Chapter XIII: Appendix: Some Byzantine Authorities (12)

Side by side with these scenes of aggressive opulence, we find occasional mention of a poorer class, farming small holdings, who are sometimes represented[840] as cultivators of land inherited from their forefathers. How far we are to take these references literally, that is as evidence that such persons were ordinary figures in the rustic life of Italy, may be doubted. The poet in need of material for contrasts, which are inevitably part of his stock-in-trade, has little in common with the statistician or even the stolid reporter. Nor can we be sure that the man who ‘works his paternal farm with oxen of his own’ or ‘delights to cleave his ancestral fields with the mattock,’ are workers doing the bodily labour in person. Even Horace, inclined though he is to realism, cannot be trusted so far: such words[841] as _arat_ and _aedificat_ for instance do not necessarily mean that the man guides the plough or is his own mason or carpenter. When he speaks of ‘all that the tireless Apulian[842] ploughs’—that is, the harvests he raises by ploughing—he does not seem to have in mind the small farmer. For the context clearly suggests corn raised on a large scale. And yet elsewhere[843] he gives us a picture of an Apulian peasant whose hard toil is cheered and eased by the work and attentions of his sunburnt wife, a little ideal scene of rural bliss. Apulia is a large district, and not uniform[844] in character, so we need not assume that either of these passages misrepresents fact. And there is a noticeable difference between the style of the Satires and Epistles on the one hand and that of the Odes on the other. In vocabulary, as in metre and rhythm, the former enjoy an easy license denied to the severer lyric poems on which he stakes his strictly poetic reputation. In the Odes[845] for instance _colonus_ bears the old general sense ‘tiller of the soil’: in the Satires we find it in the legal sense of ‘tenant-farmer’ as opposed to ‘owner,’ _dominus_. He refers in both groups of poems to the military colonists[846] pensioned by Augustus with grants of land. In neither place is the word _coloni_ used; this is natural enough. We need only note the care with which the court-poet refers to the matter. His master doubtless had many an anxious hour over that settlement: the poet refers to the granting of lands, and does not touch on the disturbance caused thereby. Nor is Horace peculiar in this respect. The caution that marks the utterances of all the Augustan writers is very apt to mislead us when we try to form a notion of the actual situation. The general truth seems to be that the beginning of the Empire was a time of unrest tempered by exhaustion, and that things only calmed down gradually as the sufferers of the elder generation died out. Wealth was now the one aim of most ambitions, and the race to escape poverty was extreme. The merchant[847] in Horace is a typical figure. For a while he may have had enough of seafaring perils and turn with joy to the rural quiet of his country town: but to vegetate on narrow means is more than he can stand, and he is off to the seas again. He is contrasted with the farmer content to till his ancestral fields, whom no prospect of gain would tempt to face the dangers of the deep: and he is I believe a much more average representative of the age than the acquiescent farmer.

One passage in the works of Horace calls for special discussion by itself, for the value of its evidence depends on the interpretation accepted, and opinions have differed. In the fourteenth epistle of the first book the poet expresses his preference for country life in the form of an address to the steward of his Sabine estate, beginning with these lines

_Vilice silvarum et mihi me reddentis agelli,_
_quem tu fastidis habitatum quinque focis et_
_quinque bonos solitum Variam dimittere patres,_

thus rendered by Howes

Dear Bailiff of the woody wild domain
Whose peace restores me to myself again,—
(A sprightlier scene, it seems, thy taste requires,
To Varia though it send five sturdy sires
The lords of five good households)—

and the question at once arises, what sort of persons are meant by these ‘five good fathers.’ In agreement with the excellent note of Wilkins I hold that they are free heads of households, and that they are persons existing in the then present time, not imagined figures of a former age. It seems also clear that they were living on the modest estate (_agellus_) of Horace. If so, then they can hardly be other than tenants of farms included therein. Therefore it has naturally been inferred that the estate consisted of a _villa_ with a home-farm managed by a steward controlling the staff of eight slaves of whom we hear elsewhere: and that the outlying portions were let to free farmers[848] on terms of money rent or shares of produce. Horace would thus be the landlord of five _coloni_, and his relations with them would normally be kept up through the agency of the resident slave-steward of the home-farm. All this agrees perfectly with other evidence as to the customary arrangements followed on rural estates; and I accept it as a valuable illustration of a system not new but tending to become more and more prevalent as time went on. But it is well to note that the case is one from a hill district, and that we must not from it draw any inference as to how things were moving on the great lowland estates, the chief latifundial farm-areas of Italy.

The _patres_ referred to are virtually _patres familias_[849], free responsible persons, probably Roman citizens, but tenants, not landowning yeomen of the ancient type. Whether their visits to Varia (Vicovaro) were to bear their part in the local affairs of their market-town, or to buy and sell, or for both purposes, is not quite clear; nor does it here concern us. But we should much like to know whether these five farmers, or some of them, employed[850] any slaves. I do not see how this curiosity is to be gratified. Perhaps we may argue that their assumed liberty to come and go points to the employment of some labour other than their own: but would this labour be slave or free? If we assume (as I think we fairly may) that the labour needed would be mainly regular routine-work and not occasional help, this points rather to slave-labour. Nor is there any general reason for distrusting that conclusion; only it would probably mean slave-labour on a small scale. There is moreover no reason to think that free wage-labourers for regular routine work were plentiful in the Sabine hills. And these small farmers were not likely to be creditors, served by debtors (_obaerati_) working off arrears of debt, a class of labour which according to Varro seems to have been no longer available in Italy. There I must leave this question, for I can add no more.

It remains to ask whether the identification of _patres_ with _patres familias_ exhausts the full meaning of the word. In the _Aeneid_ (XII 520) a combatant slain is described as by craft a poor fisherman of Lerna, no dependant of the wealthy, and then follow the words _conductaque pater tellure serebat_. Now most commentators and translators seem determined to find in this a reference to the man’s father, which is surely flat and superfluous. The stress is not on _pater_ but on _conducta_. Is not _pater_ an honourable quality-term, referring to the man[851] himself? He would not be always fishing in the lake. He had a dwelling of some sort, most probably a patch of land, to grow his vegetables. The point is that even this was not his own, but hired from some landowner. I would render ‘and the land where the honest man used to grow a crop from seed was rented from another.’ That _pater_ (Aeneas etc) is often used as a complimentary prefix, is well known, and I think it delicately expresses the poet’s kindly appreciation of the poor but honest and independent rustic. In the passage of Horace I am inclined to detect something of the same flavour. Some have supposed that the five ‘fathers’ were decurions of the local township of Varia, who went thither to meetings of the local senate. I shrink from reading this into the words of Horace, all the more as Nissen[852] has shewn good reason for doubting whether Varia was anything more than a subordinate hamlet (_vicus_) of Tibur.

The general effect of the words, taken in context with the rest of the epistle, is this: the _vilicus_, once a common slave-labourer (_mediastinus_) in Rome, hankers after town life, finding his rustic stewardship dull on a small estate such as that of Horace. To Horace the place is a charming retreat from the follies and worries of Rome. To him the estate with its quiet homestead and the five tenants of the outlying farms is an ideal property: he wants[853] a retreat, not urban excitements. To the steward it seems that there is ‘nothing doing,’ while the grandeur of a great estate is lacking. So the master is contented, while the slave is discontented, with this five-farm property looked at from their different points of view.

But the most serious problem that meets us in endeavouring to appraise the evidence of the Augustan literature is connected with the _Georgics_ of Vergil. Passages from Horace will be helpful in this inquiry, in the course of which the remarkable difference between these two witnesses will appear. The stray references in other writers of the period are for the most part not worth citing. =Tibullus= speaks of the farmer[854] who has had his fill of steady ploughing, but this is in an ideal picture of the origins of agriculture. His rural scenes are not of much significance. In one place, speaking of hope[855] that sustains a man in uncertainties, for instance a farmer, he adds ‘Hope it is too that comforts one bound with a strong chain: the iron clanks on his legs, yet he sings as he works.’ A rustic slave, no doubt. But that his hope is hope of manumission is by no means clear: it may be hope of escape, and the words are indefinite, perhaps left so purposely. That =Ovid=[856] refers to the farmer statesmen and heroes of yore, who put their hands to the plough, is merely an illustration of the retrospective idealism of the Augustan age. Like Livy and the rest, he was conscious of the decay of Roman vitality, and amid the glories and dissipations of Rome recognized the vigour and simplicity of good old times. For him, and for =Manilius=, speculation[857] as to the origins of civilization, imaginings of a primitive communism, had attraction, as it had for Lucretius and Vergil. It was part of the common stock: and in connexion with the development of building it forms a topic of some interest[858] in the _architectura_ of =Vitruvius=.

=Vergil.= All readers of Vergil’s _Georgics_ are struck by the poet’s persistent glorification of labour and his insistence on the necessity and profit of personal action on the farmer’s part. Yet on one very important point there is singular obscurity. Is slave-labour meant to be a part of his _res rustica_, or not? When he bids the farmer do this or that, is he bidding him to do it with his own hands, or merely to see to the doing of it, or sometimes the one and sometimes the other? So far as I know, no sufficient attention[859] has been given to the curious, and surely deliberate, avoidance of direct reference to slavery in this poem. To this subject I propose to return after considering the references in his pastoral and epic poetry. For in the artificial world of piping shepherds and in the surroundings of heroic legend the mention of slaves and slavery is under no restraint. This I hope to make clear; and, in relation to the contrast presented by the _Georgics_, to emphasize, if not satisfactorily to explain, one of the subtle reticencies of Vergil.

The _Bucolics_ place us in an unreal atmosphere. The scenic setting is a blend of Theocritean Sicily and the poet’s own lowlands of the Cisalpine. The characters and status of the rustics are confused in a remarkable degree. Thus in the first eclogue Tityrus appears as a slave who has bought his freedom late in life (lines 27-9), having neglected to amass a _peculium_ in earlier years (31-2). It was only by a visit to Rome, and the favour of Octavian, that he gained relief. But this relief appears, not as manumission, but as the restoration of a landowner dispossessed by a military colonist. The inconsistency cannot be removed by treating the first version as symbolic or allegorical. It is there, and the poet seems to have felt no sufficient inducement to remove it. Corydon in the second eclogue has a _dominus_, and is therefore _servus_ (2). Yet he boasts of his large property in flocks, which are presumably his _peculium_ (19-22). His dwelling is a lowly cot in the rough grubby surroundings of the countryside (28-9). He is _pastor_ (1), but there are evidently _aratores_ on the estate (66). He is warned that, if it comes to buying favours with gifts, he cannot compete with his master Iollas (57). Had he not better do some basket-work and forget his passion (71-3)?

In the third eclogue the status of Damoetas is far from clear. He appears as _alienus custos_ of a flock, the love-rival of the owner (_ipse_), whom he is robbing, profiting by the latter’s preoccupation with his amour (1-6). He is in short head-shepherd (101 _pecoris magistro_), and Tityrus (96) seems to be his underling. Menalcas in staking the cups explains that he dare not risk any of the flock under his charge, which belongs to his father and is jealously counted (32-43). He is owner’s son, with no opportunities of fraud; probably free, for we can hardly assume that the flock is a slave’s _peculium_. But whether Damoetas is (_a_) a free hireling or (_b_) a slave hired from another owner or (_c_) a slave of the flock-owner, is not to be inferred with confidence from so indistinct a picture. In the ninth eclogue we are again[860] brought across the rude military colonist (4) of the first eclogue. Moeris, who seems to be the steward of Menalcas, speaks of _nostri_ (_agelli_, 2) and _nostra_ (_carmina_, 12). Menalcas is _ipse_ (16), and supposed to represent Vergil. I incline to believe that Moeris is a slave _vilicus_, but cannot feel sure. So also in the tenth, we hear of _opilio_ and _subulci_ (19), of _custos gregis_ and _vinitor_ (36). These would in the Italy of Vergil’s time be normally slaves. But it is not the question of their status that is uppermost in the poet’s mind. They appear in the picture merely as figures suggesting the rustic environment on which he loves to dwell. As for the fourth eclogue, it is only necessary to remark that, however interpreted, it points to the return (6) of a blissful age, and accordingly assumes the former existence of good old times.

It has been justly noted that the merry singing and easy life of the swains in the _Bucolics_ are incongruous with the notorious condition of the rustic slaves of Italy. No doubt the contrast is painful. But we must not presume to impute to the great and generous poet a light-headed and callous indifference to the miseries daily inflicted by capitalist exploiters of labour on their human chattels. We must not forget that in hill districts, where large-scale farming did not pay, rural life was still going on in old-fashioned grooves. Nor must we forget that in his native Cisalpine slavery was probably of a mild character. Some hundred years later we hear[861] that chained gangs of slave-labourers were not employed there: and the great armies recruited there in Caesar’s time do not suggest that the free population had dwindled there as in Etruria or Lucania. The song-loving shepherds are an importation from the Sicily of Theocritus, an extinct past, an artificial world kept alive in literature by the genius of its singer. In the hands of his great imitator the rustic figures become even more unreal. Hence the extreme difficulty of extracting any sure evidence on the status of these characters, or signs of the poet’s own sentiments, from the language of the _Bucolics_.

In the _Aeneid_ we have the legends of ancient Italy and the origin of Rome subjected to epic treatment. The drift of the poem is conditioned by modern influence, the desire of Augustus to gain support for the new Empire by fostering every germ of a national sentiment. The tale of Troy has to be exploited for the purpose, and with the tale of Troy comes the necessity of reproducing so far as possible the atmosphere of the ‘heroic’ age. There is therefore hardly any reference to the matters with which I am now concerned. When the poet speaks[862] of the peoples of ancient Italy it is in terms of general praise. Their warlike vigour and hardihood, the active life of hunters and farmers, can be admired without informing the reader whether they employed slave-labour or not. And in the rare references[863] to slavery in his own day Vergil has in mind the relation of master and slave simply, without any regard to agriculture. But in depicting the society of the ‘heroic’ times, in which the adventures of Aeneas are laid, a substratum of slavery was indispensable. It was therefore drawn from the Greek epic, where it lay ready to hand. Yet the references to slaves are less numerous than we might have expected. We find them employed in table-service (I 701-6), or as personal attendants (II 580, 712, IV 391, V 263, IX 329, XI 34). We hear of a woman skilled in handicrafts (V 284) given as a prize, and Camilla is dedicated as a _famula_ of Diana (XI 558). These are not very significant references. But that slavery is assumed as an important element in the social scheme may be inferred from the references to captives in war (II 786, III 323, IX 272-3). They are liable to be offered up as _inferiae_ to the dead (XI 81-2), and the victor takes the females as concubines at will (III 323-9, IX 546). A discarded concubine is handed over to a slave-consort (III 329), and the infant children of a _serva_ form part of a common unit with their dam (V 285).

Two passages are worth notice from an economic point of view. In VIII 408-12, in a simile, we have the picture of a poor hard-working housewife who rises very early to set her _famulae_ to work on their allotted tasks of wool, to ‘keep the little home together.’ One can hardly say that no such scene was possible in real life under the conditions of Vergil’s time, though we may fairly doubt the reality of a picture in which grim poverty and the desire to bring up a family of young children are combined with the ownership and employment of a staff of domestic slaves. For we find the not owning a single slave[864] used as the most characteristic sign of poverty. And I shrink from describing the situation industrially as the sweating of slave-labour to maintain respectability. I do not think any such notion was in the poet’s mind. That the simile is suggested by Greek models is pointed out by Conington, and to regard it as a borrowed ornament is probably the safest conclusion in general. It is however to be noted that the _famulae_ are not borrowed, but an addition of Vergil’s own. The other passage, XII 517-20, relates the death in battle of an Arcadian, who in his home was a fisherman, of humble station. The last point is brought out in the words[865] _conductaque pater tellure serebat_. This seems to mean that he was a small tenant farmer, a _colonus_ of the non-owning class. Such a man might or might not have a slave or two. But, even were there any indication (which there is not) to favour either alternative, the man’s home is in Arcadia, though the picture may be coloured by the poet’s familiarity with Italian details. Take it all in all, we are perhaps justified in saying that in the _Aeneid_ the realities of slavery and of humble labour generally are very lightly touched. Is this wholly due to the assumed proprieties of the heroic epic, dealing with characters above the ordinary freeman in station or natural qualities? Or may we surmise that to Vergil, with his intense human sympathies, the topic was in itself also distasteful, only to be referred to when it was hardly possible to avoid it?

If little, in fact almost nothing, can be gleaned bearing on the subject of labour from the _Bucolics_ and _Aeneid_, we might hope to find plenty of information in the didactic poem specially addressed to farmers. In the opening of the _Georgics_ (I 41) Vergil plainly says that he feels sorry for the rustic folk, who know not the path to success in their vocation: he appeals to the gods interested in agriculture, and above all to Augustus, to look kindly on his bold endeavour to set farmers in the right way. When he comes to speak of the peace and plenty, the security and joys, of country life, he grows enthusiastic (II 458-74). But among the advantages he does not omit to reckon the freedom from the extravagance and garish display of city life, the freedom to drowse under trees, the enjoyment of rural sights and sounds, in short the freedom to take your ease with no lack of elbow-room (_latis otia fundis_). This hardly portrays the life of the working farmer, to whom throughout the poem he is ever preaching the gospel of toil and watchfulness. True, he adds ‘there you find forest-lands (_saltus_) with coverts for wild beasts, and a population inured to toil and used to scanty diet,’ among whom yet linger survivals of the piety and righteousness of old. It is fair to ask, who are these and what place do they fill in the poet’s picture? Surely they are not the men who have fled from the vain follies of the city: for they are genuine rustics. Surely not gang-slaves, driven out to labour in the fields and back again to be fed and locked up, like oxen or asses. To the urban slave transference to such a life was a dreaded punishment. Are they free small-scale farmers? No doubt there were still many of that class remaining in the upland parts of Italy. But were they men of leisure, able to take their ease at will on broad estates? I cannot think of them in such a character, unless I assume them to own farms of comfortable size (of course not _latifundia_) and to employ some labour of slaves or hirelings. And there is nothing in the context to justify such an assumption. Lastly, are they poor peasants, holding small plots of land and eking out a meagre subsistence by occasional wage-earning labour? Such persons seem to have existed, at least in certain parts of the country: but we know that some at least of this labour hired for the job was performed[866] by bands of non-resident labourers roaming in search of such employment. No, peasants of the ‘crofter’ type do not fit in with this picture of a rural life passed in plenty and peaceful ease. I am therefore driven to conclude that the poet was merely idealizing country life in general terms without troubling himself to exercise a rigid consistency in the combination of details. He has had many followers among poets and painters, naturally: but the claim of the _Georgics_ to rank as a didactic treatise is exceptionally strong, owing to the citations of Columella and Pliny. If then the poem seems in any respect to pass lightly over questions of importance in the consideration of farming conditions, we are tempted rather to seek for a motive than to impute neglect.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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