Chapter XVIII: Appendix: Some Byzantine Authorities (17)

Whether in town or country, the life sketched by Martial is that of a society resting on a basis of slavery. At the same time the supply of new slaves[1238] was not so plentiful as it had been in days before the Roman Peace under Augustus. Serviceable rustic slaves were valuable nowadays. Addressing Faustinus, the wealthy owner of the above Baian _villa_ and several others, the poet says ‘you can send this book[1239] to Marcellinus, who is now at the end of his campaign in the North and has leisure to read: but let your messenger be a dainty Greek page. Marcellinus will requite you by sending you a slave, captive from the Danube country, who has the making of a shepherd in him, to tend the flocks on your estate by Tibur.’ Each friend is to send the other what the other lacks and he is in a position to supply. This is a single instance; but the suggested _do ut des_ is significant. As wars became rarer, and prisoners fewer, the disposal of captives would be a perquisite of more and more value. That the normal treatment of slaves was becoming more and more humane, is certain. But whether humanitarian sentiment in Stoic forms, as preached by Seneca and others, had much to do with this result, is more doubtful. The wisdom of not provoking discontent among the slaves, particularly in the country, was well understood. The decline of the free rustic population had made the absence of a regular police force a danger not to be ignored. Improved conditions were probably in most cases due to self-interest and caution much more than to humane sentiment. In Martial’s day we may gather from numerous indications that in general the lot of slaves was not a hard one if we except the legal right of self-disposal. Urban domestics were often sadly spoilt, and were apt to give themselves great airs outside the house or to callers at the door. But I believe that in respect of comfort and happiness the position of a steward with a slave-staff in charge of a country place owned by a rich man was in most cases far pleasanter. Subject to the preparation for the master’s occasional visits and entertainment of his guests, these men were left very much to their own devices. The site of the _villa_ had been chosen for its advantages. So long as enough work was done to satisfy the owner, they, his caretakers, enjoyed gratis for the whole year[1240] the privileges and pleasures which he paid for dearly and seldom used.

It seems certain that it was on such estates that most of the slave-breeding took place. It was becoming a more regular practice, as we see from Columella. And it had advantages from several points of view. The slave allowed to mate with a female partner and produce children was more effectively tied to the place than the unmated labourer on a plantation was by his chain. So long as the little _vernae_ were not brutally treated (and it seems to have been a tradition to treat them well), the parents were much less likely to join in any rebellious schemes. And, after all, the young of slaves were worth money, if sold; while, if kept by the old master, they would work in what was the only home they had known: they would be easier to train and manage than some raw barbarian from Germany or Britain or the Sudan. But it must not be forgotten that the recognition of slave-breeding foreboded the eventual decline of slavery—personal slavery—as an institution, at least for purposes of rustic life. I know of no direct evidence[1241] as to the class or classes from which the unfree _coloni_ of the later Empire were drawn. But it seems to me extremely probable that many of the _coloni_ of the period with which we are just now concerned were home-bred slaves manumitted and kept on the estate as tenants. This conjecture finds a reason for manumission, as the freedman would be capable of a legal relation, which the slave was not. The freedman’s son would be _ingenuus_, and would represent, in his economic bondage under cover of legal freedom, a natural stage in the transition from the personal slave to the predial serf.

That there were _vernae_ on the small suburban properties, the rest-retreats of Martial and many others, is not to be doubted. But they can hardly have been very numerous. These little places were often but poorly kept up. The owners were seldom wealthy men, able to maintain many slaves. Economy and quiet were desired by men who could not afford ostentation. The normal use of the epithet _sordidus_[1242] (not peculiar to Martial) in speaking of such places, and indeed of small farmsteads in general, is characteristic of them and of the undress life led there. The house was sometimes in bad condition. To patch up a leaky roof[1243] a present of a load of tiles was welcome. A man buys a place the house (_casa_) on which is horribly dark and old: the poet remarks that it is close to the pleasure-garden (_hortos_) of a rich man. This explains the purchase: the buyer will put up with bad lodging for the prospect of good dinners at his neighbour’s table. The difficulty of finding a purchaser for an estate of bad sanitary record, and the damage done to riparian farms by the Tiber floods, are instances[1244] of the ordinary troubles of the little landowners near Rome. A peculiar nuisance, common in Italy, was the presence in some corner of a field of the tomb[1245] of some former owner or his family. A slice of the land, so many feet in length and breadth, was often reserved[1246] as not to pass with the inheritance. What the heir never owned, that he could not sell. So, when the property changed hands, the new owner had no right to remove what to him might be nothing but a hindrance to convenient tillage. Altars[1247] taken over from a predecessor may also have been troublesome at times, but their removal was probably less difficult.

The picture of agricultural conditions to be drawn from =Juvenal= agrees with that drawn from Martial. But, as said above, the point of view is different in the satirist, whose business it is to denounce evils, and who is liable to fall into rhetorical exaggeration. And to a native of central Italy the tradition of a healthier state of things in earlier ages was naturally a more important part of his background than it could be to a man from Spain. Hence we find vivid scenes[1248] drawn from legend, shewing good old Romans, men of distinction, working on the land themselves and rearing well-fed families (slaves included) on the produce of meagre little plots of two _iugera_. An ex-consul[1249] breaks off his labours on a hillside, shoulders his mattock, and joins a rustic feast at the house of a relative. The hill-folk of the Abruzzi are patterns of thrifty contentment, ready to earn their bread[1250] with the plough. But the civic duties are not forgotten. The citizen has a double function. He serves the state in arms and receives a patch of land[1251] as his reward for wounds suffered. He has to attend the Assembly before his wounds[1252] are fully healed. In short, he is a peasant soldier who does a public duty in both peace and war. The vital need of the present day[1253] is that parents should rear sons of this type. Here we have the moral which these scenes, and the frequent references to ancient heroes, are meant to impress on contemporaries. A striking instance[1254] from historical times is that of Marius, who is represented as having risen from the position of a wage-earning farm-labourer to be the saviour of Rome from the barbarians of the North. But the men of the olden time led simple lives, free from the extravagance and luxury of these days and therefore from the temptations and ailments that now abound. The only wholesome surroundings[1255] now are to be found in out-of-the way country corners or the homes of such frugal citizens as Juvenal himself. But these are mere islets in a sea of wantonness bred in security: luxury is deadlier[1256] than the sword, and the conquered world is being avenged in the ruin of its conqueror. Perhaps no symptom on which he enlarges is more significant and sinister from his own point of view than that betrayed in a passing reference by the verbal contrast[1257] between _paganus_ and _miles_. The peasant is no longer soldier: and in this fact the weightiest movements of some 250 years of Roman history are virtually implied.

So much for an appeal to the Roman past. But Juvenal, like Vergil before him, was not content with this. He looks back to the primitive age[1258] of man’s appearance on earth and idealizes the state of things in this picture also. Mankind, rude healthy and chaste, had not yet reached the notion of private property: therefore theft was unknown. The moral is not pressed in the passage where this description occurs; but it is worth noting because the greed of men in imperial Rome, and particularly in the form of land-grabbing and villa-building, is a favourite topic in the satires. All this side of contemporary life, viewed as the fruit of artificial appetites and unnecessary passions, is evidence of a degeneracy that has been going on ever since the beginnings of society. And the worst of it is that those who thrive on present conditions are the corrupt the servile and the mean, from whom no improvement can be hoped for. Juvenal’s picture of present facts as he sees them is quite enough to justify his pessimism. As a means of arresting degeneration he is only able to suggest a change[1259] of mind, in fact to urge people to be other than they are. But he cannot shew where the initiative is to be found. Certainly not in the mongrel free populace of Rome, a rabble of parasites and beggars. Nor in the ranks of the wealthy freedmen into whose hands the chief opportunities of enrichment have passed, thanks to the imperial jealousy of genuine Romans and preference of supple aliens. These freedmen are the typical capitalists: they buy up everything, land included; and Romans who despise these upstarts have nevertheless to fawn on them. Nor again are leaders to be found in the surviving remnant of old families. It is a sad pity, but pride of birth, while indisposing them to useful industry, does not prevent them from debauchery or from degrading themselves in public. Financial ruin and charges of high treason are destroying them: even were this not so, who would look to such persons for a wholesome example? Neither religion with its formalities and excitements, nor philosophy with its professors belying their moral preaching, could furnish the means of effecting the change of heart needed for vital reform.

No, it was not from the imperial capital, the reeking hotbed of wickedness, that any good could come. And when Juvenal turns to the country it is remarkable how little comfort he seems to find in the rural conditions of Italy. Like other writers, he refers to the immense estates[1260] that extended over a great part of the country, both arable and grazing lands (_saltus_), the latter in particular being of monstrous size. We cannot get from him any hint that the land-monopoly, the canker of the later Republic, had been effectually checked. Nor indeed had it. One of the ways in which rich patrons[1261] rewarded clients for services, honourable or (as he suggests) often dishonourable, was to give the dependant a small landed estate. The practice was not new. Maecenas had given Horace his Sabine farm. But the man who gave away acres must have had plenty of acres to give. True, some of the great landlords had earned[1262] their estates by success in an honourable profession: but the satirist is naturally more impressed by the cases of those, generally freedmen, whose possessions are the fruit of corrupt compliance or ignoble trades. These upstarts, like the Trimalchio of Petronius, live to display their wealth, and the acquisition of lands[1263] and erection of costly villas are a means to this end. The fashion set by them is followed by others, and over-buying and over-building are the cause of bankruptcies. Two passages[1264] indicate the continued existence of an atrocious evil notorious in the earlier period of the _latifundia_, the practice of compelling small holders to part with their land by various outrages. The live stock belonging to a rich neighbour are driven on to the poor man’s farm until the damage thus caused to his crops forces him to sell—of course at the aggressor’s price. A simpler form, ejectment without pretence of purchase, is mentioned as an instance of the difficulties in the way of getting legal redress, at least for civilians. There would be little point in mentioning such wrongs as conceivable possibilities: surely they must have occurred now and then in real life. The truth, I take it, was that the great landlord owning a host of slaves had always at disposal a force well able to carry out his territorial ambitions; and possession of power was a temptation to use it. The employment of slaves in rural border-raids was no new thing, and the slave, having himself nothing to lose, probably found zest in a change of occupation.

In Juvenal agriculture appears as carried on by slave labour, and the employment of supplementary wage-earners is ignored; not unnaturally, for it was not necessary to refer to it. The satirist himself[1265] has rustic slaves, and is proud that they are rustic, when they on a special occasion come in to wait at his table in Rome. Slaves are of course included[1266] in the stock of an estate, great or small, given or sold. All this is commonplace: what is more to the satirist’s purpose is the mention[1267] of a member of an illustrious old family who has come down in the world so low as to tend another man’s flocks for hire. And this is brought in as a contrast to the purse-proud insolence of a wealthy freedman. But more remarkable is the absence of any reference to tenant _coloni_. Even the word _colonus_ does not occur in any shade of meaning. This too may fairly be accounted for by the fact that little could have been got out of references to the system for the purposes of his argument. It was, as he knew, small peasant landowners, not tenants, that had been the backbone of old Rome; and it was this class, viewed with the sympathetic eye of one sighing for perished glories, that he would have liked to restore. It is a satirist’s bent to wish for the unattainable and protest against the inevitable. For himself, he can sing the praises of rustic simplicity and cheapness and denounce the luxury and extravagance of Roman society, though he dare not assail living individuals. And in exposing the rottenness of the civilization around him he attacks the very vices that had grown to such portentous heights through the development of slavery. Idleness bore its fruit, not only in the debauchery and gambling that fostered unholy greed and crimes committed to procure the money that was ever vanishing, but in the degradation of honest labour. Pampered menials were arrogant, poor citizens servile. And vast tracts of Italian land bore witness to the mournful fact that the land system, so far from affording a sound basis for social and economic betterment, was itself one of the worst elements of the situation.

At this stage it is well to recall the relation between agriculture and military service, the farmer-soldier ideal. The long-since existing tendency for the soldier to become a professional, while the free farmer class was decaying, had never obliterated the impression of this ideal on Roman minds. The belief that gymnastic exercises on Greek models were no effective substitute for regular manual labour in the open air as guarantees of military ‘fitness’ is still strong in Juvenal. It shews itself in his pictures of life in Rome, where such exercises were practised for the purpose of ‘keeping fit’ and ‘getting an appetite,’ much as they are now. Followed by baths and massage and luxurious appliances of every kind, this treatment enabled the jaded city-dweller to minimize the enervating effects of idleness relieved by excitements and debauchery. He significantly lays stress on the fact that these habits were as common among women as among men. The usual allowance must be made for a satirist’s exaggeration; but the general truth of the picture is not to be doubted. The city life was no preparation for the camp with its rough appliances and ever-present need for the readiness to endure cheerfully the hardships of the field. The toughness of the farm-labourer was proverbial: the Latin word _durus_ is his conventional epithet. In other words, he was a model of healthy hardness and vigour. Now to Juvenal, as to others, the best object of desire[1268] was _mens sana in corpore sano_, and he well knew that to secure the second gave the best hope of securing the first. We might then expect him to recommend field work as the surest way to get and keep vigorous health. Yet I cannot find any indication of this precept save the advice to a friend to get out of Rome and settle on a garden-plot in the country. He says ‘there live devoted[1269] to your clod-pick; be the _vilicus_ of a well-tended garden.’ I presume he means ‘be your own steward, and lend a hand in tillage as a steward would do.’ But an average _vilicus_ would be more concerned to get work out of his underlings than to exert himself, and Juvenal is not very explicit in his advice, the main point being to get his friend out of Rome. I have reserved for comparison with this passage one from Martial[1270]. In a couplet on a pair of _halteres_ (something rather like dumb-bells) he says ‘Why waste the strength of arms by use of silly dumb-bells? If a man wants exercise, he had better go and dig in a vineyard.’ This is much plainer, but one may doubt whether it is seriously meant to be an ordinary rule of life. Probably it is no more than a sneer at gymnastic exercises. For Martial well knew that muscle developed by the practice of athletics[1271] is very different from the bodily firmness and capacity for continuous effort under varying conditions that is produced by a life of hard manual labour. And the impression left on a reader’s mind by epigrammatist and satirist alike is that in Rome and in the most favoured and accessible parts of Italy the blessing of ‘corporal soundness’ was tending to become a monopoly of slaves. For when Juvenal declares[1272] that nowadays the rough _fossor_, though shackled with a heavy chain, turns up his nose at the garden-stuff that fed a Manius Curius in the olden days, hankering after the savoury fleshpots of the cook-shop, we need not take him too seriously.

XLIII. PLINY THE YOUNGER.

The =younger Pliny=, one of the generation who remembered Vespasian, lived through the dark later years of Domitian, and rejoiced in the better times of Nerva and Trajan, is one of our most important witnesses. Not being a technical writer on agriculture, it was not his business to dwell on what ought to be done rather than what was being done. Being himself a great landowner as well as a man of wide interests and high reputation, he knew the problems of contemporary land-management from experience, and speaks with intelligence and authority. He was not a man of robust constitution, and like many others he found much refreshment in rural sojournings. He is remarkable for keen appreciation of beautiful scenery. Adopted by his uncle, the author of the _Natural History_, well-educated and in touch with the literary circles and the best social life of Rome, his letters illustrate the intellectual and moral influences that prevailed in cultivated households of honest gentlemen. In particular he is to us perhaps the very best example of the humanizing tendency of the current philosophies of the day in relation to the subject of slavery. He is deeply interested in promoting manumissions[1273] whenever he gets a chance. His tender concern for the welfare of his slaves constantly meets us, and he is only consoled for the death of one by reflecting that the man was manumitted in time[1274] and so died free. In fact he does not regard slavery as a normally lifelong condition; and he allows his slaves to make informal wills and respects their disposition of their savings among their fellows[1275] in the household, which is to slaves a sort of commonwealth. Masters who don’t feel the loss of their slaves are really not human. But this all refers to domestics, and does not touch the case of the field-hand toiling on the farm.

A transaction[1276] in reference to the sale of some land by the lake of Como, Pliny’s own neighbourhood, illustrates the normal changes of ownership that were going on, and his own generous nature. An old lady, an intimate friend of his mother, wanted to have a property in that lovely district. Pliny gave her the offer of any of his land at her own price, reserving only certain parcels for sentimental reasons. Before (as it seems) any bargain was made, a friend died and left ⁵⁄₁₂ of his estate to Pliny, including some land such as the old lady desired. Pliny at once sent his freedman Hermes to offer her the suitable parcels for sale. She promptly clinched the bargain with Hermes at a figure which turned out to be only ⁷⁄₉ of the full value. Pliny’s attention was called to this, but he stood by the act of his freedman and ratified the sale. The _publicani_ who were then farming the 5% duty on successions soon appeared, and claimed the 5% as reckoned on estimated full value of the property. The old lady settled with them on these terms, and then insisted on paying to Pliny the full value, not the bargained price; which offer he, not to be outdone, gracefully declined. Such was the course of a commonplace transaction, carried out by exceptional people in an unselfish spirit. We are most certainly not to suppose that this sort of thing was common in land-dealings. Another letter[1277] shews us how a well-meant benefaction might fail in its aim for want of means in the beneficiary. An old slave-woman, once Pliny’s wet-nurse, had evidently been manumitted, and he made her a present of a small farm (_agellum_) to provide her maintenance. At that time its market value was ample to secure this. But things went wrong. For some reason the yearly returns fell, and the market value fell also. Whether the old woman had tried to manage it herself and failed, or whether a bad tenant had let down the cultivation, does not plainly appear. At any rate Pliny was greatly relieved when a friend, presumably one living near the place, undertook to direct the cultivation of the farm. He expresses his confidence that under the new management the holding would recover its value. For his own credit, not less than for the advantage of his nurse, he wishes to see it produce its utmost. These little holdings no doubt needed very skilful management, and I suspect that idle slaves were in this case the cause of the trouble. Slaves commonly went with land, and I do not think the generous donor would give his old nurse the bare land without the needful labour. The old ‘Mammy’ could not control them, and Pliny’s friend saved the situation.

Trajan’s order, requiring Provincial candidates for office to invest a third[1278] of their property in Italian real estate, and the artificial rise of prices for the time, has been dealt with above. Pliny advised a friend, if he would be not sorry[1279] to part with his Italian estates, to sell now at the top of the market and buy land in the Provinces, where prices would be correspondingly lowered. Of the risks attendant on landowning in Italy he was well aware, and one letter[1280] on the pros and cons of a tempting purchase must be translated in full. He writes thus to a friend.

‘I am doing as usual, asking your advice on a matter of business. There are now for sale some landed properties that border on farms of mine and indeed run into them. There are about them many points that tempt me, but some equally important that repel me. The temptations are these. First, to round off my estate would be in itself an improvement. Secondly, it would be a pleasure, and a real economy to boot, to make one trip and one expense serve for a visit to both properties, to keep both under the same[1281] legal agent, indeed almost under the same stewards, and to use only one of the granges as my furnished house, just keeping the other in repair. I am taking into account the cost of furniture, of chief servants, fancy gardeners, artisans, and even hunting[1282] outfit: for it makes a vast difference whether items like these are concentrated in one spot or are scattered in separate places. On the other hand I fear it may be rash to expose so large a property to the same local climatic risks. It seems safer to encounter the changes of fortune by not holding too much land in one neighbourhood. Moreover, it is a very pleasant thing to have change of scene and climate, and so too is the mere touring about from one of your estates to another. Then comes the chief issue on which I am trying to make up my mind. The farms are productive, the soil rich, the water-supply good; they contain pastures, vineyards, and woodlands that afford timber, from which there is a small but regular return. A favoured land, you see: but it is suffering from the weakness[1283] of those who farm it. For the late landlord several times distrained[1284] on the tenants’ goods, lessening their arrears[1285] of rent for the moment, but draining their substance for the future: the failure of this sent up the arrears once more. So they will have to be equipped[1286] with labour; which will cost all the more because only trusty slaves will do. As for chained slaves, I never keep them on my estates, and in those parts nobody does. I have now only to tell you the probable price. It is three million sesterces, though at one time it was five million: but, what with the present scarcity[1287] of tenants and the prevailing agricultural depression, the returns from the farms have fallen, and so has the market value. You will want to know whether I can raise easily even the three millions. It is true that nearly all I have is invested[1288] in land; still I have some money out at interest, and I shall have no trouble in borrowing. I shall get it from my mother-in-law, who lets me use her cash as if it were my own. So pray don’t let this consideration influence you, provided the others do not gainsay my project; I beg you to weigh them most carefully. For of experience and foresight you have plenty and to spare as a guide in general business, particularly in the placing of investments.’

The glimpses of agricultural conditions that we get from Pliny’s letters do not as a rule give us a cheerful picture. Most of his land seems to have been under vines, and the vintage[1289] was often poor, sometimes a failure. Drought and hailstorms played havoc[1290] with the crops. When there was a bountiful vintage, of course the wine made a poor price. Hence the returns from the farms are small, and unsafe[1291] at that. So he replies to similar complaints of friends. When he is at any of his country places he generally has to face a chorus of grumbling[1292] tenants. He was sometimes utterly puzzled what to do. If inclined to make abatements[1293] of rent, he is uneasily aware that this remedy may only put off the evil day. If tenants do not recover their solvency (and he knows that they seldom do), he will have to change his policy[1294], for they are ruining the land by bad husbandry. For himself, he is no farmer. When on a country estate, watching the progress of the vintage, he potters about[1295] in a rather purposeless manner, glad to retire to his study where he can listen to his reader or dictate to his secretary: if he can produce[1296] a few lines, that is his crop. It would seem that not all his farms were let to tenants. In one letter he speaks of his town-slaves[1297] being employed as overseers or gangers of the rustic hands, and remarks that one of his occupations is to pay surprise visits to these fellows. We can guess what a drag upon Italian agriculture the slavery-system really was: here is a man full of considerate humanity, devoted to the wellbeing of his slaves, who cannot trust one of them to see that others do their work.

But that letting to tenants was his usual plan is evident from the number of his references to the trouble they gave him. It was not always clear whether to get rid of them or to keep them (and if the latter, on what terms,) offered the less disastrous solution of an awkward problem. In one letter[1298] he gives the following excuse for his inability to be present in Rome on the occasion of a friend’s succeeding to the consulship. ‘You won’t take it ill of me, particularly as I am compelled[1299] to see to the letting of some farms, a business that means making an arrangement for several years, and will drive me to adopt a fresh policy. For in the five years[1300] just past the arrears have grown, in spite of large abatements granted. Hence most (of the tenants) take no further trouble to reduce their liabilities, having lost hope of ever meeting them in full: they grab and use up everything that grows, reckoning that henceforth it is not they[1301] who would profit by economy. So as the evils increase I must find remedies to meet them. And the only possible plan is to let these farms[1302] not at a cash rent but on shares, and then to employ some of my staff as task-masters to watch the crops. Besides, there is no fairer source of income than the returns rendered by soil climate and season. True, this plan requires mighty honesty, keen eyes, and a host of hands. Still I must make the trial; I must act as in a chronic malady, and use every possible treatment to promote a change.’

No doubt there were many landlords more effectively qualified to wring an income out of rustic estates than this delicate and gentle literary man. Indeed he knew this himself and made no secret of it. Writing to a friend[1303] he says ‘When others go to visit their estates, it is to come back the richer; when I do so, it is to come back the poorer for the trip.’ He then tells the story of a recent experience. He had disposed of the year’s vintage on some estate (evidently the hanging crop) by auction to some speculative buyers, who were tempted by the apparent prospects of a rise in price to follow. Things did not turn out as expected, and Pliny felt bound to make some abatement in the covenanted price. Whether this was simply owing to his own scrupulous love of fair dealing, or whether some stipulation in the contract of sale had automatically become operative, does not seem quite clear: I should give him the benefit of the doubt. How to make the abatement equitably, so as to treat each case with perfect fairness, was a difficult problem. For, as he shews at length, the circumstances of different cases differed widely, and a mere ‘flat rate’ remission of so much per cent all round would not have worked out so as to give equal relief to all. After careful calculation he devised a scheme that satisfied his conscientious wish to act fairly by each and all. Of course this left him a large sum out of pocket, but he thought that the general approval of the neighbourhood and the gratitude of the relieved speculators were well worth the money. For to have a good name among the local dealers was good business for the future. Many an honest gentleman since Pliny’s time has similarly consoled himself for his losses of honour, and some of them have not missed their well-earned recompense.

Among his many country properties, a certain Tuscan _villa_ was one of his favourite resorts. In a long description of it and its various attractions he mentions[1304] incidentally that the Tiber, which ran right through the estate, was available for barges in winter and spring, and thus enabled them to send their farm-produce by water-carriage to Rome. This confirms the evidence of other writers, as does also the letter describing the widespread devastation[1305] caused by a Tiber flood. More notable as throwing light on conditions of life in rural Italy is a letter[1306] in reply to a correspondent who had written to inform him of the disappearance of a Roman of position and property when on a journey, apparently in the Tiber country. The man was known to have reached Ocriculum, but after that all trace of him was lost. Pliny had small hopes from the inquiry that it was proposed to conduct. He cites a similar case from his own acquaintance years before. A fellow-burgess of Comum had got military promotion as centurion through the influence of Pliny, who made him a present of money when he set out, apparently for Rome, to take up his office. Nothing more was ever heard of him. But Pliny adds that in this case, as in the one just reported, the slaves escorting their master also disappeared. Therefore he leaves it an open question, whether[1307] the slaves murdered their master and escaped undetected, or whether the whole party on either occasion were murdered by a robber band. The lack of a regular constabulary in Italy had been, and still was, a grave defect in Roman administration. To account for this neglect we must remember that rich men always relied on their slave-escort for protection. If the poor man travelled, he was not worth[1308] robbing; his danger was the chance of being kidnapped and sold for a slave, and we have seen that some of the early emperors tried to put down this abuse. The danger to a traveller from his own slaves was perhaps greater on a journey than at home; but it was of the same kind, inseparable from slavery, and was most cruelly dealt with by the law. Meanwhile brigandage seems never to have been thoroughly extinguished in Italy or the Provinces[1309].

In spite of these drawbacks to life and movement in a great slave-holding community, there is nothing that strikes a reader more in Pliny’s letters than the easy acceptance of present conditions. Under Trajan the empire seemed so secure and strong, that unpleasant occurrences could be regarded as only of local importance. That the free population of Italy could no longer defend in arms what their forefathers had won, was manifest. But custom was making it seem natural to rely on armies raised in the Provinces; all the more so perhaps as emperors were being supplied by Spain. That slavery itself was one of the cankers that were eating out the vitality of the Roman empire, does not seem to have occurred to Pliny or other writers of the day. Philosophers had got so far as to protest against its worst abuses and vindicate the claims of a common humanity. Christian apostles, in the circles reached by them, preached also obedience[1310] and an honesty above eye-service as the virtues of a slave. But in both of these contrasted doctrines the teachers were mainly if not exclusively thinking of domestics, not of farm-hands. There was however one imperial department in which the distinction between slave and free still rigidly followed old traditional rules; and it was one much more likely to have to deal with cases of rustic slaves than of domestics. This was the army. The immemorial rule, that no slave could be a soldier, had never been broken save under the pressure of a few great temporary emergencies, or by the evasions incident to occasions of civil warfare. It still remained in force. When Pliny was governor of the Province of Bithynia and Pontus he had to deal with a question arising out of this rule. Recruiting was in progress, and two slaves were discovered among the men enlisted. They had already taken the military oath, but were not yet embodied in any corps. Pliny reported the case[1311] to Trajan, and asked for instructions. The emperor sent a careful answer. ‘If they were called up (_lecti_), then the recruiting officer did wrong: if they were furnished as substitutes[1312] (_vicarii dati_), the fault is with those who sent them: but if they presented themselves as volunteers, well knowing[1313] their disqualification, they must be punished. That they are not as yet embodied, matters little. For they were bound to have given a true account of their extraction on the day when they came up for inspection.’ What came of it we do not know. But it is no rash guess that the prospect of escaping into the ranks of the army would be attractive[1314] to a sturdy rustic slave, and that a recruiting officer might ask few questions when he saw a chance of getting exceptionally fine recruits. Probably the two detected suffered the capital penalty. Such was still the rigid attitude of the great soldier-emperor, determined not to confess the overstraining of the empire’s man-power. But the time was not far distant when Marcus, beset by the great pestilence and at his wits’ end for an army of defence, would enrol slaves[1315] and ruffians of any kind to fight for Rome.

It is not necessary to cite the numerous references in the letters to slaves and slavery that are not connected with agriculture. Nor need I pursue in detail the circumstances of one of his generous public benefactions, the alimentary endowment[1316] for freeborn children, probably at Comum. It has been mentioned in another chapter, and its chief point of interest is in the elaborate machinery employed to secure the perpetuity of the charity. To leave money to the municipality was to risk its being squandered. To leave them land meant that the estate would not be carefully managed. What he did was to convey[1317] the property in some land to a representative of the burgesses, and to take it back subject to a rent-charge considerably less than the yearly value of the land. Thus the endowment was safe, for the margin allowed would ensure that the land would not be allowed to drop out of cultivation. An interesting glimpse of municipal patriotism, active and passive. The only other detail I have to note is that he regularly uses the term _colonus_ as ‘tenant-farmer.’ I have not found a single instance of the older sense ‘tiller of the soil.’ We cannot argue from Pliny to his contemporaries without some reserve, for he was undoubtedly an exceptional man. But, so far as his evidence goes, it bears out the view that great landlords were giving up the system of slave stewardships for free tenancies. Owners there still were who kept their estates in hand, farming themselves or by deputy for their own account. But that some of these were men of a humbler class, freedmen to wit, we have seen reason to believe from references in the elder Pliny. Perhaps they were many, and some may even have worked with their own hands. Be this as it may, slave labour[1318] was still the staple appliance of agriculture, and whenever there were slaves for sale there were always buyers.

XLIV. SUETONIUS AND OTHERS.

=Suetonius=, whose Lives of the first twelve emperors contain much interesting and important matter, stands in relation to the present inquiry on the same footing as most of the regular historians. He flourished in the times of Trajan and Hadrian, and therefore what remains of his writings is not contemporary evidence. But he was a student and a careful compiler from numerous works now lost. The number of passages in which he refers to matters directly or indirectly bearing on rustic life and labour is not large, and most of them have been cited in other chapters, where they find a place in connexion with the context. He can be dealt with very briefly here.

The close connexion between wars and the supply of slaves is marked in the doings of Julius[1319] Caesar. Gaulish and British captives were (as Caesar himself records) no small part of the booty won in his northern campaigns. He rewarded his men after a victory with a prisoner apiece: these would soon be sold to the dealers who followed the army, and most of them would find their way to the Roman slave-market. To gratify friendly princes or provincial communities, he sent them large bodies of slaves as presents. So his victims served instead of cash to win adherents for their new master. And these natives of the North would certainly be used for heavy rough work, mostly as farm-hands. When Augustus, loth to enlarge the empire, felt constrained to teach restless tribes a lesson, he imposed a reserve-condition[1320] on the sale of prisoners taken: they were not to be employed in districts near their old homes, and not to be manumitted before thirty years. Most of these would probably also be brought to Italy for the same kind of service. Yet, as we have seen, there was kidnapping[1321] of freemen in Italy; probably a sign that slaves were already become dear. That their numbers had been reduced in the civil wars, not only by death but by manumission, is fairly certain. In the war with Sextus Pompeius it was found necessary[1322] to manumit 20,000 slaves to serve as oarsmen in the fleet. Suetonius also records that Augustus when emperor had trouble with the unwillingness of Romans to be called up for military duty. He had to deal sharply[1323] with an _eques_ who cut off the thumbs of his two sons to incapacitate them. The abuse of the public corn-doles was a grave evil. Men got rid of the burden of maintaining old slaves by manumitting them and so making them, as freedmen-citizens, entitled to a share of the doles. This was shifting the burden of feeding useless mouths on to the state. Augustus saw that the vast importation of corn for this bounty tended to discourage[1324] Italian agriculture, and thought of abolishing the whole system of _frumentationes_. But he had to give up the project, being convinced that the system would be restored. He really desired to revive agriculture, and it was surely with this aim that he advanced capital sums[1325] to landlords free of interest on good security for the principal. The growth of humane sentiment toward slaves is marked by the ordinance of Claudius[1326] against some very cruel practices of slaveowners. And we are reminded that penal servitude was now a regular institution in the Roman empire by Nero’s order[1327] for bringing prisoners from all parts to carry out some colossal works in Italy, and for fixing condemnation to hard labour as the normal penalty of crime.

In the Lives of the three Flavian emperors there are one or two passages of interest. At this distance of time it is not easy to appreciate the effect on the sentiments of Roman society of the extinction of the Julio-Claudian house, and the accession of a thoroughly plebeian one, resting on the support of the army and readily accepted by the Provinces. Suetonius, like Tacitus, was near enough to the revolutionary year 69 AD to understand the momentous nature of the crises that brought Vespasian to the head of affairs. He takes pains to describe[1328] the descent of the new emperor from a Sabine family of no remarkable distinction. For two generations they had combined with fair success the common Roman professions of military service and finance. They were respectable people of good local standing. But there was another story relative to a generation further back. It was said that Vespasian’s greatgrandfather (this takes us back to Republican days) had been a contractor[1329] for rustic labour. He was a headman or ‘boss’ of working-parties such as are wont to pass year after year from Umbria into the Sabine country to serve as farm-labourers. Of this story Suetonius could not discover any confirmation. But that there had been, and perhaps still was, some such supply of migratory labour available, is a piece of evidence not to be ignored. Vespasian himself was a soldier who steadily rose in the usual official career till he reached the coveted post of governor of Africa. After a term of honest but undistinguished rule, he came back no richer than he went, indeed he was very nearly bankrupt. He was driven to mortgage all his landed estate, and to become for a time a slave-dealer[1330], in order to live in the style that his official rank required. The implied disgrace of resorting to a gainful but socially despised trade is at least evidence of the continual demand for human chattels. Of two acts of Domitian[1331], his futile ordinance to check vine-growing, and his grant of the remaining odd remnants of Italian land to present occupants, enough has been said above.

It is not necessary to collect the numerous passages in writers of this period that illustrate the growing change of view as to slavery in general. The point made by moralists, that moral bondage is more degrading than physical (for the latter need not be really degrading), came with not less force from Epictetus the slave than from Seneca the noble Roman. It is however worth while just to note the frequent references to cases of philosophers and other distinguished literary men who had either actually been slaves or had at some time in their lives been forced to earn their daily bread by bodily labour. Such cases are, Cleanthes[1332] drawing water for wages, Plautus[1333] hired by the baker to grind at his mill, and Protagoras[1334] earning his living as a common porter. In one passage several slaves[1335] are enumerated who became philosophers. Now, what is the significance of these and other references of the same import? I suggest that they have just the same bearing as the general principles of common humanity argumentatively pressed by the Stoic and other schools of thought. The sermonizing of Seneca is a good specimen. But discussion of principles in the abstract was never the strong point of Roman society, and citation of concrete instances would serve to give reality to views that were only too often regarded as the visionary speculations of chattering Greeks. That Roman authors, down to the last age of Roman literature, expressed the longing for a more wholesome state of agriculture by everlasting references to Cincinnatus and the rest of the traditional rustic heroes, is another recognition of this method. The notion that courage and contempt of death could be fostered by the spectacle of gladiators rested on much the same basis. True, there is nothing in the above considerations that directly bears upon rustic labour as such: but hints that ‘a man’s a man for a’ that’ are not to be ignored when they make their appearance in the midst of a slave-holding society.

XLV. APULEIUS.

The Province of Africa was in this period a flourishing part of the empire, giving signs of its coming importance in the next generation, when it produced several emperors. It was in fact a sort of successor of Spain, and like Spain it enjoyed the advantage of not fronting on the usual seats of war to the North and East. One of the most remarkable literary figures of the age was the African[1336] =L Apuleius= of Madaura, who travelled widely as student and lecturer, and was well acquainted with Greece and Italy. A philosopher of the mystical-Platonist type, he was in touch with practical life through his study of the Law, and was for some time a pleader in Rome. His native Province[1337] was notoriously addicted to litigation, and a modern scholar[1338] has shewn that the works of Apuleius abound in legal phraseology and are coloured with juristic notions. Now, it was not possible to go far in considering property and rights without coming upon questions relative to land: moreover, he himself owned land in Africa. Accordingly we find in him some references to land, and even to rustic labour and conditions of rural life. And, though his _Metamorphoses_ is a fantastic romance, there is no reason to doubt that incidents and scenes (other than supernatural) are true to facts observed by the writer, and therefore admissible as evidence of a general kind. An instance may be found in the case of the ass, that is the hero of the story transformed into that shape by magic. He is to be sold, and the waggish auctioneer[1339] says to a possible bidder ‘I am well aware that it is a criminal offence to sell you a Roman citizen for a slave: but why not buy a good and trusty slave that will serve you as a helper both at home and abroad?’ Here we have a recognition of the fact of kidnapping, which is referred to elsewhere in the book; that in cases of Roman victims the law took a very serious view of the offence; while the point of the pleasantry lies in the circumstance that neither auctioneer nor company present are aware that the ass is a transformed man, liable to regain his human shape by magical disenchantment.

The scene of the _Metamorphoses_ is laid in Greece, and the anecdotes included in it do not give us a favourable picture of that part of the Roman empire. There was surely nothing to tempt the writer to misrepresent the condition of the country by packing his descriptions with unreal details: he would thus have weakened the effect of his romance. Wealth in the hands of a few, surrounded by a pauper majority; shrunken towns, each with its more or less degraded rabble; general insecurity for life liberty and property; a cruel and arbitrary use of power; a spiritless acquiescence in this pitiful state of things, relieved by the excitements of superstition and obscenity: such was Roman Greece as Apuleius saw it. No doubt there was Roman Law to enforce honesty and order. But the administration of justice seldom, if ever, reaches the standard of legislation; and as yet the tendency of the Roman government was to interfere as little as possible with local authorities. Greece in particular had always been treated with special indulgence, in recognition of her glorious past. Whether the effects of this favour were conducive to the wellbeing of the country, may fairly be doubted. The insane vanity of Nero, masquerading as Liberator of Greece, had surely done more harm than good. Hadrian’s benefactions to Athens, dictated by sentimental antiquarianism, could not improve the general condition of the country, however satisfactory they might be to what was now an University town living on students and tourists.