Chapter XIV: Appendix: Some Byzantine Authorities (13)

The actual success or failure of the attempt to revive Roman agriculture on a better footing is not only a question of fact in itself historically important: its determination will throw light on the circumstances in which Vergil wrote, and perhaps help somewhat in suggesting reasons for his avoidance of certain topics. If we are to believe Horace[895], the agricultural policy of Augustus was a grand success: security, prosperity, virtue, good order, had become normal: fertility had returned to the countryside. I had better say at once that I put little faith in these utterances of a court poet. Far more significant is the statement, preserved by Suetonius[896], of the evils dealt with by Augustus in country districts. Parties of armed bandits infested the country. Travellers, slaves and freemen alike, were kidnapped and _ergastulis possessorum supprimebantur_. He checked the brigandage by armed police posted at suitable spots, and _ergastula recognovit_. But it is not said that he did away with them: he cleared out of them the persons illegally held in bondage (_suppressi_). Not only is rustic slavery in full swing in the treatise of Varro: some 80 years later the _ergastulum_ is adopted as a matter of course by Columella, and appears as a canker of agriculture in the complaints of Pliny. The neglect of rustic industry is lamented by all three writers, and to the testimony of such witnesses it is quite needless to add quotations from writers of merely literary merit. There is no serious doubt that the reconstruction of agriculture on the basis of small farms tilled by working farmers was at best successful in a very moderate degree; and this for many a long year. Organized slave-labour remained the staple appliance of tillage until the growing scarcity of slaves and the financial policy of the later Empire brought about the momentous change by which the free farmer gradually became the predial serf.

Another point to be noted in the _Georgics_ is the absence of any reference to _coloni_ as tenants under a landlord. Yet we know that this relation existed in Cicero’s time, and tenant farmers appear in Varro[897] and Columella[898]. Vergil, but for a stray reference in the _Aeneid_, might seem never to have heard of the existence of such people. It is easy to say that the difference between an owner and a tenant is a difference in law, and unsuited for discussion in a poem. But it also involves economic problems. The landlord wants a good return on his capital, the tenant wants to make a good living, and the conditions of tenancy vary greatly in various cases. The younger Pliny[899] had to deal with awkward questions between him and his tenants, and there is no reason to suppose that his case was exceptional. Surely the subject was one of immediate interest to an agricultural reformer, quite as interesting as a number of the details set forth here and there in the _Georgics_; that is, assuming that the author meant his farmer to be economically prosperous as well as to set a good example. It may be argued that the operations enjoined on the farmer would greatly improve the farm and enhance the value of the land, and that no man in his senses would do this unless the land were his own: there was therefore no need to discuss tenancy, ownership being manifestly implied. The argument is fair, so far as it goes. But it does not justify complete silence on what was probably at the moment a question of no small importance in the eyes of landowners.

Some passages of Horace may serve to shew that circumstances might have justified or even invited some reference to this topic. In the seventh _epistle_ of the first book he tells the story of how Philippus played a rather scurvy trick on a freedman in a small way of business as an auctioneer. As a social superior, his patronage turned the poor man’s head. Taking him for an outing to his own Sabine country place, he infected him with desire of a rustic life. He amused himself by persuading him to buy a small farm, offering him about £60 as a gift and a loan of as much more. The conversion of a regular town-bred man into a thoroughgoing farmer was of course a pitiful failure. Devotion and industry availed him nothing. The losses and disappointments incidental to farming were too much for him. He seems to have had no slave: he probably had not sufficient capital. He ended by piteously entreating his patron to put him back into his own trade. The story is placed about two generations before Horace wrote. But it would be pointless if it were out of date in its setting, which it surely is not; it might have happened to a contemporary, nay to Horace himself. It is addressed to his own patron Maecenas, the generous donor of his own Sabine estate. Here we have a clear intimation that to buy a little plot and try to get a living out of it by your own labour was an enterprise in which success was no easy matter. In the second _satire_ of the second book we have the case of Ofellus, one of the yeomen of the old school. He had been a working farmer on his own land, but in the times of trouble his farm had been confiscated and made over to a discharged soldier. But this veteran wisely left him in occupation as cultivator on terms. Whether he became a sort of farm-bailiff, working for the new owner’s account at a fixed salary, or whether he became a tenant, farming on his own account and paying a rent, has been doubted. I am strongly of the second opinion. For it was certainly to the owner’s interest that the land should be well-farmed, and that his own income (the endowment of his later years) should be well-secured by giving the farmer every motive for industry. These considerations do not suit well with the former alternative, which also makes _colonus_ hardly distinguishable from _vilicus_. Again, the _colonus_ is on the farm[900] _cum pecore et gnatis_. The _pecus_, like the children, is surely the farmer’s own, and it is much more likely that the live-stock should belong to a rent-paying tenant than to a salaried bailiff. Moreover, there is no mention of slaves. The man works the farm with the help of his family. Is it likely that he would turn them into a household of serfs? Therefore I render line 115 _fortem mercede colonum_ ‘a sturdy tenant-farmer sitting at a rent’; that is, on a holding that as owner he formerly occupied rent-free. He can make the farm pay even now: as for the mere fact of ground-landlordship, that is an idle boast, and in any case limited by the span of human life. I claim that these two passages are enough to prove the point for which I am contending; namely, that questions of the tenure under which agriculture could best be carried on were matters of some interest and importance about the time when Vergil was writing the _Georgics_.

But the help of Horace is by no means exhausted. He refers to a story of a wage-earning labourer (_mercennarius_) who had the luck to turn up a buried treasure, a find which enabled him to buy the very farm on which he was employed, and work it as his own. There is no point in this ‘yarn’ unless it was a well-known tale, part of the current stock of the day. The famous _satire_ in which it occurs (II 6) seems to be almost exactly contemporary with the appearance of the _Georgics_. In it the restful charm of country life is heartily preferred to the worries and boredom of Rome. His Sabine estate, with its garden, its unfailing spring of water, and a strip of woodland, is of no great size, but it is enough: he is no greedy land-grabber. When in Rome he longs for it. There he can take his ease among spoilt young slaves, born[901] on the place, keeping a sort of Liberty Hall for his friends. The talk at table is not _de villis domibusve alienis_ but of a more rational and improving kind: envy of other men’s wealth is talked out with an apposite fable. Here we have mention of wage-earning, land-purchase, and slaves. And the poet’s estate is evidently in the first place a residence, not a farm worked on strict economic lines. That the number of slave hands (_operae_) employed there on the Home Farm[902] was eight, we learn from another _satire_ (II 7 118). To the smart country seats, which advertise the solid wealth of rich capitalists, he refers in express terms in _epistles_ I 15 45-6, and by many less particular references. The land-grabbers are often mentioned, and the forest-lands (_saltus_) used for grazing, in which much money was invested by men ‘land-proud,’ as a sign of their importance. In short, the picture of rural Italy given by Horace reveals to us a state of things wholly unfavourable to the reception of the message of the _Georgics_. When he speaks of _pauper ruris colonus_ or of _inopes coloni_ he is surely not betraying envy of these toilers’ lot. Far from it. When enjoying a change in his country place, he may occasionally divert himself with a short spell[903] of field-work, at which his neighbours grin. On the other hand the spectacle of a disreputable freedman, enriched by speculations in time of public calamity, and enabled through ill-gotten wealth to become a great landlord, is the cause of wrathful indignation (_epode_ IV). And these and other candid utterances come from one whose father was a freedman in a country town, farming in quite a small way, to whose care and self-denial the son owed the education that equipped him for rising in the world. Horace indeed is one of the best of witnesses on these points.

There are points on which Vergil and Horace are agreed, though generally with a certain difference of attitude. Thus, both prefer the country to the town, but Horace frankly because he enjoys it and likes a rest: he does not idealize country life as such, still less agricultural labour. Both disapprove _latifundia_, but Horace on simple commonsense grounds, not as a reformer. Both praise good old times, but Horace without the faintest suggestion of possible revival of them, or anything like them. Both refer to the beginnings of civilization, but Vergil looks back to a golden age of primitive communism, when _in medium quaerebant_ and so forth; a state of things ended by Jove’s ordinance that man should raise himself by toil. Horace, less convinced of the superiority of the past, depicts[904] the noble savage as having to fight for every thing, even acorns; and traces steps, leading eventually to law and order, by which he became less savage and more noble. Horace is nearer to Lucretius here than Vergil is. Neither could ignore the disturbing effect of the disbanding of armies and ejectment of farmers to make way for the settlement of rude soldiers on the land. But to Horace, personally unconcerned, a cool view was more possible. So, while hinting at public uneasiness[905] as to the detailed intentions of the new ruler in this matter, he is able to look at the policy in general merely as the restoration of weary veterans to a life of peace and the relief of their chief’s anxieties. Vergil, himself a sufferer, had his little fling in the _Bucolics_, and was silent[906] in the _Georgics_. Again, Vergil shuns the function of war as a means of supplying the slave-market. He knows it well enough, and as a feature of the ‘heroic’ ages the fate of the captive appears in the _Aeneid_. Horace makes no scruple[907] of stating the time-honoured principle that a captive is to the conqueror a valuable asset: there is a market for him as a serviceable drudge, and not to spare his life is sheer waste. That there may be sarcasm underlying the passage does not impair its candour. And it distinctly includes rustic slavery in the words _sine pascat durus aretque_. Lastly, while both poets praise the restfulness of the countryside with equal sincerity, it is Horace who recognizes[908] that the working farmer himself, after his long labours at the plough, looks forward to retirement and ease when he has saved enough to live on. His is a real rustic, Vergil’s an ideal.

It will be admitted that all writers are, as sources of evidence, at their best when they feel free to say or to leave unsaid this or that according to their own judgment. If there is in the background some other person whom it is necessary to please, it is very hard to divine the reason of an author’s frankness, and still more of his reticence. For instance, the omission of a topic naturally connected with a subject need not imply that a patron forbade its introduction. I cannot believe that such a man as Maecenas[909] banned the free mention of slavery in the _Georgics_. But, if a whole subject is proposed for treatment under conditions of a well-understood tendency, the writer is not unlikely to discover that artistic loyalty to that tendency will operate to render the introduction of this or that particular topic a matter of extreme difficulty. If the task of Vergil was to recommend a return to a more wholesome system of agriculture, reference to the labour-question or to land-tenure bristled with difficulties. My belief is that the poet shirked these topics, relevant though they surely were, because he did not see how to treat them without provoking controversy or ill-feeling; a result which Maecenas and the Emperor were undoubtedly anxious to avoid. It was simpler and safer not to refer to these things. True, the omission was a restraint on full-blooded realism. An indistinct picture was produced, and modern critics have some reason to complain of the difficulty of understanding many places of the _Georgics_.

Whether chronological considerations may throw any light on the influences to which this indistinctness is due, and, if so, what is their exact significance, are very difficult questions, to which I cannot offer a definite answer. The completion of the _Georgics_ is placed in the year 30 BC, after seven years more or less spent on composition and revision. Now it was in that year that the new ruler, supreme since the overthrow of Antony, organized the great disbandment of armies of which he speaks in the famous inscription[910] recording the events of his career. He tells us that he rewarded all the discharged men, either with assignations of land or with sums of money in lieu thereof. The lands were bought by him (not confiscated) and the money-payments also were at his cost (_a me dedi_). Below he refers to the matter again, and adds that to pay for lands taken and assigned to soldiers was a thing no one had ever done before. That he paid in all cases, and paid the full market value, he does not expressly say; Mommsen shews cause for doubting it. The only remark I have to make is that in the years between Philippi and Aetium there was plenty of fighting and negotiations. Maecenas was for most of the time in a position of great trust, and pretty certainly in touch with all that went on. The fact that a wholesale discharge of soldiers was surely coming, and that the future of agriculture in Italy was doubtful, was perhaps not likely to escape the forecast of so far-sighted a man. Is it just possible that Vergil may have had a hint from him, to stick to generalities and avoid controversial topics? We are credibly informed[911] that Maecenas was well rewarded by his master for his valuable services, and it has been pointed out[912] that his position of authority offered many opportunities of profitable transactions on his own account. There is even an express tradition that he was concerned in the liquidation of one estate. In short, he was one of the land-speculators of the time. To such a man it would seem not untimely to praise the virtues of the rustic Romans of old and to recommend their revival in the coming age; but to call attention to the uncertainties of the present, involving many awkward problems, would seem imprudent. In suggesting, doubtfully, that a patron’s restraining hand may have had something to do with the poet’s reticence, I may be exaggerating the pressure exercised by the one on the other. But that Maecenas interested himself in the slowly-growing poem is hardly to be doubted. Early in each of the four books he is addressed by name. His _haud mollia iussa_ (III 41) may imply nothing more than the general difficulty of Vergil’s task: but may it not faintly indicate just the least little restiveness under a guidance that could not be refused openly?

To reject the suggestion of actual interference on Maecenas’ part is not to say that the _Georgics_ exhibits no deference to his wishes. That many a veiled hint could be given by a patron in conversation is obvious. That Maecenas would be a master of that judicious art, is probable from what we know of his character and career. But, while it is plain that questions of land-tenure would from his point of view be better ignored, how would his likes and dislikes affect the mention of slavery and the labour-question? Here I must refer to the three great writers on agriculture. Cato, about 150 years earlier, and Columella, about 80 years later, both contemplate the actual buying of land, and insist on the care necessary in selection. The contemporary Varro seems certainly to assume purchase. All three deal with slave-labour, Cato like a hard-fisted _dominus_ of an old-Roman generation just become consciously imperial and bent on gain, Columella as a skilful organizer of the only regular supply of labour practically available: Varro, who makes more allowance[913] for free labour beside that of slaves, reserves the free man for important jobs, where he may be trusted to use his wits, or for unhealthy work, in which to risk slaves is to risk your own property. All the ordinary work in his system is done by slaves. The contemporary Livy[914] tells us that in his time large districts near Rome had scarce any free inhabitants left. The elder Pliny, reckoning up the advantages of Italy for the practice of agriculture, includes[915] among them the supply of _servitia_, though no man knew better than he what fatal results had issued from the plantation-system. It is to be borne in mind that this evidence relates to the plains and the lower slopes of hills, that is to the main agricultural districts. It is to these parts that Gardthausen[916] rightly confines his remarks on the desolation of Italy, which began before the civil wars and was accelerated by them. Other labour was scarce, and gangs of slaves, generally chained, were almost the only practicable means of tillage for profit. Speaking broadly, I think the truth of this picture is not to be denied. If then the word had gone forth that a return to smaller-scale farming was to be advocated as a cure for present evils, it was hardly possible to touch on slavery without some unfavourable reference to the plantation-system. Now surely it is most unlikely that Maecenas, a cool observer and a thorough child of the age, sincerely believed in the possibility of setting back the clock. The economic problem could not be solved so simply, by creating a wave of ‘back-to-the-land’ enthusiasm. I suggest that he saw no good to be got by openly endeavouring to recreate the race of small working farmers by artificial means. Would it be wise to renew an attempt in which the Gracchi had failed? Now to Vergil, who had passed his youth in a district of more humane agriculture, the mere praise of farming, with its rich compensations for never-ending toil and care, would be a congenial theme. The outcome of their combination was that a topic not easily idealized in treatment was omitted. The realistic value of the picture was impaired to the relief of both poet and patron. But what the poem gained as a beautiful aspiration it lost as a practical authority.

Can we suppose that Vergil did not know how important a place in contemporary agriculture was filled by slave-labour? I think not: surely it is inconceivable. What meets us at every turn in other writers cannot have been unknown to him. Macrobius[917] has preserved for us a curious record belonging to 43 BC, when the great confiscations and assignations of land were being carried out in the Cisalpine by order of the Triumvirs. Money and arms, needed for the coming campaign of Philippi, were being requisitioned at the same time. The men of property threatened by these exactions hid themselves. Their slaves were offered rewards and freedom if they would betray their masters’ hiding-places, but not one of them yielded to the temptation. The commander who made the offer was Pollio. No doubt domestics are chiefly meant, but there were rustic slaves, and we have reason to think that they were humanely treated in those parts. Dion Cassius[918] tells us that in 41 BC Octavian, under great pressure from the clamorous armies, saw nothing to be done but to take all Italian lands from present owners and hand them over to the soldiers μετά τε τῆς δουλείας καὶ μετὰ τῆς ἄλλης κατασκευῆς. Circumstances necessitated compromise, which does not concern us here. But it is well to remember that it was just the best land that the soldiers wanted, and with it slaves and other farm-stock. For it was a pension after service, not a hard life of bodily drudgery, that was in view. The plan of letting the former owner stay on as a tenant has been referred to above.

I hold then that Vergil’s silence on the topics to which I have called attention, however congenial it may have been to him, was intentional: and that the poem, published _in honorem Maecenatis_[919], was limited as to its practical outlook with the approval, if not at the suggestion, of the patron. It is essentially a literary work. In it Vergil’s power of gathering materials from all quarters and fusing them into a whole of his own creation is exemplified to a wonderful degree. His own deep love of the country, with its homely sights and sounds, phenomena of a Nature whose laws he felt unable to explore, helped him to execute the task of recommending a social and economic reform through the medium of poetry. By ignoring topics deemed unsuitable, he left his sympathies and enthusiasm free course, and without sympathies and enthusiasm the _Georgics_ would not have been immortal. Even when digressing from agriculture, as in his opening address to the Emperor, there is more sincerity than we are at first disposed to grant. He had not been a Republican, like Horace, and probably had been from the first attached to the cause of the Caesars.

I can discover no ground for thinking[920] that Vergil was ever himself a farmer. That Pliny and Columella cite him as an authority is in my opinion due to the predominance of his works in the literary world. As writers of prose dealing with facts often of an uninspiring kind, it would seem to raise the artistic tone of heavy paragraphs if the first name in Latin literature could be introduced with an apposite quotation in agreement with their own context. Vergil-worship began early and lasted long; and indeed his admirers in the present day are sometimes so absorbed in finding[921] more and more in what he said that they do not trouble themselves to ask whether there may not be some significance[922] in his silences. Rightly or wrongly, I am persuaded that this question ought at least to be asked in connexion with the _Georgics_. I have reserved till the last a passage[923] of Seneca, in which he challenges the authority of Vergil in some points connected with trees, speaking of him as _Vergilius noster, qui non quid verissime sed quid decentissime diceretur aspexit, nec agricolas docere voluit sed legentes delectare_. Now Seneca was devoted to the works of Vergil, and is constantly quoting them. He has no prejudice against the poet. The view of the _Georgics_ set forth in these words implies no literary dispraise, but a refusal to let poetic excellence give currency to technical errors. Seneca is often tiresome, but in this matter his criticism is in my opinion sound. In the matter of labour my contention is not that the poet has inadvertently erred, but that he has for some reason deliberately dissembled.

XXX. THE ELDER SENECA AND OTHERS.

The comparatively silent interval, between the Augustan circle and the new group of writers under Claudius and Nero, furnishes little of importance. The one writer who stands out as giving us a few scraps of evidence is the =elder Seneca=, the earliest of the natives of Spain who made their mark in Latin literature. But the character of his work, which consists of examples of the treatment of problem-cases in the schools of rhetoric, makes him a very peculiar witness. When he tells us how this or that pleader of note made some point neatly, the words have their appropriate place in the texture of a particular argument. Often they contain a fallacious suggestion or a misstatement useful for the purpose of _ex parte_ advocacy, but having as statements no authority whatever. Still there are a few references of significance and value. Thus, when the poor man’s son refuses the rich man’s offer to adopt him, and his own father approves the proposal, one rhetorician made the young man[924] say ‘Great troops of slaves whom their lord does not know by sight, and the farm-prisons echoing to the sound of the lash, have no charm for me: my love for my father is an unbought love.’ Again, a poor man, whose property has been outrageously damaged by a rich neighbour, protests[925] against the whims of modern luxury. ‘Country districts’ he says ‘that once were the plough-lands of whole communities are now each worked by a single slave-gang, and the sway of stewards is wider than the realms of kings.’ Now, we cannot cite the old rhetorician as an authority on agriculture directly: but he gives us proof positive that references to estates worked by gangs[926] of slaves, and the _ergastula_ in which the poor wretches were shut up after the hours of labour, would not in his time sound strange to Roman audiences. Another passage[927] touches on a very typical lecture-room theme, an unnatural son. A father is banished for unintentional homicide. The law forbids the sheltering and feeding of an exile. But the father contrives to return and haunt an estate adjoining the main property, now controlled by his son. The son hears of these visits, flogs the _vilicus_ for connivance, and compels him to exclude the old man. The piece is one of which only a brief abstract remains, but there is enough to shew that, while the gist of it was a casuistic discussion of a moral problem, it assumes as a matter of course the liability of a trusted slave to the lash. The faithful and kindly slave is contrasted with the unnatural son. There are in these curious collections other utterances indicative of the spread of humanitarian notions. Thus in the piece first cited[928] above, the poor man’s son in refusing the rich man’s offer of adoption, as a situation to which he could never accommodate himself, is made to add ‘If you were selling a favourite slave, you would inquire whether the buyer was a cruel man.’ Such ideas come from the later Greek philosophies, chiefly Stoic, the system on which Seneca brought up his more famous son. In one place[929] we find an echo of an earlier Greek sentiment, when a rhetorician propounds the doctrine that Fortune only, not Nature, distinguishes freemen from slaves.

Indeed it is evident, from the many passages that touch on slavery and expose some of its worst horrors, that the subject was at this time beginning to attract more general attention than heretofore. And the relations of patron and freedman, also discussed in these artificial school-debates, are a further illustration of this tendency. Milder and more humane principles were germinating, though as yet they had not found expression in law. In arguing on a peculiarly revolting case (the deliberate mutilation of child-beggars) a speaker incidentally refers[930] to wealthy landowners recruiting their slave-gangs by seizing freemen. The hearers are supposed to receive this reference to kidnapping as no exceptional thing extravagantly suggested. We have seen that both Augustus and Tiberius had to intervene to put down this _suppressio_. One little note of interest deserves passing mention. In a discussion on unequal marriages the question is raised whether even the very highest desert on a slave’s part could justify a father in taking him as a son-in-law. A speaker cites the case[931] of Old Cato, who married the daughter of his own _colonus_. Here we clearly have the tenant farmer in the second century BC In Plutarch the man appears as a client. Neither writer makes him a freedman in so many words. But it is probably the underlying fact. That the daughter was _ingenua_ does not rule out this supposition.

=Velleius= and =Valerius Maximus= also belong to the reign of Tiberius. The former in what remains of his history supplies nothing to my purpose. Valerius made a collection of anecdotes from Roman and foreign histories illustrating various virtues and vices, classifying the examples of good and bad action under heads. They are ‘lifted’ from the works of earlier writers: many are taken from Livy, already used as a classic quarry. The book is pervaded by tiresome moralizing, and points of interest are few. There is the story of the farm[932] of Regulus, of the patriotic refusal[933] of M’ Curius to take more than the normal seven _iugera_ of land as a reward from the state, of the horny-handed rustic voter[934] being asked whether he walked on his hands; also reference to the simple habits of the famous Catos, and a passing remark that the men of old had few slaves. Those of the above passages that are of any value at all have been noticed in earlier sections. The freedman =Phaedrus= gives us next to nothing in his fables, unless we care to note the items[935] of a farm-property, _agellos pecora villam operarios boves iumenta et instrumentum rusticum_, and a fable specially illustrating the fact that a master’s eye sees what escapes the notice of the slave-staff, even of the _vilicus_.

XXXI. SENECA THE YOUNGER.

The chief literary figure of the reigns of Claudius and Nero was =L Annaeus Seneca=, a son of the rhetorician above referred to, and like his father born in Spain. His life extended from 4 BC to 65 AD. For the purpose of the present inquiry his surviving works are mainly of interest as giving us in unmistakeable tones the point of view from which a man of Stoic principles regarded slavery as a social institution. The society of imperial Rome, in which he spent most of his life, was politically dead. To meddle with public affairs was dangerous. Even a senator needed to walk warily, for activity was liable to be misinterpreted by the Emperor and by his powerful freedmen[936], who were in effect Imperial Ministers. To keep on good terms with these departmental magnates, who had sprung from the slave-market to be courted as the virtual rulers of freeborn Roman citizens, was necessary for all men of note. Under such conditions it is not wonderful that the wealthy were tempted to assert themselves in ostentatious luxury and dissipation: for a life of careless debauchery was on the face of it hardly compatible with treasonable conspiracy. The immense slave-households of Rome were a part and an expression of this extravagance; and the fashion of these domestic armies was perhaps at its height in this period. Now, nothing kept the richer Romans in subjection more efficiently than this habit of living constantly exposed to the eyes and ears of their menials. Cruel laws might protect the master from assassination by presuming[937] the guilt of all slaves who might have prevented it. They could not protect him from the danger of criminal charges, such as treason[938], supported by servile evidence: indeed the slave was a potential informer, and a hated master was at the mercy of his slaves. Under some Emperors this possibility was a grim reality, and no higher or more heartfelt praise could be bestowed[939] on an Emperor than that he refused to allow masters to be done to death by the tongue of their slaves.

Meanwhile the slave was still legally[940] his (or her) master’s chattel, and cases of revolting cruelty[941] and other abominations occurred from time to time. Yet more humane and sympathetic views were already affecting public sentiment, chiefly owing to the spread of Stoic doctrines among the cultivated classes. Of these doctrines as adapted to Roman minds Seneca was the leading preacher. Thus he cites the definition of ‘slave’ as ‘wage-earner for life,’ propounded[942] by Chrysippus: he insists on the human quality common to slave and free alike: he reasserts the equality of human rights, only upset by Fortune, who has made one man master of another: he sees that the vices of slaves are very often simply the result of the misgovernment of their owners: he reckons them as humble members[943] of the family circle, perhaps even the former playmates of boyhood: he recommends a kindly consideration for a slave’s feelings, and admits[944] that some sensitive natures would prefer a flogging to a box on the ear or a harsh and contemptuous scolding. We need not follow up his doctrines in more detail. The general tone is evident and significant enough. But it is the relations of the domestic circle that he has primarily in view. His references to agriculture and rustic labour are few, as we might expect from the circumstances of his life. But we are in a better position to judge their value having considered his attitude towards slavery in general. It should be noted, as a specimen of his tendency to Romanize Greek doctrine, that he lays great stress on the more wholesome relations[945] of master and slave in the good old times of early Rome,—here too without special reference to the rustic households of the rude forefathers round which tradition centred.

Judged by a modern standard, a defect in Stoic principles was the philosophic aloofness from the common interests and occupations of ordinary workaday life. To the Wise Man all things save Virtue are more or less indifferent, and in the practice of professions and trades there is little or no direct connexion with Virtue. Contempt for manual labour, normal in the ancient world and indeed in all slaveowning societies, took a loftier position under the influence of Stoicism. Hence that system, in spite of its harsh and tiresome features, appealed to many of the better Romans of the upper class, seeming as it did to justify their habitual disdain. Seneca’s attitude towards handicrafts is much the same as Cicero’s, only with a touch of Stoic priggishness added. Wisdom, he says[946], is not a mere handworker (_opifex_) turning out appliances for necessary uses. Her function is more important: her craft is the art of living, and over other arts she is supreme. The quality of an artist’s action[947] depends on his motive: the sculptor may make a statue for money or to win fame or as a pious offering. Arts, as Posidonius[948] said, range from the ‘liberal’ ones to the ‘common and mean’ ones practised by handworkers: the latter have no pretence of moral dignity. Indeed many of these trades are quite unnecessary, the outcome of modern[949] extravagance. We could do without them, and be all the better for it: man’s real needs are small. But to work for a living is not in itself a degradation: did not the Stoic master Cleanthes draw water[950] for hire? In short, the Wise Man may be a king or a slave, millionaire or pauper. The externals cannot change his true quality, though they may be a help or a hindrance in his growth to perfect wisdom.

In his references to agriculture and country matters it is to be remarked that Seneca confirms the impression derived from other sources, that the letting of land to tenant farmers was on the increase. Discoursing on the greedy luxury of the rich, their monstrous kitchens and cellars, and the toiling of many to gratify the desires of one, he continues ‘Look at all the places where the earth is being tilled, and at all the thousands[951] of farmers (_colonorum_) ploughing and digging; is this, think you, to be reckoned one man’s belly, for whose service crops are being raised in Sicily and in Africa too?’ The _coloni_ here mentioned may be merely ‘cultivators’ in a general sense. But I think they are more probably tenants of holdings on great estates. In speaking of his arrival at his Alban villa, and finding nothing ready for a meal, he philosophically refuses to let so small an inconvenience make him angry with his cook and his baker. ‘My baker[952] has got no bread; but the steward has some, and so have the porter and the farmer.’ A coarse sort of bread, no doubt, but you have only got to wait, and you will enjoy it when you are really hungry. Here we seem to have an instance of what was now probably an ordinary arrangement: the _villa_, homestead with some land round it, kept as a country ‘box’ for the master by his steward, who would see to the garden and other appurtenances, while the rest of the land is let to a humble tenant farmer. In another passage we have an interesting glimpse of a tenant’s legal position[953] as against his landlord. ‘If a landlord tramples down growing crops or cuts down plantations, he cannot keep his tenant, though the lease may be still in being: this is not because he has recovered what was due to him as lessor, but because he has made it impossible for him to recover it. Even so it often happens that a creditor is cast in damages to his debtor, when he has on other grounds taken from him more than the amount of the debt claimed.’ I gather from this passage that damage done by the lessor to the lessee’s interest in the farm deprived him of right of action against the lessee, in case he wanted to enforce some claim (for rent or for some special service) under the terms of the existing contract[954] of lease. If this inference be just, the evidence is important. For the _colonus_ is conceived as a humble person, whose interest a brutal inconsiderate landlord would be not unlikely to disregard, and to whom a resort to litigation would seem a course to be if possible avoided.

To this question of the rights of landlord and tenant Seneca returns later, when engaged in reconciling the Stoic thesis that ‘all things belong to the Wise Man’ with the facts of actual life. The Wise Man is in the position of a King to whom belongs the general right of sovranty (_imperium_) while his subjects have the particular right of ownership (_dominium_). Illustrating the point he proceeds[955] thus. ‘Say I have hired a house from you. Of its contents some belong to you and some to me. The thing (_res_) is your property, but the right of user (_usus_) of your property is mine. Just so you must not meddle with crops, though grown on your own estate, if your tenant forbids it; and in a season of dearness or dearth you will be like the man in Vergil wistfully gazing at another’s plenteous store, though the land where it grew, the yard where it is stacked, and the granary it is meant to fill, are all your own property. Nor, when I have hired a lodging, have you a right to enter it, owner though you be: when a slave of yours is hired for service by me, you have no right to withdraw him: and, if I hire a trap from you and give you a lift, it will be a good turn on my part, though the conveyance belongs to you.’ I have quoted this at some length, in order to make the farm-tenant’s position quite clear. His rights are presumed to be easily ascertainable, and his assertion of them will be protected by the law. His contract, whether a formal lease or not, is also presumed to guarantee him complete control of the subject for the agreed term. Whether encroachments by landlords and legal proceedings for redress by tenants were common events in rural Italy, Seneca need not and does not say. I suspect that personal interest on both sides was in practice a more effective restraint than appeals to law.

There are other references to agricultural conditions, which though of less importance are interesting as confirming other evidence as to the _latifundia_ of this period. A good specimen is found in his denunciation of human greed as the cause of poverty, by bringing to an end the happy age of primitive communism, when all shared the ownership of all. Cramped and unsatisfied, this _avaritia_ can never find the way back to the old state of plenty and happiness. ‘Hence, though she now endeavour to make good[956] what she has wasted; though she add field to field by buying out her neighbours or wrongfully ejecting them; though she expand her country estates on the scale of provinces, and enjoy the sense of landlordism in the power of touring mile after mile without leaving her own domains; still no enlargement of bounds will bring us back to the point from whence we started.’ Again, in protesting against the luxurious ostentation of travellers and others, he shews that they are really in debt. ‘So-and-so is, you fancy, a rich man ... because he has arable estates[957] in all provinces of the empire ... because his holding of land near Rome is on a scale one would grudge him even in the wilds of Apulia.’ Such a man is in debt to Fortune. In these as in other passages the preacher illustrates his sermon by references calculated to bring home his points. Naturally he selects for the purpose matters familiar to his audience; and it is this alone that makes the passages worth quoting. The same may be said of his sympathetic reference[958] to the hard lot of a slave transferred from the easy duties of urban service to the severe toil of farm labour. In general it may be remarked that the evidence of Seneca and other literary men of this period is to be taken in connexion with the treatise of Columella, who is the contemporary specialist on agriculture. The prevalence of slave labour and the growth of the tenant-farmer class are attested by both lines of evidence.

XXXII. LUCAN, PETRONIUS, AND OTHERS.

=Lucan=, Seneca’s nephew, has a few interesting references in his poem on the great civil war. Thus, in the eloquent passage[959] lamenting the decay of Roman vital strength, a long process to be disastrously completed in the great Pharsalian battle, he dwells on the shrinkage of free Roman population in Italy. The towns and the countryside alike are empty, houses deserted, and it is by the labour of chained[960] slaves that Italian crops are raised. Elsewhere[961] he looks further back, and traces this decay to the effect of luxury and corruption caused by the influx of vast wealth, the spoils of Roman conquests. Among the symptoms of disease he notes the _latifundia_, which it was now becoming the fashion to denounce, the land-grabbing passion that prompted men to monopolize great tracts of land and incorporate in huge estates, worked by cultivators unknown[962] to them, farms that once had been ploughed and hoed by the rustic heroes of old. But all such utterances are merely a part of a declaimer’s stock-in-trade. We may fairly guess that they are echoes of talk heard in the literary circle of his uncle Seneca. That they are nevertheless consistent with the land-system of this period, is to be gathered from other sources, such as Petronius and Columella. It remains to note that the word _colonus_ is used by Lucan in the senses of ‘cultivator’ and ‘farmer,’ rather suggesting ownership, and of ‘military colonist,’ clearly implying it. That of ‘tenant’ does not occur: there was no need for it in the poem. Again, he has _servire servilis_ and _servitium_, but _servus_ occurs only in a suspected[963] line, and as an adjective. His regular word for ‘slave’ is _famulus_.

The bucolic poems of this period are too manifestly artificial to serve as evidence of value. For instance, when =Calpurnius= declares[964] that in this blessed age of peace and prosperity the _fossor_ is not afraid to profit by the treasure he may chance to dig up, we cannot infer that a free digger is meant, though it is hardly likely that a slave would be suffered to keep treasure-trove.

=Petronius=, in the curious mixed prose-verse satire of which part has come down to us, naturally says very little bearing directly on agriculture. But in depicting the vulgar freedman-millionaire Trimalchio he refers pointedly to the vast landed estates belonging to this typical figure of the period. He owns estates ‘far as the kites[965] can fly.’ This impression is confirmed in detail by a report delivered by the agent for his properties. It is a statement[966] of the occurrences in a domain of almost imperial proportions during a single day. So many children, male and female, were born: so many thousand bushels of wheat were stocked in the granary: so many hundred oxen broken in: a slave was crucified for disloyalty to his lord: so many million sesterces were paid in to the chest, no opening for investment presenting itself. On one park-estate (_hortis_) there was a great fire, which began in the steward’s house. Trimalchio cannot recall the purchase of this estate, which on inquiry turns out to be a recent acquisition not yet on the books. Then comes the reading of notices issued by officials[967] of the manors, of wills[968] made by rangers, of the names of his stewards; of a freedwoman’s divorce, the banishment of an _atriensis_, the committal of a cashier for trial, and the proceedings in court in an action between some chamberlains. Of course all this is not to be taken seriously, but we can form some notion of the state of things that the satirist has in mind. Too gross an exaggeration would have defeated his purpose. The book is full of passages bearing on the history of slavery, but it is domestic slavery, and that often of the most degrading character.

XXXIII. COLUMELLA.

The great interest taken in agriculture after the establishment of the Roman peace by Augustus is shewn by the continued appearance of works on the subject. The treatise of =Celsus=, who wrote in the time of Tiberius, was part of a great encyclopaedic work. It was probably one of the most important books of its kind: but it is lost, and we only know it as cited by other writers, such as Columella and the elder Pliny. It is from the treatise of =Columella=, composed probably under Nero, that we get most of our information as to Roman husbandry (_rusticatio_, as he often calls it) in the period of the earlier Empire. The writer was a native of Spain, deeply interested, like other Spanish Romans, in the past present and future of Italy. It is evident that in comparing the present with the past he could not avoid turning an uneasy eye to the future. Like others, he could see that agriculture, once the core of Roman strength, the nurse of a vigorous free population, was in a bad way. It was still the case that the choicest farm-lands of Italy were largely occupied by mansions and parks, the property of non-resident owners who seldom visited their estates, and hardly ever qualified themselves to superintend their management intelligently. The general result was hideous waste. In modern language, those who had command of capital took no pains to employ it in business-like farming: while the remaining free rustics lacked capital. Agriculture was likely to go from bad to worse under such conditions. The Empire would thus be weakened at its centre, and to a loyal Provincial, whose native land was part of a subject world grouped round that centre, the prospect might well seem bewildering. Columella was from the first interested in agriculture, on which his uncle[969] at Gades (Cadiz) was a recognized authority, and his treatise _de re rustica_ is his contribution to the service of Rome.

The serious consequences of the decay of practical farming, and the disappearance of the small landowners tilling their own land, had long been recognized by thoughtful men. But the settlement of discharged soldiers on allotted holdings had not repopulated the countryside with free farmers. The old lamentations continued, but no means was found for solving the problem how to recreate a patient and prosperous yeoman class, firmly planted on the soil. Technical knowledge had gone on accumulating to some extent, though the authorities on agriculture, Greek Carthaginian or Roman, appealed to by Columella are mainly the same as those cited by Varro some eighty years before. The difficulty at both epochs was not the absence of knowledge but the neglect of its practical application. Columella, like his forerunners, insists on the folly[970] of buying more land than you can profitably manage. But it seems that the average wealthy landowner could not resist the temptation to round off[971] a growing estate by buying up more land when a favourable opportunity occurred. It is even hinted that ill-treatment[972] of a neighbour, to quicken the process by driving him to give up his land, was not obsolete. Moreover, great estates often consisted of separate holdings in different parts of the country. For owners of vast, and sometimes[973] scattered, estates to keep effective control over them was an occupation calling for qualities never too common, technical skill and indefatigable industry. The former could, if combined with perfect honesty, be found in an ideal deputy; but the deputy, to be under complete control, must be a slave: and, the more skilled the slave, the better able he was to conceal dishonesty. Therefore, the more knowledge and watchful attentiveness was needed in the master. Now it is just this genuine and painstaking interest in the management of their estates that Columella finds lacking in Roman landlords. They will not live[974] in the country, where they are quickly bored and miss the excitements of the city, and My Lady detests country life even more than My Lord. But they will not even take the trouble to procure good[975] Stewards, let alone watching them so as to keep them industrious and honest. Thus the management of estates has generally passed from masters to _vilici_, and the domestic part of the duties even more completely from house-mistresses to _vilicae_. As to the disastrous effect of the change upon rustic economy, the writer entertains no doubt. But the evil was no new phenomenon. It may well be that it was now more widespread than in Varro’s time; but in both writers we may perhaps suspect some degree of overstatement, to which reformers are apt to resort in depicting the abuses they are wishing to reform. I do not allow much for this consideration, for the picture, confirmed by general literary evidence, is in the main unquestionably true.