Chapter XVII: Appendix: Some Byzantine Authorities (16)

That the attention of Tacitus had been directed to the methods of capitalists in Italy, and therewith to money-lending, landholding, and slavery, may be gathered from the remarks on these subjects in his _Germany_. He writes, as Herodotus and others had done before him, taking particular notice of customs differing from those prevalent in his own surroundings. Thus he notes[1160] the absence of money-lending at interest. He describes the system of communal ownership of land by village-units, and its periodic redistribution among the members of the community. The wide stretches of open plains[1161] enable the Germans to put fresh fields under tillage year by year, leaving the rest in fallow (no doubt as rough pasture). Intensive culture is unknown. To wring the utmost out of the soil by the sweat of their brow is not their aim: they have no orchards or gardens or fenced paddocks, but are content to raise a crop of corn. All this is in marked contrast with Italian conditions. Even to get rid of fallows was an ambition of agriculturists in Italy, and a rotation-system[1162] had been devised to this end. And, whatever may have been the case in prehistoric times, full property in land had long been established by the Roman Law, and there was in the Italian land-system no trace of redistribution for short terms of use. In treating of slavery, the first point made is its connexion[1163] with the inveterate German habit of gambling. Losers will end by staking their own freedom on a last throw; if this also fails, they will submit to be fettered and sold. To the Roman this seems a false notion of honour. He adds that to take advantage of this sort of slave-winning is not approved by German sentiment: hence the winner combines[1164] scruples with profit by selling a slave of this class into foreign lands. Other slaves are not employed in Roman fashion as an organized staff of domestics. Each has a lodging and home of his own: his lord requires of him a fixed rent[1165] of so much corn or live-stock or clothing, as of a tenant: and he renders no service beyond this. House-work is done by a man’s own wife and family. Slaves are seldom flogged or chained or put to task-work. The German may kill his slave, but it will not be as a penalty for disobedience, but in a fit of rage. Freedmen are of little more account than slaves, and are only of influence at the courts of the kings who rule some of the tribes. There they rise above the freeborn and noble: but in general the inferiority of freedmen serves to mark the superiority of the freeborn.

Tacitus had held an important official post in Belgic Gaul or one of the so-called ‘Germanies’ along the Rhine, and had been at pains to learn all he could of the independent barbarians to the East. The Rhine frontier was one of the Roman borders that needed most careful watching, and Roman readers took an uneasy interest in the doings of the warrior tribes whose numbers, in contrast to their own falling birth-rate, were ever renewed and increased by alarming fertility. He was not alone in perceiving the contrasts between Italian and German institutions and habits, or in reading morals therefrom, expressed or implied. Germans had been employed as mercenary soldiers by Julius Caesar, and were destined to become one of the chief elements of the Roman armies. But in Italy they were perhaps more directly known as slaves. We have just seen that Tacitus speaks of a regular selling of slaves over the German border, and another passage[1166] incidentally illustrates this fact in a curious manner. In the course of his conquest of Britain, Agricola established military posts on the NW coast over against Ireland. It seems to have been in one of these that a cohort of Usipi were stationed. They had been raised in the Roman Germanies, and apparently sent over in a hurry. Not liking the service, they killed their officer and the old soldiers set to train them, seized three vessels, and put to sea. After various adventures and sufferings in a voyage round the north of Britain, they fell into the hands of some tribes of northern Germany, who took them for pirates—those that were left of them. Of the fate reserved for some of these Tacitus remarks ‘Some were sold as slaves[1167] and, passing from purchaser to purchaser, eventually reached the Roman bank (of the Rhine), where their extraordinary story aroused much interest.’ Such were the strange possibilities in the northern seas and lands where the Roman and the German met.

NOTE ON AN AFRICAN INSCRIPTION.

It may be convenient to notice here an inscription[1168]
relative to irrigation in Africa. In all parts of the empire
subject to drought the supply of water to farmers was a matter
of importance, as it is in most Mediterranean countries today.
Good soils, that would otherwise have lain waste, were thus
turned to account. In the African Provinces much was done to
meet this need, as the remains of works for storage of water
clearly testify. The period 69-180 AD seems to have been marked
by a considerable extension of cultivation in these parts,
and particularly in southern Numidia, which at that time was
included in the Province Africa. In this district, between
Sitifis (Setif) and Trajan’s great city Thamugadi (Timgad),
lay the commune of Lamasba[1169], the members of which appear
to have been mainly engaged in agriculture. There has been
preserved a large portion of a great inscription dealing with
the water-rights of their several farms. There is nothing to
suggest that the holders of these plots were tenants under
great landlords. They seem to be owners, not in the full
sense of Roman civil law, but on the regular provincial[1170]
footing, subject to tribute. To determine the shares of the
several plots in the common water-supply was probably the most
urgent problem of local politics in this community.

The date of the inscription has been placed in the reign of
Elagabalus; but it is obviously based on earlier conditions
and not improbably a revision of an earlier scheme. It deals
with the several plots one by one, fixing the number of
hours[1171] during which the water is to be turned on to each,
and making allowance for variation of the supply according to
the season of the year. A remarkable feature of this elaborate
scheme is the division of the plots into those below the water
level into which the water finds its way by natural flow
(_declives_), and those above water level (_acclives_). To the
latter it is clear that the water must have been raised by
mechanical means, and the scale of hours fixed evidently makes
allowance for the slower delivery accomplished thereby. For
the ‘descendent’ water was to be left flowing for fewer hours
than the ‘ascendent.’ As a specimen of the care taken in such
a community to prevent water-grabbing by unscrupulous members
this record is a document of high interest. That many others of
similar purport existed, and have only been lost to us by the
chances of time, is perhaps no rash guess.

The water-leet is called _aqua Claudiana_. The regulations are
issued by the local senate and people (_decreto ordinis et
colonorum_), for the place had a local[1172] government. Names
of 43 possessors remain on the surviving portion of the stone.
In form they are generally Roman[1173]. It is noted that only
three of them have a _praenomen_. Of the quality of the men
it is not easy to infer anything. Some may perhaps have been
Italians. Whether they, or some of them, were working farmers
must remain doubtful. At all events they do not seem to belong
to the class of _coloni_ of whom we shall have to speak below,
but to be strictly cultivating possessors. What labour they
employed it is hardly possible to guess.

XXXVIII. FRONTINUS.

=Sextus Julius Frontinus=, a good specimen of the competent departmental officers in the imperial service, was not only a distinguished military commander but an engineer and a writer of some merit. His little treatise[1174] on the aqueducts of Rome has for us points of interest. From it we can form some notion of the importance of the great water-works, not only to the city but to the country for some miles in certain directions. For water-stealing by the illicit tapping of the main channels was practised outside as well as within the walls. Landowners[1175] did it to irrigate their gardens, and the underlings of the staff (_aquarii_) connived at the fraud: to prevent this abuse was one of the troubles of the _curator_. But in certain places water was delivered by branch supplies from certain aqueducts. This of course had to be duly licensed, and license was only granted when the flow of water in the particular aqueduct was normally sufficient to allow the local privilege without reducing the regular discharge in Rome. The municipality of Tibur[1176] seems to have had an old right to a branch of the _Anio vetus_. The _aqua Crabra_ had been a spring serving Tusculum[1177], but in recent times the Roman _aquarii_ had led off some of its water into the _Tepula_, and made illicit profit out of the supply thus increased in volume. Frontinus himself with the emperor’s approval redressed the grievance, and the full supply of the _Crabra_ again served the Tusculan landlords. The jealous attention given to the water-works is illustrated by the decrees[1178] of the Senate in the time of the Republic and of emperors since, by which grants of water-rights can only be made to individuals named in the grant, and do not pass to heirs or assigns: the water must only be drawn from the reservoir named, and used on the estate for which the license is specifically granted.

The office of _curator aquarum_ was manifestly no sinecure. It was not merely that constant precautions had to be taken against the stealing of the water. An immense staff[1179] had to be kept to their duties, and the cleansing and repair of the channels needed prompt and continuous attention. And it seems that some of the landowners through whose estates the aqueducts passed gave much trouble[1180] to the administration. Either they erected buildings in the strips of land reserved as legal margin on each side of a channel, or they planted trees there, thus damaging the fabric; or they drove local roads over it; or again they blocked the access to working parties engaged in the duties of upkeep. Frontinus quotes decrees of the Senate dealing with these abuses and providing penalties for persons guilty of such selfish and reckless conduct. But to legislate was one thing, to enforce the law was another. Yet the unaccommodating[1181] landlords had no excuse for their behaviour. It was not a question of ‘nationalizing’ the side strips, though that would have been amply justified in the interests of the state. But the fact is that the old practice of Republican days was extremely tender of private rights. If a landlord made objection to selling a part of his estate, they took over the whole block and paid him for it. Then they marked off the portions required for the service, and resold the remainder. Thus the state was left unchallenged owner of the part retained for public use. But the absence of any legal or moral claim has not availed to stop encroachments: the draining away of the water still goes on, with or without leave, and even the channels and pipes themselves are pierced. No wonder that more severe and detailed legislation was found necessary in the time of Augustus. The writer ends by recognizing the unfairness of suddenly enforcing a law the long disuse of which has led many to presume upon continued impunity for breaking it. He therefore has been reviving it gradually, and hopes that offenders will not force him to execute it with rigour.

What stands out clearly in this picture of the water-service is the utter lack of public spirit imputed to the landowners near Rome by a careful and responsible public servant of good repute. There is none of the sermonizing of Seneca or the sneers and lamentations of Pliny. Frontinus takes things as they are, finds them bad, and means to do his best to improve them, while avoiding the temptations of the new broom. That a great quantity of water was being, and had long been, diverted from the public aqueducts to serve suburban villas and gardens, is certain. What we do not learn is whether much or any of this was used for the market-gardens of the humble folk who grew[1182] garden-stuff for the Roman market. It is the old story,—little or nothing about the poor, save when in the form of a city rabble they achieve distinction as a public burden and nuisance. It does however seem fairly certain that licenses to abstract water were only granted as a matter of special favour. Therefore, so far as licensed abstraction went, it is most probable that influential owners of _suburbana_ were the only beneficiaries. Theft of water with connivance[1183] of the staff was only possible for those who could afford to bribe. There remains the alternative of taking it by eluding or defying the vigilance of the staff. Is it probable that the poor market-gardener ventured to do this? Not often, I fancy: we can only guess, and I doubt whether much of the intercepted water came his way. There was it is true one aqueduct[1184] the water of which was of poor quality. It was a work of Augustus, intended to supply the great pond (_naumachia_) in which sham sea-fights were held to amuse the public. When not so employed, this water was made available for irrigation of gardens. This was on the western or Vatican side of the Tiber. Many rich men had pleasure-gardens in that part, and we cannot be sure that even this water was in practice serving any economic purpose.

XXXIX. INSCRIPTIONS RELATIVE TO _ALIMENTA_.

It is impossible to leave unnoticed the inscriptions[1185] of this period relative to _alimenta_, and Mommsen’s interpretation[1186] of the two chief ones, though their connexion with my present subject is not very close. In the bronze tablets recording respectively the declarations of estate-values in the communes of Ligures Baebiani (101 AD) and Veleia (103 AD), made with the view of ascertaining the securities upon which the capital endowment was to be advanced, we have interesting details of this ingenious scheme for perpetuating charity. But neither these, nor some minor inscribed records of bequests, nor again the experience of Pliny the younger in a benefaction[1187] of the same kind, give us direct evidence on labour-questions. It is in connexion with tenure of land and management of estates that these documents mainly concern us. The fact that there was felt to be a call for charities to encourage the rearing of children was assuredly not a sign of social or economic wellbeing; but this I have remarked above.

The following points stand out clearly in the interpretation of Mommsen. The growth of large estates as against small is shewn in both the tablets as having gone far by the time of Trajan: but not so far as modern writers have imagined. In the case of the Ligures Baebiani there is record of a considerable number of properties of moderate value, indeed they are in a majority. At Veleia, though small estates have not disappeared, there are more large ones, and the process of absorption has evidently been more active. This was not strange, for the former case belongs to the Hirpinian hill country of southern Italy, the latter to the slopes of the Apennine near Placentia, including some of the rich plain of the Po. The latter would naturally attract capital more than the former. I have more than once remarked that in the upland districts agricultural conditions were far less revolutionized than in the lowlands. This seems to be an instance in point: but the evidence is not complete. There is nothing to shew that the estates named in these tablets were the sole landed properties of their several owners. Nor is it probable. To own estates in different parts of the country was a well understood policy of landlords. How we are to draw conclusions as to the prevalence of great estates from a few isolated local instances, without a statement of the entire landed properties of the persons named, I cannot see. That writers of the Empire, when they speak of _latifundia_, are seldom thinking of the crude and brutal plantation-system of an earlier time, is very true. Those vast arable farms with their huge slave-gangs were now out of fashion, and Mommsen points out that our records are practically silent as to large-scale arable farming. We are not to suppose that it was extinct, but it was probably rare.

The most valuable part of this paper is its recognition of the vital change in Italian agriculture, the transfer of farming from a basis of ownership to one of tenancy. The yeoman or owner-cultivator of olden time had been driven out or made a rare figure in the most eligible parts of Italy. The great plantations, which had largely superseded the small-scale farms, had in their turn proved economic failures. Both these systems, in most respects strongly contrasted, had one point in common: the land was cultivated by or for the owner, and for his own account. But the failure of the large-scale plantation-system did not so react as to bring back small ownership. Large ownership still remained, supported as it was by the social importance attached to landowning, and occasionally by governmental action directed to encourage investment in Italian land. Large owners long struggled to keep their estates in hand under stewards farming for their masters’ account. But this plan was doomed to failure, because the care and attention necessary to make it pay were in most cases greater than landlords were willing to bestow. By Columella’s time this fact was already becoming evident. He could only advise the landlords to be other than he found them, and meanwhile point to an alternative, namely application of the tenancy-system. It was this latter plan that more and more found favour. The landlord could live in town and draw his rents, himself free to pursue his own occupations. The tenant-farmer was only bound by the terms of his lease; and, being resident, was able to exact the full labour of his staff and prevent waste and robbery. The custom was for the landlord to provide[1188] the equipment (_instrumentum_) of the farm, or at least most of it, including slaves. Thus he was in a sense partner of his tenant, finding most of the working capital. Whether he had a claim to a money rent only, or to a share of crops also, depended on the terms of letting. It seems that rents were often in arrear, and that attempts to recover sums due by selling up tenants’ goods did not always cover the debts.

The typical tenant-farmer was certainly a ‘small man.’ To let the whole of a large estate to a ‘big man’ with plenty of capital was not the practice in Italy. Why? I think the main reason was that a big capitalist who wanted to get the highest return on his money could at this time do better for himself in other ventures: if set upon a land-enterprise, he could find far more attractive openings in some of the Provinces. Anyhow, as Mommsen says, ‘Grosspacht’ never became acclimatized in Italy, though we find it on Imperial domains, for instance in Africa. In connexion with this matter I am led to remark that small tenancy ‘Kleinpacht’ seems to have existed in two forms, perhaps indistinguishable in law, but different in their practical effect. When a landlord, letting parcels of a big estate to tenants, kept in hand the chief _villa_ and its appurtenances as a sort of Manor Farm, and tenants fell into arrear with their rent, he had a ready means of indemnifying himself without ‘selling up’ his old tenants and having possibly much difficulty in finding better new ones. He could commute arrears of rent into obligations of service[1189] on the Manor Farm. Most tenants would probably be only too glad to get rid of the immediate burden of debt. It would seem a better course than to borrow for that purpose money on which interest would have to be paid, even supposing that anyone would be willing to lend to a poor tenant confessedly in difficulties. And such an arrangement would furnish the landlord with a fixed amount of labour (and labour was becoming scarcer) on very favourable terms—he or his agent would see to that. But it was not really necessary to reserve a ‘Manor Farm’ at all, and a man owning land in several districts would hardly do so in every estate, if in any. Such a landlord could not readily solve the arrears-problem by commutation. He was almost compelled[1190] to ‘sell up’ a hopeless defaulter: and, since most of the stock had probably been supplied by himself, there would not be much for him to sell. That such cases did occur, we know for certain; the old tenant went, being free to move, and to find a good new one was no easy matter, particularly as the land was sure to have been left in a bad state. Arrears of farm-rents had a regular phrase (_reliqua colonorum_) assigned to them, and there is good reason to believe that they were a common source of trouble. It has been well said[1191] that landlords in Italy were often as badly off as their tenants. The truth is that the whole agricultural interest was going downhill.

If the tenant-farmer was, as we see, becoming more and more the central figure of Italian agriculture, we must next inquire how he stood in relation to labour. It is _a priori_ probable that a man will be more ready to work with his own hands on a farm of his own than on one hired: no man is more alive to the difference of _meum_ and _alienum_ than the tiller of the soil. It is therefore not wonderful that we find tenant-farmers employing slave labour. From the custom of having slaves as well as other stock supplied by the landlord we may fairly infer that tenants were, at least generally, not to be had on other terms. Mommsen remarks[1192] that actual handwork on the land was more and more directed rather than performed by the small tenants. Thus it came to be more and more done by unfree persons. This recognizes, no doubt rightly, that the system of great estates let in portions to tenants was not favourable to a revival of free rustic labour, but told effectively against it. He also points out[1193] that under Roman Law it was possible for a landlord and his slave to stand in the mutual relation of lessor and lessee. Such a slave lessee is distinct from the free tenant _colonus_. It appears that there were two forms of this relation. The slave might be farming on his own[1194] account, paying a rent and taking the farm-profits as his _peculium_. In this case he is in the eye of the law _quasi colonus_. Or he might be farming on his master’s account; then he is _vilicus_. In both cases he is assumed to have under him slave-labourers supplied[1195] by the landlord, and it seems that the name _vilicus_ was sometimes loosely applied even in the former case. In the latter case he cannot have been very different from the steward of a large estate worked for owner’s account. I can only conclude that he was put in charge of a smaller farm-unit and left more to his own devices. Probably this arrangement would be resorted to only when an ordinary free tenant was not to be had; and satisfactory ones were evidently not common in the time of the younger Pliny.

So far as I can see, in this period landlords were gradually ceasing to keep a direct control over the management of their own estates, but the changes in progress did not tend to a rehabilitation of free labour. One detail needs a brief special consideration. The landlord’s agent (_actor_) is often mentioned, and it is clear that the _actor_ was generally a slave. But there is reference to the possible case[1196] of an _actor_ living (like his master) in town, not on the farms, and having a wife[1197] and daughter. This suggests a freedman, not a slave, and such cases may have been fairly numerous. Another point for notice is the question of _vincti, alligati, compediti_, in this period. Mommsen[1198] treats the chaining of field-slaves as being quite exceptional, in fact a punishment, in Italy under the Empire. Surely it was always in some sense a punishment. From what Columella[1199] says of the normal employment of chained labourers in vineyard-work I can not admit that the evidence justifies Mommsen’s assertion. That there was a growing reluctance to use such barbarous methods, and that local usage varied in various parts of the country, is certain.

XL. DION CHRYSOSTOM.

We have seen that there is no lack of evidence as to the lamentable condition of Italian agriculture in a large part of the country. But things were no better in certain Provinces, more particularly in Greece. Plutarch deplores[1200] the decay and depopulation of his native land, but the most vivid and significant picture preserved to us is one conveyed in a public address[1201] by the famous lecturer =Dion of Prusa=, better known as Dion[1202] Chrysostom. It describes conditions in the once prosperous island of Euboea. The speaker professes to have been cast ashore there in a storm, and to have been entertained with extraordinary kindness by some honest rustics who were living an industrious and harmless life in the upland parts, the rocky shore of which was notorious as a scene of shipwrecks. There were two connected households, squatters in the lonely waste, producing by their own exertions everything they needed, and of course patterns of every amiable virtue. The lecturer recounts the story of these interesting people as told him by his host. How much of it is due to his own imagination, or put together out of various stories, we cannot judge: but it is manifest that what concerns us is to feel satisfied that the experiences described were possible, and not grotesquely improbable, in their setting of place and time. I venture to accept the story as a sketch of what might very well have happened, whether it actually did so or not.

We live mostly by the chase, said the hunter, with very little tillage. This croft (χωρίον) does not belong to us either by inheritance or purchase. Our fathers, though freemen, were poor like ourselves, just hired herdsmen, in charge of the herds of a rich man who owned wide farm-lands and all these mountains. When he died, his estate was confiscated: It is said that the emperor[1203] made away with him to get his property. Well, they drove off his live-stock for slaughter, and our few oxen with them, and never paid our wages. So we did the best we could, taking advantage of the resources of the neighbourhood in summer and winter. Since childhood I have only once visited the city[1204]. A man turned up one day demanding money. We had none, and I told him so on my oath. He bade me come with him to the city. There I was arraigned before the mob as a squatter on the public land, without a grant from the people, and without any payment. It was hinted that we were wreckers, and had put together a fine property through that wicked trade. We were said to have valuable farms and abundance of flocks and herds, beasts of burden, slaves. But a wiser speaker took a different line. He urged that those who turned the public land to good account were public benefactors and deserved encouragement. He pointed out that two thirds of their territory was lying waste through neglect and lack of population. He was himself a large landowner: whoever was willing to cultivate his land was welcome to do so free of charge,—indeed he would reward him for his pains—the improvement would be worth it. He proposed a plan for inducing citizens to reclaim the derelict lands, rent-free for ten years, and after that rented at a moderate share of the crops. To aliens less favourable terms might be offered, but with a prospect of citizenship in case of reclamation on a large scale. By such a policy the evils of idleness and poverty would be got rid of. These considerations he enforced by pointing to the pitiful state of the city itself. Outside the gates you find, not a suburb but a hideous desert. Within the walls we grow crops and graze beasts on the sites of the gymnasium and the market-place. Statues of gods and heroes are smothered in the growing corn. Yet we are forsooth to expel these hard-working folks and to leave men nothing to do but to rob or steal.

The rustic, being called upon to state his own case, described the poverty of the squatter families, the innocence of their lives, their services to shipwrecked seafarers, and so forth. On the last topic he received a dramatic confirmation from a man in the crowd, who had himself been one of a party of castaways hospitably relieved three years before by these very people. So all ended well. The stress laid on the simple rusticity of the rustic, and the mutual distrust and mean jealousy of the townsfolk, shew in numerous touches that we have in this narrative a highly coloured scene. But the picture of the decayed city, with its ancient walls a world too wide for its shrunk population, is companion to that of the deserted countryside. Both panels of this mournful diptych could have been paralleled in the case of many a city and territory in Italy and Greece. The moral reflexions, in which the lecturer proceeds to apply the lessons of the narrative, are significant. He enlarges on the superiority of the poor to the rich in many virtues, unselfishness in particular. Poverty in itself is not naturally an evil. If men will only work with their own hands, they may supply their own needs, and live a life worthy of freemen. The word αὐτουργεῖν occurs more than once in this spirited appeal, shewing clearly that Dion had detected the plague-spot in the civilization of his day. But he honestly admits the grave difficulties that beset artisans in the various trades practised in towns. They lack necessary[1205] capital: everything has to be paid for, food clothing lodging fuel and what not, for they get nothing free but water, and own nothing but their bodies. Yet we cannot advise them to engage in foul degrading vocations. We desire them to live honourably, not to sink below the standards of the greedy usurer or the owners of lodging-houses or ships or gangs of slaves. What then are we to do with the decent poor? Shall we have to propose turning them out of the cities and settling them on allotments in the country? Tradition tells us rural settlement prevailed throughout Attica of yore: and the system worked well, producing citizens of a better and more discreet type than the town-bred mechanics who thronged the Assemblies and law-courts of Athens.

It may be said that Dion is a mere itinerant philosopher, who travels about seeing the world and proposing impracticable remedies for contemporary evils in popular sermons to idle audiences. But he knew his trade, and his trade was to make his hearers ‘feel better’ for attending his discourses. When he portrays the follies or vices of the age, he is dealing with matters of common knowledge, and not likely to misrepresent facts seriously. When he suggests remedies, it matters little that there is no possibility of applying them. Present company are always excepted, and the townsfolk who listened to the preacher would neither resent his strictures on city life nor have the slightest intention of setting their own hands to the spade or plough. That there was a kind of moral reaction[1206] in this period, and that lecturers and essayists contributed something to the revival of healthier public sentiment, I do not dispute; though I think too much success is sometimes[1207] ascribed to their good intentions. At any rate they cannot be credited with improving the conditions of rustic life. To the farmer the voice of the great world outside was represented by the collectors of rents and taxes, the exactors of services, not by the sympathetic homilies of popular teachers.

XLI. NEW TESTAMENT WRITERS.

The authors of the books of the New Testament, whom it is convenient to view together as a group of witnesses bearing on the condition of a part of the Roman East under the early Empire, supply some interesting matter. We read of an agriculture that includes corn-growing, the culture of vines, and pastoral industry: the olive, and above all the fig-tree, appear as normal objects of the countryside. Plough spade and sickle, storehouse threshing-floor and winepress, are the familiar appliances of rustic life, as they had been from time immemorial. Farmers need not only hard work, but watchfulness and forethought, for the business of their lives. Live stock have to be protected from beasts of prey, and need endless care. And the rustic’s outlook is ever clouded by the fear of drought and murrain. All this is an ordinary picture, common to many lands: only the anxiety about water-supply is perhaps specially Oriental. The ox and the ass are the chief beasts of draught and burden. In short, country life goes on as of old, and much as it still does after many changes of rulers.

From the way in which farmers are generally spoken of I infer that they are normally peasant[1208] landowners. That is to say, not tenants of an individual landlord, but holding their farms with power of sale and right of succession, liable to tribute. The Roman state is strictly speaking the owner, having succeeded to the royal ownership assumed by the Seleucid kings. But that there was also letting[1209] of estates to tenant-farmers is clear, for we read of collection of rents. At the same time we find it suggested, apparently as a moral rather than legal obligation, that the toiling farmer has the first claim[1210] on the produce, and the ox is not to be muzzled. Such passages, and others insisting on honesty and the duty of labour, keep us firmly reminded of the moral aims pervading the works of these writers. In other words, they are more concerned to define what ought to be than to record what is. Many of the significant references to rustic matters occur in parables. But we must not forget that a parable would have little force if its details were not realistic.

Of the figures appearing on the agricultural scene we may distinguish the wealthy landlord[1211], whether farming for his own account or letting his land to tenants: the steward[1212] farming for his lord’s account: the tenant-farmer: probably the free peasant on a small holding of his own. Labour is represented by the farmer working with his own hands, and by persons employed simply as labourers. These last are either freemen or slaves. Slavery is assumed as a normal condition, but a reader can hardly help being struck by the notable passages in which the wage-earner appears as a means of illustrating an important point. Does the occurrence of such passages suggest that in these Oriental surroundings wage-service was as common a system as bond-service, perhaps even more so? I hesitate to draw this conclusion, for the following reason. Accepting the fact of slavery (as the writers do), there was not much to be said beyond enjoining humanity on masters and conscientious and respectful service on slaves. But the relation between hirer and hired, presumably a bargain, opened up far-reaching issues of equity, transcending questions of formal law. Hence we hear much about it. That the workman is worthy of his meat (ἐργάτης ... τροφῆς) is a proposition of which we have an earlier[1213] version, referring to slaves. The cowardice of the hireling shepherd points a notable moral. The rich who defraud the reaper of his hire[1214] meet with scathing denunciation. For to him that worketh the reward is not reckoned[1215] of grace but of debt.

This last proposition seems to furnish a key to the remarkable parable[1216] of the Labourers in the Vineyard, which has been subjected to many diverse interpretations. If we accept the view that the wages represent the Kingdom of God, and that this reward is granted not of debt but of grace, it is clear that great stress is laid on the autocratic position of the householder (οἰκοδεσπότης). His treatment of the hired labourers is an assertion of entire indifference to what we call ‘economic’ considerations. How it is to be interpreted as equitable, theologians must decide, or be content to leave modern handworkers to draw their own conclusions. My interest in the matter may be shewn in the question whether this householder is to be regarded as a typical figure, or not. I trust I am guilty of no irreverence in saying that to me he seems a purely hypothetical character. That is to say that I take the gist of the parable to be this: if an employer chose to deal with his hirelings on such arbitrary principles, he would be acting within his rights. I do not infer that such conduct was likely in ordinary life, or even that a concrete case of its occurrence had ever been known. I cannot believe that in a country where debts[1217] and usury are referred to as matters of course, and where masters entrusted money[1218] to their slaves for purposes of trade, where sales of land[1219] were an ordinary business transaction, a sane individualistic capitalist would act as the man in this parable. Those who think differently must clear up their own difficulties. I would add that this parable, the details of which seem to me non-realistic, only occurs in one of the Gospels. Is it possible that it is based on some current Oriental story?

XLII. MARTIAL AND JUVENAL.

Among the witnesses, other than technical writers, from whom we get evidence as to the conditions of agriculture under the Empire, are two poets, Martial and Juvenal. The latter, a native of Aquinum in the old Volscian part of Latium, never shook off the influence of his connexion with rural Italy. The former, a native of Bilbilis in Spain, was one of the gifted provincials who came to Rome as the literary centre of the world. He spent more than thirty years there, and made an unrivalled name as a writer of epigrams, but his heart was in Spain. The attitude of these two men towards the facts of their time is very different, and the difference affects the value of their evidence. In the satires of Juvenal indignant rhetoric takes up a high moral position, and declaims fiercely against abominations. Now this attitude is beset with temptations to overstate an evil rather than weaken effect. Moreover, in imperial Rome it was necessary to be very careful: not only were personal references dangerous, but it was above all things necessary to avoid provoking the Emperor. Yet even Emperors could (and did) view attacks upon their predecessors with indifference or approval: while vicious contemporaries were not likely to put on the cap if their deceased counterparts were assailed. So the satirist, confining his strictures mainly to the past, is not often a contemporary witness of the first order. It is fortunate that his references to rustic conditions are not much affected by this limitation: but they mostly refer to the past. =Martial= on the contrary is a mere man of his time. His business is not to censure, still less to reform, but to find themes for light verse such as will hit the taste of average Roman readers. He soon discovered that scandal was the one staple topic of interest, and exploited it as a source of ‘copy’ down to the foulest dregs. Most of the characters exposed appear under fictitious Greek names, but doubtless Roman gossips applied the filthy imputations to each other. We need not suppose that Martial’s ruling passion was for bawdy epigram. But he knew what would hit the taste of an idle and libidinous world. For himself, nothing is clearer than that he found life in the great city a sore trial, not solely from the oppressive climate at certain seasons of the year. He was too clever a man not to suffer weariness in such surroundings. He had to practice the servility habitually displayed by poor men towards the rich and influential, but he did not like it. It seems to have been through patronage that he got together sufficient wealth to enable him eventually to retire to his native country. The din and dirt and chronic unrest of Rome were to him, as to Juvenal, an abomination: and from these ever-present evils there was, for dwellers in mean houses or crowded blocks of sordid flats, no escape. Both writers agree that the Rome of those days was only fit for the wealthy to live in. Secure in his grand mansion on one of the healthiest sites, with plenty of elbow-room, guarded against unwelcome intrusions by a host of slaves and escorted by them in public, the millionaire could take his life easily: he could even sleep. Martial had his way to make as a man of letters, and needed to keep brain and nerves in working order. For this, occasional retirement from the urban pandemonium was necessary. So he managed to acquire a little suburban[1220] property, where he could spend days in peace and quiet. Many of his friends did the same. To keep such a place, however small, in good order, and to grow some country produce, however little, it was necessary to have a resident[1221] _vilicus_. He had also a _vilica_, and there would probably be a slave or two under them. The poet was now better off, and doing as others did. These _suburbana_, retreats for the weary, were evidently numerous. Their agricultural significance was small. Martial often pokes fun at the owners who withdraw to the country for a holiday, taking with them[1222] their supplies of eatables bought in the markets of Rome. Clearly the city markets were well supplied: and this indicates the existence of another class of suburban properties, market-gardens on a business footing, of which we hear little directly. An industry of this kind springs up round every great centre of population: how far it can extend depends on the available means of delivering the produce in fair marketable condition. Round Rome it had no doubt existed for centuries, and was probably one of the most economically sound agricultural undertakings in central Italy. That it was conducted on a small scale and was prosperous may be the reason why it attracted little notice in literature.

Though Martial cannot be regarded as an authority on Italian agriculture, it so happens that passages of his works are important and instructive, particularly in connexion with matters of land-management and farm-labour. He gives point to his epigrams by short and vivid touches, above all by telling contrasts. Now this style of writing loses most of its force if the details lack reality. He was therefore little tempted to go beyond the truth in matters of ordinary non-bestial life, such as agricultural conditions; we may accept him as a good witness. To begin with an all-important topic, let us see what we get from him on the management of land, either for the landlord’s account under a slave _vilicus_, or by letting it to a free _colonus_. In explaining the gloomy bearing of Selius, he remarks[1223] that it is not due to recent losses: his wife and his goods and his slaves are all safe, and he is not suffering from any failures of a tenant or a steward. Here _colonus_ as opposed to _vilicus_ must mean a free tenant, who might be behindhand with his rent or with service due under his lease. The opposition occurs elsewhere, as when he refers[1224] to the produce sent in to a rich man in Rome from his country estates by his steward or tenant. So too on the birthday of an eminent advocate all his clients and dependants send gifts; among them[1225] the hunter sends a hare, the fisherman some fish, and the _colonus_ a kid. The _venator_ and _piscator_ are very likely his slaves. In protesting[1226] against the plague of kissing as it strikes a man on return to Rome, he says, ‘all the neighbours kiss you, and the _colonus_ too with his hairy unsavoury mouth.’ It seems to imply that the rustic tenant would come to Town to pay his respects to his landlord. Barring the kiss, the duty of welcoming the squire makes one think of times not long gone by in England. In one passage[1227] there is a touch suggestive of almost medieval relations. How Linus has managed to get through a large inherited fortune, is a mystery in need of an explanation. He has not been a victim of the temptations of the great wicked city. No, he has always lived in a country town, where economy was not only possible but easy. Everything he needed was to be had cheap or gratis, and there was nothing to lead him into extravagant ways. Now among the instances of cheapness is the means of satisfying his sexual passions when they become unruly. At such moments either the _vilica_ or the _duri nupta coloni_ served his turn. The steward’s consort would be his slave, and there is no more to be said: but the tenant-farmer’s wife, presumably a free woman, is on a different footing. There is no suggestion of hoodwinking the husband, for the situation is treated as a matter of course. It would rather seem that the landlord is represented as relying on the complaisance of a dependent boor. If I interpret the passage rightly, we have in it a vivid sidelight on the position of some at least of the _coloni_ of the first century AD. That _vilici_ and _coloni_ alike were usually clumsy rustics of small manual skill, is suggested by two passages[1228] in which they are credited with bungling workmanship in wood or stone. Perhaps we may detect reference to a _colonus_ in an epigram on a man who spends his money lavishly on his own debaucheries but is meanly niggardly to necessitous friends. It says ‘you sell ancestral lands to pay for a passing gratification of your lust, while your friend, left in the lurch, is tilling land[1229] that is not his own.’ That is, you might have made him a present of a little farm, as many another has done; but you have left him to sink into a mere _colonus_. Enough has now been said to shew that these tenant-farmers were a humble and dependent class of men, and that the picture drawn from passages of Martial corresponds to that drawn above in Weber’s interpretation of Columella.

It is not necessary to set out with the same fulness all the evidence of Martial on agricultural matters regarded from various points of view. The frequent reference to the land is a striking fact: like his fellow-countryman Columella, he was clearly interested in the land-system of Italy. He shews wide knowledge of the special products of different districts; a knowledge probably picked up at first in the markets of Rome, and afterwards increased by experience. No writer draws the line more distinctly between productive and unproductive estates. That we hear very much more of the latter is no wonder: so long as the supremacy of Rome was unshaken, and money poured into Italy, a great part of the country was held by wealthy owners to whom profit was a less urgent motive than pleasure or pride. To what lengths ostentation could go is seen[1230] in the perverse fancy of a millionaire to have a real _rus in urbe_ with grounds about his town house so spacious that they included a real vineyard: here in sheltered seclusion he could have a vintage in Rome. This is in truth the same vulgar ambition as that (much commoner) of the man who prides himself on treating guests at his country mansion to every luxury procurable in Rome. It is merely inverted.

At this point it is natural to ask whence came the vast sums lavished on these and other forms of luxury. Italy was not a great manufacturing country. The regular dues from the Provinces flowed into the treasuries, not openly into private pockets. Yet a good deal of these monies no doubt did in the end become the reward of individuals, as salaries or amounts payable to contractors, etc. These however would not by themselves suffice to account for the immense squandering that evidently took place. A source of incomes, probably much more productive than we might at first sight imagine, existed in the huge estates owned by wealthy Romans in the lands beyond the seas. Martial refers[1231] to such properties at Patrae in Achaia, in Egypt, etc. The returns from these estates, however badly managed, were in the total probably very large. And they were no new thing. In Varro and in Cicero’s letters we find them treated as a matter of course: the case of Atticus and his lands in Epirus is well known. Pliny[1232] tells us of the case of Pompey, and also of the six land-monopolizers whom Nero found in possession of 50% of the Province of Africa. The practice of usury in the subject countries was no longer so widespread or so remunerative as it had been in the last period of the Republic, but it had not ceased, and the same is true of the farming of revenues. Commerce was active: but we are rather concerned with the means of paying for imported goods than with the fact of importation. The anxiety as to the supply of corn from abroad shews itself in the gossip[1233] of quidnuncs as to the fleet of freight-ships coming from Alexandria. Puteoli and Ostia were doubtless very busy; all we need note is that someone must have made money[1234] in the business of transport and delivery. These considerations may serve to explain the presence of so much ‘money in the country’ as we say, and the resulting extravagance. But all this social and economic fabric rested on the security guaranteed by the imperial forces on land and sea.

One of Martial’s epigrams[1235] is of special interest as describing a manifestly exceptional estate. It was at or near Baiae, the famous seaside pleasure-resort, which had been the scene of costly fancies and luxurious living for more than a hundred years. The point of the poem lies in the striking contrast of this place compared with the unproductive _suburbanum_[1236] of another owner, which is kept going by supplies from the Roman market. For the place is a genuine unsophisticated country farm, producing corn and wine and good store of firewood, and breeding cattle swine sheep and various kinds of poultry and pigeons. When rustic neighbours come to pay their respects, they bring presents, such as honey in the comb, cheese, dormice, a kid, a capon. The daughters[1237] of honest tenants bring baskets of eggs. The _villa_ is a centre of hospitality; even the slaves are well fed. The presence of a slave-household brought from Town is particularly dwelt on: what with fishing and trapping and with ‘light work’ in the garden, these spoilt menials, even my lord’s pet eunuch, are happy enough. There are also young home-bred slaves (_vernae_) probably the offspring of the farm-slaves. The topsyturvydom of this epigram is so striking that one may suspect Martial of laughing in his sleeve at the eccentric friend whose farm he is praising. In any case this cannot be taken seriously as a realistic picture of a country seat practically agricultural. The owner evidently drew his income from other sources. And the sort of man who treated himself to an eunuch can hardly have been much of a farmer, even near Baiae. The mention of _probi coloni_ illustrates what has been said above as to tenants, and that a farm could be described in such words as _rure vero barbaroque_ is a candid admission that in too many instances a place of the kind could only by courtesy be styled a farm, since the intrusion of ‘civilization’ (that is, of refined and luxurious urban elements) destroyed its practical rustic character. That the estate in question produced enough to feed the owner and his guests, his domestics brought from Rome, and the resident rustic staff as well, is credible. But there is nothing to shew that it produced any surplus for the markets: it may have done something in this direction, but that it really paid its way, yielding a moderate return on the capital sunk in land slaves and other farm-stock, is utterly incredible.