Chapter XII: The Management of Land and of Capital (2)

But above all the deep rooted immorality, which is inherent in an economy of pure capital, ate into the heart of society and of the commonwealth, and substituted an absolute selfishness for humanity and patriotism. The better portion of the nation were very keenly sensible of the seeds of corruption which lurked in that system of speculation; and the instinctive hatred of the great multitude, as well as the displeasure of the well-disposed statesman, was especially directed against the trade of the professional money-lender, which for long had been subjected to penal laws and still continued under the letter of the law amenable to punishment. In a comedy of this period the money-lender is told that the class to which he belongs is on a parallel with the -lenones- --

-Eodem hercle vos pono et paro; parissumi estis ibus. Hi saltem in occultis locis prostant: vos in foro ipso. Vos fenore, hi male suadendo et lustris lacerant homines. Rogitationes plurimas propter vos populus scivit, Quas vos rogatas rumpitis: aliquam reperitis rimam. Quasi aquam ferventem frigidam esse, ita vos putatis leges.-

Cato the leader of the reform party expresses himself still more emphatically than the comedian. "Lending money at interest," he says in the preface to his treatise on agriculture, "has various advantages; but it is not honourable. Our forefathers accordingly ordained, and inscribed it among their laws, that the thief should be bound to pay twofold, but the man who takes interest fourfold, compensation; whence we may infer how much worse a citizen they deemed the usurer than the thief." There is no great difference, he elsewhere considers, between a money-lender and a murderer; and it must be allowed that his acts did not fall short of his words--when governor of Sardinia, by his rigorous administration of the law he drove the Roman bankers to their wits' end. The great majority of the ruling senatorial order regarded the system of the speculators with dislike, and not only conducted themselves in the provinces on the whole with more integrity and honour than these moneyed men, but often acted as a restraint on them. The frequent changes of the Roman chief magistrates, however, and the inevitable inequality in their mode of handling the laws, necessarily abated the effort to check such proceedings.

Reaction of the Capitalist System on Agriculture

The Romans perceived moreover--as it was not difficult to perceive --that it was of far more consequence to give a different direction to the whole national economy than to exercise a police control over speculation; it was such views mainly that men like Cato enforced by precept and example on the Roman agriculturist. "When our forefathers," continues Cato in the preface just quoted, "pronounced the eulogy of a worthy man, they praised him as a worthy farmer and a worthy landlord; one who was thus commended was thought to have received the highest praise. The merchant I deem energetic and diligent in the pursuit of gain; but his calling is too much exposed to perils and mischances. On the other hand farmers furnish the bravest men and the ablest soldiers; no calling is so honourable, safe, and free from odium as theirs, and those who occupy themselves with it are least liable to evil thoughts." He was wont to say of himself, that his property was derived solely from two sources --agriculture and frugality; and, though this was neither very logical in thought nor strictly conformable to the truth,(29) yet Cato was not unjustly regarded by his contemporaries and by posterity as the model of a Roman landlord. Unhappily it is a truth as remarkable as it is painful, that this husbandry, commended so much and certainly with so entire good faith as a remedy, was itself pervaded by the poison of the capitalist system. In the case of pastoral husbandry this was obvious; for that reason it was most in favour with the public and least in favour with the party desirous of moral reform. But how stood the case with agriculture itself? The warfare, which from the third onward to the fifth century capital had waged against labour, by withdrawing under the form of interest on debt the revenues of the soil from the working farmers and bringing them into the hands of the idly consuming fundholder, had been settled chiefly by the extension of the Roman economy and the throwing of the capital which existed in Latium into the field of mercantile activity opened up throughout the range of the Mediterranean. Now even the extended field of business was no longer able to contain the increased mass of capital; and an insane legislation laboured simultaneously to compel the investment of senatorial capital by artificial means in Italian estates, and systematically to reduce the value of the arable land of Italy by interference with the prices of grain. Thus there began a second campaign of capital against free labour or--what was substantially the same thing in antiquity--against the small farmer system; and, if the first had been bad, it yet seemed mild and humane as compared with the second. The capitalists no longer lent to the farmer at interest --a course, which in itself was not now practicable because the petty landholder no longer aimed at any considerable surplus, and was moreover not sufficiently simple and radical--but they bought up the farms and converted them, at the best, into estates managed by stewards and worked by slaves. This likewise was called agriculture; it was essentially the application of the capitalist system to the production of the fruits of the soil. The description of the husbandmen, which Cato gives, is excellent and quite just; but how does it correspond to the system itself, which he portrays and recommends? If a Roman senator, as must not unfrequently have been the case, possessed four such estates as that described by Cato, the same space, which in the olden time when small holdings prevailed had supported from 100 to 150 farmers' families, was now occupied by one family of free persons and about 50, for the most part unmarried, slaves. If this was the remedy by which the decaying national economy was to be restored to vigour, it bore, unhappily, an aspect of extreme resemblance to the disease.

Development of Italy

The general result of this system is only too clearly obvious in the changed proportions of the population. It is true that the condition of the various districts of Italy was very unequal, and some were even prosperous. The farms, instituted in great numbers in the region between the Apennines and the Po at the time of its colonization, did not so speedily disappear. Polybius, who visited that quarter not long after the close of the present period, commends its numerous, handsome, and vigorous population: with a just legislation as to corn it would doubtless have been possible to make the basin of the Po, and not Sicily the granary of the capital. In like manner Picenum and the so-called -ager Gallicus- acquired a numerous body of farmers through the distributions of domain-land consequent on the Flaminian law of 522--a body, however, which was sadly reduced in the Hannibalic war. In Etruria, and perhaps also in Umbria, the internal condition of the subject communities was unfavourable to the flourishing of a class of free farmers, Matters were better in Latium--which could not be entirely deprived of the advantages of the market of the capital, and which had on the whole been spared by the Hannibalic war--as well as in the secluded mountain-valleys of the Marsians and Sabellians. On the other hand the Hannibalic war had fearfully devastated southern Italy and had ruined, in addition to a number of smaller townships, its two largest cities, Capua and Tarentum, both once able to send into the field armies of 30,000 men. Samnium had recovered from the severe wars of the fifth century: according to the census of 529 it was in a position to furnish half as many men capable of arms as all the Latin towns, and it was probably at that time, next to the -ager Romanus-, the most flourishing region of the peninsula. But the Hannibalic war had desolated the land afresh, and the assignations of land in that quarter to the soldiers of Scipio's army, although considerable, probably did not cover the loss. Campania and Apulia, both hitherto well-peopled regions, were still worse treated in the same war by friend and foe. In Apulia, no doubt, assignations of land took place afterwards, but the colonies instituted there were not successful. The beautiful plain of Campania remained more populous; but the territory of Capua and of the other communities broken up in the Hannibalic war became state-property, and the occupants of it were uniformly not proprietors, but petty temporary lessees. Lastly, in the wide Lucanian and Bruttian territories the population, which was already very thin before the Hannibalic war, was visited by the whole severity of the war itself and of the penal executions that followed in its train; nor was much done on the part of Rome to revive the agriculture there--with the exception perhaps of Valentia (Vibo, now Monteleone), none of the colonies established there attained real prosperity.

Falling Off in the Population

With every allowance for the inequality in the political and economic circumstances of the different districts and for the comparatively flourishing condition of several of them, the retrogression is yet on the whole unmistakeable, and it is confirmed by the most indisputable testimonies as to the general condition of Italy. Cato and Polybius agree in stating that Italy was at the end of the sixth century far weaker in population than at the end of the fifth, and was no longer able to furnish armies so large as in the first Punic war. The increasing difficulty of the levy, the necessity of lowering the qualification for service in the legions, and the complaints of the allies as to the magnitude of the contingents to be furnished by them, confirm these statements; and, in the case of the Roman burgesses, the numbers tell the same tale. In 502, shortly after the expedition of Regulus to Africa, they amounted to 298,000 men capable of bearing arms; thirty years later, shortly before the commencement of the Hannibalic war (534), they had fallen off to 270,000, or about a tenth, and again twenty years after that, shortly before the end of the same war (550), to 214,000, or about a fourth; and a generation afterwards--during which no extraordinary losses occurred, but the institution of the great burgess-colonies in the plain of northern Italy in particular occasioned a perceptible and exceptional increase --the numbers of the burgesses had hardly again reached the point at which they stood at the commencement of this period. If we had similar statements regarding the Italian population generally, they would beyond all doubt exhibit a deficit relatively still more considerable. The decline of the national vigour less admits of proof; but it is stated by the writers on agriculture that flesh and milk disappeared more and more from the diet of the common people. At the same time the slave population increased, as the free population declined. In Apulia, Lucania, and the Bruttian land, pastoral husbandry must even in the time of Cato have preponderated over agriculture; the half-savage slave-herdsmen were here in reality masters in the house. Apulia was rendered so insecure by them that a strong force had to be stationed there; in 569 a slave-conspiracy planned on the largest scale, and mixed up with the proceedings of the Bacchanalia, was discovered there, and nearly 7000 men were condemned as criminals. In Etruria also Roman troops had to take the field against a band of slaves (558), and even in Latium there were instances in which towns like Setia and Praeneste were in danger of being surprised by a band of runaway serfs (556). The nation was visibly diminishing, and the community of free burgesses was resolving itself into a body composed of masters and slaves; and, although it was in the first instance the two long wars with Carthage which decimated and ruined both the burgesses and the allies, the Roman capitalists beyond doubt contributed quite as much as Hamilcar and Hannibal to the decline in the vigour and the numbers of the Italian people. No one can say whether the government could have rendered help; but it was an alarming and discreditable fact, that the circles of the Roman aristocracy, well-meaning and energetic as in great part they were, never once showed any insight into the real gravity of the situation or any foreboding of the full magnitude of the danger. When a Roman lady belonging to the high nobility, the sister of one of the numerous citizen-admirals who in the first Punic war had ruined the fleets of the state, one day got among a crowd in the Roman Forum, she said aloud in the hearing of those around, that it was high time to place her brother once more at the head of the fleet and to relieve the pressure in the market-place by bleeding the citizens afresh (508). Those who thus thought and spoke were, no doubt, a small minority; nevertheless this outrageous speech was simply a forcible expression of the criminal indifference with which the whole noble and rich world looked down on the common citizens and farmers.

They did not exactly desire their destruction, but they allowed it to run its course; and so desolation advanced with gigantic steps over the flourishing land of Italy, where countless free men had just been enjoying a moderate and merited prosperity.

Notes for Chapter XII

1. In order to gain a correct picture of ancient Italy, it is necessary for us to bear in mind the great changes which have been produced there by modern cultivation. Of the -cerealia-, rye was not cultivated in antiquity; and the Romans of the empire were astonished to rind that oats, with which they were well acquainted as a weed, was used by the Germans for making porridge. Rice was first cultivated in Italy at the end of the fifteenth, and maize at the beginning of the seventeenth, century. Potatoes and tomatoes were brought from America; artichokes seem to be nothing but a cultivated variety of the cardoon which was known to the Romans, yet the peculiar character superinduced by cultivation appears of more recent origin. The almond, again, or "Greek nut," the peach, or "Persian nut," and also the "soft nut" (-nux mollusca-), although originally foreign to Italy, are met with there at least 150 years before Christ. The date-palm, introduced into Italy from Greece as into Greece from the East, and forming a living attestation of the primitive commercial-religious intercourse between the west and the east, was already cultivated in Italy 300 years before Christ (Liv. x. 47; Pallad. v. 5, 2; xi. 12, i) not for its fruit (Plin. H. N. xiii. 4, 26), but, just as in the present day, as a handsome plant, and for the sake of the leaves which were used at public festivals. The cherry, or fruit of Cerasus on the Black Sea, was later in being introduced, and only began to be planted in Italy in the time of Cicero, although the wild cherry is indigenous there; still later, perhaps, came the apricot, or "Armenian plum." The citron-tree was not cultivated in Italy till the later ages of the empire; the orange was only introduced by the Moors in the twelfth or thirteenth, and the aloe (Agave Americana) from America only in the sixteenth, century. Cotton was first cultivated in Europe by the Arabs. The buffalo also and the silkworm belong only to modern, not to ancient Italy.

It is obvious that the products which Italy had not originally are for the most part those very products which seem to us truly "Italian;" and if modern Germany, as compared with the Germany visited by Caesar, may be called a southern land, Italy has since in no less degree acquired a "more southern" aspect.

2. II. III. Licinio-Sextian Laws

3. According to Cato, de R. R, 137 (comp. 16), in the case of a lease with division of the produce the gross produce of the estate, after deduction of the fodder necessary for the oxen that drew the plough, was divided between lessor and lessee (-colonus partiarius-) in the proportions agreed upon between them. That the shares were ordinarily equal may be conjectured from the analogy of the French -bail a cheptel- and the similar Italian system of half-and-half leases, as well as from the absence of all trace of any other scheme of partition. It is erroneous to refer to the case of the -politor-, who got the fifth of the grain or, if the division took place before thrashing, from the sixth to the ninth sheaf (Cato, 136, comp. 5); he was not a lessee sharing the produce, but a labourer assumed in the harvest season, who received his daily wages according to that contract of partnership (III. XII. Spirit of the System).

4. The lease lirst assumed real importance when the Roman capitalists began to acquire transmarine possessions on a great scale; then indeed they knew how to value it, when a temporary lease was continued through several generations (Colum. i. 7, 3).

5. That the space between the vines was occupied not by grain, but only at the most by such fodder plants as easily grew in the shade, is evident from Cato (33, comp. 137), and accordingly Columella (iii. 3) calculates on no other accessory gain in the case of a vineyard except the produce of the young shoots sold. On the other hand, the orchard (-arbustum-) was sown like any corn field (Colum. ii. 9, 6). It was only where the vine was trained on living trees that corn was cultivated in the intervals between them.

6. Mago, or his translator (in Varro, R. R., i. 17, 3), advises that slaves should not be bred, but should be purchased not under 22 years of age; and Cato must have had a similar course in view, as the personal staff of his model farm clearly shows, although he does not exactly say so. Cato (2) expressly counsels the sale of old and diseased slaves. The slave-breeding described by Columella (I. I. Italian History), under which female slaves who had three sons were exempted from labour, and the mothers of four sons were even manumitted, was doubtless an independent speculation rather than a part of the regular management of the estate--similar to the trade pursued by Cato himself of purchasing slaves to be trained and sold again (Plutarch, Cat. Mai. 21). The characteristic taxation mentioned in this same passage probably has reference to the body of servants properly so called (-familia urbana-).

7. In this restricted sense the chaining of slaves, and even of the sons of the family (Dionys. ii. 26), was very old; and accordingly chained field-labourers are mentioned by Cato as exceptions, to whom, as they could not themselves grind, bread had to be supplied instead of grain (56). Even in the times of the empire the chaining of slaves uniformly presents itself as a punishment inflicted definitively by the master, provisionally by the steward (Colum. i. 8; Gai. i. 13; Ulp. i. ii). If, notwithstanding, the tillage of the fields by means of chained slaves appeared in subsequent times as a distinct system, and the labourers' prison (-ergastulum-)--an underground cellar with window-aperatures numerous but narrow and not to be reached from the ground by the hand (Colum. i. 6)--became a necessary part of the farm- buildings, this state of matters was occasioned by the fact that the position of the rural serfs was harder than that of other slaves and therefore those slaves were chiefly taken for it, who had, or seemed to have, committed some offence. That cruel masters, moreover, applied the chains without any occasion to do so, we do not mean to deny, and it is clearly indicated by the circumstance that the law- books do not decree the penalties applicable to slave transgressors against those in chains, but prescribe the punishment of the half- chained. It was precisely the same with branding; it was meant to be, strictly, a punishment; but the whole flock was probably marked (Diodor. xxxv. 5; Bernays, --Phokytides--, p. xxxi.).

8. Cato does not expressly say this as to the vintage, but Varro does so (I. II. Relation of the Latins to the Umbro-Samnites), and it is implied in the nature of the case. It would have been economically an error to fix the number of the slaves on a property by the standard of the labours of harvest; and least of all, had such been the case, would the grapes have been sold on the tree, which yet was frequently done (Cato, 147).

9. Columella (ii. 12, 9) reckons to the year on an average 45 rainy days and holidays; with which accords the statement of Tertullian (De Idolol. 14), that the number of the heathen festival days did not come up to the fifty days of the Christian festal season from Easter to Whitsunday. To these fell to be added the time of rest in the middle of winter after the completion of the autumnal bowing, which Columella estimates at thirty days. Within this time, doubtless, the moveable "festival of seed-sowing" (-feriae sementivae-; comp. i. 210 and Ovid. Fast, i. 661) uniformly occurred. This month of rest must not be confounded with the holidays for holding courts in the season of the harvest (Plin. Ep. viii. 21, 2, et al.) and vintage.

10. III. I. The Carthaginian Dominion in Africa

11. The medium price of grain in the capital may be assumed at least for the seventh and eighth centuries of Rome at one -denarius- for the Roman -modius-, or 2 shillings 8 pence per bushel of wheat, for which there is now paid (according to the average of the prices in the provinces of Brandenburg and Pomerania from 1816 to 1841) about 3 shillings 5 pence. Whether this not very considerable difference between the Roman and the modern prices depends on a rise in the value of corn or on a fall in the value of silver, can hardly be decided.

It is very doubtful, perhaps, whether in the Rome of this and of later times the prices of corn really fluctuated more than is the case in modern times. If we compare prices like those quoted above, of 4 pence and 5 pence for the bushel and a half, with those of the worst times of war-dearth and famine--such as in the second Punic war when the same quantity rose to 9 shillings 7 pence (1 -medimnus- = 15 -- drachmae--; Polyb. ix. 44), in the civil war to 19 shillings 2 pence (1 -modius- = 5 -denarii-; Cic. Verr. iii. 92, 214), in the great dearth under Augustus, even to 21 shillings 3 pence (5 -modii- =27 1/2 -denarii-; Euseb. Chron. p. Chr. 7, Scal.)--the difference is indeed immense; but such extreme cases are but little instructive, and might in either direction be found recurring under the like conditions at the present day.

12. II. VIII. Farming of Estates

13. Accordingly Cato calls the two estates, which he describes, summarily "olive-plantation" (-olivetum-) and "vineyard" (-vinea-), although not wine and oil merely, but grain also and other products were cultivated there. If indeed the 800 -culei-, for which the possessor of the vineyard is directed to provide himself with casks (11), formed the maximum of a year's vintage, the whole of the 100 -jugera- must have been planted with vines, because a produce of 8 -culei- per -jugerum- was almost unprecedented (Colum. iii. 3); but Varro (i. 22) understood, and evidently with reason, the statement to apply to the case of the possessor of a vineyard who found it necessary to make the new vintage before he had sold the old.

14. That the Roman landlord made on an average 6 per cent from his capital, may be inferred from Columella, iii. 3, 9. We have a more precise estimate of the expense and produce only in the case of the vine yard, for which Columella gives the following calculation of the cost per -jugerum-:

Price of the ground 1000 sesterces. Price of the slaves who work it 1143 (proportion to-jugerum-) Vines and stakes 2000 Loss of interest during the first two years 497 ---- Total 4640 sesterces= 47 pounds.

He calculates the produce as at any rate 60 -amphorae-, worth at least 900 sesterces (9 pounds), which would thus represent a return of 17 per cent. But this is somewhat illusory, as, apart from bad harvests, the cost of gathering in the produce (III. XII. Spirit of the System), and the expenses of the maintenance of the vines, stakes, and slaves, are omitted from the estimate.

The gross produce of meadow, pasture, and forest is estimated by the same agricultural writer as, at most, 100 sesterces per -jugerum-, and that of corn land as less rather than more: in fact, the average return of 25 -modii- of wheat per -jugerum- gives, according to the average price in the capital of 1 -denarius- per -modius-, not more than 100 sesterces for the gross proceeds, and at the seat of production the price must have been still lower. Varro (iii. 2) reckons as a good ordinary gross return for a larger estate 150 sesterces per -jugerum-. Estimates of the corresponding expense have not reached us: as a matter of course, the management in this instance cost much less than in that of a vineyard.

All these statements, moreover, date from a century or more after Gate's death. From him we have only the general statement that the breeding of cattle yielded a better return than agriculture (ap. Cicero, De Off. ii. 25, 89; Colum. vi. praef. 4, comp. ii. 16, 2; Plin. H. N. xviii. 5, 30; Plutarch, Cato, 21); which of course is not meant to imply that it was everywhere advisable to convert arable land into pasture, but is to be understood relatively as signifying that the capital invested in the rearing of flocks and herds on mountain pastures and other suitable pasture-land yielded, as compared with capital invested in cultivating Suitable corn land, a higher interest. Perhaps the circumstance has been also taken into account in the calculation, that the want of energy and intelligence in the landlord operates far less injuriously in the case of pasture-land than in the highly-developed culture of the vine and olive. On an arable estate, according to Cato, the returns of the soil stood as follows in a descending series:--1, vineyard; 2, vegetable garden; 3, osier copse, which yielded a large return in consequence of the culture of the vine; 4, olive plantation; 5, meadow yielding hay; 6, corn fields; 7, copse; 8, wood for felling; 9, oak forest for forage to the cattle; all of which nine elements enter into the scheme of husbandry for Cato's model estates.

The higher net return of the culture of the vine as compared with that of corn is attested also by the fact, that under the award pronounced in the arbitration between the city of Genua and the villages tributary to it in 637 the city received a sixth of wine, and a twentieth of grain, as quitrent.

15. III. XII. Spirit of the System

16. III. XI. As to the Management of the Finances

17. The industrial importance of the Roman cloth-making is evident from the remarkable part which is played by the fullers in Roman comedy. The profitable nature of the fullers' pits is attested by Cato (ap. Plutarch, Cat 21).

18. III. III. Organization of the Provinces

19. III. III. Property

20. III. VII. The State of Culture in Spain

21. III. I. Comparison between Carthage and Rome

22. III. VI. Pressure of the War

23. There were in the treasury 17,410 Roman pounds of gold, 22,070 pounds of uncoined, and 18,230 pounds of coined, silver. The legal ratio of gold to silver was: 1 pound of gold = 4000 sesterces, or 1: 11.91.

24. On this was based the actionable character of contracts of buying, hiring, and partnership, and, in general, the whole system of non-formal actionable contracts.

25. The chief passage as to this point is the fragment of Cato in Gellius, xiv. 2. In the case of the -obligatio litteris- also, i. e. a claim based solely on the entry of a debt in the account-book of the creditor, this legal regard paid to the personal credibility of the party, even where his testimony in his own cause is concerned, affords the key of explanation; and hence it happened that in later times, when this mercantile repute had vanished from Roman life, the -obligatio litteris-, while not exactly abolished, fell of itself into desuetude.

26. In the remarkable model contract given by Cato (141) for the letting of the olive harvest, there is the following paragraph:--

"None [of the persons desirous to contract on the occasion of letting] shall withdraw, for the sake of causing the gathering and pressing of the olives to be let at a dearer rate; except when [the joint bidder] immediately names [the other bidder] as his partner. If this rule shall appear to have been infringed, all the partners [of the company with which the contract has been concluded] shall, if desired by the landlord or the overseer appointed by him, take an oath [that they have not conspired in this way to prevent competition]. If they do not take the oath, the stipulated price is not to be paid." It is tacitly assumed that the contract is taken by a company, not by an individual capitalist.

27. III. XIII. Religious Economy

28. Livy (xxi. 63; comp. Cic. Verr. v. 18, 45) mentions only the enactment as to the sea-going vessels; but Asconius (in Or. in toga cand. p. 94, Orell.) and Dio. (lv. 10, 5) state that the senator was also forbidden by law to undertake state-contracts (-redemptiones-); and, as according to Livy "all speculation was considered unseemly for a senator," the Claudian law probably reached further than he states.

29. Cato, like every other Roman, invested a part of his means in the breeding of cattle, and in commercial and other undertakings. But it was not his habit directly to violate the laws; he neither speculated in state-leases--which as a senator he was not allowed to do--nor practised usury. It is an injustice to charge him with a practice in the latter respect at variance with his theory; the -fenus nauticum-, in which he certainly engaged, was not a branch of usury prohibited by the law; it really formed an essential part of the business of chartering and freighting vessels.