INTRODUCTORY
The inquiry of which the results are set forth in these pages was undertaken in the endeavour to satisfy my own mind on a very important question in the history of the past. Circumstances have compelled me to interest myself in the civilization of the Greco-Roman world. And it has always been a painful disadvantage to students of the ‘classical’ systems that the available record neither provides adequate labour-statistics nor furnishes a criticism of existing labour-conditions from the point of view of the handworkers. Accustomed as we are nowadays to continual agitations for increase of wages and reduction of working hours, with centuries of strange experience in the working of Poor-laws, we are in no danger of undervaluing the importance of the wage-earner in our social fabric. We are rather in danger of forgetting other (and perhaps not less vital) considerations, under pressure of the material claims of the labourer and his hire. Power goes by votes; the handworker is now a voter; and the voice of the handworker is loud in the land. No scheme is too wild to find advocates; and those who venture to assert the right of invention, organization and thrift to superior recognition as public benefits often think it necessary to adopt an apologetic tone. Now it may be that this is a passing phase, and that the so-called ‘working-class’—that is, handworkers for wages—will come to see that the civilization whose comforts they enjoy, and whose discomforts they resent, does not wholly depend upon the simple repeated acts of the handworkers themselves. Perhaps there are already signs of some such reaction. But, if so, the reaction must be voluntary; for no power exists in this country to constrain the handworker to take reasonable views, in short to face facts. In these words I am not implying any denial of the reasonableness of many of his claims. To offer an opinion on questions of more or less is no business of mine.
But, when we compare modern industries in general with those of the ancient world, we find ourselves in presence of a very different situation. The largest scale of operations attainable in antiquity seems small and crude by the side of recent achievements, for instance the building of the Pyramids compared with the Panama canal. Machinery, transport, and scientific discovery in general, have made it possible to carry out colossal undertakings with comparative ease and without wholesale destruction of human life. The greatest works of the ancientsare for the most part silent witnesses to the ruthless employment of forced labour, either that of captives or bought slaves or that of the impressed subjects of an autocrat. Mere brute force, applied in unlimited quantity[1]with callous indifference to the sufferings of the toilers, was the chief means at disposal: mechanical invention had got so far as to render possible some tasks that without it could not have been performed at all. It gave extended effect to the mass of forced labour, and there it stopped, for we have no reason to think that it improved the labourer’s lot. The surviving evidence as to the condition[2]of slaves in mines and factories enables us to form some faint notion of the human wastage resulting from the cruel forced-labour system. We may then state the position briefly thus: to attempt great enterprises was only possible through the crude employment of labour in great masses: the supply of this labour was, or appeared to be, procurable only by compulsion: and compulsion was operative through the institution of slavery or the passive submission of cowed populations to the will of despots. But if slavery promoted large-scale enterprise, surely large-scale enterprise tended to establish slavery in the form of forced labour more firmly than ever. In the modern world the necessity of employing free labour has stimulated scientific invention, in mechanical and other departments, the tendency of which is to require greater intellectual[3]development in the labourer, and in the long run to furnish him with effective means of asserting his own freedom.
Under modern conditions, the gradual displacement of small handicraftsmen by the growth of great capitalistic combinations is going on, perhaps not always for good. The public accept this result as fate. And, if economy in production and prime-cost cheapness are the only things worth considering, it is not easy to condemn the process. But events are steadily demonstrating the fear once entertained, that handworkers in general would find their position weakened thereby, to be groundless. If the independent craftsman has lost ground, the wage-earning journeyman has gained. We need not follow out this topic in detail, but note the contrast presented by the ancient world. The ‘small man’ in crafts and trades was able to hold his own, for without steam-power the capitalist was not strong enough to suppress him. In a small way he was something of a capitalist himself, and commonly owned slave-apprentices. His part in ancient civilization was undoubtedly far more important than it appears in literature: for he ministered to the ordinary needs of every day, while literature, thenas now and more than now, chiefly recorded the exceptional. When we turn to the wage-earner, who earns a living by hiring out his bodily powers to an employer, we are dealing with a wholly different class. These are the free men who in a slave-holding society have to compete with the slave. In the course of the present inquiry we must keep a sharp look-out for every reference or allusion to such persons in the department of agriculture, and in particular note numerous passages in which the status of labourers cannot be inferred with certainty from the language. But the importance of this special point is of course not confined to agriculture.
I have chosen to limit my inquiry to the case of agriculture for these reasons. First, because it was and is the industry on which human life, and therefore all other industries and all progress, did and do rest. Secondly, because its economic importance in the ancient world, so far from declining, manifestly increased. The problem of food-supply was always there. And it was never more pressing than in the later ages of Rome, when imperial efforts to enforce production, if successful, fed her barbarian armies, at the same time attracting the attention of barbarian invaders to lands that promised the food-crops which they themselves were too lazy to produce. Thirdly, because the importance of agriculture was and is not merely economic. Its moral value, as a nursery of steady citizens and, at need, of hardy soldiers, was and still should be recognized by thoughtful men. Therefore its conditions and its relative prosperity or decay deserve the attention of all historians of all periods. Unluckily statistical record of a scientific character is not available for the times that we call ancient, and numbers are notoriously liable to corruption in manuscripts. Therefore I have only ventured to give figures seldom and with reserve. For agriculture we have nothing on the scale of the inscriptions that record wages, for instance on public works at Athens. On the other hand we have for certain periods the evidence of specialists such as Cato, Varro and Columella, to whom we owe much information as to the actual or possible conditions of rustic enterprise and labour. The relation of agriculture and agricultural labour to the state as a whole is a subject illustrated by great theorists such as Plato and Aristotle. The practical problems of landowning and farming meet us now and then in the contemporary evidence of such men as Xenophon and the younger Pliny. Even orators, though necessarily partisan witnesses, at times give valuable help: they may distort facts, but it is not their interest to lessen their own power of persuasion by asserting what is manifestly incredible. The ancient historians tell us very little, even of the past; contemporary evidence from them is especially rare. They are preoccupied with public affairs, and the conditions of rustic life and labouronly concern them at moments when serious distress or disorder compels attention. Rhetoricians and poets are doubtful witnesses. Like the orators, they use their matter freely and with much colouring for their immediate purposes. But they are not, like forensic orators, in direct contact with practical emergencies. The questions arising out of Vergil’sGeorgicsare problems to be discussed by themselves.
The contribution of encyclopaedic or occasional writers is in some cases of value. I will here only name the elder Pliny and Apuleius. Books of travel and geography, for instance Herodotus and Strabo, give stray details, but generally in reference to distant countries, mostly in the East and so hardly within my subject, save for purposes of comparison. There are however two topics with which I am not directly concerned, but which it is impossible wholly to ignore in speaking of ancient agriculture. First, the relation of military duty to landholding [the farmer as citizen soldier], and mercenary service [the rustic as volunteer for pay]. This has been so fully treated in modern handbooks that I need say little about it. Secondly, the various conditions of tenure of land. That rustic life and therewith rustic labour were directly and deeply affected by varieties of tenure, needs no proof. The cited opinions of Roman lawyers in the Digest are the main authority on points of this kind, and stray references elsewhere serve to illustrate them. In conclusion I have only to insist again on the fact that we have no direct witness of the labourer’s, or even the working farmer’s, point of view. The evidence all comes from above; and therefore generally gives us a picture of conditions as the law meant them to be and presumed them normally to be. How far the practical working corresponded to the legal position, is only to be guessed with caution from the admissions involved in the elaboration of legal remedies; and, in the case of imperialcoloni, from the unique evidence of the notable African inscriptions.
It is I trust after the above considerations not unreasonable to devote no special chapters to certain writers whom nevertheless it is often necessary to cite in notes. Diodorus, Livy, Athenaeus, Macrobius, Gellius, Palladius, are cases of the kind. Stray references in their works are valuable, but there is nothing to require a treatment of them as several wholes. Even Livy is chiefly useful as handing down remains of past tradition: hence he (and Dionysius and Plutarch with him) have a leading place in the introductory chapter onearly Rome. So too the writers of the so-calledhistoria Augustaand the laws of the Theodosian and Justinian Codes find their place in the notes to certain chapters. On the other hand (to omit obvious cases) Euripides, Xenophon, the younger Seneca, Martial, the younger Pliny, Apuleius, Ammianus, Symmachus, Apollinaris Sidonius, need careful treatmentwith full regard to the periods and circumstances by which their evidential values are severally qualified. And in order to place each witness in his proper setting it is sometimes necessary to pause and group a number of circumstances together in a special chapter. This arises from the endeavour to preserve so far as possible the thread of continuity, which is always really there, though at times very thin, owing to the loss of many works in the course of ages. In such chapters one has to look both backward and forward, and often to digress for a moment on topics only connected indirectly with the main object.
I have tried to avoid needless repetitions, but some repetitions are unavoidable, since the same point often serves to illustrate different parts of the argument. To make a system of cross-references from chapter to chapter quite complete is hardly possible, and would add immensely to the bulk of footnotes. It has seemed better to attempt completeness by elaboration of the Index. A few details from a period later than that with which I am concerned are given in the Appendix, as being of interest. Also the names of some books from which in a course of miscellaneous reading I have derived more or less help, particularly in noting modern survivals or analogies. For significant matter occurs in quite unexpected quarters. And the observers who record facts of rustic life and labour in Italy or France, in North or Central or South America, without attempting to manipulate them in connexion with a theory, deserve much gratitude.
It is evident that in the handling of evidence there is room for some variety of method. And it seems reasonable to hold that the choice of method should be mainly guided by two leading considerations, the nature of the evidence available and the aim of the inquiry pursued. In the present case the inquiry deals with a part, a somewhat neglected part, of Greco-Roman history: and the subject is one that can by no means be strictly confined to ascertaining the bare facts of farm life and labour. That the conditions of agriculture were not only important in connexion with food-supply, but had an extensive moral and political bearing, is surely beyond dispute. And the nature of the surviving evidence favours, or rather requires, the taking of a correspondingly wide view. Outside the circle of technical writings, the literary evidence almost always has an eye to the position of agriculture as related to the common weal; nor is this point of view ignored even by the technical writers. Therefore, in treating the subject as I have tried to treat it, it is very necessary to take each witness separately so far as possible, and not to appraise the value of his testimony without a fair consideration of his condition and environment. This necessity is peculiarly obvious in the case of the theorists, whose witness isinstructive in a very high degree, but only when we bear in mind the existing state of things from observation of which their conclusions were derived. And the changes of attitude in philosophic thought are sometimes highly instructive. Take farm life and labour as it appears to Plato and Aristotle and later to Musonius: a whole volume of history, economic moral and political, lies in the interval of some 400 years. Inscriptions furnish little to the student of this subject, but that little is worth having. To conclude this paragraph, I do not apologize for putting my authorities in the witness-box and questioning them one by one. For only thus do I see a possibility of giving a true picture of the conditions with which I am concerned. It is a long method, but perhaps not uninteresting, and I see no other.
It may seem necessary to explain why I have not devoted special chapters to rustic life and labour in Oriental countries, some of which eventually became parts of the Roman empire. Such countries are for instance Egypt, Palestine and Syria. One reason is that I could do nothing more than compile conclusions of the inquirers who have lately rescued a vast mass of detail, chiefly from the Egyptian papyri. Age forbade me to undertake this task unless it seemed clear that my inquiry really depended on it. But, inasmuch as I have not been trying to produce a technical treatise upon ancient agriculture, I do not think it necessary. That there is room for such a treatise, I have no doubt: nor that its writer will need to have many years at his disposal and a good knowledge of several sciences at his back. With regard to eastern countries other than Egypt, practically the Seleucid empire, knowledge is at present very scanty, as Rostowzew has to confess. Ancient India lies quite beyond my range, as having never been a part of the Roman empire: but there is evidently much of interest to be gathered in this field. From these extensive and promising researches my limited effort is divided by a clearly marked line. I am concerned with agriculture and agricultural labour not as the occupation of passive populations merely producing so much food year by year, peoples over whom centuries might pass without ascertainable change of a moral social or political character. Such peoples, in short, as do not get beyond the conception of ruler and ruled to that of state and citizen, or at least have not yet done so. For of all conclusions to be drawn from the history of the Greco-Roman world none seems to me more certain than the fact that, while political social and moral movements affected the conditions of agriculture, agricultural changes reacted upon political social and moral conditions. Thus the general history of the peoples, comprising the rise and fall of ancient efforts towards self-government, must always be kept in view: the fluctuations of what I may call civic values, and the position of farmers as labourers or employers of labourcannot be treated in separate compartments and their reciprocal effect ignored. That in the later stages of my inquiry Oriental influences begin to dominate Roman imperial policy, is evident, and I have not left this factor out of account. But this phenomenon announces the end of the old world. The long struggle of the Empire in the East and its final overthrow by the forces of Islam, its break-up in the West and the foundation of new nation-states, are beyond my range. In theAppendixI have put some remarks on two documents of the Byzantine period, from which we get glimpses of changes that were proceeding in the eastern empire while it still held its ground and was indeed the most highly organized of existing powers. To these I have subjoined a list of some of the books I have consulted and found helpful in various degrees, particularly such as have furnished modern illustrations in the way of analogy or survival. A few special quotations from some of these may serve to shew how very striking such illustrations can be.
Of the many difficult questions connected with the past history of the human race few have evoked such a difference of opinion as the practical importance of slavery. By some inquirers it has been held that the so-called ‘classical’ civilization of the Greco-Roman world rested upon a slavery basis, in short that slavery alone enabled that civilization to follow the lines of its actual development. In reply to this doctrine it is urged[4]that its holders have been led astray by an unhistorical method. They have been deeply impressed by the all-pervading evils of the economic and domestic slave-system during the period (say 200BC-200ADroughly) when it was in full extension and vigour. The prepossession thus created has led them to misinterpret the phenomena of earlier ages, and to ignore the significance of the later period of decline. Prejudiced eyes have detected slavery where it was not, and have seen in it where existent an importance greater than impartial inquiry will justify. Moreover the discussion of slavery-questions in modern times, conducted with the intemperate warmth of partisan controversy, have had an influence unfavourable to the statement of facts in their true relations, and therefore to the exercise of cool judgment. According to this view the facts of our record shew that, while slave-labour had its four centuries or so of predominance, free-labour never ceased, and on it, and not on slavery, the civilization of the ‘classical’ world was built up. It is argued that in primitive conditions there was little slavery, that growth of trade and exchange (andtherewith of civilization) led to division of labour and the growth of larger enterprises. On this follows a time in which the employment of slave-labour becomes more and more common, and ends by being for some centuries the basis of economic and domestic life. In due course comes the period of decline, when for various reasons slaves became less numerous, and the highly-organized civilization of antiquity relapses into the primitive conditions of the early Middle Age. Slavery is not extinct, but reverts generally to various degrees of serfdom, resembling that which meets us in the early traditions of Greek slavery. Things have gone round the full circle, and the world takes a fresh start.
This version of the process is attractive. It presents to us a spectacle of cyclic movement, pleasing from its simplicity and dignity. But it seems to imply that the old civilization reached its height more or less concurrently with the growth of slavery. One is driven to ask[5]whether the concurrence was purely accidental or not. So far as concerns the manufacture of articles for export by slave-industry, it can hardly have been a mere chance: nor is it denied that in this department it was the demand created by the needs of growing civilization that called forth the supply. Luxury too is merely a name for such needs when they clearly exceed strict necessaries of life: and here too the monstrous extravagancies of domestic slavery were a characteristic feature of the civilization of the Greco-Roman world. That neither of these forms of servile employment could outlive the civilization that had produced them, is surely no wonder. The case of slavery in agriculture is less simple, and several questions may suggest themselves to anyone who considers this subject with an open mind.
Agriculture was long regarded, from a social point of view, as superior to other occupations dependent on bodily labour. This opinion dated from very early times when, as traditions agree, the land was owned by privileged nobles who as members of powerful clans formed aristocracies of a more or less military character. War was waged by men fighting hand to hand, and it was natural that handwork of a kind likely to promote health and strength should be honoured above manual trades of a less invigorating and even sedentary character. The development of cities and urban life, which in many states led to the overthrow of the old clan aristocracies, did not make handicraftsmen the equals of agriculturists in popular esteem. Pressure to win a firm footing on the land was as marked a feature in Athenian Attica as in Roman Latium. Agriculture was a profession worthy of the free citizen, and the ownership of a plot of land stamped the citizen as a loyal and responsible member of a free and self-consciouscommunity. The ruin of Attic farmers in the Peloponnesian war, the disastrous changes in Italian agriculture after Rome became imperial, still left the old prepossession. The charm of country life and pursuits remained as an ineffective ideal. Greek philosophers were impressed with the virtues of farmer-folk, virtues social moral and ultimately political. From them Cicero and others learnt to praise rustic life: the Gracchi made vain efforts to revive it: the poets, led by Vergil, pictured the glories of old Italian agriculture: but the aspirations were vain. The ‘classical’ civilization was urban in its growth, and urban it remained. Writers on agriculture might lament that free men, capable of tilling the land, loitered idly in the city. In practice they had to take facts as they found them, and give elaborate precepts for a farm-system in which slavery was the essential factor.
It was and is possible to regard agriculture from various points of view. Three of these at least deserve a preliminary consideration. The nakedly economic view, that the production of food is necessary for any life above that of mere savages, and therefore is worthy of respect, can never have been wholly absent from men’s minds in any age. It was common property, and found frequent expression. Even when various causes led to much dependence on imported corn, the sentiment still survived, and its soundness was recognized by philosophers. The military view, that the hardy peasant makes the best soldier, was generally accepted in principle, but its relation to agriculture in the strict sense of tillage was not always a direct one. The technical training of skilled combatants began early in Greece. It was not only in the Spartan or Cretan systems that such training was normal: the citizen armies of Athens consisted of men who had passed through a long course of gymnastic exercises and drill. During their training these young men can hardly have devoted much labour to the tillage of farms, even those of them who were of country birth. What percentage of them settled down in their later years to farm-life, is just what one vainly wishes to know. The helot-system supplied the tillage that fed the warrior-caste of Sparta. It would seem that the toils of hunting played a great part in producing the military fitness required of the young Spartiate. We may be pretty sure that the Thessalian cavalry—wealthy lords ruling dependent cultivators—were not tillers of the soil. Boeotia and Arcadia were both lands in which there was a large farmer class. Boeotian infantry were notable for their steadiness in the shock of battle. But they were not untrained, far from it. United action was ever difficult in Arcadia, where small cities lay scattered in the folds of mountains. Hence no Arcadian League ever played a leading part in Greece. But the rustics of these country towns and villages were man for man as good material for war-work asGreece could produce. In the later age of professional soldering they, with the Aetolians and others in the less civilized parts, furnished numbers of recruits to the Greek mercenary armies. But the regular mercenary who had the luck to retire in comfortable circumstances, on savings of pay and loot, is portrayed to us as more inclined to luxury and wantonness in some great city than to the simple monotony of rustic life. Nor must we forget that slaves were often an important part[6]of war-booty, and that the professional warrior was used to the attendance of slaves (male and female) even on campaigns. So far the connexion of peasant and soldier does not amount to much more than the admission that the former was a type of man able to endure the hardships of a military career.
The national regular army formed by Philip son of Amyntas in Macedonia, afterwards the backbone of Alexander’s mixed host, is in itself a phenomenon of great interest: for in making it Philip made a nation. That the ranks were mainly filled with country folk is certain. But, what with wastage in wars and the settlement of many old soldiers in the East, there is little evidence to shew whether any considerable number of veterans returned to Macedon and settled on the land. I believe that such cases were few. The endless wars waged by Alexander’s successors with mixed and mongrel armies were hardly favourable to rustic pursuits: foundation of great new cities was the characteristic of the times. When we turn to Rome we find a very different story. Tradition represents landowners settled on the land and tilling it as the persons responsible for the defence of the state. Cincinnatus called from the plough to be dictator is the typical figure of early patriotic legend. When the Roman Plebeians dislodged the Patrician clans from their monopoly of political power, the burden of military service still rested on theadsidui, the men with a footing on the land. Tradition still shews us the farmer-soldier taking the risk of disaster to his homestead during his absence on campaigns. In the historical twilight of fragmentary details, coloured by later imagination, thus much is clear and credible. The connexion between landholding and soldiering was not openly disregarded until the reforms of Marius. The age of revolution was then already begun, and one of its most striking features was the creation of a professional soldiery, a force which, as experience proved, was more easy to raise than to disband. The method of pensioning veterans by assigning to them parcels of land for settlement was in general a failure, for the men were unused to thrift and indisposed to a life of patient and uneventful labour. The problem of the Republic was inherited by the Empire, and attempts at solution were only partially successful: but the systemof standing armies, posted on the frontiers, made the settlement of veterans in border-provinces a matter of less difficulty. From the third centuryADonwards we find a new plan coming into use. Men were settled with their families on lands near the frontiers, holding them by a military tenure which imposed hereditary liability to service in the armies. Thus the difficulty was for a time met by approaching it from the other end. The superiority of the rustic recruit was as fully recognized as ever: at the end of the fourth century it was reaffirmed[7]by Vegetius.
I pass on to the third point of view, which I may perhaps call philosophic. It appears in practice as the view of the statesman, in theory as that of the speculative philosopher. Men whose life and interests are bound up with agriculture are in general a steady class, little inclined to wild agitations and rash ventures. On a farm there is always something not to be left undone without risk of loss. The operations of nature go on unceasingly, uncontrolled by man. Man must adapt himself to the conditions of soil and weather: hence he must be ever on the watch to take advantage of his opportunities, and this leaves him scant leisure for politics. We may add that the habit of conforming to nature’s laws, and of profiting by not resisting what cannot be successfully resisted, is a perpetual education in patience. Working farmers as a class were not men lightly to embark in revolutionary schemes, so long as their condition was at all tolerable. It must be borne in mind that before the invention of representative systems a citizen could only vote by appearing in person at the city, where all the Assemblies were held. Assemblies might be adjourned, and two journeys, to the city and back, were not only time-wasting and tiresome, but might have to be repeated. Accordingly we hear of the encouragement of Attic farmers by Peisistratus[8]as being a policy designed to promote the stability of his government. At Rome we find reformers alarmed at the decay of the farmer-class in a great part of Italy, and straining to revive it as the sound basis of a national life, the only practical means of purifying the corrupted institutions of the state. Selfish opposition on the part of those interested in corruption was too strong for reformers, and the chance of building up a true Italian nation passed away. The working farmer had disappeared from Roman politics. The swords and the venal city mob remained, and the later literature was left to deplore the consequences.
The course of agricultural decline in Greece was different in detail from that in Italy, but its evil effects on political life were early noted, at least in Attica. The rationalist Euripides saw the danger clearly, during the Peloponnesian war; and the sympathy of theconservative Aristophanes with the suffering farmers was plainly marked. The merits of the farmer-class as ‘safe’ citizens, the backbone of a wise and durable state-life, became almost a commonplace of Greek political theory. Plato and Aristotle might dream of ideal states, governed by skilled specialists professionally trained for their career from boyhood. In their more practical moments, turning from aspirations to facts of the world around them, they confessed the political value of the farmer-class. To Aristotle the best hope of making democracy a wholesome and tolerable form of government lay in the strengthening of this element: the best Demos is the γεωργικὸς δῆμος, and it is a pity that it so often becomes superseded by the growing population devoted to trades and commerce. I need not carry further these brief and imperfect outlines of the honourable opinion held of agriculture in the Greco-Roman world. As producing necessary food, as rearing hardy soldiers, as favouring the growth and maintenance of civic virtues, it was the subject of general praise. Some might confess that they shrank from personal labour on the land. Yet even in Caesarian Rome it is somewhat startling when Sallust[9]dismisses farming in a few words of cynical contempt.
It is clear that the respect felt for agriculture was largely due to the opinion that valuable qualities of body and mind were closely connected with its practice and strengthened thereby. So long as it was on the primitive footing, each household finding labour for its own maintenance, the separation of handwork and direction could hardly arise. This primitive state of things, assumed by theorists ancient and modern, and depicted in tradition, had ceased to be normal in the time of our earliest records. And the employment of persons, not members of the household, as hired labourers, or of bondmen only connected with the house as dependents, at once differentiated these ‘hands’ from the master and his family. The master could not habitually hire day-labourers or keep a slave unless he found it paid him to do so. For a man to work for his own profit or for that of another were very different things. This simple truism, however, does not end the matter from my present point of view. It is necessary to ask whether the respect felt for agriculture was so extended as to include the hired labourer and the slave as well as the working master. We shall see that it was not. The house-master, holding and cultivating a plot of land on a secure tenure, is the figure glorified in traditions and legendary scenes. The Greek term αὐτουργός, the man who does his own work, is specially applied to him as a man that works with his own hands. It crops up in literature often, from Euripides to Polybiusand Dion Chrysostom; and sometimes, when the word is not used, it is represented by equivalents. But both the hired labourer and the slave were employed for the express purpose of working with their own hands. And yet, so far as agriculture is concerned, I cannot find that they were credited with αὐτουργία, the connotation[10]of which is generally favourable, seldom neutral, never (I think) unfavourable. It seems then that the figure present to the mind was one who not only worked with his own hands, but worked for his own profit—that is, on his own farm. And with this interpretation the traditions of early Rome fully agree.
To admit this does not however imply that the working house-master employed neither hired labourer nor slave. So long as he took a hand in the farm-work, he was a working cultivator for his own profit. The larger the scale of his holding, the more he would need extra labour. If prosperous, he would be able to increase his holding or supplement his farming[11]by other enterprises. More and more he would be tempted to drop handwork and devote himself to direction. If still successful, he might move on a stage further, living in the city and carrying on his farms by deputy, employing stewards, hired freemen or slaves, or freedmen, his former slaves. If he found in the city more remunerative pursuits than agriculture, he might sell his land and the live and dead stock thereon, and become simply an urban capitalist. So far as I know, this last step was very seldom taken; and I believe the restraining influence to have been the prestige attached to the ownership of land, even when civic franchises had ceased to depend on the possession of that form of property alone. If this view be correct, the fact is notable: for the system of great landed estates, managed by stewards[12]on behalf of wealthy owners who lived in the city, was the ruin of the peasant farmer class, in whose qualities statesmen and philosophers saw the guarantee for the state’s lasting vigour. No longer were αὐτουργοὶ a force in politics: in military service the professional soldier, idling in the intervals of wars, superseded the rustic, levied for a campaign and looking forward to the hour of returning to his plough. It was in Italy that the consummation of this change was most marked, for Rome alone provided a centre in which the great landlord could reside and influence political action in his own interest. To Rome the wealth extorted from tributary subjects flowed in an ever-swelling stream. No small part of the spoils served to enrich the noble landlords, directly or indirectly, and to supply them with the funds neededfor corrupting the city mob and so controlling politics. Many could afford to hold their lands even when it was doubtful whether estates managed by slaves or hirelings were in fact a remunerative investment. If we may believe Cicero, it was financial inability[13]to continue this extravagant policy that drove some men of apparent wealth to favour revolutionary schemes. The old-fashioned farmstead, thevilla, was modernized into a luxurious country seat, in which the owner might now and then pass a brief recess, attended by his domestic slaves from Town, and perhaps ostentatiously entertaining a party of fashionable friends.
We have followed the sinister progress of what I will call the Agricultural Interest, from the ‘horny-handed’ peasant[14]farmer to the land-proud capitalist. No doubt the picture is a highly coloured one, but in its general outlines we are not entitled to question its truth. Exceptions there certainly were. In hilly parts of Italy a rustic population[15]of freemen survived, and it was from them that the jobbing gangs of wage-earners of whom we read were drawn. And in the great plain of the Po agricultural conditions remained far more satisfactory than in such districts as Etruria or Lucania, where great estates were common. A genuine farming population seems there to have held most of the land, and rustic slavery appeared in less revolting form. But these exceptions did not avail to stay the decline of rural Italy. True, as the supply of slave-labour gradually shrank in the empire, the working farmer reappeared on the land. But he reappeared as a tenant gradually becoming bound[16]to the soil, worried by the exactions of officials, or liable to a blood-tax in the shape of military service. He was becoming not a free citizen of a free state, but a half-free serf helplessly involved in a great mechanical system. Such a person bore little resemblance to the free farmer working with his own hands for himself on his own land, the rustic figure from whom we started. On the military side, he was, if a soldier, now soldier first and farmer afterwards: on the civic side, he was a mere subject-unit, whose virtues were of no political importance and commanded no respect. In the final stage we find the government recruiting its armies from barbarians and concerned to keep the farmer on the land. So cogent then was the necessity of insuring the supply of food for the empire and its armies.
At this point we must return to our first question, how far the agriculture of the Greco-Roman world depended on free or slave labour. Itis clear that, while the presence of the slave presupposes the freeman to control him, the presence of the freeman does not necessarily imply that of the slave. Dion Chrysostom[17]was logically justified in saying that freedom comes before slavery in order of time. And no doubt this is true so long as we only contemplate the primitive condition of households each providing for its own vital needs by the labour of its members. But the growth of what we call civilization springs from the extension of needs beyond the limits of what is absolutely necessary for human existence. By what steps the advantages of division of labour were actually discovered is a subject for the reconstructive theorist. But it must have been observed at a very early stage that one man’s labour might be to another man’s profit. Those who tamed and employed other animals were not likely to ignore the possibilities offered by the extension of the system to their brother men. It would seem the most natural thing in the world. It might be on a very small scale, and any reluctance on the bondsman’s part might be lessened by the compensations of food and protection. A powerful master might gather round him a number of such dependent beings, and he had nothing to gain by treating them cruelly. On them he could devolve the labour of producing food, and so set free his own kinsmen to assert the power of their house. In an age of conflict stronger units tended to absorb weaker, and the formation of larger societies would tend to create fresh needs, to encourage the division of labour, and to promote civilization by the process of exchange. Labour under assured control was likely to prove an economic asset of increasing value. In agriculture it would be of special importance as providing food for warriors busied with serving the community in war.
This imaginative sketch may serve to remind us that there are two questions open to discussion in relation to the subject. First, the purely speculative one, whether the early stages of progress in civilization could have been passed without the help of slavery. Second, the question of fact, whether they were so passed or not. It is the latter with which I am concerned. The defects of the evidence on which we have to form an opinion are manifest. Much of it is not at first hand, and it will often be necessary to comment on its unsatisfactory character. In proceeding to set it out in detail, I must again repeat that two classes of free handworkers must be clearly kept distinct—those who work for themselves, and those who work for others. It is the latter class only that properly come into comparison with slaves. A man habitually working for himself may of course work occasionally for others as a wage-earner. But here, as in the case of the farmer-soldier, we have one person in two capacities.