Chapter XII: Appendix: Some Byzantine Authorities (11)

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] of _mercennarii_ it 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 word _mercennarius_ is 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 as _operarius_, which connotes mere manual labour, whether the labourer be free or not, and is figuratively used[779] to connote a 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 his _procurator_[780], it is as an instruction, a commission authorizing him to act; if to his _vilicus_, 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. The _procurator_ is 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 speech _pro 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 a _procurator_ or by him was legally equivalent to the same done to or by his principal, is a point pressed in the _pro Caecina_, no doubt because it was safe ground and an excuse for not dwelling on weak points in a doubtful case.

The _colonus_ as a tenant[782] farmer, whom we find mentioned in Varro but not in Cato, appears in Cicero. In the _pro Caecina_ we 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 only an 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 to _coloni_. 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 the _colonus_. 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 the _colonus_, 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 a _colonus_ is couched in such terms as to imply the man’s social inferiority. In another passage[787] we hear of a man in the Order of _equites equo publico_ being disgraced by a censor taking away his state-horse, and of his friends crying out in protest that he was _optimus colonus_, thrifty and unassuming. Here we have a person of higher social quality, no doubt: but I conceive _colonus_ to 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.

The _vilicus_ generally appears in Cicero as the slave steward familiar to us from other writers. In one place[788] he is contrasted with the _dispensator_, 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 the _vilicus_ had 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 the _vilicus_: 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 the _Philippics_ we 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 instances were 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 αὐτουργία, 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 (the _aratores_). 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 small working 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.

Another important passage occurs in the artful speech against the agrarian bill of Rullus. It refers to the _ager Campanus_, on the value of which as a public asset[800] Cicero insists. This exceptionally fertile district was, and had long been, let by the state to cultivating tenants, whose regularly-paid rents were one of the safest items in the Roman budget. These farms were no _latifundia_, but apparently of moderate size, such that thrifty farmers could make a good living in this favoured land. With the various political[801] changes, carrying with them disturbances of occupancy, caused by wars in the past, we are not here concerned. Cicero declares that one aim of the bill was the assignation of this district to new freeholders, which meant that the state treasury would lose a sure source of revenue. This, in the interest of the aristocratic party, he was opposing, and undoubtedly misrepresented facts whenever it suited his purpose. In matters of this kind, he says, the cry is often raised[802] that it is not right for lands to lie depopulated with no freemen left to till them. This no doubt refers to the Gracchan programme for revival of the peasant farmers. Cicero declares that such a cry is irrelevant to the present issue, for the effect of the bill will be to turn out the excellent sitting tenants[803] only to make room for new men, the dependants and tools of a political clique. The reason why, after the fall of Capua in the second Punic war, that city was deprived of all corporate existence, and yet the houses were left standing, was this: the menace of a disloyal Capua had to be removed, but a town-centre of some sort could not be dispensed with. For marketing, for storage[804] of produce, the farmers must have some place of common resort: and when weary with working on their farms they would find the town homesteads a welcome accommodation. Allowing for rhetorical colouring in the interests of his case, perhaps we may take it from Cicero that a fair number of practical working farmers were settled on the Campanian plain. His prediction[805] that, if this district were to be distributed in freehold allotments, it would presently pass into the hands of a few wealthy proprietors (as the Sullan allotments had been doing) suggests a certain degree of sincerity. But taken as a whole the utterances of Cicero are too general, and too obviously meant to serve a temporary purpose, to furnish trustworthy data for estimating the numerical strength and importance of the working farmers in the Italy of his day.

XXVII. SALLUST AND OTHERS.

In the writings of Cicero’s contemporaries other than Varro there is very little to be found bearing upon rustic life and labour as it went on in their time. Literature was occupied with other themes appropriate to the political conflicts or social scandals or philosophic questionings that chiefly interested various individuals and the circles in which they moved. The origins of civilization formed a fascinating problem for some, for instance the Epicurean =Lucretius=: but his theory of the development of agriculture deals with matters outside of our subject. The one helpful passage of =Caesar=[806] has been noticed already. So too has the contemptuous reference[807] of =Sallust= to agriculture as slaves’ work. This writer in a few places touches on points of interest. For instance, in speaking[808] of the various classes of men who were ripe for revolution, he says ‘moreover there were the able-bodied men who had been used to earn a hard living as hired labourers on farms; the attraction of private and public bounties had drawn them into Rome, where they found idle leisure preferable to thankless toil.’ Such statements, unsupported by statistics, must be received with caution, but this assertion is so far backed up by what we learn from other sources, that we can accept it as evidence. How many such rustic immigrants of this class there were at any given moment, is what we want to know, and do not. Again, in a passage[809] describing the popularity of Marius in 108 BC, he says ‘in short, the commons were fired with such enthusiasm that the handworkers and the rustics of all sorts, men whose means and credit consisted in the labour of their hands, struck work and attended Marius in crowds, putting his election before their own daily needs.’ In this there is perhaps some exaggeration, but the picture is probably true in the main. The _agrestes_ may include both small farmers and labourers. But they can hardly have come from great distances, and so were probably not very numerous. The description is as loose as passages of the kind were in ancient writers, and are still. The references to rustic slave-gangs, and Catiline’s refusal to arm them in support of his rising, have been cited above.

We now pass into the period in which the last acts of the Roman Republican drama were played and the great senatorial aristocrats, in whose hands was a great share of the best lands in Italy, lost the power to exploit the subject world. Not only by official extortion in provincial governorships, but by money-lending at usurious interest[810] to client princes or provincial cities, these greedy nobles amassed great sums of money, some of which was employed in political corruption to secure control of government at home. Civil wars and proscriptions now thinned their ranks, and confiscations threw many estates into the market. The fall of Antony in 31 BC left Octavian master of the whole empire of Rome, an emperor ruling under republican disguises. Now it was naturally and properly his aim to neutralize the effects of past disorders and remove their causes. He looked back to the traditions of Roman growth and glory, and hoped by using the lessons thus learnt to revive Roman prosperity and find a sound basis for imperial strength. He worked on many lines: that which concerns us here is his policy towards rustic life and agriculture. As he persuaded and pressed the rich to be less selfish[811] and more public-spirited, to spend less on ostentation and the adornment of their mansions and parks, and to contribute liberally to works of public magnificence or utility, a duty now long neglected; even so he strove to rebuild Italian farming, to make it what it had been of yore, the seed-bed of simple civic and military virtues. But ancient civilization, in the course of its development in the Roman empire, had now gone too far for any ruler, however well-meaning and powerful, to turn the tide. Socially it was too concentrated and urban, economically too individualistic and too dependent on the manipulation of masses of capital. In many directions the policy of the judicious emperor was marvellously successful: but he did not succeed in reviving agriculture on the old traditional footing as a nursery of peasant farmers. He sought to bring back a traditional golden age, and court-poets were willing to assert[812] that the golden age had indeed returned. This was not true. The ever-repeated praises of country life are unreal. Even when sincere, they are the voice of town-bred men, weary of the fuss and follies of urban life, to which nevertheless they would presently come back refreshed but bored[813] with their rural holiday. That the science and art of agriculture were being improved, is true; hence the treatise of Varro, written in his old age. But technical improvements could not set the small farmers as a class on their legs again. The small man’s vantage lay (and still lies) in minute care and labour freely bestowed, without stopping to inquire whether the percentage of profit is or is not an adequate return for his toil. Moreover, technical improvements often require the command of considerable capital. The big man can sink capital and await a return on the investment: but this return must be at a minimum rate or he will feel that it does not ‘pay.’ For in his calculations he cannot help comparing the returns[814] on different kinds of investments.

Under such conditions it is no wonder that we find _latifundia_ still existing under the early Empire in districts suited for the plantation system. No doubt much of the large landholding was the outcome of social ambitions. Men who had taken advantage of civil war and its sequels to sink money in land took their profit either in a good percentage on plantations, or in the enhanced importance gained by owning fine country places, or in both ways. A new class was coming to the front under the imperial régime and among them were wealthy freedmen. These had not yet reached the predominant influence and colossal wealth that marked their successors of the next generation. But they had begun to appear[815] in the last age of the Republic, and were now a force by no means to be ignored. Such landowners were not likely to favour the revival of peasant farmers, unless the presence of the latter could be utilized in the interest of the big estates. There were two ways in which this result could be attained. A small freeholder might, from the small size of his farm, have some spare time, and be willing to turn it to account by working elsewhere for wages. Such a man would be a labourer of the very best kind, but he could not be relied upon to be disengaged at a particular moment; for, if not busy just then on his own farm, some other employer might have secured his services. A small tenant farmer, to whom part of a great estate was let, would be governed by any conditions agreed upon between him and his landlord. That these conditions might include a liability to a certain amount of actual service at certain seasons on his landlord’s estate, is obvious. That the _coloni_ of later times were normally in this position, is well known. That this system, under which a tenant retaining personal freedom was practically (and at length legally) bound to the soil, suddenly arose and became effective, is most improbable. Whether we can detect any signs of its gradual introduction will appear as our inquiry proceeds. We have already noted the few references to tenant _coloni_ under the Republic. It is enough to remark here that, whatever degree of improvement in agriculture may have taken place owing to the reestablishment of peace and order, it could hardly have been brought about without employing the best labour to be had. If therefore we find reason to believe that the supply of skilled free labour for special agricultural work was gradually found by giving a new turn to the tenancy-system, we may hazard a guess that the first tentative steps in this direction belong to the quiet developments of the Augustan peace.

ROME—THE EMPIRE

XXVIII. AGRICULTURE AND AGRICULTURAL LABOUR UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE. GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

That the position of the working farmer in the fourth and fifth centuries AD was very different from what it had been in the early days of the Roman Republic, is hardly open to question. That in the last two centuries of the Republic his position had been gravely altered for the worse in a large (and that in general the best) part of Italy, is not less certain. This period, from 241 to 31 BC, had seen the subjection to Rome of the Mediterranean countries, and the Italian peninsula was an imperial land. It was inevitable that from a dominion so vast and various there should be some sort of reaction on its mistress, and reaction there had been, mostly for evil, on the victorious Roman state. The political social and moral effects of this reaction do not concern us here save only in so far as the economic situation was affected thereby. For instance, the plunder of the Provinces by bad governors and the extortions practised by subordinate officials, the greed of financiers and their agents, were the chief sources of the immense sums of money that poured into Italy. The corruption promoted by all this ill-gotten wealth expressed itself in many forms; but in no way was it more effective than in degradation of agriculture. It was not merely that it forwarded the movement towards great aggregations of _latifundia_. It supplied the means of controlling politics by bribery and violence and rendering nugatory all endeavours to reform the land-system and give legislative remedies a fair trial. The events of the revolutionary period left nearly all the land of Italy in private ownership, most of it in the hands of large owners. The Sullan and Triumviral confiscations and assignations were social calamities and economic failures. Of their paralysing effect on agriculture we can only form a general notion, but it is clear that no revival of a free farming peasantry took place.

Changes there had been in agriculture, due to influences from abroad. Farming on a large scale and organization of slave labour had given it an industrial turn. The crude and brutal form in which this at first appeared had probably been somewhat modified by experience. The great plantations clumsily adapted from Punic models were not easily made to pay. More variety in crops became the fashion, and the specializing of labour more necessary. In this we may surely trace Greek and Greco-oriental influences, and the advance in this respect is reflected in the more scientific precepts of Varro as compared with those of Cato. But, so long as the industrial aim, the raising of large crops for the urban market, prevailed, this change could not tend to revive the farming peasantry, whose aim was primarily an independent subsistence, and who lacked the capital needed for agricultural enterprise on industrial lines. Meanwhile there was the large-scale slavery system firmly established, and nothing less than shrinkage of the supply of slaves was likely to shake it.

But the course of Roman conquest and formation of Provinces had brought Italy into contact with countries in which agriculture and its relation to governments stood on a very different footing from that traditional in Roman Italy. The independent peasant farmer living by his own labour on his own land, a double character of citizen and soldier, untroubled by official interference, was a type not present to the eyes of Romans as they looked abroad. Tribal ownership, still common in the West, had been outgrown in Italy. The Carthaginian system, from which much had been learnt, was an exploitation-system, as industrial as a government of merchant princes could make it. In Sicily it met a Hellenistic system set up by the rulers of Syracuse, and the two seem to have blended or at least to have had common characteristics. The normal feature was the payment of a tithe of produce (δεκάτη) to the State. For the State claimed the property of the land, and reserved to itself a regular 10% in acknowledgement thereof. This royal title had passed to Rome, and Rome accordingly levied her normal _decumae_, exemption from which was a special favour granted to a few communities. Now the principle that the ultimate ownership of land is vested in the King[816] was well known in the East, and is to be traced in several of the monarchies founded by the Successors of Alexander. In the Seleucid and Attalid kingdoms there have been found indications of it, though the privileges of cities and temples checked its general application. But in Egypt it existed in full vigour, and had done so from time immemorial. It was in fact the most essential expression of oriental ideas of sovranty. Combined with it was the reservation of certain areas as peculiarly ‘royal lands’ the cultivators of which were ‘royal farmers,’ βασιλικοὶ γεωργοί, standing in a direct relation to the King and controlled by his administrative officials. The interest of the sovran was to extract a regular revenue from the crown-lands: hence it was the aim of government to secure the residence of its farmers and the continuous cultivation of the soil. The object was attained by minute regulations applied to a submissive people of small needs.

It is evident that agriculture under conditions such as these was based on ideas fundamentally different from those prevalent in Italy. There private ownership was the rule, and by the end of the Republic it was so more than ever. The _latifundia_ had grown by transfers of property[817] in land, whether the holdings so absorbed were original small freeholds or allotments of state land granted under agrarian laws. Present estates, whether large or small, were normally held under a full proprietary title; and the large ones at least were valued as an asset of social and political importance rather than as a source of economic profit. The owner could do what he would with his own, and in Italy[818] there was no tax-burden on his land. We may ask how it came about that the Italian and Provincial systems stood thus side by side, neither assimilating the other. The answer is that the contrast suited the interests of the moneyed classes who controlled the government of Rome. To exploit the regal conditions taken over by the Republic abroad was for them a direct road to riches, and the gratification of their ambitions was achieved by the free employment of their riches at home. The common herd of poor citizens, pauperized in Rome or scattered in country towns and hamlets, had no effective means of influencing policy, even if they understood what was going on and had (which they had not) an alternative policy of their own. So the Empire took over from the Republic a system existing for the benefit of hostile aristocrats and capitalists, with whom it was not practicable to dispense and whom it was not easy to control.

We cannot suppose that the classes concerned with agriculture had any suspicion how far-reaching were the changes destined to come about under the new government. They could not look centuries ahead. For the present, the ruler spared no pains to dissemble his autocratic power and pose as a preserver and restorer of the Past. Caution and a judicious patronage inspired literature to praise the government and to observe a discreet silence on unwelcome topics. The attitude of Augustus towards agriculture will be discussed below. Here it is only necessary to remark that the first aim of his policy in this as in other departments was to set the machine working with the least possible appearance of change. As the republican magistracies were left standing, and gradually failed through the incompetence of senatorial guidance, so no crude agrarian schemes were allowed to upset existing conditions, and development was left to follow the lines of changing economic and political needs. It is well to take a few important matters and see very briefly how imperial policy set going tendencies that were in course of time to affect profoundly the position of agriculture.

In the first place it was clear that no stable reconstruction was possible without a large and steady income. To this end a great reform of the old methods of revenue-collection was necessary. The wasteful system of tax-farmers practically unchecked in their exactions was exchanged for collection by officials of the state or of municipalities. In the case of land-revenue this change was especially momentous, for in no department had the abuses and extortions of _publicani_ been more oppressive. And it was in the Emperor’s Provinces that this reform was first achieved. Agriculture was by far the most widespread occupation of the subject peoples; and the true imperial interest was, not to squeeze the most possible out of them at a given moment, but to promote their continuous wellbeing as producers of a moderate but sure revenue. That this wise policy was deliberately followed is indicated by the separate[819] treatment of Egypt. Augustus did not present his new acquisition to the Roman state. He stepped into the position of the late Ptolemies, and was king there without the name. As he found the cash of Ptolemaic treasure a means of paying off debts and avoiding initial bankruptcy, so by keeping up the existing financial system he enjoyed year by year a large income entirely at his own disposal, and avoided the risk of disturbing institutions to which the native farmers had been used from time immemorial. The possession of this vast private revenue undoubtedly had much to do with the successful career of Augustus in establishing the empire.

So long as the empire was secure from invasion, and the collection of taxes on a fair and economical plan afforded sufficient and regular returns, general prosperity prevailed over a larger area than ever before. The boon of peace was to the subject peoples a compensation for the loss of an independence the advantages of which were uncertain and in most cases probably forgotten. If the benumbing of national feelings was in itself not a good thing, the central government was able to pay its way, and emperors could at need appear as a sort of benign providence, by grants of money or temporary remissions of taxation in relief of extraordinary calamities. And yet, as we can now see in retrospect, the establishment of the new monarchy had set in motion tendencies that were destined to upset the social and economic structure and eventually to give it a more Oriental character. Italy long remained a favoured metropolitan land. But the great landowning nobles no longer ruled it and the Provinces also. No dissembling could conceal the truth that their political importance was gone. It may be[820] that some of the great landlords gave more attention to their estates as economic units. It is much more certain that large-scale landholding abroad[821] was more attractive than that in Italy. It was not a new thing, and under the republican government great provincial Roman landlords had enjoyed a sort of local autocratic position, assured by their influence in Rome. But an emperor’s point of view was very different from that of the old republican Senate. He could not allow the formation of local principalities in the form of great estates under no effective control. These landlords had been bitter opponents of Julius Caesar: Augustus had been driven to make away with some of them: the uneasiness of his successors at length found full vent in the action of Nero, who put to death six great landlords in Africa, and confiscated their estates. Half Africa, the Province specially affected, thus passed into the category of Imperial Domains, under the control of a departmental bureau, and later times added more and more to these _praedia Caesaris_ in many parts of the empire.

The convenient simplicity of having great areas of productive land administered by imperial agents more or less controlled by the officials of a central department, into which the yearly dues were regularly paid, cannot have escaped the notice of emperors. But the advantages of such a system had been a part of their actual experience[822] from the first in the case of Egypt. Egypt too was the special home of finance based on a system of regulated agriculture and hereditary continuity of occupation. In particular, the interest of the government in the maintenance and extension of cultivation was expressed in minute rules for land-tenure and dues payable, and the care taken to keep the class of ‘royal farmers’ in a prosperous condition. Thus there was recognized a sort of community of interest between peasant and king. That middlemen should not oppress the former or defraud the latter was a common concern of both. Now in the Roman empire we note the growth of a system resembling this in its chief features. We find the tillage of imperial domains[823] carried on by small farmers holding parcels of land, generally as sub-tenants of tenants-in-chief holding direct from the emperor. These small farmers were evidently workers, whether they to some extent used slave-labour or not. Imperial policy favoured these men as steady producers turning the land to good account, and thus adding to the resources of the empire without being (like great landlords) a possible source of danger. Hence great care was taken to protect the _coloni Caesaris_ from oppression by middlemen: and, so long as head-tenants and official agents did not corruptly combine to wrong the farmers, the protection seems to have been effective. Moreover, the advantage of retaining the same tenants on the land whose conditions they understood by experience, and of inducing them to reclaim and improve further portions of the waste, was kept clearly in view. A policy of official encouragement in these directions was in full swing in the second century AD and may perhaps have been initiated by Vespasian.

It is not necessary to assume that these arrangements were directly copied from Oriental, particularly Egyptian, conditions. The convenience of permanent tenants and the ever-pressing need of food-supply are enough to account for the general aim, and experience of the East would naturally help to mature the policy. The establishment of the Empire made it possible. But we must plainly note the significance of new ideas in respect of residence and cultivation. In the Roman land-system of Italy private ownership was the rule, and the general assumption that the owner cultivated on his own account: stewards and slave-gangs were common but not essential phenomena. It is true that the practice of letting farms to cultivating tenants existed, and that in the first two centuries of the Empire it was on the increase, probably promoted by the comparative scarcity of slaves in times of peace. But tenancy was a contract-relation, and the law, while protecting the tenant, gave to the landlord ample means of enforcing regular and thorough cultivation. And this automatically ensured the tenant’s residence in any conditions short of final despair. We shall see that as agriculture declined in Italy it became more and more difficult to find and keep satisfactory tenants: but the tenant was in the last resort free to go, and the man who had to be compelled to cultivate properly was just the man on whom the use of legal remedies was least likely to produce the desired practical effect. Now on the imperial domains abroad we find a growing tendency to insist on residence, as a rule imposed from above. The emperor could not leave his _coloni_ simply at the mercy of his head-tenants. He was very ready to protect them, but to have them flitting at will was another matter. And this tendency surely points to Egyptian analogies; naturally too, as the Empire was becoming more definitely a Monarchy.

We shall also find reason to think that both in Italy and in the Provinces there was a tendency to reduce farm-tenants to a considerable degree of _de facto_ dependence by manipulation of economic relations. A landlord could let a farm on terms apparently favourable but so arranged that it was easy for the tenant to fall into arrears and become his debtor. The exploitation of debtors’ necessities[824] was a practice traditionally Roman from very early times. True, it was seldom politic to sell up a defaulting tenant in the declining state of Italian agriculture. But the gradual acceptance of a liability to small burdens in lieu of cash payment might rob him of his effective independence before he was well aware of the change in his position. On a great provincial domain, the emperor being far away, a head-tenant could deal with the sub-tenants on much the same lines. A trifling requirement, just exceeding what was actually due, would be submitted to as not worth the trouble and risk of setting the appeal-machinery in motion. Further encroachments, infinitesimal but cumulative, might reduce the _colonus_ to a semi-servile condition: and, the poorer he became, the less his prospect of protection from the emperor’s local agents, too often men of itching palms. Still the _coloni_ were freemen, and we have evidence that they sometimes appealed to their imperial lord, and with success. It seems that in some respects _coloni Caesaris_ were at an advantage as compared with _coloni_ of private landlords, at least in the means of protection. Roman law was very chary of interference with matters of private contract, and the principles guiding the courts were well known. An astute landlord could see to it that his encroachments on a tenant’s freedom did not entitle the man to a legal remedy. But the imperial domains abroad were often, if not always, governed by administrative procedure under the emperor’s own agents; and these gentry could quickly be brought to order, and compelled to redress grievances, by a single word from headquarters. That the word was forthcoming on occasion is not wonderful. The policy of an emperor was to cherish and encourage the patient farmers whose economic value was a sound imperial asset, while the head-tenant was only a convenient middleman. But the private landowner had no imperial interest to guide him, and looked only to his own immediate profit.

In tracing the influences that changed the condition of the working farmer we must not forget the establishment of a new military system. The standing army created by Augustus was an absolute necessity for imperial defence. At the same time it was a recognition of the fact that the old system of temporary levies, long proved inadequate, must henceforth be abandoned. Frontier armies could not be formed by simply mobilizing free peasants for a campaign. The strength of the armies lay in military skill, not in numbers. Long service and special training made them uniformly professional, and provision was duly made for regular conditions of retirement. The Italian peasant-farmers, much fewer than of yore, and no longer all potential soldiers, were left to become simply professional farmers. That agriculture nevertheless did not really prosper was due to causes beyond their control; but that they, both tenant _coloni_ and any remaining small owners, should tend to become a purely peasant class was inevitable. Augustus may have wished to rebuild Italian agriculture on a sound foundation of the peasant-elements, but circumstances were too contrary for the successful prosecution of any such design. Meanwhile the marked differentiation[825] of soldier and farmer, and the settlement of veterans on allotments of land, mainly in frontier Provinces, was proceeding. Analogies from the East, particularly from Egypt, where such arrangements[826] were traditional, can hardly have been ignored. In ancient Egypt the division of military and farming classes had been so marked as to present the appearance of a caste-system. But this was not peculiar to Egypt. It was in full vigour in ancient India, where it impressed[827] Greek observers, to whom the general absence of slaves, there as in Egypt, seemed one of its notable phenomena.

I do not venture to suggest that Roman emperors set themselves deliberately to substitute a fixed attachment of working farmers to the soil for a failing system of rustic slave-labour. But it is not likely that, as labour-problems from time to time arose, the well-known Oriental solutions were without some influence on their policy. We must not forget that Greek thinkers had long ago approved the plan of strict differentiation of functions in ideal states, and that such notions, popularized in Latin, were common property in educated circles. Tradition[828] even pointed to the existence of some such differentiation in primitive Rome. Therefore, when we find under the later Empire a rigid system of castes and gilds, and the _coloni_ attached to the soil with stern penalties to hinder movement, we must not view the situation with modern eyes. The restraint, that to us seems a cruel numbing of forces vital to human progress, would come as no great shock to the world of the fourth century, long prepared for the step by experience not encountered by theory. To us it is a painful revolution that, instead of the land belonging to the cultivator, the cultivator had become an appendage of the land. But it was the outcome of a long process: as for progress in any good sense, it had ceased. Government had become a series of vain expedients to arrest decay. And the rule of fixed _origo_, a man’s officially fixed domicile, was nothing more than the doctrine of the ἰδία long prevalent in the East.

The true significance of the change binding the tiller to the soil he tilled is to be found in the fact that it was a desperate effort to solve a labour-question. To secure a sufficient supply of food had been a cause of anxiety to the imperial government from the first. The encouragement of increased production had become an important part of imperial policy in the second century. It looked to the small working farmers as the chief producing agency, men who provided all or most of the labour on their farms, and in at least some cases a certain amount of task-work[829] on the larger farms of the head-tenants. But in the wars and utter confusion of the third century the strain on the system was too great. The peaceful and prosperous parts of the empire suffered from increased demands on their resources to make good the deficiencies of the Provinces troubled with invasions or rebellions. And there can be no doubt that the working of governmental departments was interrupted and impeded by the general disorder. In such times as those of Gallienus and the so-called Thirty Tyrants the protection of the small farmers by intervention of the central authority must have been pitifully ineffective. Naturally enough, we do not get direct record of this failure, but the change of conditions that followed on the restoration of order by Diocletian shews what had been happening. The increase of taxation, rendered necessary by the costly machinery of the new government, led to increased pressure on the farmers, and evasions had to be checked by increased restraints. In a few years the facts were recognized and stereotyped by the law of Constantine, and the _coloni_ were henceforth bound down to the soil by an act of state. Another notable change[830] was introduced by requiring payment of dues to be made in kind. The motive of this was to provide a certain means of supporting the armies and the elaborate civil service; for the currency, miserably debased in the course of the third century, was a quite unsuitable medium for the purpose. That Diocletian, in these institutions of a new model, was not consciously applying oriental usage to the empire generally, is hardly credible. It only remained to reduce Italy to the common level by subjecting Italian land to taxation. This he did, and the new Oriental Monarchy was complete.

That a labour-question underlay the policy of attaching the _coloni_ to the land, is to be gathered from the following considerations. The development of the plan of promoting small tenancies, particularly on the imperial domains, was undoubtedly calculated to take the place of large-scale cultivation by slave labour. It was a move in the direction of more intensive tillage, and economically sound. So long as a firm hand was kept on large head-tenants and imperial officials, the plan seems to have been on the whole a success. But all depended on the protection of the small working farmers, and of course on the moderation of government demands. The disorders of the third century tended to paralyse the protection while they increased demands. Therefore the head-tenants, aided by the slackness or collusion of officials, gained a predominant power, which imperial policy had been concerned to prevent. By the time of Diocletian their position was far stronger than it had been under Hadrian. To restore the former relations by governmental action would be certainly difficult, perhaps impossible. As middlemen, through whose agency the collection of dues in non-municipal areas could be effected, they were useful. It was a saving of trouble to deal with a comparatively small number of persons, and those men of substance. The remodelling of the disordered Empire was no doubt a complicated and laborious business, and anything that promised to save trouble would be welcomed. So the government accepted[831] the changed position as accomplished fact, and left the _coloni_, its former clients, to the mercies of the men of capital. But the big men, controlling ever more lands, whether as possessors or as imperial head-tenants or as ‘patrons’ of helpless villagers, could not meet their obligations to the government without having the disposal of a sufficient and regular supply of labour. And to the authorities of the later Empire, deeply committed to a rigid system of castes and gilds, no way of meeting the difficulty seemed open but to extend the system of fixity to the class of toilers on the land. The motive was a financial one, naturally. Non-industrial, and so unable to pay for imports by export of its own manufactures, the civilization of the empire was financially based upon agriculture. Looking back on the past, we can see that the deadening of hope and enterprise in the farming population was a ruinous thing. But the empire drifted into it as the result of circumstances and influences long operative and eventually irresistible. To displace the free peasant by the slave, then the slave by the small tenant, only to end by converting the small tenant into a serf, was a part of the Roman fate.

ROME—AUGUSTUS TO NERO

XXIX. HORACE AND VERGIL.

For literary evidence bearing on agriculture in the time of Augustus we naturally look to Vergil and Horace. Now these two witnesses, taken separately and construed literally, might convey very different, even inconsistent, impressions of farm life and labour in the world around them. And Vergil is the central figure of Roman literature, the poet who absorbed the products of the past and dominated those of many generations to come. His quality as a witness to the present is what concerns us here. I have tried to discuss this problem thoroughly and fairly in a special section. In order to do this, it has been necessary to deal _pari passu_ with most of the evidence of Horace, the rest of which can be treated first by itself.

=Horace=, the freedman’s son, himself an illustration of the way in which the ranks of Roman citizenship were being recruited from foreign sources, yields to none in his admiration of the rustic Romans of old[832] and the manly virtues of the genuine stock. In the dialogue between himself and his slave Davus the latter is made to twit him with his praises of the simple life and manners of the commons of yore, though he would never be content to live as they did. A palpable hit, as Horace knew: but he did not change his tone. With due respect he speaks of the farmers of olden time, men of sturdy mould and few wants. It was as poor men on small hereditary farms[833] that M’ Curius and Camillus grew to be champions of Rome. In those far-off days the citizen might have little of his own, but the public treasury[834] was full; a sharp contrast to present selfishness and greedy land-grabbing. Those old farmer folk put their own hand to the work. Their sons were brought up to a daily round of heavy tasks, and the mother of such families[835] was a strict ruler and an active housewife. For the scale of all their operations was small, and personal labour their chief means of attaining limited ends. They are not represented as using slave labour, nor is the omission strange. For the military needs of the great world-empire were never far from the minds of the Augustan writers, conscious as they were of their master’s anxieties on this score. Now the typical peasant of old time was farmer and soldier too, and it is of the _rusticorum mascula militum proles_ that Horace is thinking. There was no need to refer to farm-slaves even in the case of Regulus[836], whom tradition evidently assumed to have been a slaveowner. But, when he refers to circumstances of his own day, the slave meets us everywhere; not only in urban life and the domestic circle, but on the farm and in the contractor’s[837] labour-gang. We then hear of great estates, of great blocks of land mostly forest (_saltus_)[838] bought up by the rich, of the sumptuous _villae_ of the new style, all implying masses of slave labour: also of the great estates outside[839] Italy, from which speculators were already drawing incomes.