From the death of Cato in 149BCto the date of Varro’s bookde re rustica(about 37BC) is a space of more than a century. The one great fact of this momentous period in relation to agriculture is the public recognition of the decay of the small farmers over a large part of Italy, and the vain attempt to revive a class well known to have been the backbone of Roman strength. But the absorption of small holdings in large estates had already gone so far in the affected districts that there was practically only one direction in which land-reformers could move. To confiscate private property was forbidden by Roman respect for legal rights: it appears in Roman history only after the failure of the Gracchan movement, and as a phenomenon of civil war. There were however great areas of land of which the state was still in law proprietor, held by individuals (often in very large blocks) under a system of recognized occupation known aspossessio. Tradition alleged that in Rome’s early days thisager publicushad been a cause of quarrels between the needy Commons who hungered for land and the rich nobles who strove to monopolize the land annexed by war and now state-property. It was known that one of the effects produced by the political equalization of the Orders in the fourth centuryBChad been legislation to restrain land-monopoly. But the Licinian laws of 367BChad not made an end of the evil. Soon evaded, they had become in course of time wholly inoperative. The new Patricio-Plebeian nobility quieted the claims of the poor by colonial foundations and allotments of land in newly-conquered districts, while they continued to enrich themselves by ‘possession’ of the public land. Undisturbed possession gradually obscured the distinction between such holdings and the estates held in full ownership asager privatus. Boundaries were confused: mixed estates changed hands by inheritance or sale without recognition of a legal difference in the tenure of different portions: where improvements had been carried out, they applied indistinguishably to lands owned or possessed. The greater part of thesepossessioneswas probably not arable but pasture, grazed by numerous flocks and herds in charge of slave herdsmen. Now in Cato’s time the imports of foreign corn were already rendering the growth of cereal crops for the market an unremunerative enterprise in the most accessible parts of Italy. Grazing paid better. It required fewer hands, but considerable capital and wide areas of pasturage. It could be combined with the culture of the vine and olive; for the live-stock, brought down to the farmstead in the winter months, supplied plentiful manure. Moreover, the wholesale employment of slaves enabled a landlord to rely on aregular supply of labour. The slave was not liable to military service: so the master was not liable to have his staff called up at short notice. In short, economic influences, aided by selfish or corrupt administration of the laws under the rule of the nobility, gave every advantage to the rich landlords. No wonder that patriotic reformers viewed the prospect with alarm, and sought some way of promoting a revival of the peasant farmers.
The story of the Gracchan movement and the causes of its failure are set forth from various points of view in histories[707]of Rome and special monographs. What concerns us here is to remark that its remedial legislation dealt solely with land belonging to the state and occupied by individuals. Power was taken to ascertain its boundaries, to resume possession on behalf of the state, and to parcel it out in allotments among needy citizens. How far success in the aim of restoring a free citizen population in the denuded districts was ever possible, we cannot tell. But we know that it did not in fact succeed. By 111BCwhatever had been achieved[708]was finally annulled. The bulk of theager publicushad disappeared. The sale of land-allotments, at first forbidden, had been permitted, and the process of buying out the newly created peasantry went on freely. But large estates formed under the new conditions were subject to no defect of title. They were strictly private property, though the termpossessionesstill remained in use. Slave-labour on such estates was normal as before. Indeed rustic slavery was now at its height. This short period of attempted land-reform comes between the two great Sicilian slave-wars (135-2 and 103-99BC), in the events of which the horrors of contemporary agriculture were most vividly expressed. It was also a time of great wars abroad, in Gaul, in Africa, and against the barbarian invaders from the North. Roman armies suffered many defeats, and the prestige of Roman power was only restored by the military remodelling under Marius. When Marius finally threw over the principle that military service was a duty required of propertied citizens, and raised legions from the poorest classes, volunteering with an eye to profit, he in effect founded the Empire. We can hardly help asking[709]from what quarters he was able to draw these recruits. Some no doubt were idlers already living inRome attracted by the distributions of cheap corn provided by the Government in order to keep quiet the city mob. But these can hardly have been a majority of the recruits of this class. Probably a number came in from rural districts, hearing that Marius was calling for volunteers and prepared to disregard altogether the obsolete rules which had on occasion been evaded by others before him. It is perhaps not too bold a conjecture to suggest that the casual wage-earners, themercennariireferred to by Cato, were an important element in the New Model army of Marius. This landless class, living from hand to mouth, may have been declining in numbers, but they were by no means extinct. We meet them later in Varro and elsewhere. And no man knew better than Marius the military value of men hardened by field-labour, particularly when led to volunteer by hopes of earning a higher reward in a career of more perils and less monotony.
It can hardly be supposed that agriculture throve under the conditions prevailing in these troubled years. The tendency must have been to reduce the number of free rustic wage-earners, while each war would bring captives to the slave-market. We can only guess at these economic effects. The following period of civil wars, from the Italian rising in 90BCto the death of Sulla in 78, led to a further and more serious disturbance of the land-system. The dictator had to reward his soldiery, and that promptly. The debt was discharged by grants of land, private land, the owners of which were either ejected for the purpose or had been put to death. Of the results of this wholesale confiscation and allotment we have abundant evidence, chiefly from Cicero. Making full allowance for exaggeration and partisan feeling, it remains sufficient to shew that Sulla’s military colonists were economically a disastrous failure, while both they and the men dispossessed to make room for them soon became a grave political danger. The discharged soldiers desired an easy life as proprietors, and the excitements of warfare had unfitted them for the patient economy of farming. They bought slaves; but slaves cost money, and the profitable direction of slave-labour was an art calling for a degree of watchfulness and skill that few landlords of any class were willing or able to exert. So this substitution of new landowners for old was an unmixed evil: the new men failed as farmers, and we hardly need to be told that the feeling of insecurity produced by the confiscations was a check on agricultural improvements for the time. Those of the ‘Sullan men’ who sold their allotments (evading the law) would certainly not get a good price, and the money would soon melt away.
It will be seen that the old Roman system, under which the ordinary citizen was a peasant farmer who served the state as a soldier when needed, was practically at an end. Compulsory levies were on certainoccasions resorted to, for no abolition of the old liability to service had taken place: but voluntary enlistment of young men, and their conversion into professional soldiers by technical training, was henceforth the normal method of forming Roman armies. Armies were kept on foot for long campaigns, and the problem of their peaceful disbandment was one of the most serious difficulties of the revolutionary age. The treasury had no large income to spend on money-pensions, so the demand for allotments of land became a regular accompaniment of demobilization. Meanwhile the desperate condition of landlords in important districts, and the danger from the slave-gangs, were forcibly illustrated in the rising under Spartacus (73-1BC) and the Catilinarian conspiracy. It is unfortunate that the scope of the land-bill of Rullus[710]in 63, defeated by Cicero, is uncertain, and the effect of Caesar’s land-law of 59 hardly less so. But one thing seems clear. In default of sufficient lands suitable for allotment, legislators were driven to propose the resumption of the rich Campanian domain. This public estate had long been let to tenants, real farmers, in small holdings; and the rents therefrom were one of the safest sources of public income. To disturb good tenants, and give the best land in Italy to untried men as owners, was surely a bad business. It shews to what straits rulers were driven to find land for distribution. To enter into the details of the various land-allotments between the abortive proposal of Rullus and the final settlement of Octavian would be out of place here. But it is well to note that the plan of purchasing private land for pension-allotments, proposed in the bill of Rullus, was actually carried out by the new Emperor and proudly recorded[711]by him in his famous record of the achievements of his life. The violent transfer of landed properties from present holders to discharged soldiers of the triumviral armies had evidently been both an economic failure and a political evil. To pay for estates taken for purpose of distribution was a notable step towards restoration of legality and public confidence. Whether it immediately brought about a revival of agriculture on a sound footing is a question on which opinions may justifiably differ. Much will depend on the view taken by this or that inquirer of the evidence of Varro and the Augustan poets Horace and Vergil.
Note—In Prendergast’sCromwellian Settlement of Ireland(ed 2, 1870), chapterIVa, much interesting matter may be found. Cruel expulsions, corrupt influences, and the sale of their lots by soldiers to officers, their frequent failure as cultivators, etc, stand out clearly. The analogy to the Roman cases must of course not be too closely pressed, as the conditions were not identical.
Note—In Prendergast’sCromwellian Settlement of Ireland(ed 2, 1870), chapterIVa, much interesting matter may be found. Cruel expulsions, corrupt influences, and the sale of their lots by soldiers to officers, their frequent failure as cultivators, etc, stand out clearly. The analogy to the Roman cases must of course not be too closely pressed, as the conditions were not identical.
M Terentius Varrowrote his treatisede re rusticain 37-6BCat the age of 80. The subject was only one of an immense number to which he devoted his talents and wide learning when not actively engaged in public duties. The last republican rally under Brutus and Cassius had failed at Philippi in 42, and the Roman world was shared out between the Triumvirs. In 36 the suppression of Lepidus declared what was already obvious, that Antony and Octavian were the real holders of power and probable rivals. Proscriptions, confiscations, land-allotments to soldiers, the wars with Antony’s brother Lucius and the great Pompey’s son Sextus, had added to the unsettlement and exhaustion of Italy. If it appeared to Varro that a treatise on farming would be opportune (and we may fairly conjecture that it did), there was surely much to justify his opinion in the distressful state of many parts of the country. But at this point we are met by a passage[712]in the work itself which seems to prove that he took a very different view of present agricultural conditions in Italy. Some of the speakers (the book is in form a dialogue) declare that no country is better cultivated than Italy, that no other country is so fully cultivated all through (tota), that Italian crops are in general the best of their several kinds, and in particular that Italy is one great orchard. Instances in point are given. That Varro, like Cicero, took great care[713]to avoid anachronisms and improbabilities, that his characters are real persons, and that he tries hard to fit the several topics to the several characters, is not to be denied. But it is perhaps too much to assume that such general remarks as those just cited are meant to represent the known personal opinions of the speakers. If we could be sure of the date at which the dialogue is supposed to be held, we might have a more satisfactory standard for estimating the significance and historical value of these utterances. Unluckily we have no convincing evidence as to the intended date. The scene of the second book can be laid in 67BCwith reasonable certainty, and that of the third in 54BC. But no passage occurs in the first book sufficient to furnish material for a like inference. When Stolo refers[714]to Varro’s presence with the fleet and army at Corcyra, some have thought that he has in mind the time of the civil war in 49BC. It is much more likely that the reference is to Varro’s service[715]as one of Pompey’s lieutenants in the pirate war of 67BC. The dialogue of BookIwould then be placed after the summer of that year, probably not much later. The boast of the speakers as to the splendid cultivation of Italy in general would refer to the time when the disturbance caused by the confiscations and assignations of Sulla was dying down and the rising of Spartacus had lately been suppressed. It would be placed before the later disturbances caused by measures designed to satisfy the claims of Pompeian Caesarian and Triumviral armies. Vergil had not yet been driven from his Cisalpine farm.
Whether by placing BookIin this interval, and by supposing that the circumstances of that time would fit the utterances of Varro’s characters, I am exceeding the limits of sober guesswork, I cannot judge. But I am convinced that in any case upland pastures and forest-lands[716]accounted for a very large part of the surface of Italy then, as they do still. Indeed Varro recognizes this in his references to the migration of flocks and herds according to the seasons, and particularly when he notes not only the great stretches of rough land to be traversed but also the need of active and sturdypastoresable to beat off the assaults of wild beasts and robbers. Surely the complete cultivation of Italy, compared as it is with that of other countries, is a description not to be taken literally, but as a natural exaggeration in the mouth of a self-complacent Roman agriculturist. Be this as it may, the treatise marks a great advance on that of Cato in some respects. Many details are common to both writers, in particular the repeated insistence on the main principle that whatever the farmer does must be made to pay. Profit, not sentiment or fancy, was their common and truly Roman aim. But in the century or more that had elapsed since Cato wrote other authors (such as Saserna) had treated of farming, and much had been learnt from Greek and Punic authorities. Knowledge of the products and practices of foreign lands had greatly increased, and Varro, who had himself added to this store, made free use of the wider range of facts now at the service of inquirers. And the enlarged outlook called for a systematic method. Accordingly Varro’s work is clearly divided into three discussions, of tillage (BookI), grazing and stock-breeding (II), and keeping fancy animals (III) chiefly to supply the market for table-luxuries. And he goes into detail in a spirit different from that of Cato. Cato jerked out dogmatic precepts when he thought fit, for instance his wonderful list of farm-requisites. Varro is more concerned with the principles, the reasons for preferring this or that method, derived from thetheories and experience of the past. For instance, in estimating the staff required, he insists[717]on its being proportioned to the scale of the work to be done: as the average day’s work (opera) varies in efficiency according to the soil, it is not possible to assign a definite number of hands to a farm of definite area. Nor is he content simply to take slave-labour, supplemented by hired free labour and contract-work, for granted. In a short but important passage he discusses the labour-question, with reasons for the preference of this or that class of labour for this or that purpose, of course preferring whichever is likely to give the maximum of profit with the minimum of loss.
It is this passage[718]that is chiefly of interest from my present point of view, and I will therefore translate it in full.
‘So much for the four conditions[719]of the farm that are connected with the soil, and the second four external to the farm but bearing on its cultivation. Now for the appliances used in tillage. Some classify these under two heads (a) men (b) the implements necessary for their work. Others under three[720]heads (a) the possessed of true speech (b) the possessed of inarticulate speech (c) the speechless. In these classes respectively are included[721](a) slaves (b) oxen (c) waggons, and such are the three kinds of equipment. The men employed in all tillage are either slaves or freemen or both. Free labour is seen in the case of those who till their[722]land themselves, as poor peasants[723]with the help of their families mostly do: or in that of wage-earners[724], as when a farmer hires free hands to carry out the more important operations on his farm, vintage or hay-harvest and the like: such also are those who were called “tied menâ€[725]in Italy, a class still numerous in Asia Egypt and Illyricum. Speaking of these[726]as a class, I maintain that in the tillage of malarious land[727]it pays better to employ free wage-earners than slaves; even in a healthy spot the more important operations, such as getting in vintage or harvest, are best so managed. As to their qualities, Cassius writes thus: in buying[728]labourers you are to choose men fit for heavy work, not less than 22 years of age and ready to learn farm-duties. This you can infer from giving them other tasks and seeing how they perform them, or byquestioning[729]new slaves as to the work they used to do under their former owner. Slaves should be neither timid nor high-spirited. Their overseers[730]should be men able to read and write, in fact with a touch of education, honest fellows, somewhat older than the mere labourers just mentioned. For these are more willing to obey their elders. Above all things the one indispensable quality in overseers is practical knowledge of farming. For the overseer is not only to give orders, but to take part in carrying them out; so that the slave may do as he sees the overseer do, and note the reasonableness of his own subordination to one his superior in knowledge. On the other hand the overseer should not be allowed to enforce obedience by the lash rather than by reprimand,—of course supposing that the same effect[731]is produced. Again, you should not buy too many slaves of the same race, for nothing breeds trouble in the household[732]more than this. For the overseers there should be rewards to make them keen in their work: care should be taken to allow them a private store[733]and slave concubines to bear them children, a tie which steadies them and binds them more closely to the estate. It is these family ties that distinguish the slave-gangs from Epirus and give them a high market-value. You should grant favours to overseers to gain their goodwill, and also to the most efficient of the common hands; with these it is also well to talk over the work that is to be undertaken, for it makes them think that their owner takes some account of them and does not utterly despise them. They can be given more interest in their work by more generous treatment in the way of food or clothing, or by a holiday or by leave to keep a beast or so of their own at grass on the estate, or other privileges: thus any who have been overtasked or punished may find some comfort[734]and recover their ready goodwill towards their owner.’
This passage well illustrates the advance in scientific treatment of the subject since the time of Cato. The analysis and classification may not be very profound, but it tends to orderly method, not to oracles. The influence of Greek writings is to be traced, for instance in the rules for the choice and treatment of slaves. The writings of Aristotle and his school had been studied in Rome since the great collection had been brought by Sulla from the East. How far Varro actually borrows from Aristotle or Plato or Xenophon is not always easy to say. The advice to avoid getting too many slaves of one raceor too spirited, and to use sexual relations as a restraining tie, were by this time common-places of slave-management, and appear under Cato in somewhat cruder practical forms. But Varro is involved in the difficulties that have ever beset those who try to work on double principles, to treat the slave as at once the chattel of an owner and a partner in common humanity. So he tells his reader ‘manage your slaves as men, if you can get them to obey you on those terms; if not,—well, you must make them obey—flog them.’ Humanitarian principles have not gone far in the system of Varro, who looks solely from the master’s point of view. The master gets rather more out of his slaves when they work to gain privileges than when they work merely to escape immediate punishment. So he is willing to offer privileges, and the prospect of promotion to the higher ranks of the staff. Overseers and the best of the common hands may form a little quasi-property of their own by the master’s leave. But thesepeculiado not seem to be a step on the road to manumission, of which we hear nothing in this treatise. We are left to infer that rustic slaves on estates generally remained there when past active work, tolerated hangers-on, living on what they could pick up, and that to have acquired somepeculiumwas a comfortable resource in old age. In short, the hopes of the worn-out rustic bondman were limited indeed.
When we note Varro’s attitude towards free labour we cannot wonder that humanitarianism is not conspicuous in his treatment of slavery. Hired men are more to be trusted than slaves, so you will employ them, as Cato advised, for jobs that need care and honesty and that cannot wait. But he adds a sinister hint as to employing them on work dangerous to health. Your own slaves for whom you have paid good money are too valuable to be exposed to such risks. The great merit of themercennariusis that, when the job is done and his wage paid, you have done with him and have no further responsibility. This brutally industrial view is closely connected with the legal atmosphere of Roman civilization, in which Varro lived and moved. The debtor discharging his debt by serving his creditor as a farm-hand, once an ordinary figure in Italy, was now only found abroad: Varro mentions this unhappy class, for he is not thinking of Italy alone. It is interesting to hear from him that peasant-farmers were not extinct in Italy. But we are not told whether they were still numerous or whether they were mostly to be found in certain districts, as from other authorities we are tempted to infer. Nor do we learn whether men with small farms of their own often went out as wage-earners; nor again whether landlessmercennariiwere in his time a numerous class. These omissions make it very difficult for us to form any clear and trustworthy picture of rural conditions as they presentedthemselves to Varro. It would seem that they were in general much the same as in Cato’s time, but that Varro is more inclined to discuss openly some details that Cato took for granted. So in his turn Varro takes some things for granted, passing lightly over details that we cannot but wish to know.
There is however one important matter, ignored by Cato (at least in his text as we have it), to which reference is found in Varro. It is the presence of the free tenant farmer (colonus) in the agricultural system of Italy. He tells us that the formal lease[735]of a farm usually contained a clause by which thecolonuswas forbidden to graze a she-goat’s offspring on the farm. In another passage[736]the same prohibition is mentioned, but with this limitation, that it applies only to land planted with immature saplings. So poisonous were the teeth of nibbling goats thought to be. The restriction imposed on the tenant suggests that the landlord was bargaining at an advantage; the lessor could dictate his terms to the lessee. That the tenant farmers of this period were at least in some cases humble dependants of their landlords is clearly shewn by a passage[737]of Caesar. In order to hold Massalia for Pompey in 49BC, Domitius raised a squadron of seven ships, the crews for which he made up from his own[738]slaves freedmen and tenants. Soon after he refers to this force[739]as the tenants and herdsmen brought by Domitius. These herdsmen are no doubt some of the slaves before mentioned. It is evident that the free retainers called tenants are not conceived as having much choice in the matter when their noble lord called them out for service. Probably their effective freedom consisted in the right to own property (if they could get it), to make wills, to rear children of their own, and other like privileges. But their landlord would have so great a hold[740]on them that, though in theory freemen, they were in practice compelled to do his bidding. In later times we shall find the tenant farmer a common figure in rural life, but very dependent on his landlord; and it is by no means clear that his position had ever been a strong and independent one. Of Varro all we can say is that he does refer to farm-tenancy as a business-relation, and infer from his words that in that relation the landowner had the upper hand.
Beside what we may call the legal sense of ‘tenant,’ Varro also usescolonusin its older sense of ‘cultivator.’ In discussing the convenience of being able to supply farm needs, and dispose of farm surplus, in the neighbourhood, he points out that the presence or absence of thisadvantage may make all the difference whether a farm can be made to pay or not. For instance, it is seldom worth while to keep skilled craftsmen[741]of your own: the death of one such specialist sweeps away the (year’s) profit of the farm. Only rich landowners can provide for such services in their regular staff. So the usual practice ofcoloniis to rely on local men for such services, paying a yearly fee and having a right to their attendance at call. Thecolonihere are simply ‘farmers,’ and there is nothing to shew that they do not own their farms. The connexion with the verbcolereappears even more strongly wherepastoris contrasted[742]withcolonus, grazier with tiller: and in that passage thecolonusis apparently identical with thedominus fundijust below. Thecoloniof these passages can hardly be mere tenants, but on the other hand they are certainly not great landowners. They seem to be men farming their own land, but in a small way[743]of business. Whether there were many such people in Varro’s Italy, he does not tell us. Nor do we find any indication to shew whether they would normally take part in farm work with their own hands. When he deplores[744]the modern tendency to crowd into the city, where men use their hands for applauding shows, having abandoned the sickle and the plough, he is merely repeating the common lament of reformers. There is no sign of any hope of serious reaction against this tendency: the importation and cheap distribution of foreign corn is a degenerate and ruinous policy, but there it is. Varro admired the small holdings and peasant farmers of yore, but no man knew better that independent rustic citizens of that type had passed away from the chief arable districts of Italy never to return.
That small undertakings were still carried on in the neighbourhood of Rome and other urban centres, is evident from the market-gardens of the Imperial age. A notable case[745]is that of the bee-farm of a singleiugerumworked at a good profit by two brothers about 30 miles north of Rome. Varro expressly notes that they were able to bide their time so as not to sell on a bad market. He had first-hand knowledge of these men, who had served under him in Spain. Clearly they were citizens. They can hardly have kept slaves. It seems to have been a very exceptional case, and to be cited as such: it is very different from that of the peasant farmer of early Rome, concerned first of all to grow food for himself and his family. Agriculture as treated by Varro is based on slave labour, and no small part of his work deals with thequarters, feeding, clothing, discipline, sanitation, and mating, of the slave staff. True to his legal bent, he is careful to safeguard the rights of the slaveowner by explaining[746]the formal details necessary to effect a valid purchase, with guarantee of bodily soundness, freedom from vice, and flawless title. Again, to keep slaves profitably it was urgently necessary to keep them constantly employed, so that the capital sunk in them should not lie idle and the hands lose the habit of industry. Therefore, while relying on local craftsmen for special skilled services occasionally needed, he insists that a number of rustic articles should be manufactured on the farm. ‘One ought not to buy anything that can be produced on the estate[747]and made up by the staff (domesticis=familia), such as wicker work and things made of rough wood.’ Moreover, the organization of the staff in departments is an elaborate slave-hierarchy. Under the general direction of thevilicus, each separate function of tillage or grazing, or keeping and fattening fancy-stock has its proper foreman. Such posts carried little privileges, and were of course tenable during good behaviour. Some foremen would have several common hands under them: none would wish to be degraded back to the ranks. It seems that some wealthy men kept[748]birdcatchers huntsmen or fishermen of their own, but Varro, writing for the average landlord, seems to regard these as being properly free professionals. As for the common hands, the ‘labourers’ (operarii), on whose bone and sinew the whole economic structure rested, their condition was much the same as in Cato’s time, but apparently somewhat less wretched. Varro does not propose to sell off worn-out slaves; this let us credit to humaner feelings. He shews a marked regard for the health and comfort of slaves; this may be partly humanity, but that it is also due to an enlightened perception of the owner’s interest is certain. He does not provide for anergastulum, though those horrible prisons were well known in his day. Why is this? Perhaps partly because slave-labour was no longer normally employed on estates in the extremely crude and brutal fashion that was customary in the second centuryBC. And partly perhaps owing to the great disturbances of land-tenure since the measures of the Gracchi and the confiscations of Sulla. The earlierlatifundiahad been in their glory when the wealthy nobles sat securely in power, and this security was for the present at an end. But, if the slaveoperariiwere somewhat better treated, their actual field labour was probably no less hard. Many pieces of land could not be worked with the clumsy and superficial plough then in use. Either the slope of the ground forbade it, or a deeper turning of the soil was needed,as for growing[749]vines. This meant wholesale digging, and the slave was in effect a navvy without pay or respite. No wonder thatfossorbecame a proverbial term for mere animal strength and dull unadaptability. An interesting estimate of the capability of an average digger is quoted[750]from Saserna. One man can dig over 8iugerain 45 days. But 4 day’s work is enough for oneiugerum(about â… of an acre). The 13 spare days allowed are set to the account[751]of sickness, bad weather, awkwardness, and slackness. Truly a liberal margin to allow for waste. It cannot have been easy to farm at a profit with slave-labour on such terms; for the slave’s necessary upkeep was, however meagre, a continual charge.
And yet we do not find Varro suggesting that free wage-earning labour might in the long run prove more economical than slave-labour even for rough work. Nay more, he does not refer to the employment of contractors with their several gangs, each interested in getting his particular job done quickly and the price paid. He only refers tomercennariiin general terms, as we saw above. Nor does he speak[752]ofpolitioas a special process, as Cato does. It may be that he did not think it worth while to enter into these topics. But it is more probable that the results of agrarian legislation and civil warfare in the revolutionary period had affected the problems of rustic labour. The attempt to revive by law the class of small cultivating owners had been a failure. Military service as a career had competed with rustic wage-earning. Men waiting to be hired as farm hands were probably scarce. Otherwise, how can we account for the great armies raised in those days? To refer once more to a point mentioned above, Varro does not suggest that the charge of an estate might with advantage be entrusted to a freeman asvilicus. That we can discover all the reasons for the preference of slaves as stewards is too much to hope for. That it seemed to be a guarantee of honesty and devotion to duty, the manager being wholly in his master’s power, is a fairly certain guess. And yet Varro like others saw the advisability of employing free labour for occasional work of importance. Perhaps the permanent nature of a steward’s responsibilities had something to do with the preference. It may well have been difficult to keep a hold on a free manager. In management of a slave staff no small tact and intelligence were needed as well as a thorough knowledge of farming. General experience needed to be supplemented by an intimate knowledge[753]of the conditions of the neighbourhood and the capacities of the particular estate. And a free citizen,whose abilities and energy might qualify him for management of a big landed estate, had endless opportunities of turning his qualities to his own profit elsewhere. Whether as individuals or in companies, enterprising Romans found lucrative openings in the farming of revenues, in state-contracts, in commerce, or in money-lending, both in Italy and in the Provinces. Such employments, compared with a possible estate-stewardship, would offer greater personal independence and a prospect of larger gains. And freemen of a baser and less effective type would have been worse than useless: certainly far inferior to well-chosen slaves.
It is hardly possible to avoid devoting a special section to the evidence ofCicero, though it must consist mainly of noting a number of isolated references to particular points. With all his many country-houses, his interest in agriculture was slight. But his active part in public life of all kinds makes him a necessary witness in any inquiry into the facts and feelings of his time; though there are few witnesses whose evidence needs to be received with more caution, particularly in matters that offer opportunity for partisanship. For our present purpose this defect does not matter very much. It is chiefly as confirming the statements of others that his utterances will be cited.
When we reflect that Cicero was himself a man of generous instincts, and that he was well read in the later Greek philosophies, we are tempted to expect from him a cosmopolitan attitude on all questions affecting individuals. He might well look at human rights from the point of view of common humanity, differentiated solely by personal virtues and vices and unaffected by the accident of freedom or servitude. But we do not find him doing this. He might, and did, feel attracted by the lofty nobility of the Stoic system; but he could not become a Stoic. No doubt that system could be more or less adapted to the conditions of Roman life: it was not necessary to make the Stoic principles ridiculous by carrying[754]priggishness to the verge of caricature. But the notion that no fundamental difference existed between races and classes, that for instance the Wise Man, human nature’s masterpiece, might be found among slaves, was more than Cicero or indeed any level-headed Roman could digest. The imperial pride of a great people, conscious of present predominance through past merit, could not sincerely accept such views. To a Roman the corollary of accepting them would be the endeavour (more or less successful) to act upon them. This he had no intention of doing, and a mere theoretical assent[755]to them as philosophicalspeculations was a detail of no serious importance. Taking this as a rough sketch of the position occupied by Romans of social and political standing, we must add to it something more to cover the case of Cicero. He was a ‘new man.’ He was not a great soldier. He was not a revolutionary demagogue. He was ambitious. In order to rise and take his place among the Roman nobles he had to fall in with the sentiments prevailing among them: the newly-risen man could not afford to leave the smallest doubt as to his devotion to the privileges of his race and class. Thus, if there was a man in Rome peculiarly tied to principles of human inequality, it was Cicero.
Therefore we need not be surprised to find that this quick-witted and warm-hearted man looked upon those engaged in handwork with a genial contempt[756]sometimes touched with pity. To him, as to the society in which he moved, bodily labour seemed to deaden interest[757]in higher things, in fact to produce a moral and mental degradation. In the case of slaves, whose compulsory toil secured to their owners the wealth and leisure needed (and by some employed) for politics or self-cultivation, the sacrifice of one human being for the benefit of another was an appliance of civilization accepted and approved from time immemorial. But the position of the freeman working for wages, particularly of the man who lived by letting out his bodily strength[758]to an employer for money, was hardly less degrading in the eyes of Roman society, and therefore in those of Cicero. We have no description of the Roman mob by one of themselves. That the rough element[759]was considerable, and ready to bear a hand in political disorder, is certain. But they were what circumstances had made them, and it is probable that the riotous party gangs of Cicero’s time were not usually recruited among the best of the wage-earners. It is clear that many slaves took part in riots, and no doubt a number of freedmen also. In many rural districts disputes between neighbours easily developed into acts of force and the slaves of rival claimants did battle for their several owners. Moreover, slaves might belong, not to an individual, but to a company[760]exploiting some state concession of mineral or other rights. In such cases ‘regrettable incidents’ were always possible. And the wild herdsmen (pastores) roaming armed in the lonely hill-country were a ready-made soldiery ever inclined to brigandage or servilerebellions, a notorious danger. It was an age of violence in city and country. Rich politicians at last took to keeping private bands[761]of swordsmen (gladiatores). And it is to be borne in mind that, while a citizen might be unwilling to risk the life of a costly[762]slave, his own property, a slave would feel no economic restraint to deter him from killing his master’s citizen enemy.
The employment of slaves in the affrays that took place in country districts over questions of disputed right is fully illustrated in the speeches[763]delivered in cases of private law. The fact was openly recognized in the legal remedies provided, for instance in the variousinterdictaframed to facilitate the trial and settlement of disputes as topossessio. The forms contemplated the probability of slaves being engaged in assailing or defending possession on behalf of their masters, and the wording even varied according as the force in question had been used by men armed or unarmed. Counsel of course made much or little of the happenings in each case according to the interest of their clients. But that bloodshed occurred at times in these fights is certain. And there was no regular police force to keep order in remote corners of the land. When slaves were once armed and set to fight, they would soon get out of hand, and a slaveowner might easily lose valuable men. Nay more, an epidemic of local brigandage might result, particularly in a time of civil war and general unrest, and none could tell where the mischief would end. We can only form some slight notion of the effect of such conditions as these on the prospects of peaceful agriculture. The speechpro Quinctiobelongs to 81BC, thepro Tullioto 71, thepro Caecinato 69. When we reflect that the slave rising under Spartacus lasted from 73 to 71, and swept over a large part of Italy, we may fairly conclude that this period was a bad one for farming.
The most striking picture of the violence sometimes used in the disputes of rustic life meets us in the mutilated speechpro Tullio, of which enough remains to make clear all that concerns us. First, the form of action employed in the case was one of recent[764]origin, devised to check the outrages committed by bands of armed slaves, which had increased since the disturbances of the first civil war. The need for such a legal remedy must have been peculiarly obvious at the time of the trial, for the rising of Spartacus had only just been suppressed. Cicero refers to the notorious scandal of murders committed by thesearmed bands, a danger to individuals and even to the state, that had led to the creation of the new form of action at law. In stating the facts of the case, of course from his client’s point of view, he gives us details[765]which, true or not, were at least such as would not seem incredible to a Roman court. Tullius owned an estate in southern Italy. That his title to it was good is taken for granted. But in it was reckoned a certain parcel of land which had been in undisputed possession of his father. This strip, which was so situated as to form a convenient adjunct to a neighbouring estate, was the cause of trouble. The neighbouring estate had been bought by two partners, who had paid a fancy price for it. The bargain was a bad one, for the land proved to be derelict and the farmsteads all burnt down. One of the partners induced the other to buy him out. In stating the area of the property he included the border strip of land claimed by Tullius as his own. In the process of settlement of boundaries for the transfer to the new sole owner he would have included the disputed ground, but Tullius instructed[766]his attorney and his steward to prevent this: they evidently did so, and thus the ownership of the border strip was left to be determined by process of law. The sequel was characteristic of the times. The thwarted claimant armed a band of slaves and took possession[767]of the land by force, killing the slaves who were in occupation on behalf of Tullius, and committing other murders and acts of brigandage by the way. We need not follow the case into the law-court. What concerns us is the evidence of unfortunate land speculation, of land-grabbing, of boundary-disputes, and of the prompt use of violence to supersede or hamper the legal determination of rights. The colouring and exaggeration of counsel is to be allowed for; but we can hardly reject the main outlines of the picture of armed slave-bands and bloodshed as a rural phenomenon of the sorely tried South of Italy.
The speechpro Caecinashews us the same state of things existing in Etruria. The armed violence alleged in this case is milder in form: at least the one party fled, and nobody was killed. Proceedings were taken under a possessory interdict issued by a praetor, and Cicero’s artful pleading is largely occupied with discussion of the bearing and effect of the particular formula employed. Several interesting transactions[768]are referred to. A man invests his wife’s dowry in a farm, land being cheap, owing to bad times, probably the result of the Sullan civil war. Some time after, he bought some adjoining land for himself. After his death and that of his direct heir, the estate had to be liquidatedfor purpose of division among legatees. His widow, advised to buy in the parcel of land adjoining her own farm, employed as agent a man who had ingratiated himself with her. Under this commission the land was bought. Cicero declares that it was bought for the widow, who paid the price, took possession, let it to a tenant, and held it till her death. She left her second husband Caecina heir to nearly all her property, and it was between him and the agent Aebutius that troubles now arose. For Aebutius declared that the land had been bought by him for himself, and that the lady had only enjoyed the profits of it for life in usufruct under her first husband’s will. This was legally quite possible. At the same time he suggested that Caecina had lost the legal capacity of taking the succession at all. For Sulla had degraded the citizens belonging to Volaterrae, of whom Caecina was one. Cicero is more successful in dealing with this side-issue than in establishing his client’s claim to the land. The dispute arising out of that claim, the armed violence used by Aebutius to defeat Caecina’s attempt to assert possession, and the interdict granted to Caecina, were the stages by which the case came into court. Its merits are not certain. But the greedy characters on both sides, the trickery employed by one side or other (perhaps both), and the artful handling of the depositions of witnesses, may incline the reader to believe that the great orator had but a poor case. At all events farming in Etruria appears as bound up with slave labour and as liable to be disturbed by the violence of slaves in arms.
In the above cases it suited Cicero’s purpose to lay stress on the perils that beset defenceless persons who were interested in farms in out-of-the-way[769]places. Yet the use of armed force was probably most habitual on the waste uplands, and his references to the lawless doings of the brigand slave-bands fully confirm the warnings of Varro. His tone varies according to the requirements of his client’s case, but he has to admit[770]that wayfarers were murdered and bloody affrays between rival bands ever liable to occur. He can on occasion[771]boldly charge a political opponent with deliberate reliance on such forces for revolutionary ends. Thus of C Antonius he asserts ‘he has sold all his live stock and as good as parted with his open pastures, but he is keeping his herdsmen; and he boasts that he can mobilize these and start a slave-rebellion whenever he chooses.’ There was no point in sayingthis if it had been absurdly incredible. Another glimpse of the utter lawlessness prevalent in the wilds appears in the story[772]of murders committed in Bruttium. Suspicion rested on the slaves employed by the company who were exploiting the pitch-works in the great forest of Sila under lease from the state. Even some of the free agents of the company were suspected. The case, which was dealt with by a special criminal tribunal, belongs to the year 138BC, and attests the long standing of such disorders. And it is suggestive of guilty complicity on the part of the lessees that, though they eventually secured an acquittal, it was only after extraordinary exertions on the part of their counsel.
Indeed these great gangs of slaves in the service ofpublicaniwere in many parts of Italy and the Provinces a serious nuisance. Wherever the exploitation of state properties or the collection of dues was farmed out to contractors, a number of underlings would be needed. The lower grades were slaves: a few rose to higher posts as freedmen of the various companies. Now some of the enterprises, such as mines quarries woodlands and the collection of grazing dues on the public pastures, were generally in direct contact with rural life, and employed large staffs of slaves. The managers of a company were concerned to produce a high dividend for their shareholders: so long as this resulted from the labours of their men, it was a matter of indifference to them whether neighbouring farmers were robbed or otherwise annoyed. That we hear little or nothing of such annoyances is probably owing to the practice of locking up slave-labourers at night in anergastulum, for fear of their running away, not to keep them from doing damage. Runaways do not appear singly as a rustic pest. But in bands there was no limit to the harm thatfugitivimight do; witness the horrors of the slave-wars. In short, wherever slaves were employed in large numbers, the possibility of violence was never remote. Their masters had always at hand a force of men, selected for bodily strength and hardened by labour, men with nothing but hopeless lives to lose, and nothing loth to exchange dreary toil for the dangers of a fight in which something to their advantage might turn up. No doubt the instances of slaves called to arms in rustic disputes were far more numerous than those referred to by Cicero: he only speaks of those with which he was at the moment concerned.
Is it then true that in the revolutionary period farming depended on slave-labour while its security was ever menaced by dangers that arose directly out of the slave-system? I fear it is true, absurd though the situation may seem to us. Between the great crises of disturbance were spells of comparative quiet, in which men could and did farmprofitably in the chief agricultural districts of Italy. But it must be remembered that many an estate changed hands in consequence of civil war, and that many new landlords profited economically by appropriating the capital sunk in farms by their predecessors. The case of Sextus Roscius of Ameria gives us some light on this point. The picture drawn[773]by Cicero of the large landed estate of the elder Roscius, of his wealth and interest in agriculture, of his jealous and malignant relatives, of the reasons why he kept his son Sextus tied to a rustic life, is undoubtedly full of colouring and subtle perversions of fact. Let it go for what it may be worth. The accused was acquitted of the crime laid to his charge (parricide), but there is no sign that he was ever able to recover the estate and the home from which his persecutors had driven him. They had shared the plunder with Chrysogonus the favoured freedman of Sulla, who himself bought the bulk of the property at a mere fraction of its market value, and it is practically certain that the rogues kept what they got. It was easy to make agriculture pay on such terms. But what of the former owners of such properties, on whose ruin the new men’s prosperity was built? Can we believe that genuine agricultural enterprise was encouraged by a state of things in which the fruits of long patience and skill were liable to sudden confiscation?
In Cicero, as in other writers, we find evidence of a wage-earning class living by bodily labour alongside of the slave-population. But in passages where he speaks[774]ofmercennariiit is often uncertain whether freemen serving for hire, or slaves hired from another owner, are meant. In his language the associations[775]of the word are mean. It is true that you may buy for money not only the day’s-work (operae) of unskilled labourers but the skill (artes) of craftsmen. In the latter case even Roman self-complacency will admit a certain dignity; for men of a certain social status[776]such professions are all very well. But the mere ‘hand’ is the normal instance; and for the time of his employment he is not easily distinguished from a slave. Therefore Cicero approves[777]a Stoic precept, that justice bids you to treat slaves as you would hirelings—don’t stint their allowances (food etc), but get your day’s-work out of them. In passages[778]where the wordmercennariusis not used, but implied, there is the same tone of contempt, and it is not always clear whether the workers are free or slaves. In short the word is not as neutral asoperarius, which connotes mere manual labour, whether the labourer be free or not, and is figuratively used[779]to connotea merely mechanical proficiency in any art. Our ‘journeyman’ is sometimes similarly used.
There are other terms in connexion with land-management the use of which by Cicero is worth noting. Thus a landlord may have some order to give in reference to the cultivation of a farm. If he gives it to hisprocurator[780], it is as an instruction, a commission authorizing him to act; if to hisvilicus, it is simply a command. For the former is a free attorney, able at need to represent his principal even in a court of law: the latter is a slave steward, the property of his master. Theprocuratoris hardly a ‘manager’: he seldom occurs in connexion with agriculture, and seems then to be only required when the principal is a very ‘big man,’ owning land on a large scale, and probably in scattered blocks. In such cases it would be convenient for (say) a senator to give a sort of ‘power of attorney’ to an agent and let him supervise the direction of a number of farms, each managed by a steward. I take this policy to be just that against which the writers on agriculture warn their readers. It sins against the golden rule, that nothing is a substitute for the Master’s eye. Whether the agent referred to in the speechpro Tullio, who as well as the steward received[781]written instructions from Tullius, was guilty of any neglect or blunder, we cannot tell. That any act done to aprocuratoror by him was legally equivalent to the same done to or by his principal, is a point pressed in thepro Caecina, no doubt because it was safe ground and an excuse for not dwelling on weak points in a doubtful case.
Thecolonusas a tenant[782]farmer, whom we find mentioned in Varro but not in Cato, appears in Cicero. In thepro Caecinawe read[783]that the widow lady took possession of the farm and let it (locavit); also that the tenant was after her death still occupying the farm, and that a visit of Caecina, in which he audited the accounts of the tenant, is a proof that Caecina himself was now in possession. That is, by asserting control of the sitting tenant Caecina made the man his agent so far as to retain possession through the presence of his representative. If the facts were as Cicero states them, the contention would be legally sound. For, as he points out in another passage, any representative[784]will serve for these purposes of keeping or losing possession. If the interdict-formula only says ‘attorney’ (procurator), this does not mean that onlyan attorney in the technical sense, a plenipotentiary agent appointed by an absentee principal with full legal formalities, is contemplated. No, the brief formula covers agency of any kind: it will apply to your tenant your neighbour your client or your freedman, in short to any person acting on your behalf. In the great indictment of Verres[785]we find a good instance of tenancy in Sicily, where it seems to have been customary for large blocks of land to be held on lease from the state by tenants-in-chief (aratores) who sometimes sublet parcels tocoloni. In this case the trouble arose out of the tithe to which the land was liable. Verres, in order to squeeze an iniquitous amount out of a certain farm, appointed a corrupt court charged to inquire whether the (arable) acreage had been correctly returned by thecolonus. Of course they were instructed to find that the area had been fraudulently understated. But the person against whom judgment was to be given was not thecolonus, but Xeno, who was not the owner of the farm. He pleaded that it belonged to his wife, who managed her own affairs; also that he had not been responsible for the cultivation (non arasse). Nevertheless he was not only compelled to pay a large sum of money to meet the unfair damages exacted, but subjected to further extortion under threat of corporal punishment. The returns on which the tithes were assessed would seem to have been required from the actual cultivators, and the lessees of the year’s tithe to have had a right of action against the owners or chief-tenants of the land, if the tenant farmer defaulted in any particular. So far we are able to gather that tenant farmers were no exception at this time, though perhaps not a numerous class; and that they were not persons of much social importance. That they were to a considerable extent dependent on their landlords is probable, though not actually attested by Cicero, for we have seen evidence of it in a passage of Caesar. Cicero’s reference[786]to the case of a lady who committed adultery with acolonusis couched in such terms as to imply the man’s social inferiority. In another passage[787]we hear of a man in the Order ofequites equo publicobeing disgraced by a censor taking away his state-horse, and of his friends crying out in protest that he wasoptimus colonus, thrifty and unassuming. Here we have a person of higher social quality, no doubt: but I conceivecolonusto be used in the original sense of ‘cultivator.’ To say ‘he is a good farmer’ does not imply that he is a mere tenant, any more than it does in the notable passage of Cato.
Thevilicusgenerally appears in Cicero as the slave steward familiar to us from other writers. In one place[788]he is contrasted with thedispensator, who seems to be a sort of slave clerk charged with registering stores and serving out rations clothing etc. As this functionary seldom meets us in the rustic system of the period, we may perhaps infer that only large estates, where thevilicushad no time to spare from purely agricultural duties, required such extra service. In saying that he can read and write (litteras scit) Cicero may seem to imply that this is not to be expected from thevilicus: but the inference is not certain, for the agricultural writers require stewards to read at least. In another passage[789]we read that in choosing a slave for the post of steward the one thing to be kept in view is not technical skill but the moral qualities, honesty industry alertness. Here it is plain that the orator is warping the truth in order to suit his argument: Varro would never have disregarded technical skill. For Cicero’s point is that what the state needs most in its ‘stewards’ (that is, magistrates) is good moral qualities. On the same lines he had some 16 years before compared[790]Verres to a bad steward, who has ruined his master’s farm by dishonest and wasteful management, and is in a fair way to be severely punished for his offence. The tone of this passage is exactly that of old Cato, put in the rhetorical manner of an advocate.
A few words must be said on the subject of manumission. In his defence of Rabirius, accused of high treason, Cicero launches[791]out into a burst of indignation at the attempted revival of an obsolete barbarous procedure designed for his client’s destruction. The cruel method of execution to which it points, long disused, is repugnant to Roman sentiment, utterly inconsistent with the rights of free humanity. Such a prospect[792]would be quite unendurable even to slaves, unless they had before them the hope of freedom. For, as he adds below, when we manumit a slave, he is at once freed thereby from fear of any such penalties as these. Taken by itself, this passage is better evidence of the liability of slaves to cruel punishment than of the frequent use of manumission. But we know from Cicero’s letters and from other sources that freedmen were numerous. And from a sentence[793]in one of thePhilippicswe may gather that it was not unusual for masters to grant freedom to slaves after six years of honest and painstaking service. I suspect that this utterance, in the context in which it occurs, should not be taken too literally. That Romans of wealth and position liked to surround themselves with retainers, humble and loyal, bound to their patron by ties of gratitude and interest, is certain: and early manumissions were naturally promoted by this motive. But the most pleasing instanceswere of course those in which a community of pursuits developed a real sympathy, even affection between owner and owned, as in the case of Tiro, on whose manumission[794]Quintus Cicero wrote to congratulate his brother. In all these passages, however, there is one thing to be noted. They do not look to the conditions of rustic life; and, so far as the evidence of Cicero goes, they do not shake my conviction that manumission was a very rare event on country estates.
A topic of special interest is the evidence of the existence of farmers who, whether employing slaves or not, worked on the land in person. What does Cicero say as to αá½Ï„ουÏγία, in his time? It has been pointed out above that, when it suits his present purpose, he not only enlarges on the homely virtues of country folk but refers to the old Roman tradition of farmer-citizens called from the plough to guide and save the state in hours of danger. He made full use of this topic in his defence of Sextus Roscius, and represented his client as a simple rustic, reeking of the farmyard,—how far truly, is doubtful. But he does not go so far as to depict him ploughing or digging or carting manure. It is reasonable to suppose that the slaves to whom he refers[795]did the rough farm-work under his orders. When he can make capital out of the wrongs of the humble labouring farmer, the orator does not shrink from doing so. One of the iniquities laid to the charge[796]of Verres is that he shifted the burden of taking legal proceedings from the lessees of the Sicilian tithes (decumani) to the tithe-liable lessees of the land (thearatores). Instead of the tithe-farmer having to prove that his demand was just, the land-farmer had to prove that it was unjust. Now this was too much even for those farming on a large scale: it meant in practice that they had to leave their farms and go off to make their appeals at Syracuse. But the hardship was far greater in the case of small farmers (probably sub-tenants), of whom he speaks thus: ‘And what of those whose means of tillage[797]consist of one yoke of oxen, who labour on their farms with their own hands—in the days before your governorship such men were a very numerous class in Sicily—when they have satisfied the demands of Apronius, what are they to do next? Are they to leave their tillages, leave their house and home, and come to Syracuse, in the hope of reasserting their rights at law against an Apronius[798]under the impartial government of a Verres?’ No doubt the most is made of these poor men and their wrongs. But we need not doubt that there were still some smallworking farmers in Sicily. In the half-century or so before the time of Verres we hear[799]of free Sicilians who were sorely disturbed by the great servile rebellions and even driven to make common cause with the insurgent slaves. Some such ‘small men’ were evidently still to be found wedged in among the big plantations.