difference between ownership and tenancy is not a point of interest to Pliny.

In continuation of what has been said above as to the relations of Vergil and Columella, it is necessary to discuss briefly the attitude of Pliny towards these two writers. The indices to the Natural History at once disclose the fact that citations of Vergil[1146] are about six times as numerous as those of Columella. Indeed he seldom refers to the latter; very often to Varro, even more often to Cato. The frequent references to Vergil may reasonably be explained as arising from a wish to claim whenever possible the moral support of the now recognized chief figure of Roman literature. This was all the more easy, inasmuch as Vergil’s precepts in the Georgics[1147] are mostly old or borrowed doctrine cast into a perfect form. Columella had used them in a like spirit, but in dealing with the labour-question he faced facts, not only instructing his readers in the technical processes of agriculture, but setting forth the forms of labour-organization by which those processes were to be carried on. Now Pliny records an immense mass of technical detail, but of labour-organization he says hardly any thing; for his laments over a vanished past are only of use in relieving his own feelings. And yet the labour-question, and the tenancy-question connected therewith, were the central issues of the agricultural problem. It was not the knowledge of technical details that was conspicuously lacking, but the will and means to apply knowledge already copious. Not what to do, but how to get it done, was the question which Columella tried to answer and Pliny, like Vergil, did not really face. It is curious to turn out the eight distinct references to Columella in Pliny. In none of these passages is there a single word of approval, and the general tone of them is indifferent and grudging. Sometimes the words seem to suggest that his authority is not of much weight, or pointedly remark that it stands quite alone. In one place[1148] he is flatly accused of ignorance. When we consider that Pliny speaks of Varro with high respect, and positively worships Cato and Vergil, it is clear that there must have been some special reason for this unfriendly and half-contemptuous attitude. The work of Columella did not deserve such treatment. It evidently held its ground in spite of sneers, for Palladius in the fourth century cites it repeatedly as one of the leading authorities. It is not difficult to conjecture possible causes for the attitude of Pliny: but none of those that occur to me is sufficient, even if true, to justify it. I must leave it as one of the weak points in the Natural History.

XXXVII. TACITUS.

=P Cornelius Tacitus=, one of the great figures of Roman literature, passed through the time of the Flavian emperors, but his activity as a writer belonged chiefly to the reign of Trajan. Like most historians, he gave his attention to public and imperial affairs, and we get from him very little as to the conditions of labour. Of emperors and their doings evil or good, of the upper classes and their reactionary sympathies, their intrigues and perils, we hear enough: but of the poor wage-earners[1149] and slaves hardly anything, for to one who still regretted the Republic while accepting the Empire, an aristocrat at heart, the lower orders were of no more importance than they had been to Cicero. Indeed they were now less worthy of notice, as free political life had ceased and the city rabble, no longer needed for voting and rioting, had merely to be fed and amused. A populace of some sort was a necessary element in the imperial capital: that it was in fact a mongrel mob could not be helped, and year by year it became through manumissions of slaves a mass of more and more cosmopolitan pauperism. The Provinces and the frontier armies were matters of deep interest, but the wars of the succession after Nero only served to exhibit with irresistible stress the comparative unimportance of Italy. Tacitus, a Roman of good family, born in Italy if not in Rome, dignified and critical by temperament, was not the man to follow the fashion of idle and showy rhetoric. He does not waste time and effort in vainly deploring the loss of a state of things that could not be restored. That the present condition of Italy grieved him, we may feel sure. But he viewed all things in a spirit of lofty resignation. That he was led to contrast the real or assumed virtues of German barbarians with the flagrant vices of Roman life was about the limit of his condescension to be a preacher: and it is not necessary to assume that the pointing of a moral was the sole motive of his tract on the land and tribes of Germany.

I have already referred to the uneasiness of Tiberius as to the food-supply[1150] of Rome, dependent on importations of corn which were liable to be interrupted by foul weather and losses at sea. The risk was real enough, and the great artificial harbours constructed at the Tiber mouth by Claudius and Trajan were chiefly meant to provide accommodation for corn-fleets close at hand, with large granaries to store cargoes[1151] in reserve. The slave rising of 24 AD in south-eastern Italy, and its suppression, have also been mentioned[1152] above. These passages, and a passing reference to the unproductiveness[1153] of the soil (of Italy) are significant of the inefficiency of Italian agriculture in the time of Tiberius. But in reporting these matters Tacitus writes as historian, not as a contemporary witness, and enough has been said of them above. A curious passage, not yet referred to, is that describing the campaign[1154] against money-lenders in 33 AD. A law passed by Julius Caesar in BC 49 with the object of relieving the financial crisis without resorting to a general cancelling of debts, long obsolete, was raked up again, and there was widespread alarm, for most senators had money out on loan. It seems that some trials and condemnations actually took place, and that estates of the guilty were actually seized and sold for cash under the provisions of a disused law. Further trouble at once followed, for there was a general calling in of mortgages, while cash was scarce, the proceeds of the late sales having passed into one or other of the state treasuries. Eighteen months grace had been granted to enable offending capitalists to arrange their affairs in conformity with the law. Evidently these gentry were in no hurry to reinvest their money as it came in, but waited for a fall in the price of land, certain to occur as a consequence of dearer money. In order to guard against such a result, the Senate had ordered that each (that is, each paid-off creditor,) should invest ⅔ of his loanable capital in Italian real estate, and that each debtor[1155] should repay ⅔ of his debt at once. But the creditors were demanding payment in full, and it did not look well for the debtors to weaken their own credit (by practically confessing insolvency). So there was great excitement, followed by uproar in the praetor’s court: and the measures intended to relieve the crisis—the arrangements for sale and purchase—had just the opposite effect. For the capitalists had locked up all their money with a view to the (eventual) purchase of land. The quantity of land thrown on the market sent prices down, and the more encumbered a man was the more difficult he found it to dispose of his land (that is, at a price that would clear him of debt). Numbers of people were ruined, and the situation was only saved by Tiberius, who advanced a great sum of money to be used in loans for three years free of interest, secured in each case on real estate[1156] of twice the value. Thus confidence was restored and private credit gradually revived. But, Tacitus adds, the purchase of land on the lines of the Senate’s order was never carried through: in such matters it is the way of the world to begin with zeal and end with indifference.

If I have rightly given the sense of this passage, it furnishes some points of interest. It sets before us a state of things in which a number of landowners have raised money by mortgaging their real estate, disregarding the provisions (whatever they were) of a law practically disused. This reminds us that one very general use of Italian land was as a security on which money could at need be raised. It was the only real security always available, and this inclined people to keep their hold on it, though as a direct income-producer it seldom gave good returns. No doubt they had to pay on their borrowings a higher rate[1157] of interest than they got on their capital invested in land. To be forced suddenly to sell their lands in a glutted market was manifest ruin; for the whole strength of their position lay in the justified assumption that the capital value of their land in the market exceeded the amount of their mortgage debts. Otherwise, who would have lent them the money on that security? We can hardly avoid the suspicion that the frequent use of land as a pledge may have had something to do with that unsatisfactory condition of agriculture on which the evidence of Latin writers has driven us to dwell. The mortgagor, once he had got the money advanced, had less interest in the landed security: the mortgagee, so long as he got his good return on the money lent, was unconcerned to see that his debtor’s income was maintained; and that, in taking a mortgage, he had insisted on a large margin of security for his capital, is not to be doubted. For what purpose these loans were generally contracted, we are not told. Those who borrowed money to waste it in extravagance would surely have found it more business-like to sell their land outright. The number of those who preferred to keep it, though encumbered on onerous terms, simply from social pride, cannot have been really large; but they would hardly make wise landlords. Probably some men raised money to employ it in speculations[1158] that seemed to offer rich returns. So long as the empire stood strong, mercantile speculation was far-reaching and vigorous. But those engaged in this line of business would seldom be able to find large sums in ready cash at short notice. Hence to them, as to spendthrifts, the sudden calling in of mortgages was a grave inconvenience.

The picture of the wily capitalists, hoarding their money till the ‘slump’ in land-values had fully developed, is one of all ‘civilized’ peoples and ages. What is notable on this particular occasion is the sequel according to Tacitus. Once their design of profiting by their neighbours’ necessities was checked by the intervention of Tiberius, the investment in real estate was no longer attractive. The Senate’s order was not enforced and the money-lenders could, and did, reserve their ready cash for use in some more remunerative form of investment. The slackness of the Senate may have been partly due to careless neglect, as the words seem to suggest. But it may be suspected that some members of that body had private reasons for wishing the Order of the House not to be seriously enforced. Tacitus remarks that, on the matter being laid before the Fathers, they were thrown into a flutter, since there was hardly one among them[1159] that had not broken the law. This surely refers to the time-honoured trick of Roman senators, who, forbidden to engage in commerce (and money-lending was closely connected with commerce), evaded the restriction in various ways, such as holding shares in companies or lending through their freedmen as agents. So now, seeking a high rate of interest on their capital, they did not wish to lock up any more of it in land. Most of them would already own enough real estate for social purposes. From this episode we have some right to infer that in the period of the early Empire it had already become clear that very extensive landowning in Italy was an unwise policy for men who wanted a large income. Yet the preferential position of Italy had not ceased to be a fact; and even in the time of Trajan we have seen an imperial ordinance bidding new senators from the Provinces to invest ⅓ of their fortunes in Italian land. This might raise prices for the moment, but it had nothing directly to do with promoting agriculture. Practical farming seems to have been passing more and more into the hands of humbler persons, often freedmen, who treated it as a serious business.

That the attention of Tacitus had been directed to the methods of capitalists in Italy, and therewith to money-lending, landholding, and slavery, may be gathered from the remarks on these subjects in his Germany. He writes, as Herodotus and others had done before him, taking particular notice of customs differing from those prevalent in his own surroundings. Thus he notes[1160] the absence of money-lending at interest. He describes the system of communal ownership of land by village-units, and its periodic redistribution among the members of the community. The wide stretches of open plains[1161] enable the Germans to put fresh fields under tillage year by year, leaving the rest in fallow (no doubt as rough pasture). Intensive culture is unknown. To wring the utmost out of the soil by the sweat of their brow is not their aim: they have no orchards or gardens or fenced paddocks, but are content to raise a crop of corn. All this is in marked contrast with Italian conditions. Even to get rid of fallows was an ambition of agriculturists in Italy, and a rotation-system[1162] had been devised to this end. And, whatever may have been the case in prehistoric times, full property in land had long been established by the Roman Law, and there was in the Italian land-system no trace of redistribution for short terms of use. In treating of slavery, the first point made is its connexion[1163] with the inveterate German habit of gambling. Losers will end by staking their own freedom on a last throw; if this also fails, they will submit to be fettered and sold. To the Roman this seems a false notion of honour. He adds that to take advantage of this sort of slave-winning is not approved by German sentiment: hence the winner combines[1164] scruples with profit by selling a slave of this class into foreign lands. Other slaves are not employed in Roman fashion as an organized staff of domestics. Each has a lodging and home of his own: his lord requires of him a fixed rent[1165] of so much corn or live-stock or clothing, as of a tenant: and he renders no service beyond this. House-work is done by a man’s own wife and family. Slaves are seldom flogged or chained or put to task-work. The German may kill his slave, but it will not be as a penalty for disobedience, but in a fit of rage. Freedmen are of little more account than slaves, and are only of influence at the courts of the kings who rule some of the tribes. There they rise above the freeborn and noble: but in general the inferiority of freedmen serves to mark the superiority of the freeborn.

Tacitus had held an important official post in Belgic Gaul or one of the so-called ‘Germanies’ along the Rhine, and had been at pains to learn all he could of the independent barbarians to the East. The Rhine frontier was one of the Roman borders that needed most careful watching, and Roman readers took an uneasy interest in the doings of the warrior tribes whose numbers, in contrast to their own falling birth-rate, were ever renewed and increased by alarming fertility. He was not alone in perceiving the contrasts between Italian and German institutions and habits, or in reading morals therefrom, expressed or implied. Germans had been employed as mercenary soldiers by Julius Caesar, and were destined to become one of the chief elements of the Roman armies. But in Italy they were perhaps more directly known as slaves. We have just seen that Tacitus speaks of a regular selling of slaves over the German border, and another passage[1166] incidentally illustrates this fact in a curious manner. In the course of his conquest of Britain, Agricola established military posts on the NW coast over against Ireland. It seems to have been in one of these that a cohort of Usipi were stationed. They had been raised in the Roman Germanies, and apparently sent over in a hurry. Not liking the service, they killed their officer and the old soldiers set to train them, seized three vessels, and put to sea. After various adventures and sufferings in a voyage round the north of Britain, they fell into the hands of some tribes of northern Germany, who took them for pirates—those that were left of them. Of the fate reserved for some of these Tacitus remarks ‘Some were sold as slaves[1167] and, passing from purchaser to purchaser, eventually reached the Roman bank (of the Rhine), where their extraordinary story aroused much interest.’ Such were the strange possibilities in the northern seas and lands where the Roman and the German met.

NOTE ON AN AFRICAN INSCRIPTION.

It may be convenient to notice here an inscription[1168] relative to irrigation in Africa. In all parts of the empire subject to drought the supply of water to farmers was a matter of importance, as it is in most Mediterranean countries today. Good soils, that would otherwise have lain waste, were thus turned to account. In the African Provinces much was done to meet this need, as the remains of works for storage of water clearly testify. The period 69-180 AD seems to have been marked by a considerable extension of cultivation in these parts, and particularly in southern Numidia, which at that time was included in the Province Africa. In this district, between Sitifis (Setif) and Trajan’s great city Thamugadi (Timgad), lay the commune of Lamasba[1169], the members of which appear to have been mainly engaged in agriculture. There has been preserved a large portion of a great inscription dealing with the water-rights of their several farms. There is nothing to suggest that the holders of these plots were tenants under great landlords. They seem to be owners, not in the full sense of Roman civil law, but on the regular provincial[1170] footing, subject to tribute. To determine the shares of the several plots in the common water-supply was probably the most urgent problem of local politics in this community.

The date of the inscription has been placed in the reign of Elagabalus; but it is obviously based on earlier conditions and not improbably a revision of an earlier scheme. It deals with the several plots one by one, fixing the number of hours[1171] during which the water is to be turned on to each, and making allowance for variation of the supply according to the season of the year. A remarkable feature of this elaborate scheme is the division of the plots into those below the water level into which the water finds its way by natural flow (declives), and those above water level (acclives). To the latter it is clear that the water must have been raised by mechanical means, and the scale of hours fixed evidently makes allowance for the slower delivery accomplished thereby. For the ‘descendent’ water was to be left flowing for fewer hours than the ‘ascendent.’ As a specimen of the care taken in such a community to prevent water-grabbing by unscrupulous members this record is a document of high interest. That many others of similar purport existed, and have only been lost to us by the chances of time, is perhaps no rash guess.

The water-leet is called aqua Claudiana. The regulations are issued by the local senate and people (decreto ordinis et colonorum), for the place had a local[1172] government. Names of 43 possessors remain on the surviving portion of the stone. In form they are generally Roman[1173]. It is noted that only three of them have a praenomen. Of the quality of the men it is not easy to infer anything. Some may perhaps have been Italians. Whether they, or some of them, were working farmers must remain doubtful. At all events they do not seem to belong to the class of coloni of whom we shall have to speak below, but to be strictly cultivating possessors. What labour they employed it is hardly possible to guess.

XXXVIII. FRONTINUS.

=Sextus Julius Frontinus=, a good specimen of the competent departmental officers in the imperial service, was not only a distinguished military commander but an engineer and a writer of some merit. His little treatise[1174] on the aqueducts of Rome has for us points of interest. From it we can form some notion of the importance of the great water-works, not only to the city but to the country for some miles in certain directions. For water-stealing by the illicit tapping of the main channels was practised outside as well as within the walls. Landowners[1175] did it to irrigate their gardens, and the underlings of the staff (aquarii) connived at the fraud: to prevent this abuse was one of the troubles of the curator. But in certain places water was delivered by branch supplies from certain aqueducts. This of course had to be duly licensed, and license was only granted when the flow of water in the particular aqueduct was normally sufficient to allow the local privilege without reducing the regular discharge in Rome. The municipality of Tibur[1176] seems to have had an old right to a branch of the Anio vetus. The aqua Crabra had been a spring serving Tusculum[1177], but in recent times the Roman aquarii had led off some of its water into the Tepula, and made illicit profit out of the supply thus increased in volume. Frontinus himself with the emperor’s approval redressed the grievance, and the full supply of the Crabra again served the Tusculan landlords. The jealous attention given to the water-works is illustrated by the decrees[1178] of the Senate in the time of the Republic and of emperors since, by which grants of water-rights can only be made to individuals named in the grant, and do not pass to heirs or assigns: the water must only be drawn from the reservoir named, and used on the estate for which the license is specifically granted.

The office of curator aquarum was manifestly no sinecure. It was not merely that constant precautions had to be taken against the stealing of the water. An immense staff[1179] had to be kept to their duties, and the cleansing and repair of the channels needed prompt and continuous attention. And it seems that some of the landowners through whose estates the aqueducts passed gave much trouble[1180] to the administration. Either they erected buildings in the strips of land reserved as legal margin on each side of a channel, or they planted trees there, thus damaging the fabric; or they drove local roads over it; or again they blocked the access to working parties engaged in the duties of upkeep. Frontinus quotes decrees of the Senate dealing with these abuses and providing penalties for persons guilty of such selfish and reckless conduct. But to legislate was one thing, to enforce the law was another. Yet the unaccommodating[1181] landlords had no excuse for their behaviour. It was not a question of ‘nationalizing’ the side strips, though that would have been amply justified in the interests of the state. But the fact is that the old practice of Republican days was extremely tender of private rights. If a landlord made objection to selling a part of his estate, they took over the whole block and paid him for it. Then they marked off the portions required for the service, and resold the remainder. Thus the state was left unchallenged owner of the part retained for public use. But the absence of any legal or moral claim has not availed to stop encroachments: the draining away of the water still goes on, with or without leave, and even the channels and pipes themselves are pierced. No wonder that more severe and detailed legislation was found necessary in the time of Augustus. The writer ends by recognizing the unfairness of suddenly enforcing a law the long disuse of which has led many to presume upon continued impunity for breaking it. He therefore has been reviving it gradually, and hopes that offenders will not force him to execute it with rigour.

What stands out clearly in this picture of the water-service is the utter lack of public spirit imputed to the landowners near Rome by a careful and responsible public servant of good repute. There is none of the sermonizing of Seneca or the sneers and lamentations of Pliny. Frontinus takes things as they are, finds them bad, and means to do his best to improve them, while avoiding the temptations of the new broom. That a great quantity of water was being, and had long been, diverted from the public aqueducts to serve suburban villas and gardens, is certain. What we do not learn is whether much or any of this was used for the market-gardens of the humble folk who grew[1182] garden-stuff for the Roman market. It is the old story,—little or nothing about the poor, save when in the form of a city rabble they achieve distinction as a public burden and nuisance. It does however seem fairly certain that licenses to abstract water were only granted as a matter of special favour. Therefore, so far as licensed abstraction went, it is most probable that influential owners of suburbana were the only beneficiaries. Theft of water with connivance[1183] of the staff was only possible for those who could afford to bribe. There remains the alternative of taking it by eluding or defying the vigilance of the staff. Is it probable that the poor market-gardener ventured to do this? Not often, I fancy: we can only guess, and I doubt whether much of the intercepted water came his way. There was it is true one aqueduct[1184] the water of which was of poor quality. It was a work of Augustus, intended to supply the great pond (naumachia) in which sham sea-fights were held to amuse the public. When not so employed, this water was made available for irrigation of gardens. This was on the western or Vatican side of the Tiber. Many rich men had pleasure-gardens in that part, and we cannot be sure that even this water was in practice serving any economic purpose.

XXXIX. INSCRIPTIONS RELATIVE TO ALIMENTA.

It is impossible to leave unnoticed the inscriptions[1185] of this period relative to alimenta, and Mommsen’s interpretation[1186] of the two chief ones, though their connexion with my present subject is not very close. In the bronze tablets recording respectively the declarations of estate-values in the communes of Ligures Baebiani (101 AD) and Veleia (103 AD), made with the view of ascertaining the securities upon which the capital endowment was to be advanced, we have interesting details of this ingenious scheme for perpetuating charity. But neither these, nor some minor inscribed records of bequests, nor again the experience of Pliny the younger in a benefaction[1187] of the same kind, give us direct evidence on labour-questions. It is in connexion with tenure of land and management of estates that these documents mainly concern us. The fact that there was felt to be a call for charities to encourage the rearing of children was assuredly not a sign of social or economic wellbeing; but this I have remarked above.

The following points stand out clearly in the interpretation of Mommsen. The growth of large estates as against small is shewn in both the tablets as having gone far by the time of Trajan: but not so far as modern writers have imagined. In the case of the Ligures Baebiani there is record of a considerable number of properties of moderate value, indeed they are in a majority. At Veleia, though small estates have not disappeared, there are more large ones, and the process of absorption has evidently been more active. This was not strange, for the former case belongs to the Hirpinian hill country of southern Italy, the latter to the slopes of the Apennine near Placentia, including some of the rich plain of the Po. The latter would naturally attract capital more than the former. I have more than once remarked that in the upland districts agricultural conditions were far less revolutionized than in the lowlands. This seems to be an instance in point: but the evidence is not complete. There is nothing to shew that the estates named in these tablets were the sole landed properties of their several owners. Nor is it probable. To own estates in different parts of the country was a well understood policy of landlords. How we are to draw conclusions as to the prevalence of great estates from a few isolated local instances, without a statement of the entire landed properties of the persons named, I cannot see. That writers of the Empire, when they speak of latifundia, are seldom thinking of the crude and brutal plantation-system of an earlier time, is very true. Those vast arable farms with their huge slave-gangs were now out of fashion, and Mommsen points out that our records are practically silent as to large-scale arable farming. We are not to suppose that it was extinct, but it was probably rare.

The most valuable part of this paper is its recognition of the vital change in Italian agriculture, the transfer of farming from a basis of ownership to one of tenancy. The yeoman or owner-cultivator of olden time had been driven out or made a rare figure in the most eligible parts of Italy. The great plantations, which had largely superseded the small-scale farms, had in their turn proved economic failures. Both these systems, in most respects strongly contrasted, had one point in common: the land was cultivated by or for the owner, and for his own account. But the failure of the large-scale plantation-system did not so react as to bring back small ownership. Large ownership still remained, supported as it was by the social importance attached to landowning, and occasionally by governmental action directed to encourage investment in Italian land. Large owners long struggled to keep their estates in hand under stewards farming for their masters’ account. But this plan was doomed to failure, because the care and attention necessary to make it pay were in most cases greater than landlords were willing to bestow. By Columella’s time this fact was already becoming evident. He could only advise the landlords to be other than he found them, and meanwhile point to an alternative, namely application of the tenancy-system. It was this latter plan that more and more found favour. The landlord could live in town and draw his rents, himself free to pursue his own occupations. The tenant-farmer was only bound by the terms of his lease; and, being resident, was able to exact the full labour of his staff and prevent waste and robbery. The custom was for the landlord to provide[1188] the equipment (instrumentum) of the farm, or at least most of it, including slaves. Thus he was in a sense partner of his tenant, finding most of the working capital. Whether he had a claim to a money rent only, or to a share of crops also, depended on the terms of letting. It seems that rents were often in arrear, and that attempts to recover sums due by selling up tenants’ goods did not always cover the debts.

The typical tenant-farmer was certainly a ‘small man.’ To let the whole of a large estate to a ‘big man’ with plenty of capital was not the practice in Italy. Why? I think the main reason was that a big capitalist who wanted to get the highest return on his money could at this time do better for himself in other ventures: if set upon a land-enterprise, he could find far more attractive openings in some of the Provinces. Anyhow, as Mommsen says, ‘Grosspacht’ never became acclimatized in Italy, though we find it on Imperial domains, for instance in Africa. In connexion with this matter I am led to remark that small tenancy ‘Kleinpacht’ seems to have existed in two forms, perhaps indistinguishable in law, but different in their practical effect. When a landlord, letting parcels of a big estate to tenants, kept in hand the chief villa and its appurtenances as a sort of Manor Farm, and tenants fell into arrear with their rent, he had a ready means of indemnifying himself without ‘selling up’ his old tenants and having possibly much difficulty in finding better new ones. He could commute arrears of rent into obligations of service[1189] on the Manor Farm. Most tenants would probably be only too glad to get rid of the immediate burden of debt. It would seem a better course than to borrow for that purpose money on which interest would have to be paid, even supposing that anyone would be willing to lend to a poor tenant confessedly in difficulties. And such an arrangement would furnish the landlord with a fixed amount of labour (and labour was becoming scarcer) on very favourable terms—he or his agent would see to that. But it was not really necessary to reserve a ‘Manor Farm’ at all, and a man owning land in several districts would hardly do so in every estate, if in any. Such a landlord could not readily solve the arrears-problem by commutation. He was almost compelled[1190] to ‘sell up’ a hopeless defaulter: and, since most of the stock had probably been supplied by himself, there would not be much for him to sell. That such cases did occur, we know for certain; the old tenant went, being free to move, and to find a good new one was no easy matter, particularly as the land was sure to have been left in a bad state. Arrears of farm-rents had a regular phrase (reliqua colonorum) assigned to them, and there is good reason to believe that they were a common source of trouble. It has been well said[1191] that landlords in Italy were often as badly off as their tenants. The truth is that the whole agricultural interest was going downhill.

If the tenant-farmer was, as we see, becoming more and more the central figure of Italian agriculture, we must next inquire how he stood in relation to labour. It is a priori probable that a man will be more ready to work with his own hands on a farm of his own than on one hired: no man is more alive to the difference of meum and alienum than the tiller of the soil. It is therefore not wonderful that we find tenant-farmers employing slave labour. From the custom of having slaves as well as other stock supplied by the landlord we may fairly infer that tenants were, at least generally, not to be had on other terms. Mommsen remarks[1192] that actual handwork on the land was more and more directed rather than performed by the small tenants. Thus it came to be more and more done by unfree persons. This recognizes, no doubt rightly, that the system of great estates let in portions to tenants was not favourable to a revival of free rustic labour, but told effectively against it. He also points out[1193] that under Roman Law it was possible for a landlord and his slave to stand in the mutual relation of lessor and lessee. Such a slave lessee is distinct from the free tenant colonus. It appears that there were two forms of this relation. The slave might be farming on his own[1194] account, paying a rent and taking the farm-profits as his peculium. In this case he is in the eye of the law quasi colonus. Or he might be farming on his master’s account; then he is vilicus. In both cases he is assumed to have under him slave-labourers supplied[1195] by the landlord, and it seems that the name vilicus was sometimes loosely applied even in the former case. In the latter case he cannot have been very different from the steward of a large estate worked for owner’s account. I can only conclude that he was put in charge of a smaller farm-unit and left more to his own devices. Probably this arrangement would be resorted to only when an ordinary free tenant was not to be had; and satisfactory ones were evidently not common in the time of the younger Pliny.

So far as I can see, in this period landlords were gradually ceasing to keep a direct control over the management of their own estates, but the changes in progress did not tend to a rehabilitation of free labour. One detail needs a brief special consideration. The landlord’s agent (actor) is often mentioned, and it is clear that the actor was generally a slave. But there is reference to the possible case[1196] of an actor living (like his master) in town, not on the farms, and having a wife[1197] and daughter. This suggests a freedman, not a slave, and such cases may have been fairly numerous. Another point for notice is the question of vincti, alligati, compediti, in this period. Mommsen[1198] treats the chaining of field-slaves as being quite exceptional, in fact a punishment, in Italy under the Empire. Surely it was always in some sense a punishment. From what Columella[1199] says of the normal employment of chained labourers in vineyard-work I can not admit that the evidence justifies Mommsen’s assertion. That there was a growing reluctance to use such barbarous methods, and that local usage varied in various parts of the country, is certain.

XL. DION CHRYSOSTOM.

We have seen that there is no lack of evidence as to the lamentable condition of Italian agriculture in a large part of the country. But things were no better in certain Provinces, more particularly in Greece. Plutarch deplores[1200] the decay and depopulation of his native land, but the most vivid and significant picture preserved to us is one conveyed in a public address[1201] by the famous lecturer =Dion of Prusa=, better known as Dion[1202] Chrysostom. It describes conditions in the once prosperous island of Euboea. The speaker professes to have been cast ashore there in a storm, and to have been entertained with extraordinary kindness by some honest rustics who were living an industrious and harmless life in the upland parts, the rocky shore of which was notorious as a scene of shipwrecks. There were two connected households, squatters in the lonely waste, producing by their own exertions everything they needed, and of course patterns of every amiable virtue. The lecturer recounts the story of these interesting people as told him by his host. How much of it is due to his own imagination, or put together out of various stories, we cannot judge: but it is manifest that what concerns us is to feel satisfied that the experiences described were possible, and not grotesquely improbable, in their setting of place and time. I venture to accept the story as a sketch of what might very well have happened, whether it actually did so or not.

We live mostly by the chase, said the hunter, with very little tillage. This croft (χωρίον) does not belong to us either by inheritance or purchase. Our fathers, though freemen, were poor like ourselves, just hired herdsmen, in charge of the herds of a rich man who owned wide farm-lands and all these mountains. When he died, his estate was confiscated: It is said that the emperor[1203] made away with him to get his property. Well, they drove off his live-stock for slaughter, and our few oxen with them, and never paid our wages. So we did the best we could, taking advantage of the resources of the neighbourhood in summer and winter. Since childhood I have only once visited the city[1204]. A man turned up one day demanding money. We had none, and I told him so on my oath. He bade me come with him to the city. There I was arraigned before the mob as a squatter on the public land, without a grant from the people, and without any payment. It was hinted that we were wreckers, and had put together a fine property through that wicked trade. We were said to have valuable farms and abundance of flocks and herds, beasts of burden, slaves. But a wiser speaker took a different line. He urged that those who turned the public land to good account were public benefactors and deserved encouragement. He pointed out that two thirds of their territory was lying waste through neglect and lack of population. He was himself a large landowner: whoever was willing to cultivate his land was welcome to do so free of charge,—indeed he would reward him for his pains—the improvement would be worth it. He proposed a plan for inducing citizens to reclaim the derelict lands, rent-free for ten years, and after that rented at a moderate share of the crops. To aliens less favourable terms might be offered, but with a prospect of citizenship in case of reclamation on a large scale. By such a policy the evils of idleness and poverty would be got rid of. These considerations he enforced by pointing to the pitiful state of the city itself. Outside the gates you find, not a suburb but a hideous desert. Within the walls we grow crops and graze beasts on the sites of the gymnasium and the market-place. Statues of gods and heroes are smothered in the growing corn. Yet we are forsooth to expel these hard-working folks and to leave men nothing to do but to rob or steal.

The rustic, being called upon to state his own case, described the poverty of the squatter families, the innocence of their lives, their services to shipwrecked seafarers, and so forth. On the last topic he received a dramatic confirmation from a man in the crowd, who had himself been one of a party of castaways hospitably relieved three years before by these very people. So all ended well. The stress laid on the simple rusticity of the rustic, and the mutual distrust and mean jealousy of the townsfolk, shew in numerous touches that we have in this narrative a highly coloured scene. But the picture of the decayed city, with its ancient walls a world too wide for its shrunk population, is companion to that of the deserted countryside. Both panels of this mournful diptych could have been paralleled in the case of many a city and territory in Italy and Greece. The moral reflexions, in which the lecturer proceeds to apply the lessons of the narrative, are significant. He enlarges on the superiority of the poor to the rich in many virtues, unselfishness in particular. Poverty in itself is not naturally an evil. If men will only work with their own hands, they may supply their own needs, and live a life worthy of freemen. The word αὐτουργεῖν occurs more than once in this spirited appeal, shewing clearly that Dion had detected the plague-spot in the civilization of his day. But he honestly admits the grave difficulties that beset artisans in the various trades practised in towns. They lack necessary[1205] capital: everything has to be paid for, food clothing lodging fuel and what not, for they get nothing free but water, and own nothing but their bodies. Yet we cannot advise them to engage in foul degrading vocations. We desire them to live honourably, not to sink below the standards of the greedy usurer or the owners of lodging-houses or ships or gangs of slaves. What then are we to do with the decent poor? Shall we have to propose turning them out of the cities and settling them on allotments in the country? Tradition tells us rural settlement prevailed throughout Attica of yore: and the system worked well, producing citizens of a better and more discreet type than the town-bred mechanics who thronged the Assemblies and law-courts of Athens.

It may be said that Dion is a mere itinerant philosopher, who travels about seeing the world and proposing impracticable remedies for contemporary evils in popular sermons to idle audiences. But he knew his trade, and his trade was to make his hearers ‘feel better’ for attending his discourses. When he portrays the follies or vices of the age, he is dealing with matters of common knowledge, and not likely to misrepresent facts seriously. When he suggests remedies, it matters little that there is no possibility of applying them. Present company are always excepted, and the townsfolk who listened to the preacher would neither resent his strictures on city life nor have the slightest intention of setting their own hands to the spade or plough. That there was a kind of moral reaction[1206] in this period, and that lecturers and essayists contributed something to the revival of healthier public sentiment, I do not dispute; though I think too much success is sometimes[1207] ascribed to their good intentions. At any rate they cannot be credited with improving the conditions of rustic life. To the farmer the voice of the great world outside was represented by the collectors of rents and taxes, the exactors of services, not by the sympathetic homilies of popular teachers.

XLI. NEW TESTAMENT WRITERS.

The authors of the books of the New Testament, whom it is convenient to view together as a group of witnesses bearing on the condition of a part of the Roman East under the early Empire, supply some interesting matter. We read of an agriculture that includes corn-growing, the culture of vines, and pastoral industry: the olive, and above all the fig-tree, appear as normal objects of the countryside. Plough spade and sickle, storehouse threshing-floor and winepress, are the familiar appliances of rustic life, as they had been from time immemorial. Farmers need not only hard work, but watchfulness and forethought, for the business of their lives. Live stock have to be protected from beasts of prey, and need endless care. And the rustic’s outlook is ever clouded by the fear of drought and murrain. All this is an ordinary picture, common to many lands: only the anxiety about water-supply is perhaps specially Oriental. The ox and the ass are the chief beasts of draught and burden. In short, country life goes on as of old, and much as it still does after many changes of rulers.

From the way in which farmers are generally spoken of I infer that they are normally peasant[1208] landowners. That is to say, not tenants of an individual landlord, but holding their farms with power of sale and right of succession, liable to tribute. The Roman state is strictly speaking the owner, having succeeded to the royal ownership assumed by the Seleucid kings. But that there was also letting[1209] of estates to tenant-farmers is clear, for we read of collection of rents. At the same time we find it suggested, apparently as a moral rather than legal obligation, that the toiling farmer has the first claim[1210] on the produce, and the ox is not to be muzzled. Such passages, and others insisting on honesty and the duty of labour, keep us firmly reminded of the moral aims pervading the works of these writers. In other words, they are more concerned to define what ought to be than to record what is. Many of the significant references to rustic matters occur in parables. But we must not forget that a parable would have little force if its details were not realistic.

Of the figures appearing on the agricultural scene we may distinguish the wealthy landlord[1211], whether farming for his own account or letting his land to tenants: the steward[1212] farming for his lord’s account: the tenant-farmer: probably the free peasant on a small holding of his own. Labour is represented by the farmer working with his own hands, and by persons employed simply as labourers. These last are either freemen or slaves. Slavery is assumed as a normal condition, but a reader can hardly help being struck by the notable passages in which the wage-earner appears as a means of illustrating an important point. Does the occurrence of such passages suggest that in these Oriental surroundings wage-service was as common a system as bond-service, perhaps even more so? I hesitate to draw this conclusion, for the following reason. Accepting the fact of slavery (as the writers do), there was not much to be said beyond enjoining humanity on masters and conscientious and respectful service on slaves. But the relation between hirer and hired, presumably a bargain, opened up far-reaching issues of equity, transcending questions of formal law. Hence we hear much about it. That the workman is worthy of his meat (ἐργάτης ... τροφῆς) is a proposition of which we have an earlier[1213] version, referring to slaves. The cowardice of the hireling shepherd points a notable moral. The rich who defraud the reaper of his hire[1214] meet with scathing denunciation. For to him that worketh the reward is not reckoned[1215] of grace but of debt.

This last proposition seems to furnish a key to the remarkable parable[1216] of the Labourers in the Vineyard, which has been subjected to many diverse interpretations. If we accept the view that the wages represent the Kingdom of God, and that this reward is granted not of debt but of grace, it is clear that great stress is laid on the autocratic position of the householder (οἰκοδεσπότης). His treatment of the hired labourers is an assertion of entire indifference to what we call ‘economic’ considerations. How it is to be interpreted as equitable, theologians must decide, or be content to leave modern handworkers to draw their own conclusions. My interest in the matter may be shewn in the question whether this householder is to be regarded as a typical figure, or not. I trust I am guilty of no irreverence in saying that to me he seems a purely hypothetical character. That is to say that I take the gist of the parable to be this: if an employer chose to deal with his hirelings on such arbitrary principles, he would be acting within his rights. I do not infer that such conduct was likely in ordinary life, or even that a concrete case of its occurrence had ever been known. I cannot believe that in a country where debts[1217] and usury are referred to as matters of course, and where masters entrusted money[1218] to their slaves for purposes of trade, where sales of land[1219] were an ordinary business transaction, a sane individualistic capitalist would act as the man in this parable. Those who think differently must clear up their own difficulties. I would add that this parable, the details of which seem to me non-realistic, only occurs in one of the Gospels. Is it possible that it is based on some current Oriental story?

XLII. MARTIAL AND JUVENAL.

Among the witnesses, other than technical writers, from whom we get evidence as to the conditions of agriculture under the Empire, are two poets, Martial and Juvenal. The latter, a native of Aquinum in the old Volscian part of Latium, never shook off the influence of his connexion with rural Italy. The former, a native of Bilbilis in Spain, was one of the gifted provincials who came to Rome as the literary centre of the world. He spent more than thirty years there, and made an unrivalled name as a writer of epigrams, but his heart was in Spain. The attitude of these two men towards the facts of their time is very different, and the difference affects the value of their evidence. In the satires of Juvenal indignant rhetoric takes up a high moral position, and declaims fiercely against abominations. Now this attitude is beset with temptations to overstate an evil rather than weaken effect. Moreover, in imperial Rome it was necessary to be very careful: not only were personal references dangerous, but it was above all things necessary to avoid provoking the Emperor. Yet even Emperors could (and did) view attacks upon their predecessors with indifference or approval: while vicious contemporaries were not likely to put on the cap if their deceased counterparts were assailed. So the satirist, confining his strictures mainly to the past, is not often a contemporary witness of the first order. It is fortunate that his references to rustic conditions are not much affected by this limitation: but they mostly refer to the past. =Martial= on the contrary is a mere man of his time. His business is not to censure, still less to reform, but to find themes for light verse such as will hit the taste of average Roman readers. He soon discovered that scandal was the one staple topic of interest, and exploited it as a source of ‘copy’ down to the foulest dregs. Most of the characters exposed appear under fictitious Greek names, but doubtless Roman gossips applied the filthy imputations to each other. We need not suppose that Martial’s ruling passion was for bawdy epigram. But he knew what would hit the taste of an idle and libidinous world. For himself, nothing is clearer than that he found life in the great city a sore trial, not solely from the oppressive climate at certain seasons of the year. He was too clever a man not to suffer weariness in such surroundings. He had to practice the servility habitually displayed by poor men towards the rich and influential, but he did not like it. It seems to have been through patronage that he got together sufficient wealth to enable him eventually to retire to his native country. The din and dirt and chronic unrest of Rome were to him, as to Juvenal, an abomination: and from these ever-present evils there was, for dwellers in mean houses or crowded blocks of sordid flats, no escape. Both writers agree that the Rome of those days was only fit for the wealthy to live in. Secure in his grand mansion on one of the healthiest sites, with plenty of elbow-room, guarded against unwelcome intrusions by a host of slaves and escorted by them in public, the millionaire could take his life easily: he could even sleep. Martial had his way to make as a man of letters, and needed to keep brain and nerves in working order. For this, occasional retirement from the urban pandemonium was necessary. So he managed to acquire a little suburban[1220] property, where he could spend days in peace and quiet. Many of his friends did the same. To keep such a place, however small, in good order, and to grow some country produce, however little, it was necessary to have a resident[1221] vilicus. He had also a vilica, and there would probably be a slave or two under them. The poet was now better off, and doing as others did. These suburbana, retreats for the weary, were evidently numerous. Their agricultural significance was small. Martial often pokes fun at the owners who withdraw to the country for a holiday, taking with them[1222] their supplies of eatables bought in the markets of Rome. Clearly the city markets were well supplied: and this indicates the existence of another class of suburban properties, market-gardens on a business footing, of which we hear little directly. An industry of this kind springs up round every great centre of population: how far it can extend depends on the available means of delivering the produce in fair marketable condition. Round Rome it had no doubt existed for centuries, and was probably one of the most economically sound agricultural undertakings in central Italy. That it was conducted on a small scale and was prosperous may be the reason why it attracted little notice in literature.

Though Martial cannot be regarded as an authority on Italian agriculture, it so happens that passages of his works are important and instructive, particularly in connexion with matters of land-management and farm-labour. He gives point to his epigrams by short and vivid touches, above all by telling contrasts. Now this style of writing loses most of its force if the details lack reality. He was therefore little tempted to go beyond the truth in matters of ordinary non-bestial life, such as agricultural conditions; we may accept him as a good witness. To begin with an all-important topic, let us see what we get from him on the management of land, either for the landlord’s account under a slave vilicus, or by letting it to a free colonus. In explaining the gloomy bearing of Selius, he remarks[1223] that it is not due to recent losses: his wife and his goods and his slaves are all safe, and he is not suffering from any failures of a tenant or a steward. Here colonus as opposed to vilicus must mean a free tenant, who might be behindhand with his rent or with service due under his lease. The opposition occurs elsewhere, as when he refers[1224] to the produce sent in to a rich man in Rome from his country estates by his steward or tenant. So too on the birthday of an eminent advocate all his clients and dependants send gifts; among them[1225] the hunter sends a hare, the fisherman some fish, and the colonus a kid. The venator and piscator are very likely his slaves. In protesting[1226] against the plague of kissing as it strikes a man on return to Rome, he says, ‘all the neighbours kiss you, and the colonus too with his hairy unsavoury mouth.’ It seems to imply that the rustic tenant would come to Town to pay his respects to his landlord. Barring the kiss, the duty of welcoming the squire makes one think of times not long gone by in England. In one passage[1227] there is a touch suggestive of almost medieval relations. How Linus has managed to get through a large inherited fortune, is a mystery in need of an explanation. He has not been a victim of the temptations of the great wicked city. No, he has always lived in a country town, where economy was not only possible but easy. Everything he needed was to be had cheap or gratis, and there was nothing to lead him into extravagant ways. Now among the instances of cheapness is the means of satisfying his sexual passions when they become unruly. At such moments either the vilica or the duri nupta coloni served his turn. The steward’s consort would be his slave, and there is no more to be said: but the tenant-farmer’s wife, presumably a free woman, is on a different footing. There is no suggestion of hoodwinking the husband, for the situation is treated as a matter of course. It would rather seem that the landlord is represented as relying on the complaisance of a dependent boor. If I interpret the passage rightly, we have in it a vivid sidelight on the position of some at least of the coloni of the first century AD. That vilici and coloni alike were usually clumsy rustics of small manual skill, is suggested by two passages[1228] in which they are credited with bungling workmanship in wood or stone. Perhaps we may detect reference to a colonus in an epigram on a man who spends his money lavishly on his own debaucheries but is meanly niggardly to necessitous friends. It says ‘you sell ancestral lands to pay for a passing gratification of your lust, while your friend, left in the lurch, is tilling land[1229] that is not his own.’ That is, you might have made him a present of a little farm, as many another has done; but you have left him to sink into a mere colonus. Enough has now been said to shew that these tenant-farmers were a humble and dependent class of men, and that the picture drawn from passages of Martial corresponds to that drawn above in Weber’s interpretation of Columella.

It is not necessary to set out with the same fulness all the evidence of Martial on agricultural matters regarded from various points of view. The frequent reference to the land is a striking fact: like his fellow-countryman Columella, he was clearly interested in the land-system of Italy. He shews wide knowledge of the special products of different districts; a knowledge probably picked up at first in the markets of Rome, and afterwards increased by experience. No writer draws the line more distinctly between productive and unproductive estates. That we hear very much more of the latter is no wonder: so long as the supremacy of Rome was unshaken, and money poured into Italy, a great part of the country was held by wealthy owners to whom profit was a less urgent motive than pleasure or pride. To what lengths ostentation could go is seen[1230] in the perverse fancy of a millionaire to have a real rus in urbe with grounds about his town house so spacious that they included a real vineyard: here in sheltered seclusion he could have a vintage in Rome. This is in truth the same vulgar ambition as that (much commoner) of the man who prides himself on treating guests at his country mansion to every luxury procurable in Rome. It is merely inverted.

At this point it is natural to ask whence came the vast sums lavished on these and other forms of luxury. Italy was not a great manufacturing country. The regular dues from the Provinces flowed into the treasuries, not openly into private pockets. Yet a good deal of these monies no doubt did in the end become the reward of individuals, as salaries or amounts payable to contractors, etc. These however would not by themselves suffice to account for the immense squandering that evidently took place. A source of incomes, probably much more productive than we might at first sight imagine, existed in the huge estates owned by wealthy Romans in the lands beyond the seas. Martial refers[1231] to such properties at Patrae in Achaia, in Egypt, etc. The returns from these estates, however badly managed, were in the total probably very large. And they were no new thing. In Varro and in Cicero’s letters we find them treated as a matter of course: the case of Atticus and his lands in Epirus is well known. Pliny[1232] tells us of the case of Pompey, and also of the six land-monopolizers whom Nero found in possession of 50% of the Province of Africa. The practice of usury in the subject countries was no longer so widespread or so remunerative as it had been in the last period of the Republic, but it had not ceased, and the same is true of the farming of revenues. Commerce was active: but we are rather concerned with the means of paying for imported goods than with the fact of importation. The anxiety as to the supply of corn from abroad shews itself in the gossip[1233] of quidnuncs as to the fleet of freight-ships coming from Alexandria. Puteoli and Ostia were doubtless very busy; all we need note is that someone must have made money[1234] in the business of transport and delivery. These considerations may serve to explain the presence of so much ‘money in the country’ as we say, and the resulting extravagance. But all this social and economic fabric rested on the security guaranteed by the imperial forces on land and sea.

One of Martial’s epigrams[1235] is of special interest as describing a manifestly exceptional estate. It was at or near Baiae, the famous seaside pleasure-resort, which had been the scene of costly fancies and luxurious living for more than a hundred years. The point of the poem lies in the striking contrast of this place compared with the unproductive suburbanum[1236] of another owner, which is kept going by supplies from the Roman market. For the place is a genuine unsophisticated country farm, producing corn and wine and good store of firewood, and breeding cattle swine sheep and various kinds of poultry and pigeons. When rustic neighbours come to pay their respects, they bring presents, such as honey in the comb, cheese, dormice, a kid, a capon. The daughters[1237] of honest tenants bring baskets of eggs. The villa is a centre of hospitality; even the slaves are well fed. The presence of a slave-household brought from Town is particularly dwelt on: what with fishing and trapping and with ‘light work’ in the garden, these spoilt menials, even my lord’s pet eunuch, are happy enough. There are also young home-bred slaves (vernae) probably the offspring of the farm-slaves. The topsyturvydom of this epigram is so striking that one may suspect Martial of laughing in his sleeve at the eccentric friend whose farm he is praising. In any case this cannot be taken seriously as a realistic picture of a country seat practically agricultural. The owner evidently drew his income from other sources. And the sort of man who treated himself to an eunuch can hardly have been much of a farmer, even near Baiae. The mention of probi coloni illustrates what has been said above as to tenants, and that a farm could be described in such words as rure vero barbaroque is a candid admission that in too many instances a place of the kind could only by courtesy be styled a farm, since the intrusion of ‘civilization’ (that is, of refined and luxurious urban elements) destroyed its practical rustic character. That the estate in question produced enough to feed the owner and his guests, his domestics brought from Rome, and the resident rustic staff as well, is credible. But there is nothing to shew that it produced any surplus for the markets: it may have done something in this direction, but that it really paid its way, yielding a moderate return on the capital sunk in land slaves and other farm-stock, is utterly incredible.

Whether in town or country, the life sketched by Martial is that of a society resting on a basis of slavery. At the same time the supply of new slaves[1238] was not so plentiful as it had been in days before the Roman Peace under Augustus. Serviceable rustic slaves were valuable nowadays. Addressing Faustinus, the wealthy owner of the above Baian villa and several others, the poet says ‘you can send this book[1239] to Marcellinus, who is now at the end of his campaign in the North and has leisure to read: but let your messenger be a dainty Greek page. Marcellinus will requite you by sending you a slave, captive from the Danube country, who has the making of a shepherd in him, to tend the flocks on your estate by Tibur.’ Each friend is to send the other what the other lacks and he is in a position to supply. This is a single instance; but the suggested do ut des is significant. As wars became rarer, and prisoners fewer, the disposal of captives would be a perquisite of more and more value. That the normal treatment of slaves was becoming more and more humane, is certain. But whether humanitarian sentiment in Stoic forms, as preached by Seneca and others, had much to do with this result, is more doubtful. The wisdom of not provoking discontent among the slaves, particularly in the country, was well understood. The decline of the free rustic population had made the absence of a regular police force a danger not to be ignored. Improved conditions were probably in most cases due to self-interest and caution much more than to humane sentiment. In Martial’s day we may gather from numerous indications that in general the lot of slaves was not a hard one if we except the legal right of self-disposal. Urban domestics were often sadly spoilt, and were apt to give themselves great airs outside the house or to callers at the door. But I believe that in respect of comfort and happiness the position of a steward with a slave-staff in charge of a country place owned by a rich man was in most cases far pleasanter. Subject to the preparation for the master’s occasional visits and entertainment of his guests, these men were left very much to their own devices. The site of the villa had been chosen for its advantages. So long as enough work was done to satisfy the owner, they, his caretakers, enjoyed gratis for the whole year[1240] the privileges and pleasures which he paid for dearly and seldom used.

It seems certain that it was on such estates that most of the slave-breeding took place. It was becoming a more regular practice, as we see from Columella. And it had advantages from several points of view. The slave allowed to mate with a female partner and produce children was more effectively tied to the place than the unmated labourer on a plantation was by his chain. So long as the little vernae were not brutally treated (and it seems to have been a tradition to treat them well), the parents were much less likely to join in any rebellious schemes. And, after all, the young of slaves were worth money, if sold; while, if kept by the old master, they would work in what was the only home they had known: they would be easier to train and manage than some raw barbarian from Germany or Britain or the Sudan. But it must not be forgotten that the recognition of slave-breeding foreboded the eventual decline of slavery—personal slavery—as an institution, at least for purposes of rustic life. I know of no direct evidence[1241] as to the class or classes from which the unfree coloni of the later Empire were drawn. But it seems to me extremely probable that many of the coloni of the period with which we are just now concerned were home-bred slaves manumitted and kept on the estate as tenants. This conjecture finds a reason for manumission, as the freedman would be capable of a legal relation, which the slave was not. The freedman’s son would be ingenuus, and would represent, in his economic bondage under cover of legal freedom, a natural stage in the transition from the personal slave to the predial serf.

That there were vernae on the small suburban properties, the rest-retreats of Martial and many others, is not to be doubted. But they can hardly have been very numerous. These little places were often but poorly kept up. The owners were seldom wealthy men, able to maintain many slaves. Economy and quiet were desired by men who could not afford ostentation. The normal use of the epithet sordidus[1242] (not peculiar to Martial) in speaking of such places, and indeed of small farmsteads in general, is characteristic of them and of the undress life led there. The house was sometimes in bad condition. To patch up a leaky roof[1243] a present of a load of tiles was welcome. A man buys a place the house (casa) on which is horribly dark and old: the poet remarks that it is close to the pleasure-garden (hortos) of a rich man. This explains the purchase: the buyer will put up with bad lodging for the prospect of good dinners at his neighbour’s table. The difficulty of finding a purchaser for an estate of bad sanitary record, and the damage done to riparian farms by the Tiber floods, are instances[1244] of the ordinary troubles of the little landowners near Rome. A peculiar nuisance, common in Italy, was the presence in some corner of a field of the tomb[1245] of some former owner or his family. A slice of the land, so many feet in length and breadth, was often reserved[1246] as not to pass with the inheritance. What the heir never owned, that he could not sell. So, when the property changed hands, the new owner had no right to remove what to him might be nothing but a hindrance to convenient tillage. Altars[1247] taken over from a predecessor may also have been troublesome at times, but their removal was probably less difficult.

The picture of agricultural conditions to be drawn from =Juvenal= agrees with that drawn from Martial. But, as said above, the point of view is different in the satirist, whose business it is to denounce evils, and who is liable to fall into rhetorical exaggeration. And to a native of central Italy the tradition of a healthier state of things in earlier ages was naturally a more important part of his background than it could be to a man from Spain. Hence we find vivid scenes[1248] drawn from legend, shewing good old Romans, men of distinction, working on the land themselves and rearing well-fed families (slaves included) on the produce of meagre little plots of two iugera. An ex-consul[1249] breaks off his labours on a hillside, shoulders his mattock, and joins a rustic feast at the house of a relative. The hill-folk of the Abruzzi are patterns of thrifty contentment, ready to earn their bread[1250] with the plough. But the civic duties are not forgotten. The citizen has a double function. He serves the state in arms and receives a patch of land[1251] as his reward for wounds suffered. He has to attend the Assembly before his wounds[1252] are fully healed. In short, he is a peasant soldier who does a public duty in both peace and war. The vital need of the present day[1253] is that parents should rear sons of this type. Here we have the moral which these scenes, and the frequent references to ancient heroes, are meant to impress on contemporaries. A striking instance[1254] from historical times is that of Marius, who is represented as having risen from the position of a wage-earning farm-labourer to be the saviour of Rome from the barbarians of the North. But the men of the olden time led simple lives, free from the extravagance and luxury of these days and therefore from the temptations and ailments that now abound. The only wholesome surroundings[1255] now are to be found in out-of-the way country corners or the homes of such frugal citizens as Juvenal himself. But these are mere islets in a sea of wantonness bred in security: luxury is deadlier[1256] than the sword, and the conquered world is being avenged in the ruin of its conqueror. Perhaps no symptom on which he enlarges is more significant and sinister from his own point of view than that betrayed in a passing reference by the verbal contrast[1257] between paganus and miles. The peasant is no longer soldier: and in this fact the weightiest movements of some 250 years of Roman history are virtually implied.

So much for an appeal to the Roman past. But Juvenal, like Vergil before him, was not content with this. He looks back to the primitive age[1258] of man’s appearance on earth and idealizes the state of things in this picture also. Mankind, rude healthy and chaste, had not yet reached the notion of private property: therefore theft was unknown. The moral is not pressed in the passage where this description occurs; but it is worth noting because the greed of men in imperial Rome, and particularly in the form of land-grabbing and villa-building, is a favourite topic in the satires. All this side of contemporary life, viewed as the fruit of artificial appetites and unnecessary passions, is evidence of a degeneracy that has been going on ever since the beginnings of society. And the worst of it is that those who thrive on present conditions are the corrupt the servile and the mean, from whom no improvement can be hoped for. Juvenal’s picture of present facts as he sees them is quite enough to justify his pessimism. As a means of arresting degeneration he is only able to suggest a change[1259] of mind, in fact to urge people to be other than they are. But he cannot shew where the initiative is to be found. Certainly not in the mongrel free populace of Rome, a rabble of parasites and beggars. Nor in the ranks of the wealthy freedmen into whose hands the chief opportunities of enrichment have passed, thanks to the imperial jealousy of genuine Romans and preference of supple aliens. These freedmen are the typical capitalists: they buy up everything, land included; and Romans who despise these upstarts have nevertheless to fawn on them. Nor again are leaders to be found in the surviving remnant of old families. It is a sad pity, but pride of birth, while indisposing them to useful industry, does not prevent them from debauchery or from degrading themselves in public. Financial ruin and charges of high treason are destroying them: even were this not so, who would look to such persons for a wholesome example? Neither religion with its formalities and excitements, nor philosophy with its professors belying their moral preaching, could furnish the means of effecting the change of heart needed for vital reform.

No, it was not from the imperial capital, the reeking hotbed of wickedness, that any good could come. And when Juvenal turns to the country it is remarkable how little comfort he seems to find in the rural conditions of Italy. Like other writers, he refers to the immense estates[1260] that extended over a great part of the country, both arable and grazing lands (saltus), the latter in particular being of monstrous size. We cannot get from him any hint that the land-monopoly, the canker of the later Republic, had been effectually checked. Nor indeed had it. One of the ways in which rich patrons[1261] rewarded clients for services, honourable or (as he suggests) often dishonourable, was to give the dependant a small landed estate. The practice was not new. Maecenas had given Horace his Sabine farm. But the man who gave away acres must have had plenty of acres to give. True, some of the great landlords had earned[1262] their estates by success in an honourable profession: but the satirist is naturally more impressed by the cases of those, generally freedmen, whose possessions are the fruit of corrupt compliance or ignoble trades. These upstarts, like the Trimalchio of Petronius, live to display their wealth, and the acquisition of lands[1263] and erection of costly villas are a means to this end. The fashion set by them is followed by others, and over-buying and over-building are the cause of bankruptcies. Two passages[1264] indicate the continued existence of an atrocious evil notorious in the earlier period of the latifundia, the practice of compelling small holders to part with their land by various outrages. The live stock belonging to a rich neighbour are driven on to the poor man’s farm until the damage thus caused to his crops forces him to sell—of course at the aggressor’s price. A simpler form, ejectment without pretence of purchase, is mentioned as an instance of the difficulties in the way of getting legal redress, at least for civilians. There would be little point in mentioning such wrongs as conceivable possibilities: surely they must have occurred now and then in real life. The truth, I take it, was that the great landlord owning a host of slaves had always at disposal a force well able to carry out his territorial ambitions; and possession of power was a temptation to use it. The employment of slaves in rural border-raids was no new thing, and the slave, having himself nothing to lose, probably found zest in a change of occupation.

In Juvenal agriculture appears as carried on by slave labour, and the employment of supplementary wage-earners is ignored; not unnaturally, for it was not necessary to refer to it. The satirist himself[1265] has rustic slaves, and is proud that they are rustic, when they on a special occasion come in to wait at his table in Rome. Slaves are of course included[1266] in the stock of an estate, great or small, given or sold. All this is commonplace: what is more to the satirist’s purpose is the mention[1267] of a member of an illustrious old family who has come down in the world so low as to tend another man’s flocks for hire. And this is brought in as a contrast to the purse-proud insolence of a wealthy freedman. But more remarkable is the absence of any reference to tenant coloni. Even the word colonus does not occur in any shade of meaning. This too may fairly be accounted for by the fact that little could have been got out of references to the system for the purposes of his argument. It was, as he knew, small peasant landowners, not tenants, that had been the backbone of old Rome; and it was this class, viewed with the sympathetic eye of one sighing for perished glories, that he would have liked to restore. It is a satirist’s bent to wish for the unattainable and protest against the inevitable. For himself, he can sing the praises of rustic simplicity and cheapness and denounce the luxury and extravagance of Roman society, though he dare not assail living individuals. And in exposing the rottenness of the civilization around him he attacks the very vices that had grown to such portentous heights through the development of slavery. Idleness bore its fruit, not only in the debauchery and gambling that fostered unholy greed and crimes committed to procure the money that was ever vanishing, but in the degradation of honest labour. Pampered menials were arrogant, poor citizens servile. And vast tracts of Italian land bore witness to the mournful fact that the land system, so far from affording a sound basis for social and economic betterment, was itself one of the worst elements of the situation.

At this stage it is well to recall the relation between agriculture and military service, the farmer-soldier ideal. The long-since existing tendency for the soldier to become a professional, while the free farmer class was decaying, had never obliterated the impression of this ideal on Roman minds. The belief that gymnastic exercises on Greek models were no effective substitute for regular manual labour in the open air as guarantees of military ‘fitness’ is still strong in Juvenal. It shews itself in his pictures of life in Rome, where such exercises were practised for the purpose of ‘keeping fit’ and ‘getting an appetite,’ much as they are now. Followed by baths and massage and luxurious appliances of every kind, this treatment enabled the jaded city-dweller to minimize the enervating effects of idleness relieved by excitements and debauchery. He significantly lays stress on the fact that these habits were as common among women as among men. The usual allowance must be made for a satirist’s exaggeration; but the general truth of the picture is not to be doubted. The city life was no preparation for the camp with its rough appliances and ever-present need for the readiness to endure cheerfully the hardships of the field. The toughness of the farm-labourer was proverbial: the Latin word durus is his conventional epithet. In other words, he was a model of healthy hardness and vigour. Now to Juvenal, as to others, the best object of desire[1268] was mens sana in corpore sano, and he well knew that to secure the second gave the best hope of securing the first. We might then expect him to recommend field work as the surest way to get and keep vigorous health. Yet I cannot find any indication of this precept save the advice to a friend to get out of Rome and settle on a garden-plot in the country. He says ‘there live devoted[1269] to your clod-pick; be the vilicus of a well-tended garden.’ I presume he means ‘be your own steward, and lend a hand in tillage as a steward would do.’ But an average vilicus would be more concerned to get work out of his underlings than to exert himself, and Juvenal is not very explicit in his advice, the main point being to get his friend out of Rome. I have reserved for comparison with this passage one from Martial[1270]. In a couplet on a pair of halteres (something rather like dumb-bells) he says ‘Why waste the strength of arms by use of silly dumb-bells? If a man wants exercise, he had better go and dig in a vineyard.’ This is much plainer, but one may doubt whether it is seriously meant to be an ordinary rule of life. Probably it is no more than a sneer at gymnastic exercises. For Martial well knew that muscle developed by the practice of athletics[1271] is very different from the bodily firmness and capacity for continuous effort under varying conditions that is produced by a life of hard manual labour. And the impression left on a reader’s mind by epigrammatist and satirist alike is that in Rome and in the most favoured and accessible parts of Italy the blessing of ‘corporal soundness’ was tending to become a monopoly of slaves. For when Juvenal declares[1272] that nowadays the rough fossor, though shackled with a heavy chain, turns up his nose at the garden-stuff that fed a Manius Curius in the olden days, hankering after the savoury fleshpots of the cook-shop, we need not take him too seriously.

XLIII. PLINY THE YOUNGER.

The =younger Pliny=, one of the generation who remembered Vespasian, lived through the dark later years of Domitian, and rejoiced in the better times of Nerva and Trajan, is one of our most important witnesses. Not being a technical writer on agriculture, it was not his business to dwell on what ought to be done rather than what was being done. Being himself a great landowner as well as a man of wide interests and high reputation, he knew the problems of contemporary land-management from experience, and speaks with intelligence and authority. He was not a man of robust constitution, and like many others he found much refreshment in rural sojournings. He is remarkable for keen appreciation of beautiful scenery. Adopted by his uncle, the author of the Natural History, well-educated and in touch with the literary circles and the best social life of Rome, his letters illustrate the intellectual and moral influences that prevailed in cultivated households of honest gentlemen. In particular he is to us perhaps the very best example of the humanizing tendency of the current philosophies of the day in relation to the subject of slavery. He is deeply interested in promoting manumissions[1273] whenever he gets a chance. His tender concern for the welfare of his slaves constantly meets us, and he is only consoled for the death of one by reflecting that the man was manumitted in time[1274] and so died free. In fact he does not regard slavery as a normally lifelong condition; and he allows his slaves to make informal wills and respects their disposition of their savings among their fellows[1275] in the household, which is to slaves a sort of commonwealth. Masters who don’t feel the loss of their slaves are really not human. But this all refers to domestics, and does not touch the case of the field-hand toiling on the farm.

A transaction[1276] in reference to the sale of some land by the lake of Como, Pliny’s own neighbourhood, illustrates the normal changes of ownership that were going on, and his own generous nature. An old lady, an intimate friend of his mother, wanted to have a property in that lovely district. Pliny gave her the offer of any of his land at her own price, reserving only certain parcels for sentimental reasons. Before (as it seems) any bargain was made, a friend died and left ⁵⁄₁₂ of his estate to Pliny, including some land such as the old lady desired. Pliny at once sent his freedman Hermes to offer her the suitable parcels for sale. She promptly clinched the bargain with Hermes at a figure which turned out to be only ⁷⁄₉ of the full value. Pliny’s attention was called to this, but he stood by the act of his freedman and ratified the sale. The publicani who were then farming the 5% duty on successions soon appeared, and claimed the 5% as reckoned on estimated full value of the property. The old lady settled with them on these terms, and then insisted on paying to Pliny the full value, not the bargained price; which offer he, not to be outdone, gracefully declined. Such was the course of a commonplace transaction, carried out by exceptional people in an unselfish spirit. We are most certainly not to suppose that this sort of thing was common in land-dealings. Another letter[1277] shews us how a well-meant benefaction might fail in its aim for want of means in the beneficiary. An old slave-woman, once Pliny’s wet-nurse, had evidently been manumitted, and he made her a present of a small farm (agellum) to provide her maintenance. At that time its market value was ample to secure this. But things went wrong. For some reason the yearly returns fell, and the market value fell also. Whether the old woman had tried to manage it herself and failed, or whether a bad tenant had let down the cultivation, does not plainly appear. At any rate Pliny was greatly relieved when a friend, presumably one living near the place, undertook to direct the cultivation of the farm. He expresses his confidence that under the new management the holding would recover its value. For his own credit, not less than for the advantage of his nurse, he wishes to see it produce its utmost. These little holdings no doubt needed very skilful management, and I suspect that idle slaves were in this case the cause of the trouble. Slaves commonly went with land, and I do not think the generous donor would give his old nurse the bare land without the needful labour. The old ‘Mammy’ could not control them, and Pliny’s friend saved the situation.

Trajan’s order, requiring Provincial candidates for office to invest a third[1278] of their property in Italian real estate, and the artificial rise of prices for the time, has been dealt with above. Pliny advised a friend, if he would be not sorry[1279] to part with his Italian estates, to sell now at the top of the market and buy land in the Provinces, where prices would be correspondingly lowered. Of the risks attendant on landowning in Italy he was well aware, and one letter[1280] on the pros and cons of a tempting purchase must be translated in full. He writes thus to a friend.

‘I am doing as usual, asking your advice on a matter of business. There are now for sale some landed properties that border on farms of mine and indeed run into them. There are about them many points that tempt me, but some equally important that repel me. The temptations are these. First, to round off my estate would be in itself an improvement. Secondly, it would be a pleasure, and a real economy to boot, to make one trip and one expense serve for a visit to both properties, to keep both under the same[1281] legal agent, indeed almost under the same stewards, and to use only one of the granges as my furnished house, just keeping the other in repair. I am taking into account the cost of furniture, of chief servants, fancy gardeners, artisans, and even hunting[1282] outfit: for it makes a vast difference whether items like these are concentrated in one spot or are scattered in separate places. On the other hand I fear it may be rash to expose so large a property to the same local climatic risks. It seems safer to encounter the changes of fortune by not holding too much land in one neighbourhood. Moreover, it is a very pleasant thing to have change of scene and climate, and so too is the mere touring about from one of your estates to another. Then comes the chief issue on which I am trying to make up my mind. The farms are productive, the soil rich, the water-supply good; they contain pastures, vineyards, and woodlands that afford timber, from which there is a small but regular return. A favoured land, you see: but it is suffering from the weakness[1283] of those who farm it. For the late landlord several times distrained[1284] on the tenants’ goods, lessening their arrears[1285] of rent for the moment, but draining their substance for the future: the failure of this sent up the arrears once more. So they will have to be equipped[1286] with labour; which will cost all the more because only trusty slaves will do. As for chained slaves, I never keep them on my estates, and in those parts nobody does. I have now only to tell you the probable price. It is three million sesterces, though at one time it was five million: but, what with the present scarcity[1287] of tenants and the prevailing agricultural depression, the returns from the farms have fallen, and so has the market value. You will want to know whether I can raise easily even the three millions. It is true that nearly all I have is invested[1288] in land; still I have some money out at interest, and I shall have no trouble in borrowing. I shall get it from my mother-in-law, who lets me use her cash as if it were my own. So pray don’t let this consideration influence you, provided the others do not gainsay my project; I beg you to weigh them most carefully. For of experience and foresight you have plenty and to spare as a guide in general business, particularly in the placing of investments.’

The glimpses of agricultural conditions that we get from Pliny’s letters do not as a rule give us a cheerful picture. Most of his land seems to have been under vines, and the vintage[1289] was often poor, sometimes a failure. Drought and hailstorms played havoc[1290] with the crops. When there was a bountiful vintage, of course the wine made a poor price. Hence the returns from the farms are small, and unsafe[1291] at that. So he replies to similar complaints of friends. When he is at any of his country places he generally has to face a chorus of grumbling[1292] tenants. He was sometimes utterly puzzled what to do. If inclined to make abatements[1293] of rent, he is uneasily aware that this remedy may only put off the evil day. If tenants do not recover their solvency (and he knows that they seldom do), he will have to change his policy[1294], for they are ruining the land by bad husbandry. For himself, he is no farmer. When on a country estate, watching the progress of the vintage, he potters about[1295] in a rather purposeless manner, glad to retire to his study where he can listen to his reader or dictate to his secretary: if he can produce[1296] a few lines, that is his crop. It would seem that not all his farms were let to tenants. In one letter he speaks of his town-slaves[1297] being employed as overseers or gangers of the rustic hands, and remarks that one of his occupations is to pay surprise visits to these fellows. We can guess what a drag upon Italian agriculture the slavery-system really was: here is a man full of considerate humanity, devoted to the wellbeing of his slaves, who cannot trust one of them to see that others do their work.

But that letting to tenants was his usual plan is evident from the number of his references to the trouble they gave him. It was not always clear whether to get rid of them or to keep them (and if the latter, on what terms,) offered the less disastrous solution of an awkward problem. In one letter[1298] he gives the following excuse for his inability to be present in Rome on the occasion of a friend’s succeeding to the consulship. ‘You won’t take it ill of me, particularly as I am compelled[1299] to see to the letting of some farms, a business that means making an arrangement for several years, and will drive me to adopt a fresh policy. For in the five years[1300] just past the arrears have grown, in spite of large abatements granted. Hence most (of the tenants) take no further trouble to reduce their liabilities, having lost hope of ever meeting them in full: they grab and use up everything that grows, reckoning that henceforth it is not they[1301] who would profit by economy. So as the evils increase I must find remedies to meet them. And the only possible plan is to let these farms[1302] not at a cash rent but on shares, and then to employ some of my staff as task-masters to watch the crops. Besides, there is no fairer source of income than the returns rendered by soil climate and season. True, this plan requires mighty honesty, keen eyes, and a host of hands. Still I must make the trial; I must act as in a chronic malady, and use every possible treatment to promote a change.’

No doubt there were many landlords more effectively qualified to wring an income out of rustic estates than this delicate and gentle literary man. Indeed he knew this himself and made no secret of it. Writing to a friend[1303] he says ‘When others go to visit their estates, it is to come back the richer; when I do so, it is to come back the poorer for the trip.’ He then tells the story of a recent experience. He had disposed of the year’s vintage on some estate (evidently the hanging crop) by auction to some speculative buyers, who were tempted by the apparent prospects of a rise in price to follow. Things did not turn out as expected, and Pliny felt bound to make some abatement in the covenanted price. Whether this was simply owing to his own scrupulous love of fair dealing, or whether some stipulation in the contract of sale had automatically become operative, does not seem quite clear: I should give him the benefit of the doubt. How to make the abatement equitably, so as to treat each case with perfect fairness, was a difficult problem. For, as he shews at length, the circumstances of different cases differed widely, and a mere ‘flat rate’ remission of so much per cent all round would not have worked out so as to give equal relief to all. After careful calculation he devised a scheme that satisfied his conscientious wish to act fairly by each and all. Of course this left him a large sum out of pocket, but he thought that the general approval of the neighbourhood and the gratitude of the relieved speculators were well worth the money. For to have a good name among the local dealers was good business for the future. Many an honest gentleman since Pliny’s time has similarly consoled himself for his losses of honour, and some of them have not missed their well-earned recompense.

Among his many country properties, a certain Tuscan villa was one of his favourite resorts. In a long description of it and its various attractions he mentions[1304] incidentally that the Tiber, which ran right through the estate, was available for barges in winter and spring, and thus enabled them to send their farm-produce by water-carriage to Rome. This confirms the evidence of other writers, as does also the letter describing the widespread devastation[1305] caused by a Tiber flood. More notable as throwing light on conditions of life in rural Italy is a letter[1306] in reply to a correspondent who had written to inform him of the disappearance of a Roman of position and property when on a journey, apparently in the Tiber country. The man was known to have reached Ocriculum, but after that all trace of him was lost. Pliny had small hopes from the inquiry that it was proposed to conduct. He cites a similar case from his own acquaintance years before. A fellow-burgess of Comum had got military promotion as centurion through the influence of Pliny, who made him a present of money when he set out, apparently for Rome, to take up his office. Nothing more was ever heard of him. But Pliny adds that in this case, as in the one just reported, the slaves escorting their master also disappeared. Therefore he leaves it an open question, whether[1307] the slaves murdered their master and escaped undetected, or whether the whole party on either occasion were murdered by a robber band. The lack of a regular constabulary in Italy had been, and still was, a grave defect in Roman administration. To account for this neglect we must remember that rich men always relied on their slave-escort for protection. If the poor man travelled, he was not worth[1308] robbing; his danger was the chance of being kidnapped and sold for a slave, and we have seen that some of the early emperors tried to put down this abuse. The danger to a traveller from his own slaves was perhaps greater on a journey than at home; but it was of the same kind, inseparable from slavery, and was most cruelly dealt with by the law. Meanwhile brigandage seems never to have been thoroughly extinguished in Italy or the Provinces[1309].

In spite of these drawbacks to life and movement in a great slave-holding community, there is nothing that strikes a reader more in Pliny’s letters than the easy acceptance of present conditions. Under Trajan the empire seemed so secure and strong, that unpleasant occurrences could be regarded as only of local importance. That the free population of Italy could no longer defend in arms what their forefathers had won, was manifest. But custom was making it seem natural to rely on armies raised in the Provinces; all the more so perhaps as emperors were being supplied by Spain. That slavery itself was one of the cankers that were eating out the vitality of the Roman empire, does not seem to have occurred to Pliny or other writers of the day. Philosophers had got so far as to protest against its worst abuses and vindicate the claims of a common humanity. Christian apostles, in the circles reached by them, preached also obedience[1310] and an honesty above eye-service as the virtues of a slave. But in both of these contrasted doctrines the teachers were mainly if not exclusively thinking of domestics, not of farm-hands. There was however one imperial department in which the distinction between slave and free still rigidly followed old traditional rules; and it was one much more likely to have to deal with cases of rustic slaves than of domestics. This was the army. The immemorial rule, that no slave could be a soldier, had never been broken save under the pressure of a few great temporary emergencies, or by the evasions incident to occasions of civil warfare. It still remained in force. When Pliny was governor of the Province of Bithynia and Pontus he had to deal with a question arising out of this rule. Recruiting was in progress, and two slaves were discovered among the men enlisted. They had already taken the military oath, but were not yet embodied in any corps. Pliny reported the case[1311] to Trajan, and asked for instructions. The emperor sent a careful answer. ‘If they were called up (lecti), then the recruiting officer did wrong: if they were furnished as substitutes[1312] (vicarii dati), the fault is with those who sent them: but if they presented themselves as volunteers, well knowing[1313] their disqualification, they must be punished. That they are not as yet embodied, matters little. For they were bound to have given a true account of their extraction on the day when they came up for inspection.’ What came of it we do not know. But it is no rash guess that the prospect of escaping into the ranks of the army would be attractive[1314] to a sturdy rustic slave, and that a recruiting officer might ask few questions when he saw a chance of getting exceptionally fine recruits. Probably the two detected suffered the capital penalty. Such was still the rigid attitude of the great soldier-emperor, determined not to confess the overstraining of the empire’s man-power. But the time was not far distant when Marcus, beset by the great pestilence and at his wits’ end for an army of defence, would enrol slaves[1315] and ruffians of any kind to fight for Rome.

It is not necessary to cite the numerous references in the letters to slaves and slavery that are not connected with agriculture. Nor need I pursue in detail the circumstances of one of his generous public benefactions, the alimentary endowment[1316] for freeborn children, probably at Comum. It has been mentioned in another chapter, and its chief point of interest is in the elaborate machinery employed to secure the perpetuity of the charity. To leave money to the municipality was to risk its being squandered. To leave them land meant that the estate would not be carefully managed. What he did was to convey[1317] the property in some land to a representative of the burgesses, and to take it back subject to a rent-charge considerably less than the yearly value of the land. Thus the endowment was safe, for the margin allowed would ensure that the land would not be allowed to drop out of cultivation. An interesting glimpse of municipal patriotism, active and passive. The only other detail I have to note is that he regularly uses the term colonus as ‘tenant-farmer.’ I have not found a single instance of the older sense ‘tiller of the soil.’ We cannot argue from Pliny to his contemporaries without some reserve, for he was undoubtedly an exceptional man. But, so far as his evidence goes, it bears out the view that great landlords were giving up the system of slave stewardships for free tenancies. Owners there still were who kept their estates in hand, farming themselves or by deputy for their own account. But that some of these were men of a humbler class, freedmen to wit, we have seen reason to believe from references in the elder Pliny. Perhaps they were many, and some may even have worked with their own hands. Be this as it may, slave labour[1318] was still the staple appliance of agriculture, and whenever there were slaves for sale there were always buyers.

XLIV. SUETONIUS AND OTHERS.

=Suetonius=, whose Lives of the first twelve emperors contain much interesting and important matter, stands in relation to the present inquiry on the same footing as most of the regular historians. He flourished in the times of Trajan and Hadrian, and therefore what remains of his writings is not contemporary evidence. But he was a student and a careful compiler from numerous works now lost. The number of passages in which he refers to matters directly or indirectly bearing on rustic life and labour is not large, and most of them have been cited in other chapters, where they find a place in connexion with the context. He can be dealt with very briefly here.

The close connexion between wars and the supply of slaves is marked in the doings of Julius[1319] Caesar. Gaulish and British captives were (as Caesar himself records) no small part of the booty won in his northern campaigns. He rewarded his men after a victory with a prisoner apiece: these would soon be sold to the dealers who followed the army, and most of them would find their way to the Roman slave-market. To gratify friendly princes or provincial communities, he sent them large bodies of slaves as presents. So his victims served instead of cash to win adherents for their new master. And these natives of the North would certainly be used for heavy rough work, mostly as farm-hands. When Augustus, loth to enlarge the empire, felt constrained to teach restless tribes a lesson, he imposed a reserve-condition[1320] on the sale of prisoners taken: they were not to be employed in districts near their old homes, and not to be manumitted before thirty years. Most of these would probably also be brought to Italy for the same kind of service. Yet, as we have seen, there was kidnapping[1321] of freemen in Italy; probably a sign that slaves were already become dear. That their numbers had been reduced in the civil wars, not only by death but by manumission, is fairly certain. In the war with Sextus Pompeius it was found necessary[1322] to manumit 20,000 slaves to serve as oarsmen in the fleet. Suetonius also records that Augustus when emperor had trouble with the unwillingness of Romans to be called up for military duty. He had to deal sharply[1323] with an eques who cut off the thumbs of his two sons to incapacitate them. The abuse of the public corn-doles was a grave evil. Men got rid of the burden of maintaining old slaves by manumitting them and so making them, as freedmen-citizens, entitled to a share of the doles. This was shifting the burden of feeding useless mouths on to the state. Augustus saw that the vast importation of corn for this bounty tended to discourage[1324] Italian agriculture, and thought of abolishing the whole system of frumentationes. But he had to give up the project, being convinced that the system would be restored. He really desired to revive agriculture, and it was surely with this aim that he advanced capital sums[1325] to landlords free of interest on good security for the principal. The growth of humane sentiment toward slaves is marked by the ordinance of Claudius[1326] against some very cruel practices of slaveowners. And we are reminded that penal servitude was now a regular institution in the Roman empire by Nero’s order[1327] for bringing prisoners from all parts to carry out some colossal works in Italy, and for fixing condemnation to hard labour as the normal penalty of crime.

In the Lives of the three Flavian emperors there are one or two passages of interest. At this distance of time it is not easy to appreciate the effect on the sentiments of Roman society of the extinction of the Julio-Claudian house, and the accession of a thoroughly plebeian one, resting on the support of the army and readily accepted by the Provinces. Suetonius, like Tacitus, was near enough to the revolutionary year 69 AD to understand the momentous nature of the crises that brought Vespasian to the head of affairs. He takes pains to describe[1328] the descent of the new emperor from a Sabine family of no remarkable distinction. For two generations they had combined with fair success the common Roman professions of military service and finance. They were respectable people of good local standing. But there was another story relative to a generation further back. It was said that Vespasian’s greatgrandfather (this takes us back to Republican days) had been a contractor[1329] for rustic labour. He was a headman or ‘boss’ of working-parties such as are wont to pass year after year from Umbria into the Sabine country to serve as farm-labourers. Of this story Suetonius could not discover any confirmation. But that there had been, and perhaps still was, some such supply of migratory labour available, is a piece of evidence not to be ignored. Vespasian himself was a soldier who steadily rose in the usual official career till he reached the coveted post of governor of Africa. After a term of honest but undistinguished rule, he came back no richer than he went, indeed he was very nearly bankrupt. He was driven to mortgage all his landed estate, and to become for a time a slave-dealer[1330], in order to live in the style that his official rank required. The implied disgrace of resorting to a gainful but socially despised trade is at least evidence of the continual demand for human chattels. Of two acts of Domitian[1331], his futile ordinance to check vine-growing, and his grant of the remaining odd remnants of Italian land to present occupants, enough has been said above.

It is not necessary to collect the numerous passages in writers of this period that illustrate the growing change of view as to slavery in general. The point made by moralists, that moral bondage is more degrading than physical (for the latter need not be really degrading), came with not less force from Epictetus the slave than from Seneca the noble Roman. It is however worth while just to note the frequent references to cases of philosophers and other distinguished literary men who had either actually been slaves or had at some time in their lives been forced to earn their daily bread by bodily labour. Such cases are, Cleanthes[1332] drawing water for wages, Plautus[1333] hired by the baker to grind at his mill, and Protagoras[1334] earning his living as a common porter. In one passage several slaves[1335] are enumerated who became philosophers. Now, what is the significance of these and other references of the same import? I suggest that they have just the same bearing as the general principles of common humanity argumentatively pressed by the Stoic and other schools of thought. The sermonizing of Seneca is a good specimen. But discussion of principles in the abstract was never the strong point of Roman society, and citation of concrete instances would serve to give reality to views that were only too often regarded as the visionary speculations of chattering Greeks. That Roman authors, down to the last age of Roman literature, expressed the longing for a more wholesome state of agriculture by everlasting references to Cincinnatus and the rest of the traditional rustic heroes, is another recognition of this method. The notion that courage and contempt of death could be fostered by the spectacle of gladiators rested on much the same basis. True, there is nothing in the above considerations that directly bears upon rustic labour as such: but hints that ‘a man’s a man for a’ that’ are not to be ignored when they make their appearance in the midst of a slave-holding society.

XLV. APULEIUS.

The Province of Africa was in this period a flourishing part of the empire, giving signs of its coming importance in the next generation, when it produced several emperors. It was in fact a sort of successor of Spain, and like Spain it enjoyed the advantage of not fronting on the usual seats of war to the North and East. One of the most remarkable literary figures of the age was the African[1336] =L Apuleius= of Madaura, who travelled widely as student and lecturer, and was well acquainted with Greece and Italy. A philosopher of the mystical-Platonist type, he was in touch with practical life through his study of the Law, and was for some time a pleader in Rome. His native Province[1337] was notoriously addicted to litigation, and a modern scholar[1338] has shewn that the works of Apuleius abound in legal phraseology and are coloured with juristic notions. Now, it was not possible to go far in considering property and rights without coming upon questions relative to land: moreover, he himself owned land in Africa. Accordingly we find in him some references to land, and even to rustic labour and conditions of rural life. And, though his Metamorphoses is a fantastic romance, there is no reason to doubt that incidents and scenes (other than supernatural) are true to facts observed by the writer, and therefore admissible as evidence of a general kind. An instance may be found in the case of the ass, that is the hero of the story transformed into that shape by magic. He is to be sold, and the waggish auctioneer[1339] says to a possible bidder ‘I am well aware that it is a criminal offence to sell you a Roman citizen for a slave: but why not buy a good and trusty slave that will serve you as a helper both at home and abroad?’ Here we have a recognition of the fact of kidnapping, which is referred to elsewhere in the book; that in cases of Roman victims the law took a very serious view of the offence; while the point of the pleasantry lies in the circumstance that neither auctioneer nor company present are aware that the ass is a transformed man, liable to regain his human shape by magical disenchantment.

The scene of the Metamorphoses is laid in Greece, and the anecdotes included in it do not give us a favourable picture of that part of the Roman empire. There was surely nothing to tempt the writer to misrepresent the condition of the country by packing his descriptions with unreal details: he would thus have weakened the effect of his romance. Wealth in the hands of a few, surrounded by a pauper majority; shrunken towns, each with its more or less degraded rabble; general insecurity for life liberty and property; a cruel and arbitrary use of power; a spiritless acquiescence in this pitiful state of things, relieved by the excitements of superstition and obscenity: such was Roman Greece as Apuleius saw it. No doubt there was Roman Law to enforce honesty and order. But the administration of justice seldom, if ever, reaches the standard of legislation; and as yet the tendency of the Roman government was to interfere as little as possible with local authorities. Greece in particular had always been treated with special indulgence, in recognition of her glorious past. Whether the effects of this favour were conducive to the wellbeing of the country, may fairly be doubted. The insane vanity of Nero, masquerading as Liberator of Greece, had surely done more harm than good. Hadrian’s benefactions to Athens, dictated by sentimental antiquarianism, could not improve the general condition of the country, however satisfactory they might be to what was now an University town living on students and tourists.

One of the first things that strikes a reader of this book is the matter-of-fact way in which brigandage[1340] is taken for granted. These robbers work in organized bands under chosen captains, have regular strongholds as bases of operations, draw recruits from the poverty-stricken peasantry or slaves, and do not hesitate to attack and plunder great mansions, relying on the cowardice or indifference (or perhaps treachery) of the rich owner’s slaves. Murder is to them a mere trifle, and their ingenuity in torturing is fiendish. No doubt their activities are somewhat exaggerated as a convenient part of the machinery of the story, but the lament of Plutarch and the Euboic idyll of Dion forbid us to regard these brigand-scenes as pure fiction. They are another side of the same picture of distressful Greece. Nor is the impression produced thereby at all weakened by a specimen of military[1341] insolence. Greece was not a Province in which a large army was kept, but all Governors had some armed force to support their authority. The story introduces the ass with his present owner, a gardener, on his back. They are met by a swaggering bully of a soldier, who inquires where they are going. He asks this in Latin. The gardener makes no reply, not knowing Latin. The angry soldier knocks him off the ass, and repeats his question in Greek. On being told that they are on their way to the nearest town, he seizes the ass on the pretext of being wanted for fatigue duty in the service of the Governor, and will listen to no entreaties. Just as he is preparing to break the gardener’s skull, the gardener trips him up and pounds him to some purpose. He shams dead, while the gardener hurries off and takes refuge with a friend in the town. The soldier follows, and stirs up his mates, who induce the local magistrates to take up the matter and give them satisfaction. The gardener’s retreat is betrayed by a neighbour, and clever concealment nullified by an indiscretion of the ass. The wretched gardener is found and haled off to prison awaiting execution, while the soldier takes possession of the ass. This story again is surely not grotesque and incredible fiction. More likely it is made up from details heard by the African during his sojourn in Greece. If scenes of this kind were possible, the outlook of humble rustics[1342] can hardly have been a cheerful one.

That perils of robbers and military insolence were not the only troubles of the countryside, is shewn by the following anecdote[1343] describing the brutal encroachments of a big landlord on poorer neighbours. A landowner, apparently a man of moderate means, had three sons, well-educated and well-behaved youths, who were close friends of a poor man with a little cottage of his own. Bordering on this man’s little holding was the large and fertile landed estate belonging to a rich and powerful neighbour in the prime of life. This rich man, turning the fame of his ancestors to bad account, strong in the support of party cliques, in fact an autocrat[1344] within the jurisdiction of the town, was given to making raids on the poverty of his humble neighbour. He slaughtered his flocks, drove off his oxen, and trampled down his crops before they were ripe, till he had robbed him of all the fruit of his thrift. His next desire was to expel him altogether from his patch of soil: so he got up a baseless dispute over boundaries, and claimed the whole of the land as his own. The poor man, though diffident by nature, was bent upon keeping his hereditary ground if only for his own burial. The claim upset him greatly, and he entreated a number of his friends to attend at the settlement[1345] of boundaries. Among those present were the three brothers mentioned above, who came to do their little best in the cause of their injured friend. But the rich man, unabashed by the presence of a number of citizens, treated all efforts at conciliation with open contempt, and swore that he would order his slaves to pick the poor man up by the ears and chuck him ever so far from his cottage in less than no time. The bystanders were greatly incensed at this brutal utterance. One of the three brothers dared to say ‘It’s no good your bullying and threatening like this just because you are a man of influence; don’t forget that even poor[1346] men have found in the laws guarding freemen’s rights a protector against the outrages of the rich.’ Upon this the enraged tyrant let loose his ferocious dogs[1347] and set them on the company. A horrible scene followed. One of the three youths was torn to pieces, and the others also perished; one of them slain by the rich man himself, the other, after avenging his brother, by his own hand.

The mere aggression of the rich landlord on the poor is interesting as adding another instance of the encroachments to the occurrence of which many other writers testify. The most remarkable feature of the story is the insolent disregard of the Law shewn by the rich man from first to last. That the governor of the Province could prevent or punish such outrages, if his attention were called to them, is not to be doubted. But he could not be everywhere at once, and it is not likely that many of the poorer class would be forward to report such doings and appear as accusers of influential persons. The rich probably sympathized with their own class, and a poor man shrank from a criminal prosecution that would in any event expose him to their vengeance afterwards. True, the poor were the majority. But it was a very old principle of Roman policy to entrust the effective control of municipalities to the burgesses of property, men who had something to lose and who, being a minority, would earn their local supremacy by a self-interested obedience to the central government. Thus local magnates (their evil day was not yet come) were left very much to their own devices, and most provincial governors cared too much for their own ease and comfort to display an inquisitive zeal. Moreover, so far as the rich thought it judicious to keep the poorer contented, it would be the town rabble that profited chiefly if not exclusively by their liberalities: the more isolated rustic was more liable to suffer from their land-proud greediness. We must picture them as overbearing and arbitrary slaveholders, practically uncontrolled; and the worst specimens among them as an ever-present terror to a cowed and indigent peasantry. We are not to suppose that things were as bad as this in all parts of Greece, but that there was little or nothing to prevent their becoming so, even in happier districts.

From time immemorial the Greek tendency had been to congregate in towns, and after the early fall of the landowning aristocracies this tendency was strengthened by democratic movements. The country as a whole was never able to feed its population. But the population was now greatly reduced. Given due security, perhaps the rustics might now have been able to feed the towns. And that they were to some extent doing so may be inferred from the fact that the chief peasant figure in the rural life of the Metamorphoses is the market-gardener[1348]. If he is but left in peace, he seems to be doing fairly well. It is natural at this point to inquire whether a hortulanus might not also be a colonus, the former name connoting his occupation and the latter his legal position in relation to the land. Both terms often occur, but they seem to be quite distinct: I can find nothing to justify the application of both to the same person. And yet I cannot feel certain that Apuleius always means a tenant-farmer[1349] under a landlord whenever he uses the word colonus. Probably he does, as Norden seems to think. In any case the gardener is evidently in a smaller way of business than the average colonus, and it may be that his little scrap of land is his own. He certainly works[1350] with his own hands, and I find nothing to suggest that he is an employer of slaves, or that he himself is not free. That the tenant-farmers were often coloni partiarii, bound to deliver to their landlord a fixed share of their produce in kind, is highly probable. But this does not exclude the payment of money rents as well. Local usage probably varied in different districts. It is true that Apuleius several times[1351] uses partiarius metaphorically, but this only shews his addiction to legal language, and is no proof of the prevalence of the share-system in Greece. The coloni, nominally free, were as yet only bound to the soil by the practical difficulty of clearing themselves from the obligations that encumbered them and checked freedom of movement. But they were now near to the time when they were made fixtures by law.

Another work of Apuleius furnishes matter of interest, the so-called Apologia, a speech in his own defence when tried on a charge of magical arts about the year 158 AD. That the accused was in no little danger from this criminal prosecution has been shewn[1352] by Norden. What concerns us is the reference to rustic affairs that the speaker is led to make in the course of his argument, when demolishing some of the allegations of his enemies. The trial was in Africa at the regular provincial assize, and the conditions referred to are African. Apuleius, as a man of note in his native Province, takes high ground to manifest his confidence in the strength of his case. The prosecution want to draw him into an unseemly squabble over side-issues. As the chief alleged instance of his magic was connected with his marriage to a rich lady, a widow of mature age, whom he was said to have bewitched, being at the time a young man in need, it had evidently been thought necessary to discuss his financial position as throwing light upon his motives. If at the same time he could be represented as having acted in defiance of well-known laws, so much the better. If we may trust the bold refutation of Apuleius, they entangled themselves in a contradiction and betrayed their own blind malice. His reply[1353] is as follows. ‘Whether you keep slaves to cultivate your farm, or whether you have an arrangement with your neighbours for exchange[1354] of labour, I do not know and do not want to know. But you (profess to) know that at Oea, on the same day, I manumitted three slaves: this was one of the things you laid to my charge, and your counsel brought it up against me, though a moment before he had said that when I came to Oea I had with me but a single slave. Now, will you have the goodness to explain how, having but one, I could manumit three,—unless this too is an effect of magic. Was there ever such monstrous lying, whether from blindness or force of habit? He says, Apuleius brought one slave with him to Oea. Then, after babbling a few words, he adds that Apuleius manumitted three in one day at Oea. If he had said that I brought with me three, and granted freedom to them all, even that would not have deserved[1355] belief. But, suppose I had done so, what then? would not three freedmen be as sure a mark of wealth as three slaves of indigence?’

After this outburst the speaker is at pains to point out that to do with few slaves is a philosopher’s part, commended by examples not of philosophers only but of men famed in Roman history. The well-worn topic of the schools, that to need little is true riches, is set forth at large, with instances in illustration. He then asserts[1356] that he inherited a considerable property from his father, which has been much reduced by the cost of his journeys and expenses as a student and gifts to deserving friends. After this he turns upon his adversary. ‘But you and the men of your uneducated rustic class are worth just what your property is worth and no more, like trees that bear no fruit and are worth only the value of the timber in their stems. Henceforth you had better not taunt any man with his poverty. Your father left you nothing but a tiny farm at Zarat, and it is but the other day that you were taking the opportunity of a shower of rain to give it a good ploughing with the help of a single ass, and made it a three-days[1357] job. What has kept you on your legs is the quite recent windfalls of inheritances from kinsmen who died one after another.’ These personalities, in the true vein of ancient advocacy, do not tell us much, but it is interesting to note that the skilled pleader, a distinguished man of the world, quite naturally sneers at his opponent for having been a poor working farmer. Whether this was an especially effective taunt in the Province Africa, the home of great estates, it is hardly possible to guess.

Of small farmers in Africa, working their own land, we have, probably by accident, hardly any other record. But the reference above, to neighbours taking turns to help one another on their farms, comes in so much as a matter of course that we may perhaps conclude that there were such small free farmers, at least in some parts of the Province. For slaves we need no special evidence. But the lady whom Apuleius had married seems to have been a large slaveowner as well as a large landowner. He declares that he with difficulty persuaded her to quiet the claims of her sons by making over to them a great part of her estate in land and other goods; and one item consists[1358] of 400 slaves. We have also a reference to ergastula in a passage where he is protesting that to charge him with practising magic arts with the privity of fifteen slaves is on the face of it ridiculous[1359]. ‘Why, 15 free men make a community, 15 slaves make a household, and 15 chained ones a lock-up.’ I take these vincti to be troublesome slaves, not debtors. Again, in refuting the suggestion that he had bewitched the lady, he states as proof of her sanity that at the very time when she is said to have been out of her mind she most intelligently audited and passed the accounts of her stewards[1360] and other head-servants on her estates. And in general it has been well said[1361] that Apuleius, with all his wide interest in all manner of things, did not feel driven to inquire into the right or wrong of slavery in itself. He took it as he found it in the Roman world of his day. That he had eyes to see some of its most obvious horrors, may be inferred from the description[1362] of the condition of slaves in a flour-mill, put into the mouth of the man-ass. But with the humanitarian movements of these times he shews no sympathy; and he can depict abominable scenes of cruelty and bestiality without any warmth of serious indignation.

COMMODUS TO DIOCLETIAN

XLVI. GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

The death of Marcus Aurelius in 180 AD brings us to the beginning of a long period of troubles, in which the growing weakness of the empire was exposed, the principate-system of Augustus finally failed under the predominance of military power, and the imperial government was left to be reorganized by Diocletian on a more Oriental model. There is no doubt that during some hundred years the internal wellbeing of the Roman empire was being lowered, and that the parts most open to barbarian invasion suffered terribly. But the pressure of taxation to supply military needs bore heavily on all parts and impaired the vitality of the whole. Reactions there were now and then, when a strong man, or even a well-meaning one, became emperor and had a few years in which to combat present evils and for the moment check them. But the average duration of reigns was very brief; emperors were generally murdered or slain in battle; from 249 to 283 the chief function of an emperor was to lead his army against barbarian invaders. It is a remarkable fact that the first half of this unhappy century was the classical period of Roman jurisprudence. The important post of Praetorian Prefect, which began with a dignified military command and was more and more becoming the chief ministry of the Empire, was again and again held by eminent jurists. But in the long run the civil power could not stand against the jealousy of the military, and the murder of Ulpian in 228 practically ends the series of great lawyer-ministers, leaving the sword in undisputed control. The authorities for this century of troubles are meagre and unsatisfactory. With the help of contemporary inscriptions, modern writers are able to compose some sort of a history of the times, so far as public events and governmental activities are concerned. But the literature of private life, the source of our best evidence on agricultural labour, is for the time at an end, and the facts of farm life were not of the kind thought worthy of record in inscriptions.

There is therefore nothing to be done but to glean the few scraps of information that in any way bear upon the condition of tillers of the soil in this period. They are as a rule of little value, and they come from writers of little authority. But it is something if they are of a piece with the general record of these unhappy times. Even the imperial biographies of Marius Maximus survive only in the meagre abstracts of later writers, and modern historians are quite unable to reconstruct any clear picture of the inner life of the period 180-284 AD owing to the lack of materials.

The most significant piece of information relates to Pertinax. We are told[1363] that one of the useful reforms contemplated by him was the reclamation of waste lands throughout the empire. He ordained that any one might occupy derelict lands, even on the imperial estates: on careful cultivation thereof, the farmer was to become owner[1364]. For a space of ten years he was to be exempt from all taxation, and his ownership was to be guaranteed against future disturbance. This passage is good evidence of the decay of agriculture, agreeing with what we have learnt from other sources. But we cannot gather from it that the well-meant design had any practical effect. Pertinax was only emperor for the inside of three months, and could not realize his virtuous aspirations. About 80 years later we find Aurelian[1365] planning the development of waste lands in Etruria, and Probus[1366] giving allotments in the wilds of Isauria to his veterans as settlers with obligation of military service. There can be little doubt that the depopulation and decline of cultivation, made sadly manifest in the calamitous times of Marcus Aurelius, had never ceased to undermine the vital forces of the empire. How to fill up deserted lands, and make them productive of food and revenue, was the problem that every serious ruler had to face. And there was in fact only one resource available to meet the need. The native population of the empire, stationary at best, had been further reduced by pestilence and famine, and was not able to fill up the spaces laid waste by frontier wars. Hence the policy of bringing in masses of barbarians, adopted by Marcus, had to be repeated again and again.

We must not confuse these settlements with the immigrations of conquering tribes that occurred later. Rome was still superior to her adversaries in military organization and skill, and under fairly equal conditions able to defeat them in pitched battles. Thus Claudius II gained great victories over the Goths, and the biographer[1367] tells us of the sequel. ‘The Roman provinces were filled with barbarian slaves and Scythian tillers of the soil. The Goth was turned into a settler on the barbarian frontier. There was not a single district but had some Gothic slave whose bondage attested the triumph.’ Here we seem to have the echo of a somewhat boastful contemporary version. The mention of both slaves and frontier colonists is to be noted. We have no statistics to guide us in an attempt to estimate the relative numbers of the two classes. But the settlement of defeated barbarians on the frontier as Roman subjects is clearly regarded as a worthy achievement. So indeed it might have been, had it been possible to civilize them as Romans, only profiting by the introduction of new blood. But this process was no longer possible: its opposite, the barbarizing of Roman lands, steadily went on. Claudius only reigned about two years. The great soldier who followed him in 270-5, Aurelian, had a plan for employing prisoners of war[1368] on the cultivation of waste lands in Italy itself, but we have no reason to think that much came of it. And the true state of things was confessed in his abandonment of Trajan’s great Province of Dacia. Aurelian withdrew[1369] the army and the provincials, whom he settled south of the Danube in Moesia; putting the best face he could on this retirement by giving Moesia the name of Dacia.

These phenomena attest an obvious truth, sometimes ignored, that territorial expansion needs something more than military conquest to give it lasting effect. In order to hold conquered lands the conquerors must either occupy them or thoroughly assimilate the native population. Emperors in this period became aware that they could do neither. Alexander Severus (222-35) gained a great victory[1370] over the Persians and took a number of prisoners. It was a tradition of Persian kings not to let their subjects pass into foreign slavery, and Alexander allowed them to redeem these captives by a money payment. This he used partly in compensating the masters of those who had already passed into private ownership, and the rest he paid into the treasury. This conciliatory policy may have been wise. In any case the treasury was in this age chronically in need of ready money. But dealing with the great oriental monarchy was a simpler undertaking than that of dealing with the rude peoples of the North, who pressed on in tribal units, offering no central power with which to negotiate. Probus (276-82) seems to have been sorely troubled by their variety and independence of action. We hear that when operating in Thrace he settled 100,000 Bastarnae[1371] on Roman soil, and that all these kept faith with him. But he went on to transplant large bodies of Gepidae Gruthungi and Vandals. These all broke their faith. While Probus was busy putting down pretenders in other parts of the empire, they went on raiding expeditions at large by land and sea, defying and damaging the power of Rome. True, the emperor broke them by force of arms, and drove the remnant back to their wilds: but we can see what the biographer ignores, that such raids did mischief which the empire was in no condition to repair. What were the terms made with these barbarians, to which the Bastarnae faithfully adhered, we are not told. Probably the grant of lands carried with it the duty of furnishing recruits to Roman armies and accepting the command of Roman officers.

In connexion with agricultural conditions we must not omit to notice the change that was passing over Roman armies. The straits to which Marcus had been reduced by the years of plague and losses in the field had compelled him to raise fresh troops by any means, enrolling slaves, hiring barbarian mercenaries, and so forth. With this miscellaneous force he just managed to hold his ground in the North. But the army never recovered its old tone. The period 180-284 shews it going from bad to worse. It is full of sectional jealousy and losing all sense of common imperial duty; only effective when some one strong man destroys his rivals and is for the moment supreme. The rise and fall of pretenders[1372] is a main topic of the imperial history. As from the foundation of the Empire, the numbers of the army were inadequate for defence against simultaneous attacks on several frontiers. The lack of cooperation among their enemies, and the mobility of Roman frontier armies, had sufficed to keep invaders at bay. But as pressure became more continuous it was more difficult to meet the needs of the moment by moving armies to and fro. More and more they took on the character of garrisons, their chief camps grew into towns, local recruits filled up their ranks, and they were less and less available for service as field-armies. But it was obviously necessary that the country round about their quarters should be under cultivation, in order to supply them with at least part of their food. It may safely be assumed that this department was carefully attended to in the formation of all these military stations. And it seems that under the new conditions one of the evils that had hitherto embarrassed the empire was gradually brought to an end. For the fact remains that, after all the wholesale waste of lives in the bloody wars of the third century, it was still possible to raise great and efficient armies. Reorganized by Diocletian and Constantine, the empire proved able to defend itself for many years yet, even in the West. The new system may have been oppressive to the civil population, but it certainly revived military strength. This could not have been achieved without an improvement in the supply of man-power. It has been maintained[1373] that this improvement was due to the permanent settlements of barbarians, mostly of German race, within the territories of the empire during the third century. Whether planted on the vacant lands as alien settlers (inquilini)[1374] on easy terms, but bound to provide recruits for the army, or enlisted from the first and settled in permanent stations, they were year by year raising large families and turning deserted border-lands into nurseries of imperial soldiers. This picture may be somewhat overdrawn, but it has the merit of accounting for the phenomena. Without some explanation of the kind it is very hard to understand how the empire came to survive at all. With it, the sequel appears natural and intelligible. These barbarians were so far Romanized as to be proud of becoming Romans: the empire was barbarized so far as to lend itself to institutions of a more and more un-Roman character, and to lose the remaining traditions of literature and art: and when ruder barbarians in the fifth century assailed the empire in the West they found the control of government already in the hands of kinsmen of their own.

If we are to take the very meagre gleanings from the general records of this period and combine them with the information gathered from the African inscriptions referred to below, we can provisionally form some sort of notion of the various classes of labour employed on the land. First, there were coloni, freemen[1375] in the eye of the law, however much local conditions, or the terms of their tenancies and the tendency for tenancies to become hereditary, may have limited the practical use of their legal freedom. Secondly, there were, at least in some parts, protected occupants encouraged to turn to account parcels of land that had for some reason or other lain idle. Thirdly, there were also rustic slaves who did most of the work on large farms. The stipulated services of tenants[1376] at certain seasons to some extent supplemented their labour, at least in some parts: and the falling supply of slaves tended to make such auxiliary services more important. For the value of agricultural land depends mainly on the available supply of labour. Fourthly, chiefly if not entirely in the northern Provinces, a number of barbarians had been planted upon Roman soil. Some entered peacefully and settled down as willing subjects of the empire on vacant lands assigned to them. Some had surrendered after defeat in battle, and came in as prisoners. But, instead of making them rustic slaves on the old model, Marcus had found a new and better use for them. A new status, that of inquilini[1377] or ‘alien denizens’ was created, inferior to that of free coloni but above that of slaves. They seem to have been generally left to cultivate plots of land, paying a share of the produce, and to have been attached to the soil, grouped under Roman landlords or chief-tenants. They had their wives and families, and their sons recruited Roman armies. Lastly, we have no right to assume that small cultivating owners[1378] were wholly extinct, though there can hardly have been many of them.

We have an account[1379] of the rising in Africa (238 AD) which, so far as it goes, gives us a little light on the agricultural situation there in the middle of this period. The barbarian emperor Maximin was represented in the Province by a procurator fisci whose oppressions provoked a conspiracy against him. Some young men of good and wealthy families drew together a number of persons who had suffered wrong. They ordered their slaves[1380] from the farms to assemble with clubs and axes. In obedience[1381] to their masters’ orders they gathered in the town before daybreak, and formed a great mob. For Africa is naturally a populous[1382] country; so the tillers of the soil were numerous. After dawn the young leaders told the mass of the slaves to follow them as being a section of the general throng: they were to conceal their weapons for the present, but valiantly to resist any attack on their masters. The latter then met the procurator and assassinated him. Hereupon his guards drew their swords meaning to avenge the murder, but the countrymen in support of their masters[1383] fell upon them with their rustic weapons and easily routed them. After this the young leaders, having gone too far to draw back, openly rebelled against Maximin and proclaimed the proconsul Gordian Roman emperor. In this passage we have before us young men of landlord families, apparently holding large estates and working them with slave labour. They are evidently on good terms with their slaves. Of tenant farmers there is no mention: but there is a general reference to support given by other persons, already wronged or afraid of suffering wrong. The Latin biographer[1384], who drew from Herodian, speaks of the murder as the work of ‘the rustic common folk[1385] and certain soldiers.’ Now Frontinus[1386], writing in the latter part of the first century AD, tells us that in Africa on their great estates individuals had ‘a considerable population[1387] of common folk.’ The language can hardly refer to slaves: and a reference to levying recruits[1388] for the army plainly forbids such an interpretation. But it does not imply that there were no slaves employed on those great estates; the writer is not thinking of the free-or-slave labour question. In regard to the writers who record this particular episode, are we to suppose that by ‘slaves’ Herodian loosely means coloni? Surely not. Then does Capitolinus by ‘rustic common folk’ mean slaves? I cannot believe it. More probably the writer, contemporary with Diocletian and Constantine, uses a loose expression without any precise meaning. If we are to attempt any inference from the language of Herodian, we must accept him as a witness that in Africa, or at least in parts of Africa, agriculture was still being carried on by slave labour. This does not exclude the existence of a small-tenancy system side by side with it. And the state of things disclosed[1389] in the African inscriptions referred to above is consistent with both systems: for that the manor-farm on a great estate employed a slave staff for its regular operations, and drew from tenants’ services only the help needed at certain seasons, seems the only possible conclusion from the evidence. Therefore, while agreeing with Heisterbergk[1390] that the narrative of Herodian shews the populousness of Africa, we need not go so far as to ignore the fact of a considerable farm-slave element in the Province.

Meanwhile there are signs that rural Italy was suffering from the disorders and insecurity that had so often hindered the prosperity of agriculture. Even under the strong reign of Severus, with a larger standing army in Italy than ever before, a daring brigand[1391] remained at large for two years and was only captured by treachery. Though we do not hear of his attacking farmers directly, such a disturbance must have been bad for all country folk. That he black-mailed them is probable: that they were plundered and maltreated by the licentious soldiery employed against him, is as nearly certain as can be from what we know of the soldiery of this time.

XLVII. THE AFRICAN INSCRIPTIONS.

Certain inscriptions[1392] from the Roman Province of Africa, dating from the second and third centuries AD or at least referring to matters of that period, throw some light upon the management of great imperial domains in that part of the world. To discuss these in full one by one would be beyond the scope of this work, and would require several chapters of intolerable length. I shall content myself with giving a short account of each case, confined to those details which have direct bearing on my subject and which can be gathered with reasonable certainty from the often mutilated texts. French and German savants have contributed freely to the deciphering and interpretation, with happy results: but some of the proposed ‘restorations’ are much too bold to serve as a basis for further argument. After the details, I purpose to consider the points common to these interesting cases, and their place in the history of agriculture and agricultural labour under the earlier Roman Empire, say from Trajan to Severus.

(1) The inscription of Henschir Mettich[1393] belongs to the year 116-7 AD, at the end of Trajan’s reign. It deals with a domain called fundus villae magnae Variani, and does not refer to it by the term saltus at all. There is no reference to arrears of rent, the reliqua colonorum of which we often hear in the jurists and other writers. Indeed there is no mention of money-rents, unless we reckon as such the little dues (4 as per head) payable for grazing stock on the common pasture. The coloni are partiarii, paying certain shares (generally ⅓) of their yearly produce as rent. These are paid, not to an imperial official but to the lords or head-tenants of the estate (dominis aut conductoribus eius fundi) or to their stewards (vilicis). It seems certain therefore that it was the chief tenants who were responsible to the imperial treasury for the amounts annually due, and that upon them rested the troublesome duty of collection. That this charge was a new one, laid upon them by Trajan, is perhaps possible, but hardly probable. For this statute regulating the domain (a lex data) is expressly declared to be modelled on a lex Manciana[1394], which can hardly be other than a set of regulations issued by a former owner of the estate, and adopted with modifications by the imperial agents (procuratores) specially appointed to organize it as an imperial domain. In Roman practice it was usual to follow convenient precedents. How long the estate had become Crown-property, and by what process, inheritance purchase confiscation etc, we do not know. Nor is it certain whether the new statute was prepared as a matter of course on the cessation of private ownership, or whether it was issued in response to an appeal to the emperor complaining of oppressive exactions on the part of the head-tenants. But of the latter situation there is no sign, and I am inclined to accept the former alternative. In that case it appears necessary to suppose that the system of letting a great estate to one or a few great lessees, who might and did sublet parcels to small tenant farmers, was not unknown in the practice of great private landlords. This may well have been the case in Africa, still populous and prosperous, though such a system never took root in depopulated and failing Italy. It required willingness on the part of men of substance to risk their capital in a speculation that could only succeed if good sub-tenants were to be found. This condition could not be fulfilled in Italy, but in Africa things were very different.

It is however easier to note this difference by unmistakeable signs than to ascertain it in detail. One point is clear. The coloni on this domain were bound to render fixed services to the head-tenants at certain seasons of the year. These services consisted of two days’ work (operas binas) at the times of ploughing hoeing and harvest, six in all. The falling-off in the supply of slaves, despite occasional captures of prisoners in war, was a consequence of the pax Romana, and how to provide sufficient labour was a standing problem of agriculture. The guarantee of extra labour at seasons of pressure was doubtless a main consideration with speculators in inducing them to venture their substance by becoming lessees of large tracts of land. Of hired labour available for the purpose the statute gives no hint, nor is it likely that such labourers were to be found in Africa. Thus the colonus, and perhaps his whole household, were bound to certain compulsory services, and thereby made part of an organization strictly regulated and liable to further regulation. Further regulation was not likely to give the peasant farmer more freedom of movement, since the leading motive of the system was to secure continuous cultivation, and this could best be secured by long tenancies, tending to become hereditary. Therefore this statute offers various inducements to keep the peasant contentedly engaged in bettering his own position by developing the estate. The head-tenants are strictly forbidden to oppress him by exacting larger shares of produce or more operae than are allowed by the regulations. He is encouraged to cultivate parcels of waste land, not included in his farm, by various privileges: in particular, a term of rent-free years is guaranteed to him in case he plants the land with fruit trees. This term, varying from five to ten years according to species of trees, is meant to give him time to get a taste of profit before he becomes liable to rent: its effect in making him loth to move is obvious.

The statute tells us nothing on another important point. From the jurists and other sources[1395] we know that in Italy it was normally the custom for the stock of a farm let to a colonus to be found for the most part by the landlord. It was held[1396] that in taking over this instrumentum at a valuation the tenant virtually purchased it, of course not paying for it in ready money, but standing bound to account for the amount on quitting the tenancy. Thus a small man was left free to employ his own little capital in the actual working of the farm. He could add to the stock, and his additions gave to the landlord a further security for his rent, over and above that given by the sureties usually required. What stock was found by landlords, and what by tenant, was a matter for agreement generally following local convention. But on this African domain we are not told how the question of instrumentum was settled. Probably there was a traditional rule so well established that no reference to the point in the statute seemed necessary. The sole landlord was now the emperor. Without some direct evidence to that effect, I can hardly suppose that the provision of farm stock was entrusted to his procuratores. On the other hand, if the chief tenants, the conductores, were expected to undertake this business, as if they had been landlords, this too seems to call for direct evidence. Possibly the need of finding stock for an African peasant farmer was not so pressing as in Italy: still some equipment was surely required. How it was provided, seems to me a question for answering which we have not as yet sufficient materials. But it may be that on these domains the practical necessity for dealing with it seldom occurred. If, when the formal term of a tenancy expired, the same tenant stayed on either by tacit renewal (reconductio) or by grant of a new lease, the stock originally supplied would surely remain for use on the farm, upkeep and renewals of particular articles being of course allowed for. If a farmer’s son succeeded him as tenant, the situation would be the same, or very nearly so. Therefore the manifest desire of emperors to keep tenants in permanence probably operated to minimize questions of instrumentum to the point of practical insignificance.

That the coloni on this estate were themselves handworkers can hardly be doubted. The operae required of them suggest this on any natural interpretation. But there is nothing to shew that they did not employ[1397] slave labour—if and when they could get it. We are not to assume that they were all on one dead level of poverty. That the head-tenants kept slaves to work those parts of the domain that they farmed for their own account, is indicated by the mention of their vilici, and made certain by the small amount of supplementary labour guaranteed them in the form of tenants’ operae. Only one direct mention of slaves (servis dominicis) occurs in the inscription, and the text is in that place badly mutilated. Partly for the same defect, it seems necessary to avoid discussing certain other details, such as the position of the stipendiarii of whom we hear in a broken passage. Nor do I venture to draw confident inferences from the references to inquilini or coloni inquilini, or to discover an important distinction between the tenants who actually resided on the estate and those who did not. It may be right to infer a class of small proprietors dwelling around on the skirts of the great domain and hiring parcels of land within it. It may be right to regard the inquilini as coloni transplanted from abroad and made residents on the estate. But until such conclusions are more surely established it is safer to refrain from building upon them. The general effect of this document is to give us outlines of a system of imperial ‘peculiars,’ that is of domains on which order and security, necessary for the successful working and continuous cultivation, were not left to the operation of the ordinary law, but guaranteed in each case by what we may call an imperial by-law.

(2) The inscription of Souk el Khmis[1398] deals with circumstances between 180 and 183 AD. The rescript of Commodus, and the appeal to which it was the answer, are recorded in it. The imperial estate to which it refers is called saltus Burunitanus. A single conductor appears to have been the lessee of the whole estate, and it was against his unlawful exactions that the coloni appealed. Through the connivance of the responsible procurator (corruptly obtained, the coloni hint,) this tyrant had compelled them to pay larger shares of produce than were rightly due, and also to render services of men and beasts beyond the amount fixed by statute. This abuse had existed on the estate for some time, but the proceedings of the present conductor had made it past all bearing. Evidently there had been some resistance, but official favour had enabled him to employ military force in suppressing it. Violence had been freely used: some persons had been arrested and imprisoned or otherwise maltreated; others had been severely beaten, among them even Roman citizens. Hence the appeal. It is to be noted that the appellants in no way dispute their liability to pay shares of produce (partes agrarias) or to render labour-services at the usual seasons of pressure (operarum praebitionem iugorumve). They refer to a clause in a lex Hadriana, regulating these dues. It is against the exaction of more than this statute allows that they venture to protest. They judiciously point out to the emperor that such doings are injurious to the financial interest[1399] of his treasury (in perniciem rationum tuarum), that is, they will end by ruining the estate as a source of steady revenue. The officials of the central department in Rome were evidently of the same opinion, for the rescript of Commodus[1400] plainly ordered his procuratores to follow closely the rules and policy applicable to the domains, permitting no exactions in transgression of the standing regulations (contra perpetuam formam). In short, he reaffirmed the statute of Hadrian.

In this document also we hear nothing of tenants’ arrears or of money-rents. Naturally enough, for the coloni are partiarii whose rent is a share of produce. In connexion with such tenants the difficulty[1401] of reliqua does not easily arise. They are labouring peasants, who describe themselves as homines rustici tenues manuum nostrarum operis victum tolerantes. Of course they are posing as injured innocents. Perhaps they were: at any rate the great officials in Rome would look kindly on humble peasants who only asked protection in order to go on unmolested, producing the food which it was their duty to produce,—food, by the by, of the need of which the Roman mob was a standing reminder. Of vilici or ordinary slaves this document says nothing, for it had no need to do so; but the right to operae at certain seasons implies slave labour on the head-tenant’s own farm, probably attached to the chief villa or palatium. In a notable phrase at the end of their appeal the coloni speak of themselves[1402] as ‘your peasants, home-bred slaves and foster-children of your domains’ (rustici tui vernulae et alumni saltuum tuorum). Surely this implies, not only that they are coloni Caesaris, standing in a direct relation to the emperor whose protection[1403] they implore against the conductores agrorum fiscalium; but also that their connexion with the estate is an old-established one, passing from fathers to sons, a hereditary tie which they have at present no wish to see broken.

In this case the circumstances that led to the setting-up of the inscription are clear enough. Evidently the appeal represented a great effort, both in the way of organizing concerted action on the part of the peasant farmers, and in overcoming the hindrances to its presentation which would be created by the interested ingenuity of those whose acts were thereby called in question. The imperial officials in the Provinces were often secretly in league with those in authority at Rome, and to have procured an imperial rescript in favour of the appellants was a great triumph, perhaps a rare one. The forma perpetua containing the regulations governing the estate was, we learn, already posted up on a bronze tablet. It had been disregarded: and now it was an obvious precaution to record that the emperor had ordered those regulations to be observed in future. How long the effect of this rescript lasted we are left to guess. Officials changed, and reaffirmation of principles could not guarantee permanent reform of practice. Still, the policy of the central bureau, when not warped by corrupt influence, was consistent and clear. To keep these imperial ‘peculiars’ on such a footing as to insure steady returns was an undoubted need: and, after the extreme strain on the resources of the empire imposed by the calamitous times of Marcus, it was in the reign of Commodus a greater need than ever.

(3) The Gazr Mezuâr inscription[1404], very fragmentary and in some points variously interpreted, belongs to the same period (181 AD). A few details seem sufficiently certain to be of use here. The estate in question is imperial property, apparently one of the domanial units revealed to us by these African documents. It seems to record another case of appeal against unlawful exaction of operae, probably by a conductor or conductores. It also was successful. But it is notable that the lawful amount of operae to be rendered by coloni on this estate was just double of that fixed in the other cases—four at each of the seasons of pressure, twelve in all. We can only infer that the task-scale varied on various estates for reasons unknown to us. One fragment, if a probable restoration[1405] is to be accepted, conveys the impression of a despairing threat on the part of the appellants. It suggests that on failure of redress they may be driven to return to their homes where they can make their abode in freedom. On the face of it, this is an assertion of freedom of movement, a valuable piece of evidence, if it can be trusted. We may safely go so far as to note that it is at least not inconsistent with other indications pointing to the same conclusion. We may even remark that the suggestion of going home in search of freedom agrees better with the notion that these coloni were African natives than with the supposition of their Italian origin. The Roman citizens on the Burunitan estate will not support the latter view, for they are mentioned as exceptional. Seeck (rightly, I think,) urges that Italy was in sore need of men and had none to spare for populous Africa. I would add that the emigration of Italians to the Provinces as working farmers seems to require more proof than has yet been produced. As officials, as traders, as financiers and petty usurers, as exploiters of other men’s labour, they abounded in the subject countries; but, so far as I can learn, not as labourers. Many of them no doubt held landed estates, for instance in the southern parts of Spain and Gaul. But when we meet with loose general expressions[1406] such as ‘The Roman is dwelling in every land that he has conquered,’ we must not let them tempt us into overestimating the number of Italian settlers taking an active part in the operations of provincial agriculture.

(4) The inscription of Ain Ouassel[1407] belongs to the end of the reign of Severus. The text is much broken, but information of no small importance can be gathered from what remains. Severus was himself a native of Africa, and may have taken a personal interest in the subject of this ordinance. In point of form the document chiefly consists of a quoted communication (sermo) from the emperor’s procuratores[1408], one of whom, a freedman, saw to its publication in an inscription on an ara legis divi Hadriani. A copy of the lex Hadriana, or at least the relevant clauses thereof, was included. The matter on which the emperor’s decision is announced was the question of the right to occupy and cultivate rough lands (rudes agri)[1409], which are defined as lands either simply waste or such as the conductores have neglected to cultivate for at least ten years preceding. These lands are included in no less than five different saltus mentioned by proper names, and the scope of the ordinance is wider than in the cases referred to above. It appears that, while it may have contained some modifications or extensions of the provisions of the lex Hadriana, its main bearing was to reaffirm and apply the privileges granted by that statute. It is not rash to infer that we have here evidence of a set of regulations for all or many of the African domains, forming a part of Hadrian’s great work of reorganization.

If the remaining words of this inscription are rightly interpreted, as I think they are, it seems that the policy of encouraging the cultivation of waste and derelict lands was at this time being revived by the government. We have seen it at work in Trajan’s time, promoted by guarantee of privileges and temporary exemption from burdens. But the persons then encouraged to undertake the work of reclamation were to all appearance only the coloni at the time resident on the estate. In the case of these five saltus, the offer seems to be made more widely, at least so far as the remaining text may justify such conclusions. It reads like an attempt to attract enterprising squatters of any kind from any quarter. They are offered not merely undisturbed occupation and a heritable tenure of some sort, but actual possessio. Now this right, which fills a whole important chapter in Roman law, was one protected by special legal remedies, and even on an imperial domain can hardly have been a matter of indifference. It was quite distinct from mere possessio naturalis[1410], which was all that the ordinary colonus enjoyed on his own behalf. This new-type squatter is allowed the same privilege of so many years of grace, free of rent, at the outset of his enterprise, that we have noted above. The details are somewhat different. For olives the free term is ten years: for fruit trees (poma, here mentioned without reference to vines) it is seven years. It is expressly provided that the divisio, which implies the partiary system of tenancy, shall apply only to such poma as are actually brought[1411] to market. This suggests that in the past attempts to levy the quota as a proportional share of the gross crop, without regard to the needs of the grower’s own household, had been found to discourage reclamation. It has been pointed out that the effect of the new policy would be to create a sort of perpetual leasehold, similar to that known by the Greek term emphyteusis, which is found fully established in the later empire. But the land was not all under fruit-crops. The disposal of corn crops is regulated in a singular clause thus. ‘Any shares of dry[1412] crops that shall be due are, during the first five years of occupation, to be delivered to the head-tenant within whose holding[1413] the land occupied is situate. After the lapse of that time they are to go to the account (of the Treasury[1414]).’ Why is the conductor to receive these partes aridae? It is reasonably suggested that the intention was to obviate initial obstruction on the part of the big lessee, and thus to give the reclamation-project a fair start.

For we have no right to assume that the parcels of land thrown open to occupation had hitherto been included[1415] in no tenancy. The whole import of the document shews that they often belonged to this or that area held by one or other of the big lessees. That there was at least one conductor to each of the five saltus seems certain. That there was only one to each, is perhaps probable, but hardly to be gathered from the text. Now, so long as the conductor regularly paid his fixed rent (canon) and accounted for the taxes (tributa) due from the estate, why should the imperial authority step in to take pieces of land (and that the poorest land) out of his direct control? The answer to this is that the Roman law[1416] recognized the right of a private landlord to require of his tenants that they should not ‘let down’ the land leased to them: and proof of neglected cultivation might operate to bar a tenant’s claim for abatement of rent. What was the right of an ordinary landlord was not likely to be waived by an emperor: though his domains might be administered in fact by a special set of fiscal regulations, he claimed a right analogous to that recognized by the ordinary law, and none could challenge its exercise. A big lessee might often find that parts of his holding could not be cultivated at a profit under existing conditions. Slave labour was careless and inefficient; it was in these times also costly, so costly that it only paid to employ it on generous soils. The task-work of coloni did not amount to much, and it was no doubt rendered grudgingly. He was tempted to economize in slaves[1417] and to employ his reduced staff on the best land only. We need not suppose that he got an abatement of his fixed rent from the fiscal authorities: he was most unlikely to attract their attention by making such a claim. He had made his bargain with eyes presumably open. That he had agreed to the canon assures us that it must have been low enough to leave him a comfortable margin for profit. We may be fairly sure that he sat quiet and did what seemed to pay him best.

In the remaining text of this statute there is no reference to operae due from the new squatters, and nothing is said of coloni. This does not seem to be due to injury of the stone. The persons for whose benefit the statute is enacted are apparently a new or newly recognized element[1418] in the population of these domains, not coloni. But the rights offered to them are expressly referred to as rights granted by the statute of Hadrian. If so, then the lex Hadriana contemplated the establishment of a new peasant class, not coloni, and the present statute was merely a revival of Hadrian’s scheme. The men are eventually to pay shares of crops, and Schulten’s[1419] view, that they are on the way to become coloni, is possible, if not probable. When he remarks that they might find the position of coloni a doubtful boon, we need not challenge his opinion.

(5) The inscription of Ain el Djemala[1420], a later discovery (1906) is of special importance as belonging to the same neighbourhood as the preceding one. It is a document of Hadrian’s time. It refers to the same group of estates as the above, and deals with the same matter, the right to cultivate waste or derelict parcels of land. Indeed the connexion of the two inscriptions is so close that the parts preserved of each can be safely used to fill gaps in the text of the other. In a few points this inscription, the earlier in date, supplies further detail. The most notable is that another estate, a saltus or fundus Neronianus, is mentioned in it, and not in the later one. Thus it would seem that it referred to six estates, a curious coincidence, when we recall the six great African landlords made away with by Nero. Another little addition is that waste lands are defined as marshy or wooded. Also that the land is spoken of as fit for growing olives vines and corn-crops, which supplements a mutilated portion of the Ain Ouassel stone. But in one point the difference between the two is on the face of it difficult to reconcile. In addressing the imperial procuratores the applicants base their request on the lex Manciana, the benefit of which they seek to enjoy[1421] as used on the neighbouring saltus Neronianus. Here the broken text is thought to have contained a reference to the enhanced prosperity of that estate owing to the concession. In any case we may fairly conclude that the lex Manciana was well known in the district, and its regulations regarded by the farmers as favourable to their interests. But the reply to their petition does not refer to it as the immediate basis of the decision given. The communication (sermo) of Hadrian’s procurators is cited as the ground of the leave granted for cultivation of waste lands. Yet the broken sentence at the end of the inscription seems at least to shew that the rules of the lex Manciana were still recognized as a standard, confirmed and perhaps incorporated, or referred to by name, in the lex Hadriana itself. It is ingeniously suggested that the farmers rest their case on the Manciana because the Hadriana was as yet unknown to them; while the reply refers to Hadrian’s statute as authority. Whether the saltus or fundus Neronianus, on which the Mancian regulations were in force, is another estate-unit similar to the five named both here and in the later inscription, is a point on which I have some doubts, too little connected with my subject for discussion here. The general scope of the concession granted by Hadrian is the same as the later one of Severus.

If Hadrian issued a statute or statutes regulating the terms of occupancy on the African domains, and some attempts to evade it were met by its reaffirmation under Commodus, it is quite natural that neglect or evasion of it in some other respects should be met by reaffirmation under Severus. This consideration will account for the identity of the concessions granted in these two inscriptions. And it agrees perfectly with the evidence of later legislation in the Theodosian code. The normal course of events is, legislation to protect the poorer classes of cultivators, then evasion of the law by the selfish rich, then reenactment of evaded laws, generally with increased penalties. That under the administrative system of the domains much the same phenomena should occur, is only what we might expect.

XLVIII. DISCUSSION OF THE ABOVE INSCRIPTIONS.

In reviewing the state of things revealed to us by these inscriptions we must carefully bear in mind that they relate solely to the Province Africa. Conditions there were in many ways exceptional. When Rome took over this territory after the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC, it was probably a country divided for the most part into great estates worked on the Carthaginian system by slave labour. Gradually the land came more and more into the hands of Roman capitalists, to whose opulence Horace refers. Pliny tells us that in Nero’s time six[1422] great landlords possessed half the entire area of the Province, when that emperor found a pretext for putting them to death and confiscating their estates. Henceforth the ruling emperor was the predominating landlord[1423] in a Province of immense importance, in particular as a chief granary of Rome. We are not to suppose that any change in the system of large units was ever contemplated. Punic traditions, probably based on experience, favoured the system; though the Punic language, still spoken, seems to have been chiefly confined to the seaboard districts. What the change of lordship effected was not only to the financial advantage of the imperial treasury: it also put an end to the creation of what were a sort of little principalities that might some day cause serious trouble. At this point we are tempted to wonder whether the great landlords, before the sweeping measure of Nero, had taken any steps towards introducing a new organization in the management of their estates. Trajan’s statute refers to a lex Manciana and adopts a number of its regulations. These regulations clearly contemplate a system of head-tenants and sub-tenants, of whom the latter seem to be actual working farmers living of the labour of their own hands, as those who some 65 years later described themselves in appealing to Commodus. The former have stewards in charge of the cultivation of the ‘manor farms’ attached to the principal farmsteads, and evidently employ gangs of slaves: but at special seasons have a right to a limited amount[1424] of task-labour from the free sub-tenants of the small farms. That these labour-conditions were devised to meet a difficulty in procuring enough slaves to carry on the cultivation of the whole big estate, is an inference hardly to be resisted. That we find it on more than one estate indicates that for the time it was serving its purpose. But, in admitting that it probably began under the rule of great private landlords, we must not lose sight of the fact that it was liable to grievous abuse, and that even the regulations of Hadrian did not remove the necessity of pitiful appeals for redress.

An important characteristic of these estates was that they were outside the municipal[1425] system. Each of the so-called civitates had its own charter or statute (lex) conforming more or less closely to a common[1426] model, under which the municipal authorities could regulate the management of lands within its territory. But these great estates were independent[1427] of such local jurisdictions. And this independence would seem to date from the times of private ownership, before the conversion of many of them into imperial domains. Mommsen thought that this separate treatment of them as ‘peculiars’ began in Italy under the Republic, and was due to the influence of the landowning aristocracy, who were bent upon admitting no such concurrent authority on their latifundia. This may have been so, and the extension of large-scale possessions to the Provinces may have carried the system abroad. At all events there it was, and it suited the convenience of a grasping emperor: he had only to get rid of the present possessor and carry on the administration of the domain as before: his agents stepped into the place of those employed by the late landlord, and only slight modification of the current regulations would be required. He issued a statute for management of ‘crown-property’ as he would for a municipality. It was in effect a local law, and it does not appear that the common law administered by the ordinary courts could override it. The imperial procurator was practically the magistrate charged with its administration in addition to his financial duties, for government and extraction of revenue were really two sides of the same function. Obviously the interests of the emperor, of his agent, of the head-tenants, and of the peasant cultivators, were not the same. But the peasant, who wanted to pay as little as possible, and the emperor who wanted to receive steady returns—as large as possible, but above all things steady—had a common interest in preventing unlawful exactions, by which a stable income was imperilled and the prosperity of the cultivator impaired. On the other hand the procurator and the conductor could only make illicit profits through combining to rob the emperor by squeezing his coloni. How to accomplish this was no doubt a matter of delicate calculation. How much oppression would the coloni stand without resorting to the troublesome and risky process of an appeal? We only hear of one or two appeals made with success. Of those that were made and rejected or foiled by various arts, and of those abandoned in despair at an early stage, we get no record. Yet that such cases did occur, perhaps not seldom, we may be reasonably sure.

It is well to remember that Columella, in whose treatise letting of farms to tenants first appears, not as an occasional expedient but as part of a reasoned scheme of estate-management, makes provision for a procurator[1428] as well as a vilicus. One duty of the former is to keep an eye on the latter. In the management of great estates an atmosphere of mistrust is perhaps to some extent unavoidable. In an agricultural system based on slave labour, this mistrust begins at the very bottom of the structure and reaches to the very top, as is shewn by all experience ancient and modern. Industry in slaves, diligence and honesty in agents and stewards, are not to be relied on when these subordinates have no share in the profit derived from the practice of such virtues. And mistrust of slaves and freedmen did not imply a simple trust in free tenants. Columella only advises[1429] letting to tenants in circumstances that make it impracticable to cultivate profitably by a slave-staff under a steward. The plan is a sort of last resort, and it can only work well if the tenants stay on continuously. Therefore care should be taken to make the position of the coloni permanently attractive. This advice is primarily designed for Italy, but its principles are of general application, and no doubt justified by experience. Their extension to latifundia abroad, coupled with a falling-off in the supply of slaves, led to similar results: great estates might still be in part worked by slave labour under stewards, but letting parcels to small tenants became a more and more vital feature of the system. But to deal directly from a distance with a number of such peasant farmers would be a troublesome business. We need not wonder that it became customary to let large blocks of land, even whole latifundia, to big lessees, speculative men who undertook the subletting and rent-collecting of part of their holdings, while they could work the central manor-farm by slave labour on their own account, and generally exploit the situation for their own profit. Thus, as once the latifundium had absorbed little properties, so now its subdivision was generating little tenancies, with chief-tenants as a sort of middlemen between the dominus and the coloni. To protect the colonus, the powers of the conductor[1430] had to be strictly limited: to ease the labour-problem and retain the conductor, a certain amount of task-work had to be required of the colonus. And this last condition was ominous of the coming serfdom.

If the economic situation and the convenience of non-resident landlords operated to produce a widespread system of letting to small tenants, it was naturally an object to levy the rents in such a form as would best secure a safe and regular return. To exact a fixed money-rent would mean that the peasant must spend time in marketing his produce in order to procure the necessary cash, and thereby lessen the time spent in actual farm-labour. In bad years he would look for an abatement of his rent, nor would it be easy to satisfy him: here was material for disputes and discontent. Such difficulties were known in Italy and elsewhere, and jurists recognized[1431] an advantage of the ‘partiary’ system in this connexion. An abatement of rent due in a particular year need not imply that the landlord lost the amount of abatement for good and all. If the next year produced a ‘bumper’ crop, the landlord was entitled to claim restitution of last year’s abatement in addition to the yearly rent. This too, it seems, in the case of a tenant sitting at a fixed money-rent. But the partiarius colonus is on another footing: he shares gain and loss with the dominus, with whom he is a quasi-partner[1432]. It was surely considerations of this kind that led to the adoption of the share-rent system on these great African estates. By fixing the proportion on a moderate scale, the peasant was fairly certain to be able to pay his rent, and he would not be harassed with money transactions dependent on the fluctuations in the price of corn. Under such conditions he was more likely to be contented and to stay on where he was, and that this should be so was precisely what the landlord desired. On the other hand the big conductor might pay rent either in coin or kind. He was a speculator, doubtless well able to take care of his own interests: probably the normal case was that he agreed to a fixed cash payment, and only took the lease on terms that left him a good prospect of making it a remunerative venture. But on this point there is need of further evidence.

When the emperor took over an estate of this kind, such an existing organization would be admirably fitted to continue under the fiscal administration. Apparently this is just what happened. One small but important improvement would be automatically produced by the change. The coloni would now become coloni Caesaris[1433] and whatever protection against exactions of conductores they may have enjoyed under the sway of their former lords was henceforth not less likely to be granted and much more certain of effect. To the fiscal officials any course of action tending to encourage permanent tenancies and steady returns would on the face of it be welcome: for it was likely to save them trouble, if not to bring them credit. The only influence liable to incline them in another direction was corruption in some form or other, leading them to connive at misdeeds of the local agents secretly in league with the head-lessees on the spot. That cases of such connivance occurred in the period from Trajan to Severus is not to be doubted. During the following period of confusion they probably became frequent. But it was not until Diocletian introduced a more elaborate imperial system, and increased imperial burdens to defray its greater cost, that the evil reached its height. Then the corruption of officials tainted all departments, and was the canker ever gnawing at the vital forces of the empire. But that this deadly corruption was a sudden growth out of an existing purity is not to be imagined. All this is merely an illustration of that oldest of political truisms, that to keep practice conformable to principle is supremely difficult. The only power that seems to be of any effect in checking the decay of departmental virtue is the power of public opinion. Now a real public opinion cannot be said to have existed in the Roman Empire; and, had it existed, there was no organ through which it could be expressed. And the Head of the State, let him be ever so devoted to the common weal, was too overburdened with manifold responsibilities to be able to give personal attention to each complaint and prescribe an equitable remedy.

How far we are entitled to trace a movement of policy by the contents of these African inscriptions is doubtful. They are too few, and too much alike. Perhaps we may venture to detect a real step onward in the latest of them. The renewal of the encouragement of squatter-settlers[1434] on derelict lands does surely point to a growing consciousness that the food-question was becoming a more and more serious one. Perhaps it may be taken to suggest that the system of leasing the African domains to big conductores had lately been found failing in efficiency. But it is rash to infer much from a single case: and the African Severus may have followed an exceptional policy in his native province. It is when we look back from the times of the later Empire, with its frantic legislation to bind coloni to the soil, and to enforce the cultivation of every patch of arable ground, that we are tempted to detect in every record symptoms of the coming constraint. As yet the central government had not laid its cramping and sterilizing hand on every part of its vast dominions. Moreover the demands on African productivity had not yet reached their extreme limit. There was as yet no Constantinople, and Egypt still shared with Africa the function of supplying food to Rome. Thus it is probably reasonable to believe that the condition of the working tenant-farmers was in this age a tolerable[1435] one. If those on the great domains were bit by bit bound to their holdings, it was probably with their own consent, so far at least that, seeing no better alternative, they became stationary and more or less dependent peasants. In other parts of Africa, for instance near Carthage, we hear of wealthy landowners employing bodies of slaves. Some of these men may well have been Italians: at least they took a leading part later in the rising against Maximin and the elevation of Gordian.

In connexion with the evidence of this group of inscriptions it may be not out of place to say a few words on the view set forth by Heisterbergk, that the origin of the later serf-colonate was Provincial, not Italian. He argues[1436] that what ruined small-scale farming in Italy was above all things the exemption of Italian land from taxation. Landlords were not constrained by the yearly exaction of dues to make the best economic use of their estates. Vain land-pride and carelessness were not checked: mismanagement and waste had free course, and small cultivation declined. The fall in free rustic population was both effect and cause. In the younger Pliny’s time good tenants were already hard to find, but great landlords owned parks and mansions everywhere. In the Provinces nearly all the land was subject to imperial taxation in kind or in money, and owners could not afford to let it lie idle. The practical control of vast estates was not possible from a distance. The direction of agriculture, especially of extensive farming (corn etc) from a fixed centre was little less difficult. There was therefore strong inducement to delegate the business of cultivation to tenants, and to let the difference in amount between their rents and the yearly imperial dues represent the landlord’s profit. Thus the spread of latifundia swallowed up small holdings in the Provinces as in Italy; but it converted small owners into small tenants, and did not merge the holdings into large slave-gang plantations or throw them into pasture. The plan of leasing a large estate as a whole to a big head-tenant, or establishing him in the central ‘manor farm,’ was quite consistent with the general design, and this theory accounts for the presence of a population of free coloni, whom later legislation might and did bind fast to the soil.

This argument has both ingenuity and force, but we can only assent to it with considerable reservations. Letting to free coloni was a practice long used in Italy, and in the first century AD was evidently becoming more common. It was but natural that it should appear in the Provinces. Still, taken by itself, there is no obvious reason why it should develope into serfdom. With the admitted scarcity and rising value of labour, why was it that the freeman did not improve his position in relation to his lord, indeed to capitalists in general? I think the presence of the big lessee, the conductor, an employer of slave labour, had not a little to do with it. Labour as such was despised. The requirement of task-work to supplement that of slaves on the ‘manor farm’ was not likely to make labour more esteemed. Yet to get his little holding the colonus had to put up with this condition. It may be significant that we hear nothing of coloni working for wages in spare time. Was it likely that they would do so? Then, when the conductor came to be employed as collector of rents and other dues on the estate, his opportunities of illicit exaction gave him more and more power over them; and, combined with their reluctance to migrate and sacrifice the fruits of past labour, reduced them[1437] more and more to a state of de facto dependence. At the worst they would be semi-servile in fact, though free in law; at the best they would have this outlook, without any apparent alternative to escape their fate. This, I imagine, was the unhappy situation that was afterwards recognized by law.

I must not omit to point out that I have said practically nothing on the subject[1438] of municipal lands and their administration by the authorities of the several res publicae or civitates. Of the importance of this matter I am well aware, more particularly in connexion with the development of emphyteusis under the perpetual leases granted by the municipalities. In a general history of the imperial economics this topic would surely claim a significant place. But it seems to have little or no bearing on the labour conditions with which I am primarily concerned, while it would add greatly to the bulk of a treatise already too long. So too the incidence of taxation, and the effects of degradation[1439] of the currency, influences that both played a sinister part in imperial economics, belong properly to a larger theme. Even the writers on land-surveying etc, the agrimensores or gromatici, only touch my subject here and there when it is necessary to speak of tenures, which cannot be ignored in relation to labour-questions. All these matters are thoroughly and suggestively treated in Seeck’s great history of the Decline and Fall of the ancient world. Another topic left out of discussion is the practical difference, if any, between the terms[1440] fundus and saltus in the imperial domains. I can find no satisfactory materials for defining it, and it does not appear to bear any relation to the labour-question. The meaning of the term inquilinus is a more important matter. If we are to accept Seeck’s ingenious conclusions[1441], it follows that this term, regularly used by the jurists of a house-tenant (urban) as opposed to colonus a tenant of land (rustic), in the course of the second century began to put on a new meaning. Marcus settled large numbers of barbarians on Roman soil. These ‘indwellers’ were labelled as inquilini, a word implying that they were imported aliens, distinct from the proper residents. An analogous distinction existed in municipalities between unprivileged ‘indwellers’ (incolae) and real municipes. Now a jurist’s opinion[1442] in the first half of the third century speaks of inquilini as attached (adhaerent) to landed estates, and only capable of being bequeathed to a legatee by inclusion in the landed estate: and it refers to a rescript of Marcus and Commodus dealing with a point of detail connected with this rule of law. Thus the inquilinate seems to have been a new condition implying attachment to the soil, long before the colonate acquired a similar character. For the very few passages, in which the fixed and dependent nature of the colonate is apparently recognized before the time of Constantine, are with some reason suspected of having been tampered with by the compilers of the Digest, or are susceptible of a different interpretation. It is clear that this intricate question cannot be fully discussed here. If these rustic inquilini were in their origin barbarian settlers, perhaps two conclusions regarding them may be reasonable. First, they seem to be distinct from slaves, the personal property of individual owners. For the evidence, so far as it goes, makes them attached[1443] to the land, and only transferable therewith. Secondly, they are surely labourers, tilling with their own hands the holdings assigned to them. If this view of them be sound, we may see in them the beginnings of a serf class. But it does not follow that the later colonate was a direct growth from this beginning. We have noted above several other causes contributing to that growth; in particular the state of de facto fixity combined with increasing dependence, in which the free colonus was gradually losing his freedom. Whether the later colonate will ever receive satisfactory explanation in the form of a simple and convincing theory, I cannot tell: at present it seems best to admit candidly that, among the various influences tending to produce the known result, I do not see my way[1444] to distinguish one as supremely important, and to ignore the effect of others. The opinion[1445] of de Coulanges, that the origin of the later colonate is mainly to be sought in the gradual effect of custom (local custom), eventually recognized (not created) by law, is perhaps the soundest attempt at a brief expression of the truth.

XLIX. THE JURISTS OF THE DIGEST.

For the position of the colonus in Roman Law during the period known as that of the ‘classic’ Jurists we naturally find our chief source of evidence in the Digest. And it is not surprising that here and there we find passages bearing on labour-questions more or less directly. But in using this evidence it is most necessary to keep in mind the nature and scope of this great compilation. First, it is not a collection of laws. Actual laws were placed in the Codex, based on previous Codes such as the Theodosian (439 AD), after a careful process of sifting and editing, with additions to complete the work. This great task was performed by Justinian’s commissioners in 14 months or less. The Justinian Code was confirmed and published in 529 AD, and finally in a revised form rather more than five years later. Secondly, the Digest is a collection of opinions of lawyers whose competence and authority had been officially recognized, and whose responsa carried weight in the Roman courts. From early times interpretation had been found indispensable in the administration of the law; and in the course of centuries, both by opinions on cases and by formal treatises, there had grown up such a mass of written jurisprudence as no man could master. These writings were specially copious in the ‘classic’ period (say from Hadrian to Alexander 117-235). Actual laws are sometimes cited in the form of imperial decisions, finally settling some disputed point. But the normal product of discussion is the opinion of this or that eminent jurist as to what is sound law in a particular question. The different opinions of different authorities are often quoted side by side. If this were all, we might congratulate ourselves on having simply a collection of authentic extracts from named authors, conveying their views in their own words. And no doubt many of the extracts are of this character.

But the position is not in fact so simple as this. Tribonian and his fellow-commissioners were set to work at the end of the year 530. Their task was completed and the Digesta published with imperial confirmation at the end of 533. Now the juristic literature in existence, of which the Digest was to be an epitome superseding its own sources, was of such prodigious bulk that three years cannot have been sufficient for the work. To read, abstract, classify, and so far as possible to harmonize, this mass of complicated material, was a duty surely needing a much longer time for its satisfactory performance. Moreover, as this official Corpus of jurisprudence was designed for reference and citation as an authority in the courts, it had to be[1446] brought up to date. That this necessity greatly increased the commissioners’ burden is obvious: nor less so, that it was a duty peculiarly difficult to discharge in haste, and liable, if hurried, to result in obscurities inconsistencies and oversights. That much of the Digest has suffered from overhaste in its production is now generally admitted. Its evidence is therefore to be used with caution. But on the subject of coloni the main points of interest are attested by witnesses of high authority, such as Ulpian, in cited passages not reasonably suspected of interpolation. And it is not necessary to follow up a host of details. We have only to reconstruct from the law-sources the characteristic features of agriculture and rustic tenancy as it existed before the time of Diocletian; and these features are on the whole significant and clear. Fortunately we are not entirely dependent on collection and comparison of scattered references from all parts of the great compilation. One title (XIX 2 locati conducti)[1447] furnishes us with a quantity of relevant matter classified under one head by the editors themselves.

First and foremost it stands out quite clear that the colonus is a free man, who enters into a legal contract as lessee with lessor, and that landlord and tenant are equally bound by the terms of the lease. If any clause requires interpretation owing to special circumstances having arisen, the jurist endeavours to lay down the principles by which the court should be guided to an equitable decision. For instance, any fact by which the productiveness of a farm and therewith the solvency of the tenant are impaired may lead to a dispute. Care is therefore taken to relieve the tenant of responsibility for damage inflicted by irresistible force (natural or human)[1448] or due to the landlord’s fault. But defects of climate and soil[1449] give no claim to relief, since he is presumed to have taken the farm with his eyes open: nor does the failure of worn-out fruit trees, which tenants were regularly bound by their covenant to replace. The chief rights of the landlord[1450] are the proper cultivation of the farm and regular payment of the rent. In these the law duly protects him. The tenant is bound not to let down the land by neglect, or to defraud[1451] the landlord by misappropriating what does not belong to him: rent is secured normally by sureties (fideiussores)[1452] found by the tenant at the time of leasing, or sometimes by the fact that all property of his on the farm is expressly pledged[1453] to the lessor on this account. Thus it is the aim of the law to guard the presumably poorer and humbler party against hard treatment, while it protects the man of property against fraud. In other words, it aims at strict enforcement of the terms[1454] of lease, while inclined to construe genuinely doubtful points or mistakes in favour[1455] of the party bound. That landlord and tenant, even in cases of fixed money rent, have a certain community[1456] of interest, seems recognized in the fact that some legal remedies against third persons (for malicious damage etc) could in some cases be employed[1457] by either landlord or tenant. In short, the latter is a thoroughly free and responsible person.

That a tenant should be protected against disturbance[1458] was a matter of course. During the term of his lease he has a right to make his lawful profit on the farm: the landlord is not only bound to allow him full enjoyment (frui licere), but to prevent molestation by a third party over whom he has control. Indeed the tenant farmer has in some relations a more positive protection than the landlord himself. Thus a person who has right of usus over an estate may in certain circumstances refuse[1459] to admit the dominus; but not the colonus or his staff of slaves employed in the farm-work. Change of ownership can perhaps never be a matter of indifference to the sitting tenant of a farm. But it is the lawyer’s aim to see that the passing of the property shall not impair the tenant’s rights under his current lease. A lease sometimes contained clauses fixing the terms (such as a money forfeit)[1460] on which the contract might be broken; in fact a cross-guarantee between the parties, securing the tenant against damage by premature ejectment and the landlord against damage by the tenant’s premature quitting. The jurists often appeal to local custom as a means of equitable decision on disputed points. But one customary principle seems to be recognized[1461] as of general validity, the rule of reconductio. If, on expiration of a lease, the tenant holds on and the landlord allows him to remain, it is regarded as a renewal of the contract by bare agreement (nudo consensu). No set form of lease is necessary; but this tacit contract holds good only from year to year. Another fact significant as to the position of the colonus is that he is assumed to have the right to sublet[1462] the farm: questions that would in that case arise are dealt with as matters of course. I suppose that a lease might be so drawn as to bar any such right, but that in practice it was always or generally admitted. Again, it is a sign of his genuinely independent position in the eye of the law that his own oath, if required of him, may be accepted[1463] as a counter-active plea (exceptio iurisiurandi) in his own defence, when sued by his landlord for damage done on the farm.

On the economic side we have first to remark that the colonus is represented as normally a man of small means. It is true that in the Digest conductor and colonus are not clearly[1464] distinguished, as we find them in the African inscriptions and in the later law. For the former is simply the counterpart of locator, properly connoting the relation between the contracting parties: colonus expresses the fact that the cultivation (colere) of land belonging to another devolves upon him by virtue of the contract. Every colonus is a conductor, but not every conductor a colonus. Now custom, recognized by the lawyers, provided a means of supplying the small man’s need of capital. To set him up in a farm, the landlord equipped him with a certain stock (instrumentum). This he took over at a valuation, not paying ready money for it, but accepting liability[1465] to account for the value at the end of his tenancy. The stock or plant included[1466] implements and animals (oxen, slaves, etc), and a miscellaneous array of things, of course varying with the nature of the farm and local custom. To this nucleus he had inevitably to add belongings[1467] of his own, which were likely to increase with time if the farm prospered in his hands. His rent[1468] might be either a fixed yearly payment in cash or produce, or a proportionate share of produce varying from year to year. The money-rent[1469] seems to have been the usual plan, and it was in connexion therewith that claims for abatement generally arose. The impression left by the frequent references to reliqua in the Digest, and the experiences of the younger Pliny, is that tenant-farmers in Italy were habitually behind with their rents and claiming[1470] remissio. This is probably true of the period (say) 100-250 AD, with which we are here concerned. It was probably a time of great difficulty for both landlords and tenants, at least outside the range of suburban market-gardening. Signs are not lacking that want of sufficient capital[1471] cramped the vigour of agriculture directly and indirectly. Improvements might so raise the standard of cultivation on an estate as to leave an awkward problem for the owner. Its upkeep on its present level might need a large capital; tenants of means were not easy to find, and subdivision into smaller holdings would not in all circumstances provide a satisfactory solution. Moreover, if the man of means was not unlikely to act independently, in defiance of the landlord, the small man was more likely to take opportunities of misappropriating things to which he was not entitled.

All these difficulties, and others, suggest no great prosperity in Italian agriculture of the period. That on certain soils farming did not pay, was as well known[1472] to the jurists as to other writers. And one great cause of agricultural decline appears in their incidental remarks as clearly as in literature. It was the devotion of much of the best land in the best situations to the unproductive parks and pleasure-grounds of the rich. This can hardly be laid to the account of the still favoured financial position of Italy as compared with the Provinces, for we find the same state of things existing late in the fourth century, when Italy had long been provincialized and taxed accordingly. It was fashion, and fashion of long standing, that caused this evil. And this cause was itself an effect of the conditions of investment. The syndicates for exploiting provincial dues had gone with the Republic. State contracts and industrial enterprises were not enough to employ all the available capital. The ownership of land, now that politics were not a school of ambition, was more than ever the chief source of social importance. A man who could afford to own vast unremunerative estates was a great personage. We may add that such estates, being unremunerative, were less likely to attract the fatal attention of bad emperors, while good rulers deliberately encouraged rich men to invest fortunes in them as being an evidence of loyalty to the government. The uneconomic rural conditions thus created are plainly referred to in the staid remarks of the jurists. We read of estates owned for pleasure (voluptaria praedia)[1473]: of cases where it may be doubted[1474] whether the fundus does not rather belong to the villa than the villa to the fundus: and the use of the word praetorium[1475] (= great mansion, palace, ‘Court’) for the lord’s headquarters on his demesne becomes almost official in the mouth of lawyers. Meanwhile great estates abroad could be, and were, profitable to their owners, who drew rent from tenants and were normally non-resident. Yet praetoria were sometimes found even in the Provinces.

In connexion with this topic it is natural to consider the questions of upkeep and improvements. The former is simple. As the tenant has the disposal of the crops raised and gathered (fructus), he is bound[1476] to till the soil, to keep up the stock of plants, and to see that the drainage of the farm is in working order. Further detail is unnecessary, as his liability must be gauged by the state of the farm when he took it over. Improvements look to the future. From the lawyers we get only the legal point of view, which is of some interest as proving that the subject was of sufficient importance not to be overlooked. Now it seems certain that a conductor or colonus had a right of action to recover[1477] from the dominus not only compensation for unexhausted improvements, but his whole outlay on them, if shewn to have been beneficial. Or his claim might rest on the fact that the project had been approved[1478] by the landlord. But it might happen that a work beneficial to the particular estate was detrimental to a neighbouring one. In such a case, against whom—landlord or tenant—had the owner of that estate a legal remedy? It was held that, if the tenant had carried out the work in question[1479] without his landlord’s knowledge, he alone was liable. If, as some held, the landlord was bound to provide a particular remedy, he could recover the amount paid under this head from his tenant. To insure the owner against loss from the acts of his lessee was evidently an object of the first importance, and this is in harmony with the Roman lawyers’ intense respect for rights of property. The general impression left on the reader of their utterances on this subject is that a landlord, after providing a considerable instrumentum, had done all that could reasonably be expected from him. Improvements, the desirability of which was usually discovered through the tenant’s experience, were normally regarded as the tenant’s business: it was only necessary to prevent the landlord from arbitrarily confiscating what the tenant had done to improve his property. Obviously such ‘improvements’ were likely to occasion disputes as to the value of the work done: but it was the custom of the countryside to refer technical questions of this kind to the arbitration of an impartial umpire (vir bonus), no doubt a neighbour familiar with local circumstances. On the whole, it does not appear that the law treated the colonus badly under this head, and the difficulty of securing good tenants may be supposed to have guaranteed him against unfair administration.

A great many more details illustrating the position of coloni as they appear in the Digest could be added here, but I think the above will be found ample for my purpose. The next topic to be dealt with is that of labour, so far as the references of the lawyers give us any information. First it is to be noted that the two systems[1480] of estate-management, that of cultivation for landlord’s account by his actor or vilicus, and that of letting to tenant farmers, were existing side by side. The latter plan was to all appearance more commonly followed than it would seem to have been in the time of Columella, but the former was still working. A confident opinion as to the comparative frequency[1481] of the two systems is hardly to be formed on Digest evidence: for in rustic matters the interest of lawyers was almost solely concerned with the relations of landlord and tenant. What an owner did with his own property on his own account was almost entirely his own business. There are signs that a certain change in the traditional nomenclature represents a real change of function in the case of landlords’ managers. The term actor is superseding[1482] vilicus, but the vilicus still remains. He would seem to be now more of a mere farm-bailiff, charged with the cultivation of some part or parts of an estate that are not let to tenants. It may even be that he is left with a free hand and only required to pay a fixed[1483] yearly return. If so, this arrangement is not easily to be distinguished from the case of a slave colonus or quasi colonus[1484] occupying a farm. The financial and general supervision of the estate is in the hands of the actor[1485], who collects all dues, including rents of colonie and is held to full account[1486] for all these receipts as well as for the contents of the store-rooms. He is a slave, but a valuable and trusted man: it is significant that the manumission[1487] of actores is not seldom mentioned. Evidently the qualities looked for in such an agent were observed to develope most readily under a prospect of freedom. But, so long as he remained actor of an estate, he could be regarded as part of it: in a bequest the testator could include him as a part[1488], and often did so: and indeed his peculiar knowledge of local detail must often have been an important element in its value. To employ such a person in the management of an estate, with powerful inducements to good conduct, may have solved many a difficult problem. We may perhaps guess that it made the employment of a qualified legal agent (procurator) less often necessary, at least if the actor contrived to avoid friction with his master’s free tenants.

Whether an estate was farmed for the owner by his manager, or let to tenants, or partly on one system partly on the other, it is clear that slave-labour is assumed as the normal basis of working. For the colonus takes over slaves supplied by the dominus as an item of the instrumentum. And there was nothing to prevent him from adding slaves of his own, if he could afford it and thought it worth his while to employ a larger staff. Whether such additions were often or ever made, we must not expect the lawyers to tell us; but we do now and then hear[1489] of a slave who is the tenant’s own. Such a slave might as part of the tenant’s goods be pledged to the landlord as security for his rent, but he would not be a part of the estate of which the landlord could dispose by sale or bequest. In such a case the slaves might be regarded[1490] as accessories of the fundus, if it were so agreed. This raised questions as to the degree of connexion that should be treated as qualifying a slave to be considered an appurtenance of a farm. The answer was in effect that he must be a member of the regular staff. Mere temporary employment on the place did not so attach him, mere temporary absence on duty elsewhere did not detach him. A further question was whether all slaves in any sort of employment on the place were included, or only such as were actually engaged in farm work proper, cultivation of the soil, not those employed in various subsidiary[1491] industries. These questions the jurists discussed fully, but we cannot follow them here, as their legal importance is chiefly in connexion with property and can hardly have affected seriously the position of tenants. But it is interesting to observe that the lawyers were feeling the necessity of attempting some practical classification. The distinction[1492] between urbana and rustica mancipia was old enough as a loose conversational or literary one. But, when rights of inheritance or legacy of such valuable property were involved, it became important to define (if possible) the essential characteristics of a ‘rustic’ slave.

That the condition of the rustic slave was improving, and generally far better than it had been on the latifundia of Republican days, seems indicated by the jurists’ speaking of a slave as colonus or quasi colonus without any suggestion of strangeness in the relation. We may assume that only slaves of exceptional capacity and merit would be placed in a position of economic (if not legal) equality with free tenants. Still the growth of such a custom can hardly have been without some effect on the condition of rustic slaves in general. It was not new in the second century: it is referred to by a jurist[1493] of the Augustan age. The increasing difficulty of getting either good tenants or good slaves no doubt induced landlords to entrust farms to men who could and would work them profitably, whether freemen or slaves. And a slave had in agriculture, as in trades and finance, a point in his favour: his person and his goods[1494] remained in his master’s power. If by skilled and honest management he relieved his master of trouble and worry, and contributed by regular payment of rent to assure his income, it was reasonable to look for gratitude expressed, on the usual Roman lines, in his master’s will. Manumission, perhaps accompanied by bequest[1495] of the very farm that he had worked so well, was a probable reward. May we not guess that some of the best farming carried on in Italy under the earlier Empire was achieved by trusted slaves, in whom servile apathy was overcome by hope? Such a farmer-slave would surely have under him[1496] slave labourers, the property of his master; and he would have the strongest possible motives for tact and skill in their management, while his own capacity had been developed by practical experience. I can point to no arrangement in Roman agriculture so calculated to make it efficient on a basis of slavery as this.

The services (operae) of a slave, due to his owner or to some one in place of his owner, were a property capable of valuation, and therefore could be let and hired at a price. That is, the person to whom they were due could commute[1497] them for a merces. This might, as in the corresponding Greek case of ἀποφορά, be a paying business, if a slave had been bought cheap and trained so as to earn good wages. It was common enough in various trades: what concerns us is that the plan was evidently in use in the rustic world also. Now this is notable. We naturally ask, if the man’s services were worth so much to the hirer, why should they not have been worth as much (or even a little more) to his own master? Why should it pay to let him rather than to use him yourself? Of course the owner might have more slaves than he needed at the moment: or the hirer might be led by temporary need of labour to offer a fancy price for the accommodation: or two masters on neighbouring farms might engage in a reciprocity of cross-hirings to suit their mutual convenience at certain seasons. Further possibilities might be suggested, but are such occasional explanations sufficient to account for the prevalence of this hiring-system? I think not. Surely the principal influence, steadily operating in this direction, was one that implied an admission of the economic failure of slavery. If A’s slave worked for B so well that it paid A to let him do so and to receive a rent for his services, it follows that the slave had some inducement to exert his powers more fully as B’s hireling than in the course of ordinary duty under his own master. Either the nature and conditions of the work under B were pleasanter, or he received something for himself over and above the stipulated sum claimed by his master. In other words, as a mere slave he did not do his best: as a hired man he felt some of the stimulus that a free man gets from the prospect of his wage. So Slavery, already philanthropically questioned, was in this confession economically condemned.

These points considered, we are not surprised to find mention of slaves letting out their own[1498] operae. This must imply the consent of their masters, and it is perhaps not rash to see in such a situation a sign of weakening in the effective authority of masters. A master whose interest is bound up with the fullest development of his slave’s powers (as rentable property exposed to competition) will hardly act the martinet without forecasting the possible damage to his own pocket. A slave who knows that his master draws an income from his efficiency is in a strong position for gradually extorting privileges till he attains no small degree of independence. We may perhaps find traces of such an advance in the arrangement by which a slave hires his own operae[1499] from his master. He will thus make a profit out of hiring himself: in fact he is openly declaring that he will not work at full power for his master, but only compound with him for output on the scale of an ordinary slave. This arrangement was common in arts and handicrafts, and not specially characteristic of Rome. In rustic life, the slave put into a farm as tenant[1500] at a fixed rent, and taking profit and loss, may furnish an instance. Whether such cases were frequent we do not know. The general impression left by the Digest passages on hiring and letting of slaves is that, when we read of mercennarii, it is generally if not always hireling[1501] slaves, not free wage-earners, that are meant. In a passage[1502] where servus occurs as well as mercennarius, it is reference to the owner as well as to the hirer that necessitates the addition. If I have interpreted these points aright, the picture suggested is a state of things in which the rustic slave was steadily improving his position, supplying hired labour, at times entrusted with the charge of a farm, and with a fair prospect of becoming by manumission under his owner’s will a free colonus, or even his own landlord. How far this picture is really characteristic of rustic Italy, or of the Provinces (such as Gaul or Spain), is what one would like to know, but I can find no evidence.

In the foregoing paragraphs I have refrained from inquiring whether the colonus as he appears in the Digest was a farmer who worked with his own hands, or merely an employer and director of labour. The reason is that I have found in the texts no evidence whatever on the point. It was not the jurist’s business. We are left to guess at the truth as best we may, and we can only start from consideration of the farmer’s own interest, and assume that the average farmer knew his own interest and was guided thereby. Now, being bound to pay rent in some form or other and to make good any deficiencies in the instrumentum at the end of his tenancy, he had every inducement to get all he could out of the land while he held it. How best to do this, was his problem. And the answer no doubt varied according to the size of the farm, the kind of crops that could profitably be raised there, and the number and quality of the staff. In some rough operations, his constant presence on one spot and sharing the actual work might get the most out of his men. Where nicety of skill was the main thing, he might better spend his time in direction and minute watching of the hands. On a fairly large farm he would have enough to do as director. We may reasonably guess that he only toiled with his own hands if he thought it would pay him to do so. This a priori guesswork is not satisfactory. But I see nothing else to be said; for the African inscriptions do not help us. The circumstances of those great domains were exceptional.

So far we have been viewing agriculture as proceeding in times and under conditions assumed to be more or less normal, without taking account of the various disturbing elements in rustic life, by which both landlords and tenants were liable to suffer vexation and loss. Yet these were not a few. Even a lawyer could not ignore wild beasts. Wolves carried off some of A’s pigs. Dogs kept by B, colonus of a neighbouring villa, for protection of his own flocks, rescued the pigs. A legal question[1503] at once arises: are the rescued pigs regarded as wild game, and therefore belonging to the owner of the dogs? No, says the jurist. They were still within reach; A had not given them up for lost; if B tries to retain them, the law provides remedies to make him give them up. I presume that B would have a claim to some reward for his services. But the lawyer is silent, confining his opinion to the one question of property. References to depredations of robbers or brigands (latrones, grassatores,) occur often, and quite as a matter of course. The police of rural Italy, not to mention the Provinces, was an old scandal. Stock-thieves, who lifted a farmer’s cattle sheep or goats, and sometimes his crops, were important enough to have a descriptive name (abigei)[1504] and a title of the Digest to themselves. That bad neighbours made themselves unpleasant in many ways, and that their presence gave a bad name to properties near them, was an experience of all lands and all ages: but the jurists treat it gravely[1505] as a lawyer’s matter. Concealment of such a detrimental fact[1506] by the seller of an estate made the sale voidable. The rich (old offenders in this kind) were by a rescript of Hadrian[1507] awarded differential punishment for removing landmarks: in their case the purpose of encroachment was not a matter open to doubt.

In one connexion the use of force as an embarrassing feature of rustic life was a subject of peculiar interest to the jurists, and had long been so. This was in relation to questions of possession. In Roman law possessio held a very important place. All that need be said of it here is that the fact of possession, or lack of it, seriously affected the position of litigants in disputes as to property. Great ingenuity was exercised in definition and in laying down rules for ascertaining the fact. Now among the means employed in gaining or recovering possession none was more striking or more effective than the use of force. Special legal remedies had been provided to deal with such violence; interdicta issued by the praetor, to forbid it, or to reinstate a claimant dislodged by his rival, or simply to state the exact issue raised in a particular case. On conformity or disobedience to the praetor’s order the case was formally tried in court: the question of law mainly turned on questions of fact. What concerns us is that force was solemnly classified under two heads, vis and vis armata. Each of these had its own proper interdict at least as early as the time of Cicero, and they occupy a whole title[1508] in the Digest. Clearly the use of force was no negligible matter. That it was a danger or at least a nuisance to owners or claimants of property, is not less clear. But how did it touch the colonus? He was, as such, neither owner nor claimant of the property of his farm. He had in his own capacity[1509] no possession either. But, as tenant of a particular owner, his presence operated[1510] to secure the possession of his landlord. Hence to oust him by force broke the landlord’s possession; whether rightly or wrongly, the law had to decide. Now it is obvious that, in cases where serious affrays resulted from intrusion, a tenant might suffer grave damage to his goods and person. The intruders (often a gang of slaves) would seldom be so punctiliously gentle as to do no harm at all. Therefore, having regard to the amount of interest in this subject shewn by the lawyers, we cannot omit the use of force in matters of possession from the list of rustic embarrassments.

Another cause of annoyance was connected with servitudes, such as rights of way and water, which were frequent subjects of dispute in country districts. Whether regarded as rights or as burdens, the principles governing them were a topic that engaged the minute and laborious attention[1511] of the lawyers. Now it is evident that a right of way or water through an estate, though a material advantage to a neighbouring estate served by the convenience, might be a material disadvantage to the one over which the right extended. Also that the annoyance might be indefinitely increased or lessened by the cantankerous or considerate user of the right by the person or persons enjoying it. When we consider that servitudes were already an important department of jurisprudence in Republican days, and see how great a space they occupy in the Digest, we can hardly resist the conclusion that country proprietors found in them a fertile subject of quarrels. But surely the quarrels of landlords over a matter of this kind could not be carried on without occasional and perhaps frequent disturbances and injury to the tenants on the land. Even if the law provided means of getting compensation for any damage done to a tenant’s crops or other goods in the course of attempts to enforce or defeat a claimed servitude, was the average colonus a man readily to seek compensation in the law-courts? I think not. But, if not, he would depend solely on the goodwill of his own landlord, supposing the latter to have got the upper hand in the main dispute. On the whole, I strongly suspect that in practice these quarrels over rustic servitudes were a greater nuisance to farmers than might be supposed. So far as I know, we have no statement of the farmer’s point of view. Another intermittent but damaging occurrence was the occasional passage of soldiery, whose discipline was often lax. We might easily forget the depredations and general misconduct of these unruly ruffians, and imagine that such annoyances only became noticeable in a later period. But the jurists do not allow us to forget[1512] the military requisitions for supply of troops on the march, the payment for which is not clearly provided, and would at best be a cause of trouble; or the pilferings of the men, compensation for which was probably not to be had. It would be farmers in northern Italy and the frontier-provinces that were the chief sufferers.

Damage by natural disturbances or by fires may happen in any age or country. That Italy in particular was exposed to the effect of floods and earthquakes, we know. Accordingly the lawyers are seriously concerned with the legal and equitable questions arising out of such events. It was not merely the claim of tenants[1513] to abatement of rent that called for a statement of principles. Beside the sudden effects of earthquakes torrents or fires, there were the slower processes of streams changing their courses[1514] and gradual land-slides on the slopes of hills. These movements generally affected the proprietary relations of neighbouring landlords, taking away land from one, sometimes giving to another. Here was a fine opening for ingenious jurists, of which they took full advantage. The growth of estates by alluvion, and loss by erosion, was a favourite topic, the operation of which, and the questions thereby raised, are so earnestly treated as to shew their great importance in country life. Of fire-damage, due to malice or neglect, no more need be said; nor of many other minor matters.

But, when all the above drawbacks have been allowed for, it is still probably true that scarcity of labour was a far greater difficulty for farmers. We hear very little directly of this trouble, as it raised no point of law. Very significant[1515] however are the attempts of the Senate and certain emperors to put down an inveterate scandal which is surely good indirect evidence of the scarcity. It consisted in the harbouring[1516] of runaway slaves on the estates of other landlords. A runaway from one estate was of course not protected and fed on another estate from motives of philanthropy. The slave would be well aware that severe punishment awaited him if recovered by his owner, and therefore be willing to work for a new master who might, if displeased, surrender him any day. The landlords guilty of this treason to the interests of their class were probably the same as those who harboured[1517] brigands, another practice injurious to peaceful agriculture both in Italy and abroad. Another inconvenience, affecting all trades and all parts of the empire in various degrees, was the local difference in the money-value[1518] of commodities in different markets. This was sometimes great: and that it was troublesome to farmers may be inferred from the particular mention of wine oil and corn as cases in point. No doubt dealers had the advantage over producers, as they generally have, through possessing a more than local knowledge of necessary facts. These middlemen however could not be dispensed with, as experience shewed, and one of the later jurists[1519] openly recognized. Facilities for borrowing, and rates of interest, varied greatly in various centres. But all these market questions do not seem to have been so acute as to be a public danger until the ruinous debasement of the currency in the time of Gallienus. A few references may be found to peculiar usages of country life in particular Provinces. Thus we read that in Arabia[1520] farms were sometimes ‘boycotted,’ any person cultivating such a farm being threatened with assassination. In Egypt[1521] special care had to be taken to protect the dykes regulating the distribution of Nile water. Both these offences were summarily dealt with by the provincial governor, and the penalty was death. Here we have one more proof of the anxiety of the imperial government to insure the greatest possible production of food. The empire was always hungry,—and so were the barbarians. And the northern frontier provinces could not feed both themselves and the armies.

While speaking of landlords and tenants we must not forget that all over the empire considerable areas of land were owned by municipalities, and dealt with at the discretion of the local authorities. Variety of systems was no doubt dictated by variety of local circumstances: but one characteristic was so general as to deserve special attention on the part of jurists. This was the system of perpetual leaseholds[1522] at a fixed (and undoubtedly beneficial) rent, heritable and transferable to assigns. So long as the tenant regularly paid the vectigal, his occupation was not to be disturbed. It was evidently the desire of the municipal authorities to have a certain income to reckon with: for the sake of certainty they would put up with something less than a rack-rent. There were also other lands owned by these civitates that were let on the system[1523] in use by private landlords; the normal term probably being five years. Of these no more need be said here. Beneficial leases under a municipality were liable to corrupt management. It had been found necessary[1524] to disqualify members of the local Senate (decuriones) from holding such leases, that they might not share out the common lands among themselves on beneficial terms. But this prohibition was not enough. The town worthies put in men of straw[1525] as nominal tenants, through whom they enjoyed the benefits of the leases. So this evasion also had to be met by revoking the ill-gotten privilege. But disturbance of tenancies was not to be lightly allowed, so it appears that a reference to the emperor[1526] was necessary before such revocation could take place. This system of perpetual leases is of interest, not as indicating different methods of cultivation from those practised on private estates, but as betraying a tendency to fixity[1527] already existing, destined to spread and to take other forms, and to become the fatal characteristic of the later Empire. Another striking piece of evidence in the same direction occurs in connexion with the lessees (publicani) of various state dues (vectigalia publica) farmed out in the usual way. In the first half of the third century the jurist Paulus attests[1528] the fact that, in case it was found that the right of collecting such dues, hitherto very profitable to the lessees, could only be let at a lower lump sum than hitherto, the old lessees were held bound to continue their contract at the old price. But Callistratus, contemporary or nearly so, tells us that this was not so, and quotes[1529] a rescript of Hadrian (117-138 AD) condemning the practice as tyrannical and likely to deter men from entering into so treacherous a bargain. It appears that other[1530] emperors had forbidden it, but there is no proof that they succeeded in stopping it. At all events the resort to coercion in a matter of contract like this reveals the presence of a belief in compulsory fixity, ominous of the coming imperial paralysis, though of course not so understood at the time. It did not directly affect agriculture as yet; but its application to agriculture was destined to be a symptom and a cause of the empire’s decline and fall.

Another group of tenancies, the number and importance of which was quietly increasing, was that known as praedia Caesaris[1531], fundi fiscales, and so forth. We need not discuss the departmental differences and various names of these estates. The tenants, whether small men or conductores on a large scale who sublet in parcels[1532] to coloni, held either directly or indirectly from the emperor. We have seen specimens in Africa, the Province in which the crown-properties were exceptionally large. What chiefly concerns us here is the imperial land-policy. It seems clear that its first aim was to keep these estates permanently occupied by good solvent tenants. The surest means to this end was to give these estates a good name, to create a general impression that on imperial farms a man had a better chance of thriving than on those of average private landlords. Now the ‘state,’ that is the emperor or his departmental chiefs, could favour crown-tenants in various ways without making a material sacrifice of a financial kind. In particular, the treatment of crown-estates as what we call ‘peculiars,’ in which local disputes were settled, not by resort to the courts of ordinary law, but administratively[1533] by the emperor’s procuratores, was probably a great relief; above all to the humbler coloni, whom we may surely assume to have been a class averse to litigation. No doubt a procurator might be corrupted and unjust. But he was probably far more effectually watched than ordinary magistrates; and, if the worst came to the worst, there was as we have seen the hope of a successful appeal to the emperor. Another favour consisted in the exemption of Caesar’s tenants from various burdensome official duties in municipalities, the so-called munera, which often entailed great expense. This is mentioned by a jurist[1534] near the end of the second century: they are only to perform such duties so far as not to cause loss to the treasury. Another[1535], somewhat later, says that their exemption is granted in order that they may be more suitable tenants of treasury-farms. This exemption is one more evidence of the well-known fact that in this age municipal offices were beginning to be evaded[1536] as ruinous, and no longer sought as an honour. We must note that, if this immunitas relieved the crown-tenants, it left all the more burdens to be borne by those who enjoyed no such relief. And this cannot have been good for agriculture in general.

It is not to be supposed that the fiscus[1537] was a slack and easy landlord. Goods of debtors were promptly seized to cover liabilities: attempts to evade payment of tributa by a private agreement[1538] between mortgagor and mortgagee were quashed: a rescript[1539] of Marcus and Verus insisted on the treasury share (½) of treasure trove: and so on. But there are signs of a reasonable and considerate policy, in not pressing demands so as to inflict hardship. Trajan[1540] had set a good example, and good emperors followed it. We may fairly guess that this moderation in financial dealings was not wholly laid aside in the management of imperial estates. Nor is it to be imagined that the advantages of imperial tenants were exactly the same in all parts of the empire. In Provinces through which armies had to move it is probable that coloni Caesaris would suffer less[1541] than ordinary farmers from military annoyances. But on the routes to and from a seat of war it is obvious that the imperial post-service would be subjected to exceptional strain. Now this service was at the best of times[1542] a cause of vexations and losses to the farmers along the line of traffic. The staff made good all deficiencies in their requirements by taking beasts fodder vehicles etc wherever they could find them: what they restored was much the worse for wear, and compensation, if ever got, was tardy and inadequate. The repair of roads was another pretext for exaction. It is hardly to be doubted that in these respects imperial tenants suffered less than others. Some emperors[1543] took steps to ease the burden, which had been found too oppressive to the roadside estates. But this seems to have been no more than relief from official requisitions: irregular ‘commandeering’ was the worst evil, and we have no reason to think that it was effectually suppressed. It appears in the next period as a rampant abuse, vainly forbidden by the laws of the Theodosian code.

L. THE LATER COLONATE, ITS PLACE IN ROMAN HISTORY.

In the endeavour to extract from scattered and fragmentary evidence some notion of agricultural conditions in the Roman empire before and after Diocletian we are left with two imperfect pictures, so strongly contrasted as to suggest a suspicion of their truth. We can hardly believe that the system known as the later Colonate appeared in full force as a sudden phenomenon. Nor indeed are we compelled to fly so directly in the face of historical experience. That we have no narrative of the steps that led to this momentous change, is surely due to the inability of contemporaries to discern the future effect of tendencies operating silently[1544] and piecemeal. What seems at the moment insignificant, even if observed, is seldom recorded, and very seldom intentionally. Hence after generations, seeking to trace effects to causes, are puzzled by defects of record. Their only resource is to supplement, so far as possible, defective record by general consideration of the history of the time in question and cautious inference therefrom: in fact to get at the true meaning of fragmentary admissions in relation to their historical setting. The chief topic to be dealt with here from this point of view is the character of the Roman Empire in several aspects. For among all the anxieties of the government during these troubled centuries the one that never ceased was the fear of failure in supplies of food.

The character of the Roman Empire had been largely determined by the fact that it arose from the overthrow of a government that had long been practically aristocratic. The popular movements that contributed to this result only revealed the impossibility of establishing anything like a democracy, and the unreality of any power save the power of the sword. The great dissembler Augustus concealed a virtual autocracy by conciliatory handling of the remains of the nobility. But the Senate, to which he left or gave many powers, was never capable of bearing a vital part in the administration, and its influence continued to dwindle under his successors. The master of the army was the master of the empire, and influence was more and more vested in those who were able to guide his policy. That these might be, and sometimes were, not born Romans at all, but imperial freedmen generally of Greek or mixed-Greek origin, was a very significant fact. In particular, it marked and encouraged the growth of departmental bureaus, permanent and efficient beyond the standard of previous Roman experience. But the price of this efficiency was centralization, a condition that carried with it inevitable dangers, owing to the vast extent of the empire. In modern times the fashionable remedy suggested for over-centralization is devolution of powers to local governments controlling areas of considerable size. Or, in cases of aggregation, the existing powers left to states merged in a confederation are considerable. In any case, the subordinate units are free to act within their several limited spheres, and the central government respects their ‘autonomy,’ only interfering in emergencies to enforce the fulfilment of definite common obligations.

But, if it had been desired to gain any such relief by a system of devolution within the Roman empire, this would have meant the recognition of ‘autonomy’ in the Provinces. And this was inconceivable. The extension of Roman dominion had been achieved by dividing Rome’s adversaries. Once conquered, it was the interest or policy of the central power to keep them in hand by preventing the growth of self-conscious cohesion in the several units. Each Province was, as the word implied, a department of the Roman system, ruled by a succession of Roman governors. It looked to Rome for orders, for redress of grievances, for protection at need. If the advance of Rome destroyed no true nations, her government at least made the development of truly national characteristics impossible, while she herself formed no Roman nation. Thus, for better or worse, the empire was non-national. But, as we have already seen, the decline of Italy made it more and more clear that the strength of the empire lay in the Provinces. Now, having no share in initiative and no responsibility, the Provinces steadily lost vitality under Roman civilization, and became more and more helplessly dependent on the central power. As the strain on the empire became greater, the possibility of relief by devolution grew less: but more centralization was no cure for what was already a disease.

That local government of a kind existed in the empire is true enough; also that it was one of the most striking and important features of the system. But it was municipal, and tended rather to subdivide than to unite. It was the outcome of a civilization profoundly urban in its origins and ideas. The notion that a city was a state was by no means confined to the independent cities of early Greece. Whether it voluntarily merged itself in a League or lived on as a subordinate unit in the system of a dominant power, the city and its territory were politically one. Within their several boundaries the townsmen and rustic citizens of each city were subject to the authorities of that community. Beyond their own boundary they were aliens under the authorities of another city. It is no wonder that jealousies between neighbour cities were often extreme, and that Roman intervention was often needed to keep the peace between rivals. But the system suited Roman policy. In the East and wherever cities existed they were taken over as administrative units and as convenient centres of taxation: in the West it was found useful and practicable to introduce urban centres into tribes and cantons, and even in certain districts to attach[1545] local populations to existing cities as dependent hamlets. And, so long as the imperial government was able to guard the frontiers and avert the shock of disturbances of the Roman peace, the empire held its own in apparent prosperity. To some historians the period of the ‘Antonines’ (say about 100-170 AD) has seemed a sort of Golden Age. But signs are not lacking that the municipal system had seen its best days. The severe strain on imperial resources in the time of Marcus left behind it general exhaustion. The decay of local patriotism marked the pressure of poverty and loss of vitality in the cities. More and more their importance became that of mere taxation-centres, in which the evasion of duty was the chief preoccupation: they could not reinvigorate the empire, nor the empire them.

Another characteristic of the empire, not less significant than those mentioned above, was this: taken as a whole, it was non-industrial. Manufactures existed here and there, and products of various kinds were exchanged between various parts of the empire. So far as the ordinary population was concerned, the Roman world might well have supplied its own needs. But this was not enough. The armies, though perilously small for the work they had to do, were a heavy burden. The imperial civil service as it became more elaborate did not become less costly. The waste of resources on unremunerative buildings and shows in cities, above all in Rome, and the ceaseless expense of feeding a worthless rabble, were a serious drain: ordained by established custom, maintained by vanity, to economize on these follies would seem a confession of weakness. Nor should the extravagance of the rich, and of many emperors, be forgotten: this created a demand for luxuries chiefly imported from the East; precious stones, delicate fabrics, spices, perfumes, rare woods, ivory, and so forth. Rome had no goods to export in payment for such things, and the scarcity of return-cargoes must have added heavily to the cost of carriage. There was on this account a steady drain of specie to the East, and this had to be met by a corresponding drain of specie to Rome. In one form or another this meant money drawn from the Provinces, for which the Provinces received hardly the bare pretence of an equivalent, or a better security for peace.

Thus the empire, created by conquest and absorption, administered by bureaucratic centralization, rested on force; a force partly real and still present, partly traditional, derived from a victorious past. The belief in Rome as the eternal city went for much, and we hear of no misgivings as to the soundness of a civilization which expressed itself in a constant excess of consumption over production. Naturally enough, under such conditions, the imperial system became more and more what it really was from the first, a vast machine. It was not a league of cooperating units, each containing a vital principle of growth, and furnishing the power of recovery from disaster. Its apathetic parts looked passively to the centre for guidance or relief, depending on the perfection of a government whose imperfection was assured by attempting a task beyond the reach of human faculty and virtue. The exposure of the empire’s weakness came about through collision with the forces of northern barbarism. What a machine could do, that it did, and its final failure was due to maladies that made vain all efforts to renew its internal strength.

The wars with the northern barbarians brought out with singular clearness two important facts, already known but not sufficiently taken into account. First, that the enemy were increasing in numbers while the people of the empire were in most parts stationary or even declining. Bloody victories, when gained, did practically nothing to redress the balance. Secondly, that at the back of this embarrassing situation lay a food-question of extreme seriousness and complexity. More and more food was needed for the armies, and the rustics of the empire, even when fitted for military service, could not be spared from the farms without danger to the food-supply. The demands of the commissariat were probably far greater than we might on the face of it suppose; for an advance into the enemy’s territory did not ease matters. Little or nothing was found to eat: indeed it was the pressure of a growing population on the means of subsistence that drove the hungry German tribes to face the Roman sword in quest of abundant food and the wine and oil of the South and West. The attempt of Marcus and others after him, to solve the problems of the moment by enlisting barbarians in Roman armies, was no permanent solution. The aliens too had to be fed, and their pay in money could not be deferred. Meanwhile the taxation of the empire inevitably grew, and the productive industries had to stagger along under heavier burdens. The progressive increase of these is sufficiently illustrated in the history of indictiones. At first an indictio was no more than an occasional[1546] impost of so much corn levied by imperial proclamation on landed properties in order to meet exceptional scarcity in Rome. But it was in addition to the regular tributum, and was of course most likely to occur in years when scarcity prevailed. No wonder it was already felt onerous[1547] in the time of Trajan. Pressure on imperial resources caused it not only to become more frequent, and eventually normal: it was extended[1548] to include other products, and became a regular burden of almost universal application, and ended by furnishing a new chronological unit, the Indiction-period of 15 years.

That agriculture, already none too prosperous, suffered heavily under this capricious impost in the second century, seems to me a fact beyond all doubt. And, not being then a general imperial tax, it fell upon those provinces that were still flourishing producers of corn. Debasement of currency already lowered the value of money-taxes, and tempted emperors to extend the system of dues in kind. Under Diocletian and Galerius things came to a head. Vast increase of taxation was called for under the new system, and it was mainly taxation in kind. Already the failure of agriculture was notorious, and attempts had been made to enforce cultivation of derelict lands. The new taxation only aggravated present evils, and in despair of milder measures Constantine attached the coloni to the soil. Important as the legal foundation of the later serf-colonate, this law is historically still more important as a recognition of past failure which nothing had availed to check. He saw no way of preventing a general stampede from the farms save to forbid it as illegal, and to employ the whole machinery of the empire in enforcing the new law. This policy was only a part of the general tendency to fix everything in a rigid framework, to make all occupations hereditary, that became normal in the later Empire. The Codes are a standing record of the principle that the remedy for failure of legislation was more legislation of the same kind. Hard-pressed emperors needed all the resources they could muster, particularly food. They had no breathing-space to try whether more freedom might not promote enterprise and increase production, even had such a policy come within their view. Hence the cramping crystallizing process went on with the certainty of fate. The government, unable to develope existing industry, simply squeezed it to exhaustion.

How came it that the government was able to do this? How came it that agricultural tenants could be converted into stationary serfs without causing a general upheaval[1549] and immediate dissolution of the empire? Mainly, I think, because the act of Constantine was no more than a recognition de iure of a condition already created de facto by a long course of servilizing influences. Also because it was the apparent interest, not only of the imperial treasury but of the great proprietors generally, to tie down to the soil[1550] the cultivators of their estates. Labour was now more valuable than land. In corn-growing Africa the importance attached to the task-work of sub-tenants was a confession of this. And, law or no law, things had to move in one or other direction. Either the landlord and head-lessee had to win further control of the tenants, or the tenants must become less dependent. Only the former alternative was possible in the circumstances; and the full meaning of the change that turned de facto dependence into legal constraint may be stated as a recognition of the colonus as labourer rather than tenant. Whether the settlement of barbarians as domiciled aliens in some Provinces under strict conditions of farm-labour had anything to do with the creation of this new semi-servile status, seems hardly to be decided on defective evidence. At all events it cannot have hindered it. And we must make full allowance for the effect of various conditions in various Provinces. If we rightly suppose that the position of coloni had been growing weaker for some time before the act of Constantine, this does not imply that the process was due to the same causes operating alike in all parts of the empire in the same degree. The evidence of the Theodosian Code shews many local differences of phenomena in the fourth and fifth centuries; and it is not credible that there was a greater uniformity in the conditions of the preceding age. Laws might aim at uniformity, but they could not alter facts.

My conclusion therefore is that the general character of the imperial system was the main cause of the later serf-colonate. However much the degradation of free farm-tenants, or the admission of slaves to tenancies, or the settlement of barbarians under conditions of service, may have contributed to the result, it was the mechanical nature of the system as a whole that gave effect to them all. After Trajan the rulers of the empire became more and more conscious that the problem before them was one of conservation, and that extension was at an end. Hadrian saw this, and strove to perfect the internal organization. By the time of Aurelian it was found necessary to surrender territory as a further measure of security. We can hardly doubt that under such conditions the machine of internal administration operated more mechanically than ever. Then, when the reforms of Diocletian made fresh taxation necessary to defray their cost, an agricultural crisis was produced by the turning of the imperial screw. The hierarchy of officials justified their existence by squeezing an assured revenue out of a population unable to resist but able to remove. There was no other source of revenue to take the place of the land: moreover, it was agricultural produce in kind that was required. Therefore the central bureaucracy, unchecked by any public opinion, did after its wont. In that selfish and servile world each one took care of his own skin. Compulsion was the rule: the coloni must be made to produce food: therefore they must be bound fast to the soil, or the empire would starve—and the officials with it.

ADDITIONAL NOTES TO CHAPTER L.

I cannot lose this opportunity of referring to a very interesting little book by M. Augé-Laribé, L’évolution de la France agricole [Paris 1912]. Much of it bears directly on the labour-question, and sets forth the difficulties hindering its solution. It is peculiarly valuable to a student of the question in the ancient world, because it lays great stress on the effect of causes arising from modern conditions. Causes operating in both ancient and modern times are thereby made more readily and clearly perceptible. Such modern influences in particular as the vast development of transport, the concentration of machine-industries in towns, and the constant attraction of better and more continuous wage-earning, by which the rustic is drawn to urban centres, are highly significant. The difference from ancient conditions is so great in degree that it practically almost amounts to a difference in kind. So too in the material resources of agriculture: the development of farm-machinery has superseded much hand-labour, while Science has increased the possible returns from a given portion of soil.

Most significant of all from my point of view is the author’s insistence on the irregularity of wage-earning in rustic life as an active cause of the flitting of wage-earners to the towns. This brings it home to a student that a system of rustic slavery implies a set of conditions incompatible with such an economic migration; and also that the employment of slaves by urban craftsmen would not leave many eligible openings for immigrant rustics. It is fully consistent with my view that the wage-earning rustic was a rare figure in the Greco-Roman world.

It is perhaps in the remedies proposed by the author for present evils (and for the resulting depopulation of the countryside) that the contrast of ancient and modern is most clearly marked. Bureaucratic the French administrative system may be: but it is not the expression of a despotism that enslaves its citizens in the frantic effort to maintain itself against pressure from without. For individuals and organizations are free to think speak and act, and so to promote what seems likely to do good. Initiative and invention are not deadened by the fear that betterment will only serve as a pretext for increase of burdens. Stationary by instinct the French peasant proprietor may be: but he is free to move if he will, and no one dare propose to tie him to the soil by law.

Nor can I omit a reference to a paper of the late Prof Pelham on The Imperial domains and the Colonate (1890, in volume of Essays, Oxford 1911).

The simplicity of the solution there offered is most attractive, and the general value of the treatise great. But I do not think it a final solution of the problem. Not only are there variations of detail in the domains known to us from the African inscriptions (some of them found since 1890). That some of the regulations may have been taken over from those of former private owners is a point not considered. And there is no mention of the notable requisition of the services of coloni as mere retainers, to which Caesar refers without comment (above pp 183, 254). Therefore, while I welcome the proposition that the system of the Imperial domains had much to do with the creation of the later Colonate, I still think that earlier and more deep-seated causes cannot safely be ignored. Perhaps this is partly because I am looking at the matter from a labour point of view.

FROM DIOCLETIAN

LI. GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

If we desire to treat History as the study of causation in the affairs of mankind—and this is its most fruitful task—we shall find no more striking illustration of its difficulties than the agricultural system of the later Roman Empire. In the new model of Diocletian and Constantine we see the imperial administration reorganized in new forms[1551] deliberately adopted: policy expresses itself, after a century of disturbance, in a clear breach with the past. But, when Constantine in 332 legislates[1552] to prevent coloni from migrating, he refers to a class of men who are not their own masters but subject to control (iuris alieni), though he distinguishes them from slaves. Evidently he is not creating a new class: his intention is to prevent an existing class from evading its present responsibilities. They are by the fact of their birth attached as cultivators to their native soil. With this tie of origo[1553] goes liability to a certain proportion of imperial tax (capitatio). This is mentioned as a matter of course. Now we know that such serf-coloni formed at least a large part of the rustic population under the later Empire. We cannot but see that the loss of the power of free migration is the vital difference that marks off these tied farmers from the tenant farmers of an earlier period, the class whom Columella advised landlords to retain if possible. For these men cannot move on if they would. How came they to be in this strange condition, in fact neither slave nor free, so that Constantine had merely to crystallize relations already existing[1554] and the institution of serf-tenancy became a regular part of the system? If we are to form any notion of the conditions of farm labour in this period, we must form some notion of the causes that produced the later or dependent colonate. And this is no simple matter: on few subjects has the divergence of opinions been more marked than on this. I have stated my own conclusions above, and further considerations are adduced in this chapter.

Our chief source of evidence is the collection of legal acts of the Christian emperors issued by authority in the year 438, and known as the codex Theodosianus. It covers a period of more than a hundred years, and innumerable references to the land-questions attest the continual anxiety of the imperial government to secure adequate cultivation of every possible acre of land. Contemporary history may suggest motives for this nervousness. The increased expenses of the court and the administrative system made it necessary to raise more taxes than ever for the civil services. The armies, now mainly composed of Germans and other barbarians, were necessary for imperial defence, but very costly to equip pay and feed. Whether they were mercenaries drawing wages, or aliens settled as Roman subjects within the empire on lands held by tenure of military service, they were either a burden on the treasury or a doubtful element of the population that must at all costs be kept in good humour. On a few occasions Roman victories furnished numbers of barbarian prisoners to the slave-market. These would be dispersed over various districts, generally at some distance from the troubled frontiers, and the rustic slaves of whom we hear were doubtless in great part procured in this way. But that the rustic population consisted largely of actual slaves we have no reason to believe. Of estates worked on a vast scale by slave labour we hear nothing. Naturally; for the social and economic conditions favourable to that system had long passed away. Slaves were no longer plentiful, markets were no longer free. Under the Empire, the pride of great landlords needed a strong mixture of caution; under a greedy or spendthrift emperor the display of material wealth was apt to be dangerous. In the century of confusion before Diocletian agriculture had been much interrupted in many parts of the empire, and much land had gone out of cultivation. So serious was the situation in the later part of that period, that Aurelian[1555] imposed upon municipal senates the burden of providing for the cultivation of derelict farms.

When a taxpayer is required to pay a fixed amount in a stable currency, he knows his liability. So long as he can meet it, any surplus income remains in his hands, and he has a fair chance of improving his economic position by thrift. If what the state really wants is (say) corn, it can use its tax-revenue to purchase corn in the open market. But this assumes that the producer is free to stand out for the best price he can get, and that he will be paid in money on the purchasing power of which he can rely for his own needs. This last condition had ceased to exist[1556] in the Roman empire. Not to mention earlier tamperings with the currency, since the middle of the third century its state had been deplorable. Things had now gone so far that the value of the fixed money taxes seriously reduced the income derived from them: the government was literally paid in its own coin. The policy of Diocletian was to extend an old practice of exacting payment in kind, and this became the principal method[1557] of imperial taxation. We must bear in mind that the supply of corn for the city of Rome, the annona urbis, went on as before, though the practical importance of Rome was steadily sinking. Diocletian made it no longer the residence of emperors, and Constantine founded another capital in the East: but Rome was still fed by corn-tributes from the Provinces, chiefly from Africa and Egypt. When the New Rome on the Bosporus was fully equipped as an imperial capital, Egypt was made liable for the corn-supply of the Constantinopolitan populace. Old Rome had then to rely almost entirely on Africa, with occasional help from other sources. Italy itself[1558] was now reduced to the common level, cut up into provinces, and liable for furnishing supplies of food. But it was divided into two separate regions: the northern, officially named Italia, or annonariae regiones, in which a good deal of corn was grown, had to deliver its annona at Mediolanum (Milan) the new imperial headquarters: the southern, suburbicariae (or urbicariae) regiones, in which little corn was grown, sent supplies of pigs cattle wine firewood lime etc to Rome. The northern annona, like that from other provinces, helped to maintain military forces and the host of officials employed by the government. For it soon became the practice to pay salaries in kind. In the pitiful state of the currency this rude method offered the best guarantee for receipt of a definite value.

Unhappily this exaction and distribution in kind was at best a wasteful process. At worst it was simply ruinous. The empire was subject to constant menace of attack, and was in dire need of the largest possible income raised on the most economical system. If the ultimate basis of imperial strength was to be found in the food-producers, it was all-important to give the farming classes a feeling of security sufficient to encourage industry and enterprise, and at all costs to avoid reducing them to despair. Nor was the new census as designed by Diocletian on the face of it an unjust and evil institution. Taking account of arable lands and of the persons employed in cultivating them, it aimed at creating a fixed number[1559] of agricultural units each of which should be liable to furnish the same amount of yearly dues in kind. But it is obvious that to carry out this doctrinaire scheme with uniform neatness and precision was not possible. To deal fairly with agriculture a minute attention to local differences and special peculiarities was necessary, and this attention could not be given on so vast a scale. Perhaps careful observation and correction of errors might have produced a reasonable degree of perfection in a long period of unbroken peace: but no such period was at hand. The same strain that drove the imperial government to the new taxation also prevented any effective control of its working.

It is perhaps inevitable that the exaction of dues in kind should lead to abuses. At all events, abuses in this department were no new thing: the sufferings of such Provinces as Sicily and Asia were notorious in the time of the Republic. A stricter control had made the state of things much better in the first two centuries of the Empire. The exploitation of the Provincials was generally checked, and the imperial government was not as yet driven by desperate financial straits to turn extortioner itself. Caracalla’s law of 212, extending the Roman franchise[1560] to all free inhabitants, was a symptom of conscious need, for it brought all estates under the Roman succession-tax. At the same time it did away with the old distinction between the ruling Roman people and the subject nationalities: henceforth, wherever there was oppression within the Roman world, it necessarily fell upon Roman[1561] citizens. Time had been when the Roman citizen, free to move into any part of the Roman dominions and to acquire property there[1562] under protection of Roman law, made full use of the opportunities afforded him, to the disadvantage of the subject natives. Now all alike were the helpless subjects of a government that they could neither reform nor supersede; a government whose one leading idea was to bring all institutions into fixed grooves in which they should move mechanically year after year, unsusceptible of growth or decay. True, the plan was absurd, and some few observers may have detected its absurdity. But the power of challenging centralized officialism and evoking expression of public opinion, never more than rudimentary in the Roman state, was now simply extinct. Things had come to such a pass that, speaking generally, a citizen’s choice lay between two alternatives. Either he must bear an active part in the system that was squeezing out the vital economic forces of the empire, making whenever possible a profit for himself out of a salary or illicit gains; or he must submit passively to all such extortions as the system, worked by men whose duty and interest alike tended to make them merciless, was certain to inflict. The oppressors, though numerous, could only be few in proportion to the whole free population. Therefore the vast majority stood officially condemned to lives of penury and wretchedness. The system became more hard-set and the outlook more hopeless with the lapse of time.

The dues exacted from the various parts of the empire varied in quality[1563] according to local conditions, and to some extent in methods of collection. In the frontier Provinces the quantity was sometimes reduced[1564] by remissions, when a district ravaged by invaders was relieved for a few years that it might recover its normal productiveness. The details of these variations are beyond the scope of the present inquiry. The general principle underlying the whole system was the fixing of taxation-units equal in liability, and the organizing of collection in municipal groups. Each municipal town or civitas was the administrative centre of a district, and stood charged in the imperial ledgers as liable for the returns from a certain number of units, this number being that recorded as existing at the last quinquennial census. For the collection the chief municipal authorities were responsible; and they had to hand over the amount due to the imperial authorities, whether they had received it in full or not. Already burdened with strictly municipal liabilities, the members of municipal senates (curiales) were crushed by this additional and incalculable pressure. Unable to resist, they generally took the course of so using their functions and powers as to protect their own interests as far as possible. One obvious precaution was to see that the number of taxable units[1565] in their district was not fixed too high by the census officials. This precaution was certainly not overlooked, and success in keeping down the number may well have been the chief reason why the system was able to go on so long. The curiales were mostly considerable landlords, residing in their town and letting their land to tenants. But there were other landlords, smaller men, some also resident in the towns, others in the country. We still hear of men farming land[1566] of their own, and it seems that some of these held and farmed other land also, as coloni of larger landlords. When any question arose as to the number of units for the tax on which this or that farm was liable, it is clear that the interests of different classes might easily clash. And the curiales undoubtedly took care[1567] that their own and those of their friends did not suffer.

These remarks imply that the system practically worked in favour of the richer classes[1568] as against the poorer. And so it certainly did, not only in the time of revision at the census each fifth year, but on other occasions. If an invasion or some other great disaster led the emperor to grant temporary relief, this would normally take the form of reducing the number of taxable units in the district for a certain period. But the local authorities were left to apportion this reduction[1569] among the several estates, and the poor farmers had no representative to see that they got their fair share of relief. Moreover, outside taxation, the farmers were often subjected to heavy burdens and damage by the irregular requisitions of imperial officials. For instance, the staff of the imperial post-service (cursus publicus)[1570] were a terror. They pressed the goods of farmers into the service of their department on various pretexts, and exacted labour on upkeep of roads and stations. For their tyranny there was no effective compensation or redress. Like other officials, they could be bought off by bribes: but this meant that the various exactions[1571] were shifted from the shoulders of the rich to those of the poor. Another iniquity, the revival of a very old[1572] abuse, was connected with the question of transport, an important consideration in the case of dues in kind, often bulky. For instance, in the case of corn, the place at which it had to be delivered might easily count for more in estimating the actual pressure of the burden than the amount of grain levied. In making the arrangements for delivery there were openings for favouritism and bribery. Circumstances varied greatly in various parts of the empire. In some Provinces delivery was made at a military depot within easy reach. Transport by sea from Egypt or Africa was carried on by gilds[1573] of shippers, who became more and more organized and regulated by law. But in many parts good roads were few, and laid out for strategic reasons; the country roads inconvenient and rough: and for transport in bulk the post-service provided no machinery available for the use of private persons.

It is not necessary here to follow out in detail all the particular discomforts and grievances of the farming classes under the system devised by Diocletian and developed by his successors. Enough has been said to shew that they were great, and to remove all ground for wondering that the area of arable land actually under tillage, and with it population, continued to decline. Constantine’s law confirming the bondage of coloni to the soil by forbidding movement was the confession of a widespread evil, but no remedy. Repeated legislation to the same purpose only recorded and continued the failure. When all the resources of evasion were exhausted, the pauperized serf fled to a town and depended for a living on the pitiful doles of private or ecclesiastical charity, or turned brigand and took precarious toll of those who still had something to lose. In either case he was an additional burden on a society that already had more than it could bear. In 382 we find an attempt[1574] made to put down ‘sturdy beggars.’ The law rewarded anyone who procured the conviction of such persons by handing over the offenders to him. An ex-slave became the approver’s own slave, and one who had nothing of his own beyond his freeborn quality was granted to him as his colonus for life. But this law seems to have been ineffectual like others. Desertion of farms might to some extent be checked, but mendicity and brigandage remained.

There was however another movement, later in time and less in volume, but not less serious as affecting the practical working of the imperial machine. With the increase of poverty life in municipal towns became less attractive. Local eminence was no longer an object of ambition; for to local burdens, once cheerfully borne, was now added a load of imperial responsibilities which lay heavy on all men of property, and which they could neither shake off nor control. In hope of evading them, well-to-do citizens took refuge[1575] in the country, either on estates of their own or under the protection of great landlords already settled there. But to allow this would mean the depletion of the local senates (curiae) on whose services as revenue-collectors the financial system of the empire depended. To prevent men qualified for the position of curiales from escaping that duty was the aim of legislation[1576] which by repeated enactments confessed its own failure. That there were country magnates, men of influence (potentes), whose protection might seem able to screen municipal defaulters, is a point to be noted. They were the great possessores[1577] (a term no longer applied to small men), who held large estates organized on a sort of manorial model, and sometimes ruled them like little principalities, territorial lordships[1578] standing in direct relations with the central authorities and not hampered by inclusion in the general municipal scheme. Such ‘peculiars’ had existed under the earlier Empire, and evidently continued to exist: the Crown-lands of the emperors, especially in Africa, were the most signal cases. But the great private Possessor could not secure to his domain the various exemptions[1579] that emperors conferred on theirs. He had to collect and pay over[1580] the dues from his estate, as a municipal magistrate did from the district round his town-centre. But he had a more immediate and personal interest in the wellbeing of all his tenants and dependants, whose presence and prosperity gave to his land by far the greater part[1581] of its value.

That territorial magnates should be free to build up a perhaps dangerous power in various corners of the empire by gathering dependants round them, could hardly be viewed with approval by the jealousy of emperors. Not only was the system of letting land in parcels to tenants spreading, but the power of the landlords over them was increasing, long before Constantine took the final step of treating them as attached permanently to the soil. Whether they were the landlord’s free tenants who had gradually lost through economic weakness the effective use of freedom; or small freeholders who had found it worth their while to part with their holdings to a big man and become his tenants for the sake of enjoying his protection; or former slaves to whom small farms had been entrusted on various conditions; they were in a sort of economic bondage. Doubtless most of them lived from hand to mouth, but we have no reason to believe that poverty, so long as they had plenty to live on, was the motive[1582] that made them wish to give up their holdings and try their luck elsewhere. It was the cruel pressure of Diocletian’s new taxation, and the army of officials employed to enforce it, that drove them to despair. A contemporary witness[1583] tells us, referring to this very matter, ‘the excess of receivers over givers was becoming so marked that farms were being abandoned, and tillages falling to woodland, the resources of the tenants being exhausted by the hugeness[1584] of the imposts.’ And this evidence does not stand alone. So Constantine sought a remedy in prevention of movement, binding down the tenants to the soil. Henceforth the land to which a colonus[1585] was attached by birth, and the colonus himself, were to be legally and economically inseparable. Attempts at evading the new rule were persistently met by later[1586] legislation. The motive of such attempts may be found by remembering that depopulation was steadily lowering the value of land and raising that of labour. If an individual landlord could add to the value of his own estate by getting more coloni settled on it, withdrawn from other estates, he might profit by the transaction: but the government, whose policy was to keep the greatest possible area under cultivation, could not allow one part to be denuded of labourers to suit the interest of the owner of another part.

When the law stepped in to deprive the tenant, already far gone in dependence on his landlord, of such freedom of movement as he still retained, it is remarkable that rustic slaves were not at the same time legally attached to the soil. That inconvenience was caused by masters selling them when and where they chose, is shewn by Constantine’s law[1587] of 327, allowing such sales to take place only within the limits of the Province where they had been employed. No doubt their removal upset the arrangements for that part of a taxable unit in which the number of adult heads[1588] was taken into account, and so had to be checked. But it seems not to have been till the time of Valentinian[1589], somewhere between 367 and 375, that the sale of a farm-slave off the land was directly prohibited, like that of a colonus. In referring to this matter, the significance of the difference of dates is thus brought out[1590] by Seeck: ‘That this measure was carried through much sooner in the case of the small farmers than in that of the farm-slaves, is very characteristic of the spirit of that age. Where court favour is the deciding factor that governs the entire policy, the government is even more reluctant to limit the proprietary rights of the great landlord[1591] than the liberties of the small man.’ This is very true, but we must not forget that in both cases the binding of the labourer to the soil did in fact restrict the landlord’s freedom of disposal. He as well as his dependants came under a system not designed to promote his private convenience or interest, but to guarantee a maximum of total cultivation in the interest of the empire as a whole. So we find that he was not allowed[1592] to raise at will the rents of his tenants: they could sue their landlord (a right which in practice was probably not worth much), and even when this right was restricted[1593] in 396 they still retained it in respect of unfair increases of rent and criminal cases. So too, if he acquired extra slaves, either by receiving them as volunteers from derelict farms or in virtue of an imperial grant, it was strictly ordained[1594] that such acquisition carried with it the tax-liability for the whole of the derelict land. The landlord was therefore kept firmly in the grip of the central power, and not left free to build up a little principality by consolidating at will all the labour-resources that he could annex as dependants. Moreover he was watched by a host of imperial agents and spies whose interests could only be reconciled with his own by the costly method of recurrent bribery.

When we return to the main question of the actual farm-labour, and ask who toiled with their own hands to raise crops, we find ourselves in a curious position. The evidence, whether legal or literary, leaves us in no doubt that the tenant farmer of this period was normally himself a labourer. And yet it is not easy to cite passages in which this is directly affirmed. The pompous and affected language of the imperial laws is throughout a bad medium for conveying simple facts; nor was the question, who did the work, of any interest to the central authority, concerned solely with the regular exaction of the apportioned dues. The real proof that coloni, whether still holding some land of their own or merely tenants, and inquilini, whether solely barbarian dependants or not, were actual handworkers, is to be found in legitimate inference from certain facts. First, the increase in the value of labour compared with the decline in that of land. The binding of tenant to soil was a confession of this. Secondly, the general poverty of the farmers[1595] and their helplessness against oppression and wrong. Of this the description of Salvian gives a striking, if rhetorical, picture, and it is implied in many laws designed[1596] for their protection. That persons in so weak an economic position could have carried on their business as mere directors of slave-labour is surely inconceivable: and we are to remember that not only they themselves but their families also were bound to the soil. It was their presence, that is to say their labour, that gave value to the land, and so paid the taxes. Hence it was that in forming taxable units (capita) it was generally the practice to include in the reckoning[1597] not only the productive area (iugatio) but also the ‘heads’ that stocked it (capitatio). In other words, productiveness must in the interest of the state be actual, not merely potential.

The importance of keeping the real locally-bound coloni strictly to their business of food-production was fully recognized in the regulations for recruiting the armies. Landlords, required to furnish[1598] recruits, were free to name some of their coloni for that purpose. But there was no fear that they would be eager to do this, for the work of their tenants was what gave value to their properties. And the imperial officers charged with recruiting duty were ordered[1599] (and this in 400, when the need of soldiers was extreme) not to accept fugitive tenants belonging to an estate (indigenis): these no doubt if found were to be returned to their lords. The military levy was to fall upon sons of veterans, for in this class as in others no effort was spared to make the ways of life hereditary; or on wastrels (vagos)[1600], of whom the laws often make mention; or generally on persons manifestly by the circumstances of their birth (origo) liable to army service. Here we have the service still in principle confined to freemen. But it is not to be doubted that many a slave (and these would be nearly all rustic slaves) passed muster with officers hasting to make up their tale of men, and so entered the army. At a much later date (529) we find Justinian[1601] contemplating cases of slaves recruited with the consent of their owners, in short furnished as recruits. He enacts that such men are to be declared ingenui[1602], that is freeborn not freedmen, the master losing all rights over them: but, if they are efficient soldiers, they are to remain in the service. And the power of commuting[1603] the obligation of furnishing a recruit for a payment of money, which was to some extent allowed, introduced a method of recruiting[1604] by purchase. A recruit being demanded, it did not follow that the emperor got either the particular man (inspected of course and passed as fit) or a fixed cash-commutation. The recruiting officer conveniently happened to have a man or two at disposal, picked up in the course of his tour. The landlord, anxious to keep his own staff intact, came to terms with the officer for one of these as substitute. These officers knew when they could drive hard bargains, and did not lose their chances. In a law of 375, this system is directly referred to, and an attempt is made to regulate it[1605] on an equitable footing. To abolish it was clearly impossible. Eventually the state undertook to work it officially, and bought its own ‘bodies’ (corpora, like σώματα, of slaves) with the composition-money or aurum temonarium. That some of these ‘bodies’ were escaped slaves is highly probable. Some may have been stray barbarians, not included in the various barbarian corps which more and more came to form the backbone of the Roman army. But the majority would probably be indigent wretches to whom any change seemed better than the miserable lives open to them in the meanest functions of the decaying civilization of the towns. In any case such recruits[1606] would be but a poor substitute for the pick of the rustic population.

The same anxiety to spare the rustics unnecessary exactions, that they might not sink under their present burdens, appears in other regulations. The subordinates employed in the public services such as the Post, or as attendants on functionaries, were tempted to ease their own duties by demanding contributions from the helpless countryfolk. This we find forbidden[1607] in 321 as interfering with the farmers’ right to procure and carry home things required for agriculture. So too a whole Title[1608] in the Codex is devoted to the prevention of superexactiones, a form of extortion often practised by officials, chiefly by the use of false weights and measures or by foul play with the official receipts. The laws forbidding practices of this kind seem to belong to the latter part of the fourth century and the earlier part of the fifth. But the evil was clearly of old standing, and the laws almost certainly vain. That illicit exactions were a particular affliction of the poorer rustics, who could not bribe the officials, is confessed[1609] by a law of 362, which ordains that the burdens of supplying beasts fodder etc for service of the Post, upkeep of the roads and so forth, are to be laid on all possessores alike. Further enactments follow in 401 and 408. But these rules for equitable distribution of burdens, even if carried out, only spread them over all landowners and coloni. All the upper ranks[1610] of the imperial service carried exemption from sordida munera in some form or other, and personal grants of exemption were often granted as a favour. It is true that such exemption only extended to the life of the grantee, that exemptions were revocable, and that in course of time extreme necessities led to revocations. But all this did not operate to relieve the unhappy rustic on whom the whole imperial fabric rested. The rich might have to lose their privileges, but it was too late for the poor to gain a benefit. That the underlings of provincial governors were a terror to farmers, levying on them illicit services and generally blackmailing them for their own profit, is clear from the law[1611] (somewhere 368-373) announcing severe punishment for the offence and declaring that it had become a regular practice. The law of 328, enacting[1612] that no farmer (agricola) was to be impressed for special service in the seasons of seed-time or harvest, is on rather a different footing. It expressly justifies the prohibition on the ground of agricultural necessity: in short, it is not to protect the farmer, but, to leave him no excuse for not producing food.

A great critic[1613] has commented severely on the intellectual stagnation that fell upon the Roman empire and was one of the most effective causes of its decline. That literature fed upon the past and dwindled into general imbecility is commonly recognized: but the lack of material inventions and the paucity of improvements is perhaps not less significant than the decay of literature and art. The department of agriculture was no exception to this sterile traditionality. Since the days of Varro there had been no considerable change. So far as labour is concerned, the system of Columella can hardly be called an advance; for it employs directly none but slave labour, a resource already beginning to fail, and causing landlords to seek help from the development of tenancies. In modern times the dearness of labour has stimulated human ingenuity to produce machines by which the efficiency of human labour is increased and therefore fewer hands required for a given output. But in the world under the Roman supremacy centuries went by with hardly any modification of the mechanical equipment. A small exception may perhaps be found in a sort of rudimentary reaping-machine. It was briefly referred to by the elder Pliny[1614] in the first century of our era, and described by Palladius in the fourth. The device was in use on the large estates in the lowlands of Gaul, and was perhaps a Gaulish invention. It is said to have been a labour-saving[1615] appliance. From the description it seems to have been clumsy; and, since it cut off the ears and left the straw standing, it was only suited to farms on which no special use was made of the straw. Its structure (for it was driven by an ox from behind) must have made it unworkable on sloping ground. That we hear nothing of its general adoption may be due to these or other defects. But I believe there is no record of attempts to improve the original design. The lack of interest in improvement of tools has been noted as a phenomenon accompanying the dependence on slave labour. And when under the Roman empire we see the free tenant passing into the condition of a serf-tenant, we are witnessing a process that steadily tended to reduce him to the moral labour-level of the apathetic and hopeless slave. To make the agriculture of a district more prosperous was to attract the attention of greedy officials. To resist their illicit extortions was to attract the attention of the central government, whose growing needs were ever tempting it to squeeze more and more out of its subjects. Why then should the rustic, tied to the soil, trouble himself to seek more economical methods, the profits of which, if ever realized, he was not himself likely to enjoy?

LII. LIBANIUS.

In order to get so far as possible a living picture of the conditions of rustic life and labour we must glean the scattered notices preserved to us in the writers of the period of decline. Due allowance must be made for the general artificiality and rhetorical bent of authors trained in the still fashionable schools of composition and style. For even private letters were commonly written as models destined eventually to be read and admired by the public, while in controversial works and public addresses the tendency to attitudinize was dominant. The circulation of literary trivialities and exchange of cheap compliments, especially prevalent in Gaul, was kept up to the last by self-satisfied cliques when the barbarians were already established in the heart of the empire. Nevertheless valuable sidelights on questions of fact are thrown from several points of view. This evidence agrees with that drawn from the imperial laws, and is in so far better for our purpose that it deals almost exclusively with the present. When it looks to the future, it is in the form of petition or advice; while the normal substance of the laws is to confess the existence of monstrous abuses by threatening offenders with penalties ever more and more severe, and enjoining reforms that no penalties could enforce. A writer very characteristic of his age (about 315-400) is the ‘sophist’ =Libanius=, who passed most of his later years at Antioch, the luxurious chief city of the East. For matters under his immediate observation he is a good authority, and may help us to form a notion of the extent to which imperial ordinances were practically operative in the eastern parts of the empire.

Two of the ‘orations,’ or written addresses, of Libanius are particularly interesting as appeals to the emperor Theodosius for redress of malpractices affecting the rustic population and impairing the financial resources of the empire. The earlier[1616] (about 385) exposes gross misdeeds of the city magistrates of Antioch. What with the falling of old houses and clearing of sites for new buildings there were great quantities of mixed rubbish to be removed and deposited elsewhere. Apparently there was now no sufficient staff of public slaves at disposal; at all events the city authorities resorted to illegal means for procuring the removal. When the country folk came into town to dispose of their produce, the magistrates requisitioned their carts asses mules (and themselves as drivers) for this work. Thus the time of the poor rustics was wasted, their carts and sacks damaged, and they and their beasts sent back to their homes in a state of utter exhaustion. No law empowered the city magnates to act thus. From small beginnings a sort of usage had been created, which nothing short of imperial ordinance could now break and abolish. That the magistrates were conscious of doing wrong was shewn by what they avoided doing. They did not impress slaves or carts from houses in the city. They did not exact like services from the military or powerful landlords. Nor did they lay the burden on the estates[1617] of the municipality, the rents from which were part of the revenues of Antioch. Favour is only justified by equity; and there is, says Libanius, no equity in sparing the luxurious rich by ruining the poor. So he entreats his most gracious[1618] Majesty to protect the farms as much as the cities, or rather more. For the country is in fact the foundation on which cities rest. Without it they could never have existed: and now it is on the rise and fall of rural wellbeing that urban prosperity depends. This appeal speaks for itself. But it is significant that the skilled pleader thinks it wise to end on a note of imperial interest. ‘Moreover, Sire, it is from the country that your tribute is drawn. It is to the cities that you address your orders[1619] for taxation, but the cities have to raise it from the country. Therefore, to protect the farmers is to preserve your interests, and to maltreat the farmers is to betray them.’

In the oration numbered 47 the abuse dealt with is of a very different kind. The date is 391 or 392, and the subject is the ‘protections’ (patrocinia)[1620] of villages. The pressure of imperial taxation and the abuses accompanying its collection had driven the villagers to seek help in resisting the visits of the tax-gatherers. This help was generally found in placing the village under the protection of some powerful person, commonly a retired soldier, who acted as a rallying-centre and leader, probably in most cases backed by some retainers of his own class. Of course these men did not undertake opposition to the public authorities for nothing. But it seems that their exactions were, at least in the earlier stages, found to be less burdensome than those of the official collectors. The situation thus created was as follows. The local senators (curiales) whose turn it was to collect the dues from the district under their municipality (a duty that they were not allowed to shirk) went out to the villages for the purpose. They were beaten off[1621] by use of force, often wounded as well as foiled. They were still bound to pay over the tax, which they had not received, to the imperial treasury. In these latter days default of payment rendered them liable to cruel scourging. So the unhappy curiales had to sell their own property to make up the amount due. The loss of their means strikes them out of the curia for lack of the legal qualification. And this was not only a loss to their particular city: it damaged imperial interests, bound up as the whole system was with maintaining unimpaired the supply of qualified curiales. The evil of these ‘protections’ was, according to Libanius, great and widespread. The protectors had become a great curse to the villagers themselves by their tyranny and exactions. Their lawless sway had turned[1622] farmers into brigands, and taught them to use iron not for tools of tillage but for weapons of bloodshed. And the trouble was not confined to villages where the land belonged to a number of small owners: it extended also to those[1623] under one big proprietor. The argument that the villagers have a right to seek help in resistance to extortion, is only sound if the means employed are fair. To justify this limitation two significant analogies[1624] are applied. Cities near the imperial frontier must not call in the foreign enemy to aid them in settling their differences with each other: they must seek help within the empire. A slave must not invoke the aid of casual bystanders against ill-usage: he stands in no relation to outsiders, and must look to his master for redress. The full bearing of these considerations is seen when we remember that the farmers are serf-tenants. They are owned[1625] by masters, as the municipal city exists only in and for the empire, and the slave has no legal personality apart from his lord.

It is a fact, says[1626] Libanius, that through such evasion of their liabilities on the part of the rustics many houses have been ruined. He is surely referring to the curiales and other landlords resident in the city, the numbers of which class it was the imperial policy to maintain at full strength. In moral indignation[1627] he urges the iniquity of beggaring poor souls who have nothing to live on but the income from their lands. ‘Say I have an estate, inherited or bought, farmed by sensible tenants who humbly faced the ups and downs of Fortune under my considerate care. Must you then stir them up by agitation, arousing unlooked-for conflicts, and reducing men of good family to indigence?’ This appeal would not sound overdrawn in the society of that age, though it might fall somewhat coldly upon modern ears. But the most notable point in this oration is the nature of the remedy[1628] for which the writer pleads, and which none but the emperor can supply. It is simply to enforce the existing law. Some years before, probably in 368, the emperor Valens had strictly forbidden[1629] the ‘protections’ that were the cause of this trouble. So now the appeal to Theodosius is ‘give the law sinews, make it a law indeed[1630] and not a bare exhortation.’ For, if it is not to be observed, it had better be repealed. That a leading writer of the day could so state the case to the ruler of the Roman world is a fact to be borne in mind by readers of the imperial laws.

LIII. SYMMACHUS

In passing on to =Q. Aurelius Symmachus=[1631] (about 345-405) we find ourselves in very different surroundings. The scene is in Italy, and the author a man of the highest station in what was still regarded as the true centre of the Roman world. He was praefectus urbi in 384-5, consul in 391, and the leading figure in Roman society and literary circles. From the bulky collection of his letters, and the forty reports (relationes) addressed to the emperor by him as city prefect, we get much interesting evidence as to the condition of rural Italy and the anxieties of the corn-supply of Rome. With his championship of the old religion, by which he is best known, we have here nothing to do; and his literary affectations, characteristic of most writers of the later Empire, do not discredit him as a witness. A remarkable feature of his letters is their general triviality and absence of direct reference to the momentous events that were happening in many parts of the empire. His attention is almost wholly absorbed by matters with which he was immediately connected, his public duties, his private affairs, the interests of his relatives and friends, or the exchange of compliments. His time is mostly passed either in Rome or at one or other of his numerous country seats: for he was one of the great landlords of his day, and the condition of Italian agriculture was of great importance to him. As a representative of the landed interest and as a self-conscious letter-writer he resembles the younger Pliny, but is weaker and set in a less happy age.

A topic constantly recurring[1632] in his correspondence is the apprehension of famine in Rome and the disturbances certain to arise therefrom. The distribution of imperial powers among several seats of government (of which Rome was not one) since the changes of Diocletian had left to the ancient capital only a sort of traditional primacy. The central bureaus were elsewhere, and Rome was only the effective capital of the southern division of Italy. Yet the moral force of her great past was still a living influence that expressed itself in various ways, notably in the growth of the Papacy out of the Roman bishopric. For centuries it had been the licensed lodging of a pauperized mob, fed by doles to keep them quiet, enjoying luxurious baths at nominal cost, and entertained with exciting or bloody shows in the circus or amphitheatre. This rabble had either to be kept alive and amused or got rid of; but the latter alternative would surely have reduced Rome to the condition of a dead city. It was morally impossible for a Roman emperor to initiate so ominous a policy. So the wasteful abomination dragged on, and every hitch in the corn-supply alarmed not only the praefectus annonae but the praefectus urbi with the prospect of bread riots. And the assignment of the Egyptian corn to supply Constantinople made Rome more than ever dependent on the fortunes of the African[1633] harvest. When this failed, it was only by great departmental energy that temporary shortage was made good by importations[1634] from Macedonia Sardinia or Spain or even by some surplus from Egypt. Even lower Italy, where little corn was grown, was at a pinch made to yield some. But bad seasons were not the only cause of short supplies. The acts of enemies might starve out Rome, as the rebellion of Gildo in Africa (397-8) nearly did. Moreover the slackness and greed of officials[1635] sometimes ruined the efficiency of the department, and ‘profiteering’ was practised by unscrupulous[1636] capitalists. Nor even with good harvests abroad were the prefects always at ease, since the corn-fleets might be delayed or scattered by foul weather, and meanwhile the consumption did not cease. And it sometimes happened that the cargoes were damaged and the public health suffered[1637] from unwholesome food. Among these various cares the praefectura annonae was no bed of roses. No wonder the worthy Symmachus tells us of private charity[1638] to relieve the necessities of the poor, and even gives a hint of voluntary rationing at the tables of the rich. But in appealing to the gods for succour he rather suggests that human benevolence would be unequal to the strain.

That agriculture was not on a sound footing in most of Italy is evident from several passages in the letters. In one of the earliest (before 376) he tells his father that, though he finds Campania charming, he should like to join him at Praeneste. ‘But’ he adds ‘I am in trouble about my property. I must go and inspect it wherever it lies, not in hope of making it remunerative, but in order to realize the promise of the land by further outlay. For things are nowadays come to such a pass[1639] that an owner has to feed the farm that once fed him.’ Some of the references to the management of estates are rather obscure. In speaking of one near Tibur he mentions[1640] stewards (vilicorum) and complains of their neglect. ‘The land is badly farmed, and great part of the returns (fructuum) is in arrear (debetur): the coloni have no means left[1641] to enable them to clear their accounts or to carry on cultivation.’ The exact status of these stewards and tenants and their relations to each other are far from clear, and the case may have been a peculiar one. Again, writing to bespeak the good offices of an influential man on behalf of an applicant, he says ‘I do this for him rather as a duty[1642] than as an act of free grace, for he is a farm-tenant of mine.’ The tenant’s name is Theodulus, which invites a conjecture that this was a case of an oriental Greek slave placed as tenant on a farm, either for his master’s account, or for his own at a rent, and afterwards manumitted. A reference to servi, dependants (obnoxii)[1643] who are owing him rents which his agents on the distant estate in question do not take the trouble to collect, may point to the same sort of arrangement. In another passage he mentions[1644] a man who was for a long time colonus under a certain landlord, but here too the lack of detail forbids inference as to the exact nature of the relation. That slave labour was still employed on some Italian farms appears from a request[1645] for help in recovering some runaways. They may have been house slaves, but if a neighbouring landlord gave them shelter no doubt he made them pay for it in work. The control of slaves in the country was never easy, and the quasi-military discipline described by Columella was a confession of this. And it was only on a large scale that a staff of overseers sufficient to work it could be provided. The time for it was indeed gone by. Slaves employed in hunting[1646] are mentioned by Symmachus as by Pliny. No doubt they took to this occupation with zest. The degeneracy of hunting by deputy is contemptuously noted as a sign of the times by the soldier critic[1647] Ammianus. But it was no new thing.

That the general state of the countryside was hardly favourable to the quiet development of agriculture may be gathered from many notices. For instance, when he would have been glad to be out of Rome for the good of his health, he complains[1648] that the prevalence of brigandage in the country near forces him to stay in the city. A friend urges him to come back to Rome for fear of a violent raid on an estate apparently suburban: he can only reply[1649] that a breach of possession during his absence will not hold good in law. Whether the militaris impressio[1650] on his farm at Ostia, to which he casually refers, was the raid of foreign foes suddenly landing on that coast, or the lawless outrage of imperial troops, is not certain: I rather suspect the latter. For, fifteen years later (398), after the overthrow of Gildo, he writes[1651] that the soldiers are all back from Africa, and the Appian way is clear: here the meaning seems plain. And his endeavour[1652] to prevent the commandeering of an old friend’s house at Ariminum for military quarters is significant of the high-handed treatment of civilians by army men in those days, of which we have other evidence. Nevertheless men were still willing to buy estates. Symmachus himself was still adding to his vast possessions. We see him in treaty[1653] for a place in Samnium, where there was apparently some queer practice on the part of the seller: in another case he is annoyed[1654] that his partner in a joint purchase has contrived to secure the whole bargain as sole transferee, and rather sulkily offers to waive his legal claims on being reimbursed what he has already paid to the transferor. It seems strange that a man who, beside his numerous properties in Italy, owned estates[1655] in Mauretania (where he complains that the governors allow his interests to suffer) and in Sicily (where the lessee is called conductor, probably a tenant in chief subletting to coloni), should have had an appetite for more investments of doubtful economic value. But other investments were evidently very hard to find in an age when industry and commerce were fettered by the compulsory gild-system. And a man of influence like Symmachus was better able than one of the common herd to protect his own interests by the favour of powerful officials.

We get glimpses of the condition of agriculture in Italy under the strain of events. It must be borne in mind that Italy was no longer exempt from the land-burdens of the imperial system. For many years, certainly from 383 to 398, Rome was hardly ever free from the fear of famine. It was necessary to scrape together all the spare food that could be found in the country in order to eke out the often interrupted importations from abroad. The decline of food-production in rich Campania is indicated by many scattered references. The district was probably too much given over to vines, and a great part of it occupied by unproductive villas. In 396 Symmachus is relieved to know that the corn-supply of Rome is assured, at least for twenty days. He goes on to mention[1656] that corn has been transferred from Apulia to Campania. Whether this was for Campanian consumption, or eventually to be forwarded to Rome, is not stated. I am inclined to the former alternative by the consideration of the quarrel between Tarracina and Puteoli referred to below. That corn should have been brought from Apulia[1657] is a striking fact. A great part of that province was taken up by pastures and oliveyards. It can only have had corn to spare by reason of sparse population and good crops. If we had the whole story of this affair, the explanation might prove to be simpler than it can be now. In 397 he writes[1658] to a friend that the Apulians are having a bad time. They are erroneously supposed to be in for a good harvest, and so are being required to supply corn. This will be stripping the province without materially helping the state. For winter is coming on, and there is not time left to bring such a great crop of ripeness. Symmachus had friends dependent on property in Apulia. Writing some four years later[1659] he refers to this estate as rated for taxation on a higher scale than its income would warrant: he asks the local governor to see that it shall not be crushed by ‘public burdens.’

For to Symmachus, as to all or most men in this passive and cruelly selfish age, the first thought was to protect their own interests and those of their friends by engaging the favour of the powerful. Many of the passages cited above illustrate this, and many more could be given. The candour of some of his applications is remarkable. On behalf of one dependant in trouble he says[1660] to the person addressed ‘but he will get more help from the partiality of your judgment, for he really has some right on his side.’ To another he writes[1661] that of course right is always to be considered, but in dealing with nobiles probabilesque personas a judge should feel free to qualify strict rules, letting the fairness of his decision appear[1662] in the distinction made. This proposition introduces a request on behalf of his sister. Some farms of hers are overburdened with the dues exacted by the state, and are now empty for lack of tenants. Only the governor’s sanction can give them the relief needed to restore them to solvency; and Symmachus trusts that his friend will do the right thing by the lady. In another case[1663] he asks favour for a dependant, significantly adding a request that his friend will see to it that the case does not come before another judge. Now, what chance of asserting their own rights had humble folk in general, and poor working farmers in particular, when governors and judges of all sorts were solicited like this by men whose goodwill was worth securing,—men for the most part unscrupulous greedy and prone to bear grudges, not such as the virtuous and kindly Symmachus? Perhaps nothing shews the selfishness of the rich more than their attempts to shirk the duty of furnishing recruits for the army. Yet we find in one letter[1664] a request to a provincial governor to check the activities of the recruiting agents. That the writer accuses these latter of overstepping their legal powers can only be viewed with some suspicion, considering his readiness to use private influence. Early in 398, when a force was being raised to operate against Gildo, it was thought necessary to enlist slaves from the city households. The protests[1665] of their owners, in which Symmachus shared, were loud: the compensation allowance was too low, and so forth. Yet, if any one was interested in suppressing the rebel, it was surely these wealthy men.

That the obligation of providing for the sustenance of the idle populace of Rome was not only a worry to officials but a heavy burden on farmers in the Provinces whence the supplies were drawn, needs no detailed proof. But they were used to the burden, and bore it quietly in average years. A very bad season might produce dearth even in Africa, and call for exceptional measures[1666] of relief on the part of emperors. So Trajan had relieved Egypt. It was however an extreme step to ease the pressure in Rome by expelling[1667] all temporary residents, as was actually done during the famine of 383. These would be nearly all from the Provinces, and Symmachus uneasily refers[1668] to the resentment that the expulsion was certain to provoke. But in this age a rebellion of provincials to gain redress of their own particular grievances was not a conceivable policy. When discontent expressed itself in something more than a local riot, it needed a head in the form of a pretender making a bid for imperial power. But we are not to suppose that Rome, and later Constantinople, stood quite alone in receipt of food-favours. The case of two Italian municipalities, reported on[1669] by Symmachus in 384-5, proves the contrary, and we have no ground for assuming that they were the only instances. The important port-town of Puteoli was granted 150000 modii of corn yearly towards the feeding of the city by Constantine. Constans cut down the allowance to 75000. Constantius raised it again to 100000. Under Julian a complication arose. The governor of Campania found Tarracina in sore straits (evidently for food) because of the failure[1670] of the supplies due from the towns long assigned for that purpose. Now Tarracina had a special claim to support, since it provided Rome with firewood for heating the baths and lime for the repair of the walls. It seems that the governor felt bound to keep this town alive, but had no new resources on which he could draw. So he took 5700 modii from the allowance of Puteoli and gave them to Tarracina. Final settlement was referred to Julian, but not reached before his death in the Persian war (363). The next stage was that a deputation from Capua[1671] addressed the emperor Gratian, confining themselves to complaint of their own losses. By this one-sided representation they procured an imperial order, that the amount of corn allowance which Cerealis[1672] had claimed for the people of Rome should be given back to all the cities deprived of it by his act. But under this order the total recovered for sustenance of the provincials only reached 38000 modii of corn that had been added to the stores of the eternal city. So Puteoli refused to hand over even the 5700 to Tarracina. And the provincial governor did not go carefully into the terms of the order, but ruled in favour of Puteoli. An appeal followed, and it came out that the grant of 5700 to Tarracina was not an ordinary bounty but an earmarked[1673] sum granted in consideration of services to Rome. The governor did not feel able either to confirm it or to take it away. Therefore the matter was referred to the emperors for a final settlement. This strange story gives us a momentary glimpse of things that make no figure in general histories. The abject dependence of the municipalities on imperial favour stands out clearly: not less so the precarious nature of such favours, a feature of the time amply illustrated by the later imperial laws, numbers of which were simply issued to withdraw privileges previously granted, under the stress of needs that made it impossible to maintain them. Again, we see that in addition to the normal jealousy of neighbours the competition for imperial favour was an influence tending to hinder rather than promote cohesion: tending in fact to weaken the fabric now menaced by the tribal barbarians. Above all, this affair strongly suggests the partiality of the central government to town populations. The farmers of the municipal territories were certainly liable to the land-burdens, and were the ultimate basis of imperial finance: but of them there is not a word. Lastly, we may suppose that inter-municipal disputes such as this were not of very frequent occurrence: but we have no reason to believe that this Campanian case was unique.

LIV. AMMIANUS.

In =Ammianus Marcellinus= (about 330 to 400) we have an oriental Greek from Antioch who passed a great part of his life in the military service of the empire. He had travelled much, campaigned in Gaul and the East, and was an observant man of wide interests, and in his history impartial to the best of his power. Whether in deliberate criticisms, or in casual references, he is an exceptionally qualified and honest witness as to the state of things in the empire. On one important point his evidence is of special value. All through the surviving portion of his work (353-378) he leaves us in no doubt that the internal evils of the empire were weakening it more than the pressure of barbarians from without. He does not argue this in a section devoted to the topic, but he takes occasion to notice the abuses that impaired the prosperity of the Provinces or led directly to grave disasters. The corruption jealousy greed cruelty and general misrule of officials high and low was no secret to him. That the ultimate sufferers from their misdeeds were the poor, and more particularly the poor farmers, may be gathered from many passages. That the centre of this all-pervading disease lay in the imperial court, a focus of intrigue and jobbery that the very best of emperors could never effectively check, he was surely aware. At least it is only on this assumption that we get the full flavour of his references to court-intrigues and his criticisms of emperors, his balanced discussions of their good and bad qualities and the effects of their policy and practice. In truth the whole system was breaking down. It lasted longer in the East than in the West, because the eastern peoples were more thoroughly tamed. They had been used to despotic government long before the coming of Rome. And the assaults of external enemies were more formidable and persistent in the North and West than in the South and East. Yet, so long as the empire held together, imperial despotism was inevitable. Neither Ammianus nor any other writer of that age did or could offer a possible alternative. Christianity might capture the empire and spread among the barbarians, but it had no constructive solution for the problems of imperial government.

A remarkably plain-spoken passage[1674] occurs in reference to the events of 356, where he describes the administration of Julian in Gaul. By his victories over the Germans he relieved the impoverished Gauls, but this was by no means his only benefit. For instance, where he found at his first coming a tax-unit[1675] of 25 gold pieces demanded as the tributum, at his departure (360) he left things so much improved that seven of these sufficed to meet all dues. Great was the joy in Gaul. As a particular example of his thoughtful care, Ammianus cites his policy in the matter of arrears of tribute. There were occasions, especially in provinces liable to invasion, when it was certain that such arrears could not be recovered in the ordinary course. It was not to the interest of the central government to ruin or turn adrift farmers whose places it would not be easy to fill. This consideration was no doubt used to procure from emperors orders of remission, indulgentiae[1676] as they were called. Julian to the last would not give relief by thus waiving the imperial rights. ‘For he was aware[1677] that the effect of that step would be to put money into the pockets of the rich; the universal practice, as everyone knows, being for the poor to be made to pay up the due amount in full directly the order of collection is issued, and allowed no time of grace.’ It seems then that it was not the amount of the imperial taxation, but the iniquities perpetrated in connexion with its collection, that were the real burden crushing the vitality of the Provinces. So thought Julian, rightly: and in the next year we find him firmly upholding his principles in the face of exceptional difficulties. The emperor Constantius had felt compelled to make Julian Caesar, and to place him at the head of the Western section of the empire. But his jealousy and fear of the Caesar’s winning glory in Gaul led him to surround Julian with officers devoted to himself and secretly encouraged to hamper their titular chief in every possible way. The court of Constantius was a hotbed of intrigue and calumny. Private reports of the doings of Julian were being regularly received. Any reforms that he was able to make in Gaul had to be effected in the teeth of imperial malignity.

A flagrant instance[1678] is seen in the efforts made to thwart his reforming energy during the winter of 357-8. After defeating and humbling aggressive German tribes, he set himself to relieve the distress of the landowners, who had suffered great losses. There was at the time a great need of money. The praetorian prefect of the Gauls, Florentius, proposed to raise the sums required[1679] by an additional levy, and procured from Constantius an order to that effect. Julian would rather die than allow this. He knew what would happen in carrying it out, and that such ‘precautions’ (provisiones)[1680] or rather destructions (eversiones) had often brought provinces into the extremities of want. The Prefect, to whose department the matter in strictness belonged, protested loudly, relying on the powers given him by Constantius. But Julian stood firm, and tried to soothe him by calmly proving that there was no necessity for the proposed measure. Careful calculations shewed that the normal impost (capitatio) would produce enough to furnish the needful supplies, and something to spare. He would have nothing to do with the order[1681] for an extra levy. The Prefect duly reported this to Constantius, who reprimanded the Caesar for his obstinacy. Julian replied that the provincials had been exposed to ravages from various quarters, and that if they were still able to render the usual dues[1682] the government had reason to be thankful. To wring more out of men in distress by punishments was impossible. And he did manage to prevent extraordinary exactions in Gaul. In the winter of 358-9 he continued the same policy. He saw to the equitable assessment[1683] of the tribute, and kept at bay the horde of rascally officials who made fortunes[1684] out of injuring the people. The corruption of the law-courts he checked by hearing the important cases himself. No wonder that in an age of Christian emperors the virtuous pagan earned a reputation as a restorer of Roman greatness far beyond the boundaries of Gaul. Whether the fact that adherents of polytheism were now chiefly to be found among rustics (pagani) had anything to do with Julian’s clear appreciation of the sufferings of countryfolk, is a question on which I cannot venture to offer an opinion.

That all or most of the corn levied by imperial taxation was in the frontier Provinces required for the military commissariat is well known, and the granaries for storing it were a leading feature of permanent camps and garrison towns. The feeding of armies in the field, always wasteful, no doubt consumed a great deal. In the case of Gaul (for to live on the country was starvation to a force invading wild Germany) the quantity to be brought up to the front seems to have been normally more than Gaul could spare. It was usual to rely on the harvests[1685] of Britain. Transport was the main difficulty. Saxon pirates infested the narrow seas, and the navigation of the Rhine was blocked by Franks. Julian’s energy cleared away these obstacles, and saw to the erection or repair of granaries in the Rhineland towns to receive the British corn. These measures enabled him to do without making extra demands on the farmers of Gaul, a step sometimes unavoidable when there was war on the frontiers. Of course such commandeering was very unpopular, and wise generals avoided it whenever possible. Ammianus draws particular attention[1686] to this matter when narrating the campaign of Theodosius in Mauretania (373). He forbade the levy of supplies from the provincials, announcing that he would make the stores of the enemy[1687] provide the commissariat, and the landowners were delighted.

Among the interesting references that occur in the course of the work are some that throw further light on the conditions of life in the parts of the empire subject to invasion. It is not necessary to cite the frequent mention of various kinds of fortified posts from great strongholds to mere blockhouses. These remind us that the strength of the imperial armies could never be so maintained as to guard the frontier at all times on all points. Barbarian raiders slipped through[1688] the inevitable gaps, and wide stretches of country were laid waste long before sufficient forces could be gathered to expel them. We do not need the descriptions of their cruel ravages to convince us that agriculture near the Danube or Rhine borders was a perilous calling. If the farmer were not carried away into bondage or slain, he was left robbed of his all, and in imminent danger of starving: for the barbarians ate up everything, and hunger was a principal motive in leading them to come and warning them to return home. Naturally it was the custom in these border-lands to provide fortified refuges here and there in which local farmers could find temporary shelter with their belongings, and homesteads of any importance were more or less equipped for defence. This was the state of things even in Mauretania. We read of a farm[1689] (fundus) which the brother of Firmus the rebel leader (373) ‘built up after the fashion of a city’; also of one girt with a strong[1690] wall, a very secure refuge for the Moors, to destroy which Theodosius had to employ battering-rams. These are not the only instances. And forts (castella) and walled towns are often referred to. Along the northern borders the necessity for such precautions was much greater. Still it seems that few if any in the latter part of the fourth century foresaw that frontier defences would at no distant date give way before the barbarian flood. A high imperial official, with whose corrupt connivance[1691] gross wrongs had been perpetrated (370) in Africa, on being superseded in office withdrew to his native Rhineland, and ‘devoted himself[1692] to rural affairs.’ The retired ease for which he apparently hoped was soon ended, though not by barbarian raiders. The malignity of a praetorian prefect tracked him to his retreat and by persecution drove him to suicide.

This last episode may remind us that the weakening of the empire was not wholly due to failure of an economic kind or to decay of military skill. The farmers might raise crops enough, the armies might prove their superiority in the field, but nevertheless the great organism was in decline. A general mistrust, fatal to loyal cooperation for the common good, was the moral canker by which the exertions of farmer and soldier were hampered and rendered vain. Officials seeking to ruin each other, emperors turning to murders and confiscations as a source of revenue, all classes bound fast in rigid corporations or gilds under laws which it was their study to evade; the failure of individual enterprise, lacking the joy of individual freedom, and the stimulus of expected reward; in short, everyone ready to sacrifice his neighbour to save his own skin: how was a society characterized by such phenomena to maintain a moral advantage over the rude barbarians? That it was now protected by alien swords, that aliens were even commanding[1693] the Roman armies, was not the main cause of its overthrow. As a rule these barbarians kept their bargain, and shed their blood freely for the empire that enlisted them in masses. But we must distinguish between two or three different classes of these alien defenders. The mere mercenaries need not detain us. More significant were the contingents taken over in large bodies by agreement with the tribes. A good instance[1694] is that of the year 376, when a vast host of Goths sought leave to pass the Danube with the hope of settling on vacant lands south of the river. We are told that the Roman commanders on that front got over their first alarm and took the line that really the emperor was in luck. Here was a huge supply of recruits[1695] brought to him from the ends of the earth, an unlooked-for reinforcement ready to be blended with his own troops, and to make up an unconquerable army. Instead of spending the yearly payments of the provinces[1696] on filling up the ranks, the treasury would gain a great sum of gold. It would seem that they reported to the emperor in favour of the request, for Valens granted the petition of a Gothic embassy. Arrangements were made for transporting them over the river, and it was understood that they had leave to settle in the parts of Thrace. But now troubles began. Greedy Roman officials fleeced and maltreated the hungry horde, who were at length driven into rebellion. With the sequel, the great battle (378) near Adrianople, and the death of Valens, we are not here concerned. But the account[1697] of their ravages in Thrace gives us a picture of the countryside in a harassed province and of the slave labour employed. The rebels, unable to take fortified places by regular siege, overran the country in raiding bands. Captives guided them to places stocked with food. But they were especially encouraged and strengthened by the great number of people of their own race who came pouring in to join them. Ammianus describes[1698] these deserters as men who had long before been sold (into slavery of course) by traders, and with them very many whom at the time of their passing the river, when they were perishing of hunger, they had bartered for thin wine or worthless scraps of bread.

This scene may serve to remind us that slavery and the sale of slaves to Roman dealers were recognized features of German tribal life as described by Tacitus. It also gives us a glimpse of the way in which opportunities of imperial advantage could be wasted or turned into calamities by the unpatriotic and selfish greed of Roman officials. In this case potential recruits were turned into actual enemies; and the barbarian slaves, who should have been tilling Thracian fields in the interest of Rome, were left to guide and recruit the hostile army of their kinsmen. It must not be supposed that all schemes for raising barbarian troops in large bodies were thus by gross mismanagement brought to a disastrous end. The value of sound flesh and blood in the ranks was well understood, and a successful campaign against German tribes could be made profitable from this point of view. Thus in 377, when Gratian had a whole tribe at his mercy, he required of them a contingent[1699] of sturdy recruits to be incorporated in Roman army-units, on delivery of whom he set free the rest to return to their native homes. That such recruits became under Roman discipline so far Romanized as to provide efficient armies is clear from the victories that still delayed the fall of the empire. But ‘Roman’ was becoming more than ever a mere name-label: there had never been a Roman nation. Of the third class of alien soldiery little need be said. Military colonists of barbarian origin had for a long time past been brought into the empire, some as frontier guards holding land on condition of army service, others more in the interior, even[1700] in Italy; and these latter undoubtedly furnished many recruits, on whatever terms. The general result may be summed up in saying that, when the barbarian invaders at last came to stay, they found their kindred already there at home.

LV. CLAUDIAN.

In =Claudian=, who wrote about 400, we have another oriental Greek, who wrote chiefly in Latin with far more mastery of that language than Ammianus. Stilicho his patron, the great barbarian head of the Roman army, was at the height of his power, and Claudian’s most congenial occupation was to sing his praises and denounce his opponents. He was also poet laureate of the feeble emperor Honorius. Writing mainly on contemporary themes, he is, if allowance be made for his bias, a witness worth citing; but the passages relevant to the present subject are naturally few. In common with other writers of the later ages of Rome he is constantly looking back to a great and glorious past, contrasting painfully with that present which he nevertheless is striving to glorify. Thus he not only refers with enthusiasm[1701] to the old heroes of Roman history and legend, the common material of Roman literature, but even dreams[1702] of a golden age to be, when the earth of her own accord shall render all good things in abundance to a people living happily in communistic brotherhood. This fancy however is no more than a piece of unreal rhetoric, an echo of Vergil. It is inspired by the victories of Stilicho, and the world-dominion under which this beatific vision is to be realized is—the rule of Honorius.

In January 395 the great Theodosius died, and the empire was divided between his two sons. In November, Rufinus, who dominated Arcadius at Constantinople, was murdered. His place was soon taken by the eunuch Eutropius. On these two personages Claudian poured out a flood of invective, speaking for Stilicho and the West. The greed of Rufinus is depicted[1703] as ruinous to the landed interests. ‘The fertility of his land was the ruin of the landlord: a good crop[1704] made the farmers tremble. He drives men from their homes, and thrusts them out of their ancestral borders, either robbing the living or seizing the estates of the dead.’ The jealousy of the West expresses itself in a passage[1705] referring to the famine created in Rome by the rebellion of Gildo in Africa. Honorius (that is Stilicho) is effusively praised for its relief by importations from other Provinces, chiefly from Gaul. That, owing to the claim of the New Rome to the corn of Egypt, the Old Rome should be so dependent on Africa, is a situation indignantly resented[1706] in eloquent lines. A symptom ominous of imperial failure was the attempt to wrest eastern Illyricum from the rule of Arcadius (407-8) an enterprise[1707] secretly concerted between Stilicho and Alaric. Fugitives from Epirus sought refuge in Italy. Stilicho treated them as prisoners of war from an enemy’s country, and handed them over to Italian landlords as slaves or coloni. When Alaric and his Goths moved towards Italy, some of these refugees, aided by a law issued for their protection, found their way home again. Claudian unblushingly declares[1708] that none but Stilicho will be able to heal the empire’s wound: ‘at length the colonus will return to his own borders and the court will once more be enriched by the tributes of Illyricum.’

A Roman view of the intruding barbarians and their capacity of peaceful settlement is in one place[1709] put into the mouth of Bellona the war-goddess. She addresses a Gothic chief in bitter sarcasm. ‘Go and be a thorough ploughman, cleaving the soil: teach your comrades to lay aside the sword and toil at the hoe. Your Gruthungians[1710] will make fine cultivators, and tend vineyards in accordance with the seasons.’ She taunts him with degenerating from the good old habits of his race, war and plunder, and scornfully describes him as one captured[1711] by the glamour of fair dealing, who had rather live as a serf on what is granted him than as a lord on what he takes by force. In short, he is a coward. Now no doubt there were Goths and others, Huns in particular, of this war-loving work-hating type approved by the war-goddess. But abundant evidence shews that many, perhaps most, of the barbarians were quite ready to settle down in peace and produce their own food. When Claudian himself speaks[1712] of the ‘Teuton’s ploughshare’ as one of the agencies producing corn that relieved famine in Rome, he is most likely referring to the many Germans already settled in Gaul as well as to inhabitants of the ‘Germanies,’ the two provinces along the Rhine.

A curious passage[1713] in the poem on the Gothic war and Stilicho’s defeat of Alaric at Pollentia (402) is of interest in connexion with the Roman army and the recruiting system. Of the confidence revived in Rome by the appearance of Stilicho and his troops a vivid picture is drawn, and he continues ‘henceforth[1714] no more pitiful conscription, no more of reapers laying down the sickle and wielding the inglorious javelin ... nor the mean clamorous jangling of amateur leaders: no, this is the presence of a genuine manhood, a genuine commander, a scene of war in real life.’ If this means anything, it implies that hasty levies[1715] of raw countrymen were notoriously unfit to face hordes of barbarian tribesmen in the field. True, no doubt; professional training had been the basis of efficiency in Roman armies ever since the days of Marius. But the words surely suggest further that conscription within the empire was in Claudian’s time not found a success, that is in producing a supply of fit recruits to keep the legions up to strength. This also was doubtless true, as much other evidence attests, and was the main reason why the ‘Roman’ soldiery of the period were mostly barbarians. But here, as usual, the witness of the court-poet is in the form of admission rather than statement. His business was to be more Roman than Rome. It remains only to mention two similes, one of which perhaps refers to free labour. An old crone[1716] has ‘poor girls’ under her engaged in weaving. They beg for a little holiday, but she keeps them at work ‘to earn their joint livelihood.’ This may be a scene from life, but is more likely an echo from earlier poetry. When he illustrates[1717] the effect of Stilicho’s coming on the peoples rising against Rome by comparing them to slaves, deceived by false report of their lord’s death, and caught revelling by him when he unexpectedly returns, it is a scene that might be enacted in any age. The little poem on the old man of Verona is famous as a picture of humble contentment in rustic life. But the main point of it as evidence is that the case is exceptional.

LVI. VEGETIUS.

=Vegetius=, a contemporary of Ammianus and Claudian, is credited with two surviving works, one on the military system, the other on veterinary practice. Both are largely compilations, and belong to the class of technical writings which formed a great part of the literature of this age. In discussing army matters the author looks back with regret to the sounder conditions of the past. Speaking[1718] of the quality of recruits, he says ‘It can surely never have been matter of doubt that the common countryfolk are more fit (than townsfolk) to bear arms, reared as they are in toil under the open sky, able to stand the heat of the sun and caring not for the shade, with no experience of baths or knowledge of luxuries, straightforward and frugal, with limbs hardened to endure any kind of toil; for the wearing of armour, digging of trenches, and carrying their kit, are continuations of rustic habit.’ It is true that sometimes town-bred recruits have to be levied, but they need long and careful training to fit them for active service. True, the Romans of old went out to war from the city. But luxury was unknown in those days: the farmer of today was the warrior of tomorrow, by change of weapons. Cincinnatus went straight from the plough to be dictator. A little after, speaking[1719] of the standard of height, he tells us that it has always been usual to have a standard tested by actual measurement, below which no recruit was passed for service in certain crack units. But there were then[1720] larger numbers to draw from, and more men followed the combatant service, for the civil service[1721] had not as yet carried off the pick of those in military age. Therefore, if circumstances require it, strength rather than height should be the first consideration. I am loth to infer much[1722] from this passage, the period referred to in ‘then’ being undefined. What it does shew is that in the writer’s own time a considerable number of men of military age (Romans being meant) were attracted by the civil career of the new imperial service, which in all its grades was technically styled[1723] a militia. Nor does it appear certain that in preferring the rustic recruit to the urban Vegetius implies the existence of a plentiful supply of the former among the subjects of the empire. His words rather suggest to me the opposite conclusion, which is in agreement with the evidence from other sources.

Turning to the veterinary work (ars mulomedicinae) we come upon a chapter devoted[1724] to the management of horses. It is well to keep a free space near the stable for the beasts to get exercise by rolling, for they need exercise. ‘And for this end it is very helpful to have them mounted[1725] often and ridden gently. Unskilful riders spoil both their paces and their temper. Most mischievous is the recklessness[1726] of slaves. When the master is not there, they urge his horses to gallop, using spur as well as whip, in matches of speed with their mates or in fiercely-contested races against outsiders: it never occurs to them to halt or check their mounts. For they give no thought[1727] to what is their master’s loss, being well content that it falls on him. A careful owner will most strictly forbid such doings, and will only allow his cattle to be handled by suitable grooms who are gentle and understand their management.’ We must bear in mind that the horse was not used in agriculture or as an ordinary beast of burden. Horse-breeding was kept up to supply chargers for war, racers for the circus, mounts for men of the wealthier classes in hunting or occasionally for exercise, for solemn processions and such like. When Vegetius treats of a stable or stud of horses, he has in mind the establishment of a gentleman of means, and it is worth noting that such an establishment could be contemplated by a writer of about 400 AD. This harmonizes with the picture of Italian conditions that we get from the letters of Symmachus and other sources. A few rich were very rich, the many poor usually very poor. The carelessness, wastefulness, thievishness, of slaves is a very old story, and in the middle of the fourth century had been bitterly referred to[1728] by the emperor Julian. That Vegetius does not advise the owner of these slave grooms to make a vilicus responsible for seeing that his orders are obeyed, is probably due to the rigidly technical character of the treatise: he is not writing on the management of estates.

CHRISTIAN WRITERS

LVII. LACTANTIUS.

When we turn to the Christian writers, whom it is convenient to take by themselves, we pass into a different atmosphere. Of rhetoric there is plenty, for most of them had been subjected to the same literary influences as their Pagan contemporaries. But there is a marked difference of spirit, more especially in one respect very important from the point of view of the present inquiry. Christianity might counsel submission to the powers that be: it might recognize slavery as an institution: it might enjoin on the slave to render something beyond eye-service to his legal master. But it could never shake off the fundamental doctrine of the equal position of all men before their Almighty Ruler, and the prospect of coming life in another world, in which the standards and privileges dominating the present one would go for nothing. Therefore a Christian writer differed from the Pagan in his attitude towards the poor and oppressed. He could sympathize with them, not as a kindly though condescending patron, but as one conscious of no abiding superiority in himself. The warmth with which the Christian witnesses speak is genuine enough. The picture may be somewhat overdrawn or too highly coloured, and we must allow for some exaggeration, but in general it is surely true to fact.

First comes =Lactantius=, who has already[1729] been once quoted. Writing under Constantine, he speaks of the Diocletian or Galerian persecution as a contemporary. The passage[1730] to be cited here describes the appalling cruelty of the fiscal exactions ordered by Galerius to meet the pressing need of the government for more money. It was after the abdication of Diocletian and Maximian in 305. The troubles that ensued had no doubt helped to render financial necessities extreme. The remark, that he now practised against all men the lessons of cruelty learnt in tormenting the Christians, must refer to Galerius. The account of the census[1731], presumably that of 307, is as follows. ‘What brought disaster on the people and mourning on all alike, was the sudden letting loose of the census on the provinces and cities. Census-officers, sparing nothing, spread all over the land, and the scenes were such as when an enemy invades a country and enslaves the inhabitants. There was measuring of fields clod by clod, counting of vines and fruit trees, cataloguing of every sort of animals, recording of the human[1732] heads. In the municipalities (civitatibus) the common folk of town and country put on the same[1733] footing, everywhere the market-place crammed with the households assembled, every householder with his children and slaves. The sounds of scourging and torturing filled the air. Sons were being strung up to betray parents; all the most trusty slaves tortured to give evidence against their masters, and wives against husbands. If all these means had failed, men were tortured for evidence against themselves, and when they broke down under the stress of pain they were credited with admissions[1734] never made by them. No plea of age or infirmity availed them: informations were laid against the invalids and cripples: the ages of individuals were recorded by guess, years added to those of the young and subtracted from those of the old. All the world was filled with mourning and grief.’ In short, Romans and Roman subjects were dealt with as men of old dealt with conquered foes. ‘The next step was the paying[1735] of moneys for heads, a ransom for a life. But the whole business was not entrusted to the same body of officials (censitoribus); one batch was followed by others, who were expected to make further discoveries: a continual doubling of demands went on, not that they discovered more, but that they made additions arbitrarily, for fear they might seem to have been sent to no purpose. All the while the numbers of live stock were falling, and mankind dying; yet none the less tribute was being paid on behalf of the dead, for one had to pay for leave to live or even to die. The only survivors were the beggars from whom nothing could be wrung, immune for the time from wrongs of any sort by their pitiful destitution.’ He goes on to declare that, in order to prevent evasion of the census on pretence of indigence, a number of these poor wretches were taken out to sea and drowned.

In this picture[1736] we may reasonably detect high colouring and perhaps downright exaggeration. Probably the grouping together of horrors reported piecemeal from various quarters has given to the description as a whole a somewhat deceptive universality. That the imperial system, though gradually losing ground, held its own against unorganized barbarism for several more centuries, seems proof positive that no utter destruction of the economic fabric took place in the census to which Lactantius refers. But that the pressure exerted by the central power, and the responsive severity of officials, were extreme, and that the opportunities for extortion were seized and cruelly used, may fairly be taken for fact on his authority. This was not the beginning of sufferings to the unhappy tillers of the soil, nor was it the end. One census might be more ruinous to their wellbeing than another: it was always exhausting, and kept the farmers in terror. But they had not as yet reached the stage of thinking it better to bear the yoke of barbarian chieftains than to remain under the corrupt and senseless maladministration of imperial Rome.

LVIII. SULPICIUS SEVERUS.

The life and doings of the famous saint of Gaul, Martin of Tours, a Pannonian by birth, were chronicled by =Sulpicius Severus=, writing soon after 400, in an enthusiastic biography still in existence. In another work occurs a passage[1737] narrating one of his hero’s many miracles; and the story is too artlessly illustrative of the behaviour of the military and the state of things on the public roads, not to be mentioned here. Martin was travelling on his ecclesiastical duties, riding on an ass with friends in company. The rest being for a moment detained, Martin went on alone for a space. Just then a government car (fiscalis raeda) occupied by a party of soldiers was coming along the road. The mules drawing it shied at the unfamiliar figure of the saint in his rough and dark dress. They got entangled in their harness, and the difficulty of disentangling them infuriated the soldiers, who were in a hurry. Down they jumped and fell upon Martin with whips and staves. He said not a word, but took their blows with marvellous patience, and his apparent indifference only enraged them the more. His companions picked him up all battered and bloody, and were hastening to quit the scene of the assault, when the soldiers, on trying to make a fresh start, were the victims of a miracle. No amount of beating would induce the mules to stir. Supernatural influence was suspected and made certain by discovery of the saint’s identity. Abject repentance was followed by gracious forgiveness, and mules and soldiers resumed their journey. Now the point of interest to us is the matter-of-fact way in which this encounter is narrated. That a party of the military should bully peaceful civilians on the high road is too commonplace an event to evoke any special comment or censure. But it is clearly an edifying fact that violence offered to a holy man did not escape divine punishment. There is no suggestion that similar brutality to an ordinary rustic would have met with any punishment human or divine. Laws framed for the protection of provincials[1738] against illegal exactions and to prevent encroachments of the military[1739] remained on the statute-book, but in remote country parts they were dead letters. It is interesting to recall that Martin had in his youth served for some years as a soldier. As the son of a veteran, his enrolment[1740] came in the ordinary course. But, though he is said to have been efficient, he did not like the profession and got his discharge with relief. His life covered about the last three quarters of the fourth century.

LIX. SALVIAN.

The calamities that befel the Roman world in the fourth century led to much recrimination between Pagan and Christian, each blaming the other for misfortunes generally regarded as the signal expression of divine wrath. Symmachus had been answered by Ambrose, and Christian interpretation of the course of human history produced its classic in Augustine’s great work de civitate Dei early in the fifth century. About the same time Orosius wrote his earnest but grotesque historiae adversus paganos, an arbitrary and superficial distortion of history, interesting as a specimen of partisan composition. But it is not till the middle of the century that we come upon a Christian author who gives us a graphic picture of the sufferings of the people in a Province of the empire, and a working theory of their causes, strictly from a pious Christian’s point of view. This is =Salvian=, an elder of the Church at Massalia. His evidence is cited by all historians, and must be repeated here. The main thesis is that all the woes and calamities of the age are judgments of God provoked by the gross immorality[1741] of the Roman world. So far from imputing all vices and crimes to the Heathen and the Pagan, he regards them as shared by all men: but he draws a sharp line between those who sin in ignorance, knowing no better, and those who profess the principles of a pure Christianity and yet sin against the light that is in them. For the barbarians are either Heathen or Heretics (he is thinking of the Arians), while in the empire the Orthodox church prevails. And yet the barbarians prosper, while the empire decays. Why? simply because even in their religious darkness the barbarians are morally superior to the Romans. For our present purpose it is the economic and social phenomena as depicted by Salvian that are of interest, and I proceed to give an abstract of the passage[1742] in which he expounds his indictment of Roman administration and the corrupt influences by which it is perverted from the promotion of prosperity and happiness to a cause of misery and ruin.

The all-pervading canker is the oppression of the poor by the rich. The heavy burdens of taxation are thrown upon the poor. When any relief is granted, it is intercepted by the rich. Franks Huns Vandals and Goths will have none of these iniquities, and Romans living among those barbarians also escape them. Hence the stream of migration sets from us to them, not from them to us. Indeed our poor folk would migrate in a body, but for the difficulty of transferring their few goods their poor hovels and their families. This drives them to take another course. They put themselves under the guardianship and protection of more powerful persons, surrendering[1743] to the rich like prisoners of war, and so to speak passing under their full authority and control. But this protection is made a pretext for spoliation. For the first condition of protection is the assignation[1744] of practically their whole substance to their protectors: the children’s inheritance is sacrificed to pay for the protection of their parents. The bargain is cruel and one-sided, a monstrous and intolerable wrong. For most of these poor wretches, stripped of their little belongings and expelled from their little farms, though they have lost their property, have still to bear the tribute on the properties lost: the possession is withdrawn, but the assessment[1745] remains: the ownership is gone, but the burden of taxation is crushing them still. The effects of this evil are incalculable. The intruders (pervasores) are settled down (incubant) on their properties, while they, poor souls, are paying the tributes on the intruders’ behalf. And this condition passes on to their children. So they who have been despoiled by the intrusion[1746] of individuals are being done to death by the pressure of the state (publica adflictione), and their livelihood is taken from them by squeezing as their property was by robbery. Some, wiser or taught by necessity, losing their homes and little farms through intrusions or driven by the tax-gatherers to abandon them through inability to keep them, find their way to the estates of the powerful, and become[1747] serf-tenants (coloni) of the rich. Like fugitives from the enemy or the law, not able to retain their social birthright, they bow themselves[1748] to the mean lot of mere sojourners: cast out of property and position, they have nothing left to call their own, and are no longer their own masters. Nay, it is even worse. For though they are admitted (to the rich men’s estates) as strangers (advenae), residence operates to make them[1749] natives of the place. They are transformed as by a Circe’s cup. The lord of the place, who admitted them as outside[1750] aliens, begins to treat them as his own (proprios): and so men of unquestioned free birth are being turned into slaves. When we are putting our brethren into bondage, is it strange[1751] that the barbarians are making bondsmen of us?

This is something beyond[1752] mere partisan polemic. It finds the source of misery and weakness in moral decay. Highly coloured, the picture is surely none the less true. The degradation of the rustic population presents itself in two stages. First, the farmer, still owning his little farm (agellus, rescula), finds that, what with legal burdens and illegal extortions, his position is intolerable. So he seeks the protection[1753] of a powerful neighbour, who exploits his necessities. Apparently he acquires control of the poor man’s land, but contrives to do it in such a form as to leave him still liable to payment of the imperial dues. That this iniquity was forbidden[1754] by law mattered not: corrupt officials shut their eyes to the doings of the rich. From the curiales of the several communities no help was to be looked for. Salvian declares[1755] that they were tyrants to a man. And we must not forget that they themselves were forced into office and held responsible for paying in full the dues they were required to collect. The great machine ground all, and its cruel effects were passed on from stronger to weaker, till the peasant was reached and crushed by burdens that he could not transmit to others. The second stage is the inevitable sequel. The poor man’s lot is more intolerable than before. His lesson is learnt, and he takes the final step into the status of a rich man’s colonus. Henceforth his lord is liable[1756] for his dues, but he is himself the lord’s serf, bound to the soil on which his lord places him, nominally free, but unable to stir from the spot[1757] to which his labour gives a value. If he runs away, the hue and cry follows him, and he is brought ignominiously back to the servile punishment that awaits him—unless he can make his way to some barbarian tribe. Whether he would find himself so much better off in those surroundings as Salvian seems to imply, must be left doubtful. Any family that he might leave behind would remain in serfage under conditions hardly improved by his desertion.

LX. APOLLINARIS SIDONIUS.

The last of our array of witnesses is =Apollinaris Sidonius=[1758] (about 430-480), a writer whose life is singularly illustrative of the confused period in which the Roman empire was tottering and the series of luckless emperors was ended in the West. Britain had been finally lost in the time of Honorius. The Armorican provinces had rebelled, and even now the hold of Rome on them was slight and precarious. The rest of Gaul and much of Spain and Africa had been subject to barbarian inroads, and numbers of the invaders were settled in the country: for instance, the Western Goths were fully established in Aquitania. But the Roman civilization was by no means wiped out. Roman landlords still owned large estates: Romans of culture still peddled with a degenerate rhetoric and exchanged their compositions for mutual admiration. Panegyrics on shadowy emperors were still produced in verse and prose, and the modern reader may often be amazed to note the way in which the troubles of the time could be complacently ignored. Above all, there was the Church, closely connected with Rome, claiming to be Catholic and Orthodox, a stable organization, able to make itself respected by the barbarians. That the latter were Arian heretics was indeed a cause of friction, though the Arians were destined to go under. The conversion of the Franks under the Catholic form did not give Roman Christianity the upper hand till 496. But the power of bishops, ever growing[1759] since the days of Constantine, was throughout a powerful influence holding the various communities together, maintaining law and order, and doing much for the protection of their own people. A native of Lugudunum, the chief city of Gaul, Sidonius came of a noble and wealthy family, and his social position evidently helped him in his remarkable career. In 468 he was city prefect at Rome, barely eight years before Odovacar removed the last of the titular Western emperors. We find him anxiously concerned[1760] with the old food-question, like his predecessor Symmachus, and not less endeavouring to cooperate harmoniously with the praefectus annonae. For a hungry rabble, no doubt fewer in number, still hung about the Eternal city, though its services in the way of applause were no longer in appreciable demand.

From about 471 Sidonius was bishop[1761] of Arverni (Clermont in Auvergne), and performed his difficult duties with efficiency and dignity, a sincerely pious man with a good deal of the grand seigneur about him. Moving about on duty or seeking restful change, he was often visiting country houses, his own or those of friends, receiving or returning hospitality. His references to these visits lead to descriptions[1762] of many pleasant places, and pictures of life in the society of cultivated gentlemen to which he belonged. There is hardly any mention of the suffering farmers of whom Salvian speaks so eloquently. Yet I hesitate to charge Salvian with gross exaggeration and imaginative untruth. Not only do the two men look from different points of view. Sidonius is writing some twenty years later than Salvian, and much had happened in the meantime. The defeat of Attila in 451 by the armies of the Romans and Western Goths had not only saved Gaul from the Huns, but had greatly improved the relations between Goth and Roman. And it is to be noted that, in a passage[1763] mentioning the victory of the allies and the reception of Thorismund the Gothic king as a guest at Lugudunum, Sidonius praises his correspondent[1764] for his share in lightening the burdens of the landowners. Now Salvian knows nothing of the battle of 451, and indeed does not regard the Huns as being necessarily enemies of Rome. It seems certain that for the rustics things were changed for the better. Not that the farmer was his own master, but that the great Roman taxing-machine was no longer in effective action. A great part of Gaul had passed under Teutonic lords. If the subjects were exposed to their caprice, it was of a more personal character, varying with individuals and likely to be modified by their personal qualities. This was a very different thing from the pressure of the Roman official hierarchy, the lower grades of which were themselves squeezed to satisfy the demands of the higher, and not in a position to spare their victims, however merciful their own inclinations might be.

But though the establishment of barbarian kingdoms, once the raiding invasions were over, had its good side from the working farmer’s point of view, much of the old imperial system still lingered on. The power of the Catholic Church stood in the way of complete revolution, and the Church was already[1765] a landowner. Roman traditions died hard, and among them it is interesting to note the exertion of private interest on behalf of individuals and causes in which an honourable patron felt some concern. Thus we find Sidonius writing[1766] on behalf of a friend who wants to buy back an ancestral estate with which recent troubles have compelled him to part. Great stress is laid on the point that the man is not grasping at pecuniary profit but actuated by sentimental considerations: in short, the transaction proposed is not a commercial one. The person addressed is entreated to use his influence[1767] in the applicant’s favour; and we can only infer that he is asked to put pressure on the present owner to part with the property, probably to take for it less than the market price. Another letter[1768] is to a bishop, into whose district (territorium) the bearer, a deacon, fled for refuge to escape a Gothic raid. There he scratched a bit of church-land and sowed a little corn. He wants to get in his crop without deductions. The bishop is asked to treat him with the consideration usually shewn to the faithful[1769]; that is, not to require of him the season’s rent[1770]. If this favour is granted him, the squatter reckons that he will do as well as if he were farming in his own district, and will be duly grateful. Very likely a fair request, but Sidonius does not leave it to the mere sense of fairness in a brother bishop. To another bishop he writes a long letter[1771] of thanks for his thoughtful munificence. After the devastation of a Gothic raid, further damage had been suffered by fires among the crops. The ensuing distress affected many parts of Gaul, and to relieve it this worthy sent far and wide bountiful gifts of corn. The happy results of his action have earned the gratitude of numerous cities, and Sidonius is the mouthpiece of his own Arverni. The affair illustrates the beneficence of good ecclesiastics in troubled times. For Gaul was not enjoying tranquil repose. The barbarians were restless, and the relations[1772] between their kings and the failing empire were not always friendly. Religious differences too played a part in preventing the coalescence of Gallo-Roman and Teuton. The good bishop just referred to is praised by Sidonius as a successful converter of heretics.

The fine country houses with their vineyards and oliveyards and general atmosphere of comfort and plenty shew plainly that the invasions and raids had not desolated all the countryside. The first need of the invaders was food. Wanton destruction was not in their own interest, and the requisitioning of food-stuffs was probably their chief offence, naturally resented by those who had sown and reaped for their own consumption. If we admit this supposition, it follows that their operations, like those of other successful invaders, would be directed mainly to the lowland districts, where most of the food-stuffs were produced. Now the country houses of Sidonius and his friends were, at least most of them, situated in hilly country, often at a considerable distance from the main[1773] roads, among pleasant surroundings which these kindly and cultivated gentlemen were well qualified to enjoy. It is evident that some, perhaps many, of these snug retreats were not seriously[1774] molested, at all events in southern and south-eastern Gaul. Roughly speaking, the old and most thoroughly Romanized provinces, the chief cities of which were Lugudunum and Narbo, were still seats (indeed the chief seats) of Roman civilization. It was there that the culture of the age survived in literary effort sedulously feeding on the products and traditions of the past. Sidonius thinks it a pity[1775] that men of education and refinement should be disposed to bury their talents and capacity for public service in rural retreats, whether suburban or remote. The truth probably was that town life had ceased to be attractive to men unconcerned in trade and not warmly interested in religious partisanship. The lord of a country manor, surrounded by his dependants, could fill his store-rooms and granaries[1776] with the produce of their labour. He still had slaves[1777] to wait on him, sometimes even to work on the land. With reasonable kindliness and care on his part, he could be assured of comfort and respect, the head of a happy rustic community. The mansions of these gentry, sometimes architecturally[1778] fine buildings, were planted in spots chosen for local advantages, and the library was almost as normal a part of the establishment as the larder. Some of the owners of these places gave quite as much of their time and attention to literary trifling as to the management of their estates. The writing of letters, self-conscious and meant for publication, after the example of Pliny the younger, was a practice of Sidonius. The best specimen of this kind is perhaps the long epistle[1779] in which he describes minutely a place among the foot-hills of the Alps. Every attraction of nature seconded by art is particularized, down to the drowsy tinkling of the bells on the mountain flocks accompanied by the shepherd’s pipe. No doubt the effective agriculture[1780] of Gaul had little in common with these Arcadian scenes. The toiling coloni, serfs of a barbarian chief or a Roman noble, were all the while producing the food needed to support the population; and it is a convincing proof of the superficiality of Sidonius as an observer of his age that he practically ignores them.

To attempt a full description of society in Roman Gaul of the fifth century is quite beyond my scope. It has already been admirably done by Sir Samuel Dill. But there are a few points remaining to be discussed as relevant to my subject. That the decline of the middle class, and the passing of large areas of land into few hands, was a process forwarded by inability to pay debts incurred, is extremely probable. It had been going on for many centuries. But I do not see that the evidence of Sidonius suggests that this evil was in his time especially prevalent. The case cited[1781] is peculiar. The borrower is expressly stated not to have mortgaged any of his land. The loan was only secured by a written bond which fixed the interest[1782] at 12% per annum. This had been ten years in arrear, and the total debt was now doubled. The debtor fell ill, and pressure was put on him by officials employed to collect debts. I infer that the lack of real security prompted this dunning of a sick man, for fear the personal security might lapse by his death. Sidonius, a friend of the creditor, undertook to plead with him for at least some stay of action. This man had lately been ordained, and Sidonius (not yet himself in orders, I think,) was evidently surprised to note the simple religious life led by him in his country villa. And he needed little entreaty, but acted up to what he considered his duty to a brother Christian. He not only granted further time for payment, but remitted the whole of the accrued interest, claiming only the principal sum lent. Such conduct may have been, and probably was, exceptional; but I cannot argue from it that heartless usurers were eating up the small landowners of Gaul.

So too the case of the young man[1783] of good position who cast off a slave mistress and wedded a young lady of good family, reputation, and property, may have been exceptional. Sidonius takes it all very coolly, and mildly improves the occasion. A far more interesting affair is one in a lower station of life, of which I must say a few words. In a brief letter[1784] to his friend Pudens he says ‘The son of your nurse has raped my nurse’s daughter: it is a shocking business, and would have made bad blood between you and me, only that I saw at once you did not know what to do in the matter. You begin by clearing yourself of connivance, and then condescend to ask me to condone a fault committed in hot passion. This I grant, but only on these terms, that you release[1785] the ravisher from the status of a Sojourner, to which he belongs by birth; thus becoming his patron instead of his lord. The woman is free already. And to give her the position of a wedded wife, and not the plaything of caprice, there is but one way. Our scamp for whom you intercede must become your Client[1786] and cease to be a Tributary, thus acquiring the quality of an ordinary Commoner rather than that of a Serf.’ Sidonius is as usual ready to make the best[1787] of a bad job. From his proposal I draw the following conclusions. First, as to the nurses. The nutrix, like the Greek τροφός, held a position of trust and respect in the household, consecrated by immemorial tradition. No slave had a higher claim to manumission, if she desired it. It would seem that Sidonius’ ‘mammy’ was ending her days as a freedwoman, and hence her daughter was free. It looks as if the nurse of Pudens were still a slave, and her son an inquilinus on the estate of Pudens. He may very well have been tenant of a small holding, practically a serf-tenant. Pudens is still his dominus. His quality of inquilinus attaches to him in virtue of his origo; that is, he is registered in the census-books[1788] as a human unit belonging to a particular estate and taken into account in estimating taxation-units. Therefore he is tributarius[1789]. Sidonius proposes to divest him of the character of serf and make him an ordinary Roman citizen. The difference this would make is probably a purely legal one. Being at present a Serf, probably in strict law a slave also, his connexion with the girl is a contubernium. His manumission[1790] (for such it really is) will enable him to convert it into a matrimonium, carrying the usual legal responsibilities. The practical change in his economic position will probably be nil. He will still remain a dependent colonus, but he may perhaps enjoy the privilege of paying his own share[1791] of taxes. That Sidonius speaks of his present condition first as Inquilinate and then as Colonate, is one of many proofs that the two terms now connoted virtually[1792] the same thing. Such had already been stated as a fact in a law of Honorius, which was retained by Tribonian in the code of Justinian. Whether the inquilini were barbarian bondsmen (hörige), tenants bound to the soil like coloni but the personal property of their landlords, as Seeck holds; or usually descendants of coloni, as Weber thought; is more than I can venture to decide. I do not think that either hypothesis[1793] exhausts all the possibilities, and the point is not material to the present inquiry. In any case it can hardly be doubted that both classes consisted of men who worked with their own hands, only aided in some cases by slave labour which was far from easy to procure.

LXI. CONCLUDING CHAPTER.

After so long a discussion of the surviving evidence, it is time to sum up the results and see to what conclusions the inquiry leads us in respect of the farm life and labour of the Greco-Roman world. And first as to the figures of the picture, the characters with whose position and fortunes we are concerned. We find three classes, owner farmer labourer, clearly marked though not so as to be mutually exclusive. We can only begin with ownership in some form, however rudimentary; for the claim to resist encroachment on a more or less ill-defined area is a phenomenon of even the rude life of hunter-tribes. How private property grew out of common ownership is a question beyond the range of the present inquiry. It is enough that the owner, whether a clan or a family or an individual, has a recognized right to use the thing owned (here land) and to debar others from doing so. But it is clear that he may also be the actual manager of its use: he may even supply in person all the labour needed for turning it to account: in short, he may be his own farmer and his own labourer. And legend asserts or implies that such was the primitive condition of man when he passed from nomadic to settled existence. Differentiation of function is therefore a product of time and circumstance, a development varying in date and degree among various races and in various portions of the world. Once the stage of civilization is reached at which the regular cultivation of the same piece of land year by year is the normal means of sustaining human life, we meet the simplest economic figure, the peasant who supplies his own needs by his own methods, tilling the soil which in some sense he claims as his own. Whether it is his own permanently as an individual, or temporarily as a member of a village community, is a difference immaterial from the present point of view. Nor does it matter that his method of dealing with the land may be regulated by principles conventional in the society to which he belongs.

Delegation of management is a momentous step, destined to bring important unforeseen consequences. Many reasons may have rendered it necessary or at least convenient. It appears in two forms, the actual and relative dates of which are hardly to be determined with certainty. Either the owner keeps the profit of the undertaking and bears the loss, or some division of profit and loss between the owner and the manager is the condition of the arrangement between the two parties. Ownership is not abdicated: nor is it easy to see how, without a clear recognition of ownership, any system of delegation could arise. But on the first plan the owner owns not only the land but the service of his delegate. Whether the man be a client bound to his patron by social custom, or an agent earning a wage, or a slave the property of his master, he is merely a servant in charge. He can be superseded at any moment at the landowner’s will. The free tenant on the other hand is a creature of contract, and his existence presupposes a community in which the sanctity of deliberate bargains is considerably developed. Whether the tenant’s obligation consists in the payment of a fixed rent in money or kind, or in a share of produce varying with the season’s crop, does not matter. He is bound by special law, however rudimentary; and it is the interest of the community to see that such law is kept in force: for no one would enter into such bargains if their fulfilment were not reasonably assured. Whether a certain reluctance to enter into such a relation may perhaps account for the rare and doubtful appearance of tenancy in early Roman tradition, or whether it is to be set down simply to defects of record, I do not venture to decide. The landlord’s obligation is to allow his tenant the enjoyment and free use of a definite piece of land on certain terms for a stipulated period. Further stipulations, giving him the right to insist on proper cultivation and the return of the land in good condition at the end of the tenancy, were doubtless soon added at the dictation of experience. That tenant farmers with their families usually supplied labour as well as management, is surely not to be doubted. That, in the times when we begin to hear of this class as non-exceptional, they also employed slave labour, is attested: that we do not hear of them as engaging free wage-earners, may or may not be an accidental omission.

Labour, simply as labour, without regard to the possible profit or loss attending its results, was no more an object of desire, engaged in for its own sake, in ancient times than it is now. Domestication of animals, a step implying much attentive care and trouble, was a great advance in the direction of securing a margin of profit on which mankind could rely for sustenance and comfort. The best instance is perhaps that of the ox, whose services, early exploited to the full, were cheaply obtained at the cost of his rearing and keep. Hence he was kept. But in ages of conflict, when might was right, the difference[1794] between an ox-servant and a man-servant had in practice no existence, and the days of theory were as yet in the far future. A human enemy, captured and spared, could be put to use in the same way as a domesticated ox. His labour, minus the cost of his keep, left a margin of profit to his owner. At the moment of capture, his life was all he had: therefore his conqueror had deprived him of nothing, and the bargain was in his favour, though economically in his owner’s interest. No wonder then that our earliest records attest the presence of the slave. Even nomad tribes were attended by slaves[1795] in their migrations, nor indeed has this custom been wholly unknown in modern times. On the other hand it is remarkable how very little we hear of wage-earning labour in ancient agriculture. Nothing seems to imply that it was ever a normal resource of cultivation. When employed, it is almost always for special work at seasons of pressure, and it seems to have remained on this footing, with a general tendency to decline. In other words, the margin of profit on the results of wage-earning labour seemed to employers less than that on the results of slave labour, so far as ordinary routine was concerned. And we are not in a position to shew that in their given circumstances their judgment was wrong. But we need to form some notion of the position of the wage-earning labourer in a civilization still primitive.

The main point ever to be borne in mind is that the family household was a close union of persons bound together by ties of blood and religion under a recognized Head. A common interest in the family property carried with it the duty of common labour. The domestic stamp was on everything done and designed. Even the slave had a humble place in the family life, and family religion did not wholly ignore him. He was there, and was meant to stay there. Farm-work was the chief item in the duties of the household, and he bore, and was meant to bear, his full share of it. But the hired labourer stood in no such relation to the household union, however friendly his connexion with his employer might be. He did his work, took his wage, and went: no tie was severed by his going, and any other person of like capacity could fill his place if and when the need for help-service arose. In short, his labour was non-domestic, irregular, occasional: and therefore less likely to receive notice in such records as have come down to us. But if we conclude (as I am inclined to do) that wage-labour was not much employed on the land in early times, we must admit that this is rather an inference than an attested tradition.

The distinction between domestic regular service and non-domestic help-service is essential, and on a small holding from which a family raised its own sustenance the line of division was easy to draw. Later economic changes tended to obscure it, and we find Roman jurists[1796] of the Empire striving to discover a full and satisfactory answer to a much later question, namely the distinction between a domestic and a rustic slave. But by that time ‘domestic’ appears as ‘urban,’ for the effect of centuries has been to draw a really important line of division, not between slave and free but between two classes of slaves. There is however in the conditions of early slavery, when ‘domestic’ and ‘rustic’ were merely two aspects of the same thing, another point not to be overlooked, since it probably had no little influence on the development of human bondage. It is this. The human slave differs from the domesticated ox through possession of what we call reason. If he wished to escape, he was capable of forming deep-laid plans for that purpose. Now the captives in border wars would be members of neighbouring tribes. If enslaved, the fact of being still within easy reach of their kindred was a standing temptation to run away, sure as they would be of a welcome in their former homes. No kindness, no watchfulness, on the master’s part would suffice to deaden or defeat such an influence. To solve the problem thus created, a way was found by disposing of captives to aliens more remote and getting slaves brought from places still further away. This presupposes some commercial intercourse. In the early Greek tradition we meet with this slave-trade at work as a branch of maritime traffic chiefly in the hands of Phoenician seamen. In Italy we find a trace of it in the custom[1797] of selling ‘beyond Tiber,’ that is into alien Etruria. At what stage of civilization exactly this practice became established it is rash to guess: we cannot get behind it. The monstrous slave-markets of the historical periods shew that it developed into a normal institution of the ancient world. But it is not unreasonable to suppose that an alien from afar was less easily absorbed into his master’s family circle than a man of a neighbouring community though of another tribe. Are we to see in this the germ of a change by which the house-slave became less ‘domestic’ and tended to become a human chattel?

The exploitation of some men’s labour for the maintenance of others could and did take another form in ages of continual conflict. Successful invaders did not always drive out or destroy the earlier inhabitants of a conquered land. By retaining them as subjects to till the soil, and making the support of their rulers the first charge upon their produce, the conquerors provided for their own comfort and became a leisured noble class. In the Greek world we find such aristocracies of a permanently military character, as in Laconia and Thessaly. Colonial expansion reproduced the same or very similar phenomena abroad, as in the cases of Heraclea Pontica and Syracuse. The serfdom of such subject populations was a very different thing[1798] from slavery. It had nothing domestic about it. There is no reason to suppose that the serf was under any constraint beyond the regular performance of certain fixed duties, conditions imposed by the state on its subjects, not the personal orders of an individual owner. In some cases at least the serf seems to have enjoyed a measure of protection[1799] under public law. Whether the original Roman plebs stood on much the same footing as the Greek serfs is perhaps doubtful, but their condition presents certain analogies. The main truth is that the desire of conquerors to profit by the labour of the conquered was and is an appetite almost universal: moral revulsion against crude forms of this exploitation is of modern, chiefly English, origin; even now it is in no small degree a lesson from the economic experience of ages. But it is well to remember that we use ‘serfdom’ also as the name for the condition of rural peasantry in the later Roman Empire, and that this again is a different relation. For it is not a case of conquered people serving their conquerors. Rather is it an affliction of those who by blood or franchise represent the conquering people. Step by step they sink under the loss of effective freedom, though nominally free, bound down by economic and social forces; influences that operate with the slow certainty of fate until their triumph is finally registered by imperial law.

That the institution of Property is a matter of slow growth, is now generally admitted by sincere inquirers. It had reached a considerable stage of development when a clan or household (still more when an individual) was recognized as having an exclusive right to dispose of this or that material object presumably useful to others also. For instance, in the right of an owner to do as he would with an ox or a slave. Individual property in land was certainly a later development, the appropriation being effected by a combination of personal acquisitiveness with economic convenience. From my present point of view the chief interest of the property-question is in its connexion with debt-slavery. That farmers, exposed to the vicissitudes of seasons, are peculiarly liable to incur debts, is well known from experience ancient and modern. But ancient Law, if rudimentary, was also rigid; and tradition depicts for us the small peasant as a victim of the wealthy whose larger capital enabled them to outlast the pressure of bad times. How far the details of this picture are to be taken literally as evidence of solid fact has not unreasonably been doubted. But that a farmer in straits could pledge not only his land but his person as security for a debt seems hardly open to question. For we find the practice still existing in historical periods, and political pressure exerted to procure mitigation of the ancient severity. Now, if a man gave himself in bondage to a creditor until such time as his debt should be discharged, he became that creditor’s slave for a period that might only end with his own life. Here we have another way in which the man of property could get the disposal of regular labour without buying a slave in the market or turning to work himself. A later form of the practice, in which a debtor worked off his liability[1800] by service at an estimated rate, a method of liquidation by the accumulation of unpaid wages, seems to have been a compromise avoiding actual slavery. Evidently subsequent to the abolition of debt-slavery, it died out in Italy, perhaps partly owing to the troublesome friction that would surely arise in enforcing the obligation.

It is natural to ask, if we find small trace of eagerness to labour in person on the land, and ample tradition of readiness to devolve that labour on slaves and subjects, how comes it that we find agriculture in honour, traditionally regarded as the manual labour beyond all others not unworthy of a freeman? To reply that human life is supported by the produce of the land is no sufficient answer. To recognize the fact of necessity does not account for the sentiment of dignity. Now, in the formation of such unions as may fairly be called States, the commonest if not universal phenomenon is the connexion of full citizenship with ownership of land. Political movement towards democracy is most significantly expressed in the struggles of landless members of inferior right to gain political equality. Whether the claim is for allotments of land, carrying a share of voting-power, or for divorcing the voting-power from landholding, does not matter much here. At any rate it was the rule that no alien could own land within the territory of the state, and state and territory were coextensive. Only special treaties between states, or a solemn act of the sovran power in a state, could create exceptions to the rule. From this situation I would start in attempting to find some answer to the above question. In a village community I think it is generally agreed that all true members had a share of the produce, the great majority as cultivators, holding lots of land, not as tenants at will or by contract, but in their own right, though the parcels might be allotted differently from time to time. If a few craftsmen were left to specialize in necessary trades for the service of all, and drew their share in the form of sustenance provided by the cultivating members, the arrangement presented no insuperable difficulty on a small scale. But the tillers of the soil were the persons on whose exertions the life of the community primarily and obviously depended. The formation of a larger unit, a State, probably by some successful warrior chief, made a great change in the situation. A city stronghold established a centre of state life and government, and villages exchanged the privileges and perils of isolation for the position of local hamlets attached to the common centre of the state, and in this new connexion developing what we may fairly call political consciousness. Under the new dispensation, what with growth of markets, the invention of coined money, and greater general security, the movement towards individual property proceeded fast. Noble families engrossed much of the best land: and tradition[1801] credibly informs us that in one mode or other they imposed the labour of cultivation on the poorer citizens, of course on very onerous terms.

At this point in the inquiry some help may be got from taking the military view. War, at least defensive war, was a possibility ever present. Kings, and the aristocracies that followed them, had as their prime function to secure the safety of the state. A sort of regular force was provided by the obligation of army service that rested upon all full citizens. The warrior nobles and their kinsmen formed a nucleus. But the free peasant farmers were indispensable in the ranks, and, as their farms usually lay near the frontier, they furnished a hardy and willing militia for border warfare. The craftsmen, smith potter cobbler etc, were now more concentrated in the city, and were always regarded as ill-fitted for service in the field. Naturally the classes that bore a direct part in defence of the state stood higher in general esteem. But to say this is not to say that bodily labour on the land was, as labour, honoured for its own sake. The honour belonged to those who, owning land, either worked it with their own hands or employed the labour of others. I can find no trace of traditional respect for the labourer as labourer until a much later age, when a dearth of free rustic labourers had begun to be felt. Then it appeared in the form of yearning[1802] for a vanished past, side by side with humanitarian views in relation to slavery. Meanwhile a stage had been traversed in which slavery was recognized as necessary in spite of its admitted evils, and therefore requiring justification; a movement most clearly illustrated by the special pleading of Aristotle. That great writer was fully alive to the manifold merits of the farmer class as citizens and producers, but his trust in the power of self-interest proves him a confirmed individualist. How to combine self-interest with patriotic devotion to the common welfare is the vital problem, even now only solved ideally on paper. That coldly-reasoned conclusions of thinkers were really the foundation of the esteem in which we find the working farmer held, I cannot believe. Much more likely is it that it sprang mainly from immemorial tradition of a time when ownership and cultivation went together, and that theory merely absorbed and revived what was still an indistinct impression in the minds of men.

The Greeks had a significant word, ἀυτουργός, the usage of which may serve to illustrate my meaning. That it connotes the fact of a man’s bearing a personal part in this or that work is clear on the face of it. That no other person also bears a part, is sometimes implied by the context, but it is not necessarily contained in the word itself. To put it differently, he does his own work, not necessarily all his own work. I note two points in connexion with it that seem to me important. First, it is so often used as descriptive of rustic labour that it seems to have carried with it associations of farm-life: most of the other uses are almost metaphorical, some distinctly so. Secondly, I have never found it applied to the case of a slave. Why? I think, because it conveyed the further notion of working not only yourself but for yourself. If in some passages it is not quite certain that an owner (rather than a tenant) is referred to, surely this extension of meaning is not such as to cause surprise. It is not enough to suggest serious doubt that the common and full sense of the word was that a man did work with his own hands on his own account on his own land. This was the character to which immemorial tradition pointed; and, whenever tenancy under landlords began, the word fitted the working tenant-farmer well enough. The Romans had the tradition in the most definite form, though Latin furnished no equivalent word. Their literature, moralizing by examples and unapt for theory, used it as material for centuries. But neither in the Greek world nor in Italy can I detect any reason for believing that the peasant farmer, idealized by later ages, is rightly to be conceived as a person unwilling to employ slave labour—if and when he could get it. The tradition, in which rustic slaves appear from very early times, seems to me far more credible than late legends of a primitive golden age in which there were no slaves at all. That a man, to be enslaved, must first have been free, is a piece of speculation with which I am not here concerned.

Tradition then, looking back to times when landowner and citizen were normally but different sides of the same character, both terms alike implying the duty of fighting for the state, idealized and glorified this character with great but pardonable exaggeration of virtues probably not merely fictitious. The peasant citizen and producer was its hero. As the devolution of bodily labour upon slaves or hirelings became more common with the increase of commerce and urban life, and the solid worth of a patriot peasantry became more evident in the hour of its decay, men turned with regret to the past. And the contrast of the real present with an idealized past naturally found a significant difference in the greater or less willingness of men to work with their own hands, particularly on the land. But it was the labour of free citizens, each bearing an active part in the common responsibilities of the state and enjoying its common protection, that was glorified, not labour as in itself meritorious or healthy. The wholesomeness of rustic toil was not ignored, but to urge it as a motive for bodily exertion was a notion developed by town-bred thinkers. That it coloured later tradition is not wonderful: its recognition is most clearly expressed in the admission of superior ‘corporal soundness’ in the sparely-fed and hard-worked slave or wage-earner. But labour as labour was never, so far as I can learn, dignified and respected in Greco-Roman civilization. Poverty, not choice, might compel a man to do all his own work; but, if he could and did employ hired or slave labour also, then he was an ἀυτουργός none the less. This I hold to be an underlying fact that Roman tradition in particular is calculated to obscure. It was voluntary labour, performed in a citizen’s own interest and therefore a service to the state, that received sentimental esteem.

The power of military influences in ancient states is often cited as a sufficient explanation of the social fact that non-military bodily labour was generally regarded with more or less contempt. The army being the state in arms, the inferiority of those who did not form part of it though able-bodied was manifest to all. This is true as far as it goes, but there was something more behind. Why does not the same phenomenon appear in modern states with conscript armies, such as France or Italy or above all Switzerland? I think the true answer is only to be found by noting a difference between ancient and modern views as to the nature and limits of voluntary action. It is only of states in which membership is fairly to be called citizenship that I am speaking; and as usual it is Greek conditions and Greek words that supply distinct evidence. Not that the Roman conditions were materially different, but they were perhaps less clearly conceived, and the record is less authentic and clear. Now, beyond the loyal obedience due from citizen to state, any sort of constraint determining the action of one free man by the will of others was feared and resented to a degree of which we cannot easily form an adequate notion. In the gradual emancipation of the commons from the dominion of privileged nobles, the long struggle gave a passionate intensity to the natural appetite for freedom. And the essence of freedom was the power of self-disposal. This power was liable to be lost permanently by sale into slavery, but also from time to time by the effect of temporary engagements. The most obvious instance of the latter condition was the bondage created by unpaid debt. Hence the persistent and eventually successful fight to make it illegal to take a borrower’s person as security for his debt. But, suppose the debt cancelled by the seizure of his goods, the man was left a pauper. His only resource was to work for wages, and this placed him for the time of his engagement at the full disposal[1803] of his employer. If he was not a master’s slave for good and all, he would be passing from master to master, ever freshly reminded of the fact that his daily necessities subjected him to the will of others, nullifying his freeman’s power of self-disposal. If he worked side by side with slaves, there was a further grievance. For the slave, in whom his owner had sunk capital, had to be kept fed and housed to retard his depreciation: the free labourer depended[1804] on his wage, liable to fail. The situation, thus crudely stated, was intolerable. In practice it was met, first by devotion to handicrafts as a means of livelihood in which the winning of custom by skill relieved the worker from direct dependence on a single master; but also by allotments of land in annexed territory, and sometimes (as at Athens) by multiplication of paid state-employments.

Of ordinary artisans, as distinct from artists, it may be said that their position varied according as their special trades were more or less esteemed by contemporary sentiment. The successful could and did employ[1805] helpers, usually slaves. In urban populations they were an important element, particularly in those where military considerations were not predominant. The accumulation of capital, and the introduction of industries on a larger scale in factory-workshops with staffs of slaves, may have affected some trades to their disadvantage, but on the whole the small-scale craftsmen seem generally[1806] to have held their ground. Unskilled labour on the other hand was generally despised. It was as a matter of course chiefly performed by slaves. If a citizen was compelled by want to hire out his bodily strength, this was not voluntary: complete submission to another’s will, even for a short time, made the relation on his part virtually servile. Accordingly philosophers, when they came to discuss such topics, came to the conclusion that the need of such unskilled labour proved slavery to be ‘according to nature,’ a necessary appliance of human society. When the Stoic defined a slave as a lifelong hireling, he gave sharp expression to what had long been felt as a true analogy. For, if the slave was a lifelong hireling, the hireling must be a temporary slave. Romans could borrow the thought, but with them practice had preceded theory.

In making comparisons between wage-earning ancient and modern we come upon a difficulty which it is hardly possible to set aside or overcome. A slave could be hired from his owner, just as a freeman could be hired from himself. The difference between the two cases would be clearly marked[1807] in the modern world, and language would leave no room for misunderstanding. But many passages in ancient writers leave it quite uncertain whether the hirelings referred to are free or slave. The point is an important one, particularly to inquirers who attempt to estimate the relative economic efficiency of free and slave labour. For the immediate interest of the freeman is to get a maximum of wage for a minimum of work: the ultimate interest of the hired slave was often to improve his own prospect of manumission. The custom was to allow the slave to retain a small portion of his wage. Now this stimulus to exertion was manifestly to the interest of the employer, who may even have made it a part of his bargain with the owner. The slave, alive to the chance of laying up a little store for the eventual purchase of his freedom, was induced to work well in order to be kept employed on these terms. The owner drew a steady income from his capital sunk in slaves, and the system was thus convenient to all parties. We may add that, by causing a slave to take thought for his own future, this plan encouraged him to take reasonable care of his own health, and so far retarded his progressive deterioration as an investment; while his owner stood to recover the slave’s hoarded wage-portion in the form of redemption-money on manumission of his worn-out slave. There is reason to think that slave labour under these conditions was often more efficient than free. Unhappily we have no direct discussion of the question from ancient observers, who did not take this point of view, though well aware of the influence of prospective manumission in producing contentment.

But how far was this comparatively genial arrangement applicable to the ruder forms of unskilled labour? Take for instance mining. Freemen would have none of it, and the inhuman practices of exploiters were notorious. Yet hired slaves were freely employed. Owners knew that their slaves were likely to waste rapidly under the methods in use, and at Athens a common stipulation was that on the expiry of a contract the gang hired should be returned in equal number, the employer making good the losses certain to occur in their ranks. Here we have the mere human chattel, hopeless and helpless, never likely to receive anything but his keep, as an engine receives its fuel and oil, but differing in this, that he was liable to cruel punishment. Such labourers could not work for a freedom that they had no prospect of living to enjoy. And how about the case of agriculture? That freemen did work for wages on farms we know, but we hear very little of them, and that little almost entirely as helpers at certain seasons. So far as I have been able to learn, free wage-labour did not really compete with slave labour in agriculture: moreover the hired man might be a hired slave, while migratory harvesters, probably freemen, appear at least in some cases as gangs hired for the job under a ganger of their own, responsible to the employer for their conduct and efficiency. Most significant is the almost complete absence of evidence that rustic slaves had any prospect of manumission. In former chapters I have commented on this fact and noted the few faint indications of such an arrangement. At all events the crude plantation-system, while it lasted, was a work-to-death system, though worn-out survivors may have had a better lot than miners, if allowed to exist as old retainers on the estate. But cultivation by slave labour for the purpose of raising an income for the landlord was, even in its later improved organization, a system implying brutal callousness, if not downright cruelty. Slave stewards and overseers, at the mercy of the master themselves, were naturally less concerned to spare the common hands than to escape the master’s wrath. When writers on agriculture urge that on all grounds it is wise to keep punishments down to a minimum, the point of their advice is surely a censure of contemporary practice.

Now in modern times, humanitarian considerations being assumed, the prevailing point of view has been more and more a strictly economic and industrial one. It has been assumed that the freedom of an individual consists first and foremost in the freedom to dispose of his own labour on the best available terms. And this freedom rests on freedom to move from place to place in search of the best labour-market from time to time. But the movement and the bargaining have been regarded as strictly voluntary, as in a certain sense they are. The power to migrate or emigrate with the view of ‘bettering himself’ is conferred on the wage-earner by modern facilities for travel, and new countries readily absorb additional labour. But experience has shewn that free bargaining for wages is not seldom illusory, since the man of capital can bide his time, while the poor man cannot. Still, when every allowance has been made on this score, it is true that the modern labourer, through freedom of movement, has far more power of self-disposal than the wage-earner of the Greco-Roman world. That his position is strengthened and assured by the possession of political power, is not without ancient analogies: but a difference in degree if not in kind is created by the wide extension of the franchise in modern states, and its complete separation in principle from the ownership of land. That is, the basis of citizenship is domicile: for citizen parentage is not required, but easily supplemented[1808] by legal nationalization. Moreover, religion is no longer a necessary family inheritance, but the choice of individuals who can generally gratify their preferential sentiments in surroundings other than their birthplace. Compare this position with the narrow franchises of antiquity and their ineffectiveness on any large scale, their normally hereditary character, the local and domestic limitation of religious ties, the restricted facilities for travel, not to mention its ever-present perils. Remember that to reside in another state as an alien did not, in default of special treaty or act of legislative grace, give the resident any claim to civic rights in his place of residence, while misfortune might at any time reduce him to slavery in a foreign land. Surely under such conditions the limits of purely voluntary action were narrow indeed. The lure of the wage and the fear of unemployment are often a severe form of pressure, but they are, as fetters on freedom, a mere nothing in comparison with this.

Considerations such as those set forth in the preceding paragraphs shew that in treating of ancient agriculture and farm-labour we are apparently faced by a curious paradox. Cultivation of land (including the keeping of live stock) is an honourable pursuit. That good health, sustenance, even comfort and profit, are its natural attendants, is not doubted. But the position of the labouring hands is painful and mean, so much so that a common punishment for urban house-slaves was to send them to work on a farm. The rustic slave’s lot differed for the better from that of the mine-slave in the healthier nature of the occupation, but in little else. And this degradation inevitably reacted on the estimate of rustic wage-earners, whenever employed. There may have been less repugnance to work side by side with slaves than has been felt in modern times, when a marked colour-line implied the disgrace of a ‘white’ man doing ‘niggers’ work.’ But it is not to be doubted that in agriculture as in other occupations the presence of slavery did degrade labour, at all events so soon as agriculture put on anything of an industrial character. The really ‘respectable’ person was the man who directed the operations, the γεωργός, agricola, or colonus (in the original sense): he was the man who worked the land and made it yield crops, whether he took part in the actual digging and ploughing or not. The larger the scale, the more he confined himself to direction, necessarily; but he was the producer, a pillar of public economy, none the less. He had provided the labour, bought or hired; in effect, the labour was his own. With the toiling yeoman farmer of tradition he had this in common, that both worked for themselves, not for another. And this position, attractive in all societies, was marked out with peculiar distinctness through the institution of slavery underlying the social fabric. Exploitation of man by man, the first beginnings of which elude our search and are only ascertained by inference, suggests some sort of superiority in the upper party. At all events the master, the man who has the upper hand, gets the credit of achievement, and in agriculture as elsewhere the subordinate operative is inevitably forgotten. It is from this point of view that we must regard the fine Roman legends of sturdy farmer-citizens, the fathers of the Republic. They are idylls conveying truth, dressed up by the imagination of a later age: and have their place in the region where history and poetry meet and blend. We must not gather from them that slavery was exceptional or a fact of no importance. Tradition habitually ignores what is normal and therefore assumed. The fairer inference is that, as I have already remarked, slavery was in those early days still a family institution, not an industrial system.

Some help towards the understanding of the different position of manual labour in ancient times as compared with modern may be got by considering Abolitionism. That a slave is a man, and as such not to be wholly ignored in respect of the claims of common humanity; that slave-labour is listless and ineffective, giving poor returns in proportion to the strength employed; these conclusions, moral and economic, were reached by the thinkers of the ancient world while their civilization was in full bloom. Why then do we find no movement corresponding to the Abolitionism of modern times? Two things were obviously necessary for such a movement; the motive to inspire it, and the force to give effect to it. Let men once be convinced that slavery is both wrong and unprofitable, and let them have the power to insist on putting an end to it, Abolitionism in some form or other is the necessary result.

Now in speaking of ancient conditions we must never lose sight of the fact that in its origin slavery was a favour. By the undissembled rule of force the conquered only retained his life through the mercy of the conqueror. By a contract tacit or expressed he was pledged for life to the service and profit of his master. And the master could, if his interest pointed that way, make over his rights to a third party. Hence the growth of a slave-market, and the relation of master and slave no longer was normally that of individual conqueror and conquered. But the original notion was by no means extinct, and it continued to colour the current view of slavery as ‘natural,’ a thing of course, an unquestioned social fact. Nor was there anything in the condition of the slave to arouse a feeling of horror, so long as patriarchal rule prevailed. If the Head of the family possessed absolute power over the slave, his power over members of the family in general was in kind the same. The bondman, a humble dependant rather than a mere chattel, was in a sense also a member of the family and under the protection of the household gods. What was there for an observer, let him be ever so kind-hearted, to object to? Accordingly, as the state developed, it too kept slaves of its own, employing them in mean functions for which it was needful to have a staff always at hand. In short, the institution was taken for granted, and growing intercourse with foreigners only served to reveal its universal prevalence.

How came it then that in course of time humanitarian scruples arose, and questioners were found to argue that the system was ‘unnatural’ and wrong? The answer must be sought in the application of an originally domestic institution to industrial ends. Once the stage was reached at which the products of labour were habitually put on the market, and the producer got his living by their regular sale, it was soon discovered that to produce and deal on a larger scale was more economical, and therefore more profitable, than on a smaller one. In the handicrafts this was so obvious that slave assistants were commonly kept by tradesmen: it was important to be sure of having the necessary help when wanted. The same was the case in the professions based on special training: the surgeon, the architect, the surveyor, the banker, employed slave subordinates, and had often been slaves themselves. In all these departments, not to mention domestic service, the position of the slave was affected by two important considerations. First, he was one of a few, and under immediate observation, so that escape from servitude was practically impossible. Secondly, there was a reasonable chance of earning manumission by long faithful service. But there were occupations in which it was far more difficult to reconcile the interests of the slave with those of the master. Such were the exploitation of mines and quarries, in which labour was simply applied in the form of brute force under direction. The direction, usually entrusted to slave or freedman overseers, was generally unsympathetic, sometimes cruel; for the overseer’s first thought was to please his master, even if he could only do so by working the slaves to death. The extension of agriculture as a means of profit rather than subsistence created conditions of the same kind in this occupation. It was here that the monstrous abuses incidental to slavery were most strikingly displayed. For, while quarries and mines were only worked in a few localities, the plan of working great landed estates by the labour of slave-gangs was applicable to vast areas of the best soil. And in Africa Sicily and Italy we find it so applied for the profit of the nobles and capitalists of a conquering race.

The evils of this system may be set down to the account of obsequious stewards heartlessly wringing profit for their masters out of human flesh and blood. But we must not ignore two considerations which suggest that the root of the evil lay not in the caprice or greed of individuals but in the attempt to carry on rural industry by slave labour at all. In the country, opportunities of escape were many; the slave-prison and the fetters could hardly be dispensed with if you meant to keep your farm-hands at disposal. And manumission, as a means of encouraging good service, was evidently not of much avail in country places. For after long years of exhausting labour the worn-out slave would be unable to earn a living by hard bodily work; and he knew no other. He had been bought as a flesh-and-blood machine; as such, to manumit him while still efficient would be a sacrifice of sunk capital for which nobody was prepared. It seems that the ordinary practice was to keep him at work till he could work no longer, and then to let him linger on the estate as an invalid retainer, feeding on what he could get and decaying in peace. But the industrializing of agriculture, heartlessly selfish in its aims, tempted landlords to shirk the unprofitable maintenance of spent labourers. When a slave was no longer worth his keep, it might pay to sell him at once for what he would fetch. There was thus a mouth less to be fed, and the problem of how to turn the remnant of his strength to account was shifted on to his new owner. This plan, approved by the elder Cato as a detail of farm-economy, marks the change of relations between master and slave in rustic life. The old domestic relation has disappeared in the brutal exploitation of a human animal for immediate profit. The crudely industrial system reproduced on great estates the horrid phenomena of the quarry and the mine.

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