Agricola: Agriculture and Rustic Life in the Greco-Roman World

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 points1073 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 carriers1074 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 Italy1075 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 adventurers1076 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 assimilate1077 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 evidence1078 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 pieces1079 (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 Domitian1080 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 further1081 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 assurances1082 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 out1083 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 Trajan1084 not only founding colonies in Italy but forbidding colonists to be drawn from Italy for settlement in the Provinces; a restriction said to have been1085 disregarded by Marcus. But one important sequel of the frontier wars of Marcus, in which German mercenaries were employed, was the transplanting1086 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’s1087 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 reduction1088 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-lands1089 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 Italian1090 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 organized1091 as coloniae. When the town of Uchi Maius received the title of colonia from the emperor Severus, it called itself1092 colonia Mariana, like the one founded by Marius in Corsica. And the same title appears in the case1093 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 record1094 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 Gaul1095 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 remembered1096 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.

Musonius1097 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 extracts1098 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 resource1099, 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 state1100 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 hands1101 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 does1102 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 manly1103 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 respect1104 to what is good and honourable, is beautiful and conducive to happiness and divine favour. Hence it was that the god (Delphic Apollo) proclaimed1105 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 Professors1106 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 difficult1107 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 service1108 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 these1109 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 traditions1110 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, responded1111 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 denounced1112 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 Regulus1113, 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 proportion1114 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’s1115 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 criminal1116 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 view1117 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-cost1118 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 instance1119 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 land1120 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 men1121 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 Egypt1122 as a vital food-centre had been shewn quite recently in strengthening the cause of Vespasian. No wonder Pliny is uneasy, and looks back regretfully1123 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 landlords1124 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 us1125 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 Tables1126 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 offence1127 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 Cato1128 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 venture1129 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 kind1130 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 business1131 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 story1132 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 importance1133 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 hillsides1134 is cross-wise, and so toilsome to man that he even has to do ox-team’s work: at least the mountain peoples1135 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 contrast1137 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-gangs1138 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 panegyric1139 on Italy, and enumerates the various elements of her preeminence among the countries of the world, he includes the supply of slave-labour1140 in the list. Spain perhaps comes next, but here too the organized employment1141 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 quotation1142 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 emphasized1143 by the addition ‘as if he had made away with his colonus.’ So of the fertilizing Nile he says ‘discharging the duty1144 of a colonus.’ In the passage where he warns his readers against too high farming1145 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 Vergil1146 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 Georgics1147 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 place1148 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-earners1149 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-supply1150 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 cargoes1151 in reserve. The slave rising of 24 AD in south-eastern Italy, and its suppression, have also been mentioned1152 above. These passages, and a passing reference to the unproductiveness1153 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 campaign1154 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 debtor1155 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 estate1156 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 rate1157 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 speculations1158 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 them1159 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 notes1160 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 plains1161 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-system1162 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 connexion1163 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 combines1164 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 rent1165 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 passage1166 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 slaves1167 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 inscription1168 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 Lamasba1169, 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 provincial1170 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 hours1171 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 local1172 government. Names of 43 possessors remain on the surviving portion of the stone. In form they are generally Roman1173. 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 treatise1174 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. Landowners1175 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 Tibur1176 seems to have had an old right to a branch of the Anio vetus. The aqua Crabra had been a spring serving Tusculum1177, 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 decrees1178 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 staff1179 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 trouble1180 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 unaccommodating1181 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 grew1182 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 connivance1183 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 aqueduct1184 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 inscriptions1185 of this period relative to alimenta, and Mommsen’s interpretation1186 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 benefaction1187 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 provide1188 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 service1189 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 compelled1190 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 said1191 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 remarks1192 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 out1193 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 own1194 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 supplied1195 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 case1196 of an actor living (like his master) in town, not on the farms, and having a wife1197 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. Mommsen1198 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 Columella1199 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 deplores1200 the decay and depopulation of his native land, but the most vivid and significant picture preserved to us is one conveyed in a public address1201 by the famous lecturer Dion of Prusa, better known as Dion1202 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 emperor1203 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 city1204. 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 necessary1205 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 reaction1206 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 sometimes1207 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 peasant1208 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 letting1209 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 claim1210 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 landlord1211, whether farming for his own account or letting his land to tenants: the steward1212 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 earlier1213 version, referring to slaves. The cowardice of the hireling shepherd points a notable moral. The rich who defraud the reaper of his hire1214 meet with scathing denunciation. For to him that worketh the reward is not reckoned1215 of grace but of debt.

This last proposition seems to furnish a key to the remarkable parable1216 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 debts1217 and usury are referred to as matters of course, and where masters entrusted money1218 to their slaves for purposes of trade, where sales of land1219 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 suburban1220 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 resident1221 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 them1222 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 remarks1223 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 refers1224 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 them1225 the hunter sends a hare, the fisherman some fish, and the colonus a kid. The venator and piscator are very likely his slaves. In protesting1226 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 passage1227 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 passages1228 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 land1229 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 seen1230 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 refers1231 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. Pliny1232 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 gossip1233 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 money1234 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 epigrams1235 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 suburbanum1236 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 daughters1237 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 slaves1238 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 book1239 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 year1240 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 evidence1241 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 sordidus1242 (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 roof1243 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 instances1244 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 tomb1245 of some former owner or his family. A slice of the land, so many feet in length and breadth, was often reserved1246 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. Altars1247 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 scenes1248 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-consul1249 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 bread1250 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 land1251 as his reward for wounds suffered. He has to attend the Assembly before his wounds1252 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 day1253 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 instance1254 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 surroundings1255 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 deadlier1256 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 contrast1257 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 age1258 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 change1259 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 estates1260 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 patrons1261 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 earned1262 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 lands1263 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 passages1264 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 himself1265 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 included1266 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 mention1267 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 desire1268 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 devoted1269 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 Martial1270. 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 athletics1271 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 declares1272 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 manumissions1273 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 time1274 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 fellows1275 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 transaction1276 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 letter1277 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 third1278 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 sorry1279 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 letter1280 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 same1281 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 hunting1282 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 weakness1283 of those who farm it. For the late landlord several times distrained1284 on the tenants’ goods, lessening their arrears1285 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 equipped1286 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 scarcity1287 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 invested1288 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 vintage1289 was often poor, sometimes a failure. Drought and hailstorms played havoc1290 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 unsafe1291 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 grumbling1292 tenants. He was sometimes utterly puzzled what to do. If inclined to make abatements1293 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 policy1294, 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 about1295 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 produce1296 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-slaves1297 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 letter1298 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 compelled1299 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 years1300 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 they1301 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 farms1302 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 friend1303 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 mentions1304 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 devastation1305 caused by a Tiber flood. More notable as throwing light on conditions of life in rural Italy is a letter1306 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, whether1307 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 worth1308 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 Provinces1309.

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 obedience1310 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 case1311 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 substitutes1312 (vicarii dati), the fault is with those who sent them: but if they presented themselves as volunteers, well knowing1313 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 attractive1314 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 slaves1315 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 endowment1316 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 convey1317 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 labour1318 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 Julius1319 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-condition1320 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 kidnapping1321 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 necessary1322 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 sharply1323 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 discourage1324 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 sums1325 to landlords free of interest on good security for the principal. The growth of humane sentiment toward slaves is marked by the ordinance of Claudius1326 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 order1327 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 describe1328 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 contractor1329 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-dealer1330, 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 Domitian1331, 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, Cleanthes1332 drawing water for wages, Plautus1333 hired by the baker to grind at his mill, and Protagoras1334 earning his living as a common porter. In one passage several slaves1335 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 African1336 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 Province1337 was notoriously addicted to litigation, and a modern scholar1338 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 auctioneer1339 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 brigandage1340 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 military1341 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 rustics1342 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 anecdote1343 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 autocrat1344 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 settlement1345 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 poor1346 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 dogs1347 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-gardener1348. 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-farmer1349 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 works1350 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 times1351 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 shewn1352 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 reply1353 is as follows. ‘Whether you keep slaves to cultivate your farm, or whether you have an arrangement with your neighbours for exchange1354 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 deserved1355 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 asserts1356 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-days1357 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 consists1358 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 ridiculous1359. ‘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 stewards1360 and other head-servants on her estates. And in general it has been well said1361 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 description1362 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.