CHAPTER L

.

I cannot lose this opportunity of referring to a very interesting little book by M. Augé-Laribé, _L’évolution de la France agricole_ [Paris 1912]. Much of it bears directly on the labour-question, and sets forth the difficulties hindering its solution. It is peculiarly valuable to a student of the question in the ancient world, because it lays great stress on the effect of causes arising from modern conditions. Causes operating in both ancient and modern times are thereby made more readily and clearly perceptible. Such modern influences in particular as the vast development of transport, the concentration of machine-industries in towns, and the constant attraction of better and more continuous wage-earning, by which the rustic is drawn to urban centres, are highly significant. The difference from ancient conditions is so great in degree that it practically almost amounts to a difference in kind. So too in the material resources of agriculture: the development of farm-machinery has superseded much hand-labour, while Science has increased the possible returns from a given portion of soil.

Most significant of all from my point of view is the author’s insistence on the _irregularity_ of wage-earning in rustic life as an active cause of the flitting of wage-earners to the towns. This brings it home to a student that a system of rustic slavery implies a set of conditions incompatible with such an economic migration; and also that the employment of slaves by urban craftsmen would not leave many eligible openings for immigrant rustics. It is fully consistent with my view that the wage-earning rustic was a rare figure in the Greco-Roman world.

It is perhaps in the remedies proposed by the author for present evils (and for the resulting depopulation of the countryside) that the contrast of ancient and modern is most clearly marked. Bureaucratic the French administrative system may be: but it is not the expression of a despotism that enslaves its citizens in the frantic effort to maintain itself against pressure from without. For individuals and organizations are free to think speak and act, and so to promote what seems likely to do good. Initiative and invention are not deadened by the fear that betterment will only serve as a pretext for increase of burdens. Stationary by instinct the French peasant proprietor may be: but he is free to move if he will, and no one dare propose to tie him to the soil by law.

Nor can I omit a reference to a paper of the late Prof Pelham on _The Imperial domains and the Colonate_ (1890, in volume of Essays, Oxford 1911).

The simplicity of the solution there offered is most attractive, and the general value of the treatise great. But I do not think it a final solution of the problem. Not only are there variations of detail in the domains known to us from the African inscriptions (some of them found since 1890). That some of the regulations may have been taken over from those of former private owners is a point not considered. And there is no mention of the notable requisition of the services of _coloni_ as mere retainers, to which Caesar refers without comment (above pp 183, 254). Therefore, while I welcome the proposition that the system of the Imperial domains had much to do with the creation of the later Colonate, I still think that earlier and more deep-seated causes cannot safely be ignored. Perhaps this is partly because I am looking at the matter from a labour point of view.

FROM DIOCLETIAN

LI. GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

If we desire to treat History as the study of causation in the affairs of mankind—and this is its most fruitful task—we shall find no more striking illustration of its difficulties than the agricultural system of the later Roman Empire. In the new model of Diocletian and Constantine we see the imperial administration reorganized in new forms[1551] deliberately adopted: policy expresses itself, after a century of disturbance, in a clear breach with the past. But, when Constantine in 332 legislates[1552] to prevent _coloni_ from migrating, he refers to a class of men who are not their own masters but subject to control (_iuris alieni_), though he distinguishes them from slaves. Evidently he is not creating a new class: his intention is to prevent an existing class from evading its present responsibilities. They are by the fact of their birth attached as cultivators to their native soil. With this tie of _origo_[1553] goes liability to a certain proportion of imperial tax (_capitatio_). This is mentioned as a matter of course. Now we know that such serf-_coloni_ formed at least a large part of the rustic population under the later Empire. We cannot but see that the loss of the power of free migration is the vital difference that marks off these tied farmers from the tenant farmers of an earlier period, the class whom Columella advised landlords to retain if possible. For these men cannot move on if they would. How came they to be in this strange condition, in fact neither slave nor free, so that Constantine had merely to crystallize relations already existing[1554] and the institution of serf-tenancy became a regular part of the system? If we are to form any notion of the conditions of farm labour in this period, we must form some notion of the causes that produced the later or dependent colonate. And this is no simple matter: on few subjects has the divergence of opinions been more marked than on this. I have stated my own conclusions above, and further considerations are adduced in this chapter.

Our chief source of evidence is the collection of legal acts of the Christian emperors issued by authority in the year 438, and known as the _codex Theodosianus_. It covers a period of more than a hundred years, and innumerable references to the land-questions attest the continual anxiety of the imperial government to secure adequate cultivation of every possible acre of land. Contemporary history may suggest motives for this nervousness. The increased expenses of the court and the administrative system made it necessary to raise more taxes than ever for the civil services. The armies, now mainly composed of Germans and other barbarians, were necessary for imperial defence, but very costly to equip pay and feed. Whether they were mercenaries drawing wages, or aliens settled as Roman subjects within the empire on lands held by tenure of military service, they were either a burden on the treasury or a doubtful element of the population that must at all costs be kept in good humour. On a few occasions Roman victories furnished numbers of barbarian prisoners to the slave-market. These would be dispersed over various districts, generally at some distance from the troubled frontiers, and the rustic slaves of whom we hear were doubtless in great part procured in this way. But that the rustic population consisted largely of actual slaves we have no reason to believe. Of estates worked on a vast scale by slave labour we hear nothing. Naturally; for the social and economic conditions favourable to that system had long passed away. Slaves were no longer plentiful, markets were no longer free. Under the Empire, the pride of great landlords needed a strong mixture of caution; under a greedy or spendthrift emperor the display of material wealth was apt to be dangerous. In the century of confusion before Diocletian agriculture had been much interrupted in many parts of the empire, and much land had gone out of cultivation. So serious was the situation in the later part of that period, that Aurelian[1555] imposed upon municipal senates the burden of providing for the cultivation of derelict farms.

When a taxpayer is required to pay a fixed amount in a stable currency, he knows his liability. So long as he can meet it, any surplus income remains in his hands, and he has a fair chance of improving his economic position by thrift. If what the state really wants is (say) corn, it can use its tax-revenue to purchase corn in the open market. But this assumes that the producer is free to stand out for the best price he can get, and that he will be paid in money on the purchasing power of which he can rely for his own needs. This last condition had ceased to exist[1556] in the Roman empire. Not to mention earlier tamperings with the currency, since the middle of the third century its state had been deplorable. Things had now gone so far that the value of the fixed money taxes seriously reduced the income derived from them: the government was literally paid in its own coin. The policy of Diocletian was to extend an old practice of exacting payment in kind, and this became the principal method[1557] of imperial taxation. We must bear in mind that the supply of corn for the city of Rome, the _annona urbis_, went on as before, though the practical importance of Rome was steadily sinking. Diocletian made it no longer the residence of emperors, and Constantine founded another capital in the East: but Rome was still fed by corn-tributes from the Provinces, chiefly from Africa and Egypt. When the New Rome on the Bosporus was fully equipped as an imperial capital, Egypt was made liable for the corn-supply of the Constantinopolitan populace. Old Rome had then to rely almost entirely on Africa, with occasional help from other sources. Italy itself[1558] was now reduced to the common level, cut up into provinces, and liable for furnishing supplies of food. But it was divided into two separate regions: the northern, officially named _Italia_, or _annonariae regiones_, in which a good deal of corn was grown, had to deliver its _annona_ at Mediolanum (Milan) the new imperial headquarters: the southern, _suburbicariae_ (or _urbicariae_) _regiones_, in which little corn was grown, sent supplies of pigs cattle wine firewood lime etc to Rome. The northern _annona_, like that from other provinces, helped to maintain military forces and the host of officials employed by the government. For it soon became the practice to pay salaries in kind. In the pitiful state of the currency this rude method offered the best guarantee for receipt of a definite value.

Unhappily this exaction and distribution in kind was at best a wasteful process. At worst it was simply ruinous. The empire was subject to constant menace of attack, and was in dire need of the largest possible income raised on the most economical system. If the ultimate basis of imperial strength was to be found in the food-producers, it was all-important to give the farming classes a feeling of security sufficient to encourage industry and enterprise, and at all costs to avoid reducing them to despair. Nor was the new census as designed by Diocletian on the face of it an unjust and evil institution. Taking account of arable lands and of the persons employed in cultivating them, it aimed at creating a fixed number[1559] of agricultural units each of which should be liable to furnish the same amount of yearly dues in kind. But it is obvious that to carry out this doctrinaire scheme with uniform neatness and precision was not possible. To deal fairly with agriculture a minute attention to local differences and special peculiarities was necessary, and this attention could not be given on so vast a scale. Perhaps careful observation and correction of errors might have produced a reasonable degree of perfection in a long period of unbroken peace: but no such period was at hand. The same strain that drove the imperial government to the new taxation also prevented any effective control of its working.

It is perhaps inevitable that the exaction of dues in kind should lead to abuses. At all events, abuses in this department were no new thing: the sufferings of such Provinces as Sicily and Asia were notorious in the time of the Republic. A stricter control had made the state of things much better in the first two centuries of the Empire. The exploitation of the Provincials was generally checked, and the imperial government was not as yet driven by desperate financial straits to turn extortioner itself. Caracalla’s law of 212, extending the Roman franchise[1560] to all free inhabitants, was a symptom of conscious need, for it brought all estates under the Roman succession-tax. At the same time it did away with the old distinction between the ruling Roman people and the subject nationalities: henceforth, wherever there was oppression within the Roman world, it necessarily fell upon Roman[1561] citizens. Time had been when the Roman citizen, free to move into any part of the Roman dominions and to acquire property there[1562] under protection of Roman law, made full use of the opportunities afforded him, to the disadvantage of the subject natives. Now all alike were the helpless subjects of a government that they could neither reform nor supersede; a government whose one leading idea was to bring all institutions into fixed grooves in which they should move mechanically year after year, unsusceptible of growth or decay. True, the plan was absurd, and some few observers may have detected its absurdity. But the power of challenging centralized officialism and evoking expression of public opinion, never more than rudimentary in the Roman state, was now simply extinct. Things had come to such a pass that, speaking generally, a citizen’s choice lay between two alternatives. Either he must bear an active part in the system that was squeezing out the vital economic forces of the empire, making whenever possible a profit for himself out of a salary or illicit gains; or he must submit passively to all such extortions as the system, worked by men whose duty and interest alike tended to make them merciless, was certain to inflict. The oppressors, though numerous, could only be few in proportion to the whole free population. Therefore the vast majority stood officially condemned to lives of penury and wretchedness. The system became more hard-set and the outlook more hopeless with the lapse of time.

The dues exacted from the various parts of the empire varied in quality[1563] according to local conditions, and to some extent in methods of collection. In the frontier Provinces the quantity was sometimes reduced[1564] by remissions, when a district ravaged by invaders was relieved for a few years that it might recover its normal productiveness. The details of these variations are beyond the scope of the present inquiry. The general principle underlying the whole system was the fixing of taxation-units equal in liability, and the organizing of collection in municipal groups. Each municipal town or _civitas_ was the administrative centre of a district, and stood charged in the imperial ledgers as liable for the returns from a certain number of units, this number being that recorded as existing at the last quinquennial census. For the collection the chief municipal authorities were responsible; and they had to hand over the amount due to the imperial authorities, whether they had received it in full or not. Already burdened with strictly municipal liabilities, the members of municipal senates (_curiales_) were crushed by this additional and incalculable pressure. Unable to resist, they generally took the course of so using their functions and powers as to protect their own interests as far as possible. One obvious precaution was to see that the number of taxable units[1565] in their district was not fixed too high by the census officials. This precaution was certainly not overlooked, and success in keeping down the number may well have been the chief reason why the system was able to go on so long. The _curiales_ were mostly considerable landlords, residing in their town and letting their land to tenants. But there were other landlords, smaller men, some also resident in the towns, others in the country. We still hear of men farming land[1566] of their own, and it seems that some of these held and farmed other land also, as _coloni_ of larger landlords. When any question arose as to the number of units for the tax on which this or that farm was liable, it is clear that the interests of different classes might easily clash. And the _curiales_ undoubtedly took care[1567] that their own and those of their friends did not suffer.

These remarks imply that the system practically worked in favour of the richer classes[1568] as against the poorer. And so it certainly did, not only in the time of revision at the census each fifth year, but on other occasions. If an invasion or some other great disaster led the emperor to grant temporary relief, this would normally take the form of reducing the number of taxable units in the district for a certain period. But the local authorities were left to apportion this reduction[1569] among the several estates, and the poor farmers had no representative to see that they got their fair share of relief. Moreover, outside taxation, the farmers were often subjected to heavy burdens and damage by the irregular requisitions of imperial officials. For instance, the staff of the imperial post-service (_cursus publicus_)[1570] were a terror. They pressed the goods of farmers into the service of their department on various pretexts, and exacted labour on upkeep of roads and stations. For their tyranny there was no effective compensation or redress. Like other officials, they could be bought off by bribes: but this meant that the various exactions[1571] were shifted from the shoulders of the rich to those of the poor. Another iniquity, the revival of a very old[1572] abuse, was connected with the question of transport, an important consideration in the case of dues in kind, often bulky. For instance, in the case of corn, the place at which it had to be delivered might easily count for more in estimating the actual pressure of the burden than the amount of grain levied. In making the arrangements for delivery there were openings for favouritism and bribery. Circumstances varied greatly in various parts of the empire. In some Provinces delivery was made at a military depot within easy reach. Transport by sea from Egypt or Africa was carried on by gilds[1573] of shippers, who became more and more organized and regulated by law. But in many parts good roads were few, and laid out for strategic reasons; the country roads inconvenient and rough: and for transport in bulk the post-service provided no machinery available for the use of private persons.

It is not necessary here to follow out in detail all the particular discomforts and grievances of the farming classes under the system devised by Diocletian and developed by his successors. Enough has been said to shew that they were great, and to remove all ground for wondering that the area of arable land actually under tillage, and with it population, continued to decline. Constantine’s law confirming the bondage of _coloni_ to the soil by forbidding movement was the confession of a widespread evil, but no remedy. Repeated legislation to the same purpose only recorded and continued the failure. When all the resources of evasion were exhausted, the pauperized serf fled to a town and depended for a living on the pitiful doles of private or ecclesiastical charity, or turned brigand and took precarious toll of those who still had something to lose. In either case he was an additional burden on a society that already had more than it could bear. In 382 we find an attempt[1574] made to put down ‘sturdy beggars.’ The law rewarded anyone who procured the conviction of such persons by handing over the offenders to him. An ex-slave became the approver’s own slave, and one who had nothing of his own beyond his freeborn quality was granted to him as his _colonus_ for life. But this law seems to have been ineffectual like others. Desertion of farms might to some extent be checked, but mendicity and brigandage remained.

There was however another movement, later in time and less in volume, but not less serious as affecting the practical working of the imperial machine. With the increase of poverty life in municipal towns became less attractive. Local eminence was no longer an object of ambition; for to local burdens, once cheerfully borne, was now added a load of imperial responsibilities which lay heavy on all men of property, and which they could neither shake off nor control. In hope of evading them, well-to-do citizens took refuge[1575] in the country, either on estates of their own or under the protection of great landlords already settled there. But to allow this would mean the depletion of the local senates (_curiae_) on whose services as revenue-collectors the financial system of the empire depended. To prevent men qualified for the position of _curiales_ from escaping that duty was the aim of legislation[1576] which by repeated enactments confessed its own failure. That there were country magnates, men of influence (_potentes_), whose protection might seem able to screen municipal defaulters, is a point to be noted. They were the great _possessores_[1577] (a term no longer applied to small men), who held large estates organized on a sort of manorial model, and sometimes ruled them like little principalities, territorial lordships[1578] standing in direct relations with the central authorities and not hampered by inclusion in the general municipal scheme. Such ‘peculiars’ had existed under the earlier Empire, and evidently continued to exist: the Crown-lands of the emperors, especially in Africa, were the most signal cases. But the great private Possessor could not secure to his domain the various exemptions[1579] that emperors conferred on theirs. He had to collect and pay over[1580] the dues from his estate, as a municipal magistrate did from the district round his town-centre. But he had a more immediate and personal interest in the wellbeing of all his tenants and dependants, whose presence and prosperity gave to his land by far the greater part[1581] of its value.

That territorial magnates should be free to build up a perhaps dangerous power in various corners of the empire by gathering dependants round them, could hardly be viewed with approval by the jealousy of emperors. Not only was the system of letting land in parcels to tenants spreading, but the power of the landlords over them was increasing, long before Constantine took the final step of treating them as attached permanently to the soil. Whether they were the landlord’s free tenants who had gradually lost through economic weakness the effective use of freedom; or small freeholders who had found it worth their while to part with their holdings to a big man and become his tenants for the sake of enjoying his protection; or former slaves to whom small farms had been entrusted on various conditions; they were in a sort of economic bondage. Doubtless most of them lived from hand to mouth, but we have no reason to believe that poverty, so long as they had plenty to live on, was the motive[1582] that made them wish to give up their holdings and try their luck elsewhere. It was the cruel pressure of Diocletian’s new taxation, and the army of officials employed to enforce it, that drove them to despair. A contemporary witness[1583] tells us, referring to this very matter, ‘the excess of receivers over givers was becoming so marked that farms were being abandoned, and tillages falling to woodland, the resources of the tenants being exhausted by the hugeness[1584] of the imposts.’ And this evidence does not stand alone. So Constantine sought a remedy in prevention of movement, binding down the tenants to the soil. Henceforth the land to which a _colonus_[1585] was attached by birth, and the _colonus_ himself, were to be legally and economically inseparable. Attempts at evading the new rule were persistently met by later[1586] legislation. The motive of such attempts may be found by remembering that depopulation was steadily lowering the value of land and raising that of labour. If an individual landlord could add to the value of his own estate by getting more _coloni_ settled on it, withdrawn from other estates, he might profit by the transaction: but the government, whose policy was to keep the greatest possible area under cultivation, could not allow one part to be denuded of labourers to suit the interest of the owner of another part.

When the law stepped in to deprive the tenant, already far gone in dependence on his landlord, of such freedom of movement as he still retained, it is remarkable that rustic slaves were not at the same time legally attached to the soil. That inconvenience was caused by masters selling them when and where they chose, is shewn by Constantine’s law[1587] of 327, allowing such sales to take place only within the limits of the Province where they had been employed. No doubt their removal upset the arrangements for that part of a taxable unit in which the number of adult heads[1588] was taken into account, and so had to be checked. But it seems not to have been till the time of Valentinian[1589], somewhere between 367 and 375, that the sale of a farm-slave off the land was directly prohibited, like that of a _colonus_. In referring to this matter, the significance of the difference of dates is thus brought out[1590] by Seeck: ‘That this measure was carried through much sooner in the case of the small farmers than in that of the farm-slaves, is very characteristic of the spirit of that age. Where court favour is the deciding factor that governs the entire policy, the government is even more reluctant to limit the proprietary rights of the great landlord[1591] than the liberties of the small man.’ This is very true, but we must not forget that in both cases the binding of the labourer to the soil did in fact restrict the landlord’s freedom of disposal. He as well as his dependants came under a system not designed to promote his private convenience or interest, but to guarantee a maximum of total cultivation in the interest of the empire as a whole. So we find that he was not allowed[1592] to raise at will the rents of his tenants: they could sue their landlord (a right which in practice was probably not worth much), and even when this right was restricted[1593] in 396 they still retained it in respect of unfair increases of rent and criminal cases. So too, if he acquired extra slaves, either by receiving them as volunteers from derelict farms or in virtue of an imperial grant, it was strictly ordained[1594] that such acquisition carried with it the tax-liability for the whole of the derelict land. The landlord was therefore kept firmly in the grip of the central power, and not left free to build up a little principality by consolidating at will all the labour-resources that he could annex as dependants. Moreover he was watched by a host of imperial agents and spies whose interests could only be reconciled with his own by the costly method of recurrent bribery.

When we return to the main question of the actual farm-labour, and ask who toiled with their own hands to raise crops, we find ourselves in a curious position. The evidence, whether legal or literary, leaves us in no doubt that the tenant farmer of this period was normally himself a labourer. And yet it is not easy to cite passages in which this is directly affirmed. The pompous and affected language of the imperial laws is throughout a bad medium for conveying simple facts; nor was the question, who did the work, of any interest to the central authority, concerned solely with the regular exaction of the apportioned dues. The real proof that _coloni_, whether still holding some land of their own or merely tenants, and _inquilini_, whether solely barbarian dependants or not, were actual handworkers, is to be found in legitimate inference from certain facts. First, the increase in the value of labour compared with the decline in that of land. The binding of tenant to soil was a confession of this. Secondly, the general poverty of the farmers[1595] and their helplessness against oppression and wrong. Of this the description of Salvian gives a striking, if rhetorical, picture, and it is implied in many laws designed[1596] for their protection. That persons in so weak an economic position could have carried on their business as mere directors of slave-labour is surely inconceivable: and we are to remember that not only they themselves but their families also were bound to the soil. It was their presence, that is to say their labour, that gave value to the land, and so paid the taxes. Hence it was that in forming taxable units (_capita_) it was generally the practice to include in the reckoning[1597] not only the productive area (_iugatio_) but also the ‘heads’ that stocked it (_capitatio_). In other words, productiveness must in the interest of the state be actual, not merely potential.

The importance of keeping the real locally-bound _coloni_ strictly to their business of food-production was fully recognized in the regulations for recruiting the armies. Landlords, required to furnish[1598] recruits, were free to name some of their _coloni_ for that purpose. But there was no fear that they would be eager to do this, for the work of their tenants was what gave value to their properties. And the imperial officers charged with recruiting duty were ordered[1599] (and this in 400, when the need of soldiers was extreme) not to accept fugitive tenants belonging to an estate (_indigenis_): these no doubt if found were to be returned to their lords. The military levy was to fall upon sons of veterans, for in this class as in others no effort was spared to make the ways of life hereditary; or on wastrels (_vagos_)[1600], of whom the laws often make mention; or generally on persons manifestly by the circumstances of their birth (_origo_) liable to army service. Here we have the service still in principle confined to freemen. But it is not to be doubted that many a slave (and these would be nearly all rustic slaves) passed muster with officers hasting to make up their tale of men, and so entered the army. At a much later date (529) we find Justinian[1601] contemplating cases of slaves recruited with the consent of their owners, in short furnished as recruits. He enacts that such men are to be declared _ingenui_[1602], that is freeborn not freedmen, the master losing all rights over them: but, if they are efficient soldiers, they are to remain in the service. And the power of commuting[1603] the obligation of furnishing a recruit for a payment of money, which was to some extent allowed, introduced a method of recruiting[1604] by purchase. A recruit being demanded, it did not follow that the emperor got either the particular man (inspected of course and passed as fit) or a fixed cash-commutation. The recruiting officer conveniently happened to have a man or two at disposal, picked up in the course of his tour. The landlord, anxious to keep his own staff intact, came to terms with the officer for one of these as substitute. These officers knew when they could drive hard bargains, and did not lose their chances. In a law of 375, this system is directly referred to, and an attempt is made to regulate it[1605] on an equitable footing. To abolish it was clearly impossible. Eventually the state undertook to work it officially, and bought its own ‘bodies’ (_corpora_, like σώματα, of slaves) with the composition-money or _aurum_ _temonarium_. That some of these ‘bodies’ were escaped slaves is highly probable. Some may have been stray barbarians, not included in the various barbarian corps which more and more came to form the backbone of the Roman army. But the majority would probably be indigent wretches to whom any change seemed better than the miserable lives open to them in the meanest functions of the decaying civilization of the towns. In any case such recruits[1606] would be but a poor substitute for the pick of the rustic population.

The same anxiety to spare the rustics unnecessary exactions, that they might not sink under their present burdens, appears in other regulations. The subordinates employed in the public services such as the Post, or as attendants on functionaries, were tempted to ease their own duties by demanding contributions from the helpless countryfolk. This we find forbidden[1607] in 321 as interfering with the farmers’ right to procure and carry home things required for agriculture. So too a whole Title[1608] in the _Codex_ is devoted to the prevention of _superexactiones_, a form of extortion often practised by officials, chiefly by the use of false weights and measures or by foul play with the official receipts. The laws forbidding practices of this kind seem to belong to the latter part of the fourth century and the earlier part of the fifth. But the evil was clearly of old standing, and the laws almost certainly vain. That illicit exactions were a particular affliction of the poorer rustics, who could not bribe the officials, is confessed[1609] by a law of 362, which ordains that the burdens of supplying beasts fodder etc for service of the Post, upkeep of the roads and so forth, are to be laid on all _possessores_ alike. Further enactments follow in 401 and 408. But these rules for equitable distribution of burdens, even if carried out, only spread them over all landowners and _coloni_. All the upper ranks[1610] of the imperial service carried exemption from _sordida munera_ in some form or other, and personal grants of exemption were often granted as a favour. It is true that such exemption only extended to the life of the grantee, that exemptions were revocable, and that in course of time extreme necessities led to revocations. But all this did not operate to relieve the unhappy rustic on whom the whole imperial fabric rested. The rich might have to lose their privileges, but it was too late for the poor to gain a benefit. That the underlings of provincial governors were a terror to farmers, levying on them illicit services and generally blackmailing them for their own profit, is clear from the law[1611] (somewhere 368-373) announcing severe punishment for the offence and declaring that it had become a regular practice. The law of 328, enacting[1612] that no farmer (_agricola_) was to be impressed for special service in the seasons of seed-time or harvest, is on rather a different footing. It expressly justifies the prohibition on the ground of agricultural necessity: in short, it is not to protect the farmer, but, to leave him no excuse for not producing food.

A great critic[1613] has commented severely on the intellectual stagnation that fell upon the Roman empire and was one of the most effective causes of its decline. That literature fed upon the past and dwindled into general imbecility is commonly recognized: but the lack of material inventions and the paucity of improvements is perhaps not less significant than the decay of literature and art. The department of agriculture was no exception to this sterile traditionality. Since the days of Varro there had been no considerable change. So far as labour is concerned, the system of Columella can hardly be called an advance; for it employs directly none but slave labour, a resource already beginning to fail, and causing landlords to seek help from the development of tenancies. In modern times the dearness of labour has stimulated human ingenuity to produce machines by which the efficiency of human labour is increased and therefore fewer hands required for a given output. But in the world under the Roman supremacy centuries went by with hardly any modification of the mechanical equipment. A small exception may perhaps be found in a sort of rudimentary reaping-machine. It was briefly referred to by the elder Pliny[1614] in the first century of our era, and described by Palladius in the fourth. The device was in use on the large estates in the lowlands of Gaul, and was perhaps a Gaulish invention. It is said to have been a labour-saving[1615] appliance. From the description it seems to have been clumsy; and, since it cut off the ears and left the straw standing, it was only suited to farms on which no special use was made of the straw. Its structure (for it was driven by an ox from behind) must have made it unworkable on sloping ground. That we hear nothing of its general adoption may be due to these or other defects. But I believe there is no record of attempts to improve the original design. The lack of interest in improvement of tools has been noted as a phenomenon accompanying the dependence on slave labour. And when under the Roman empire we see the free tenant passing into the condition of a serf-tenant, we are witnessing a process that steadily tended to reduce him to the moral labour-level of the apathetic and hopeless slave. To make the agriculture of a district more prosperous was to attract the attention of greedy officials. To resist their illicit extortions was to attract the attention of the central government, whose growing needs were ever tempting it to squeeze more and more out of its subjects. Why then should the rustic, tied to the soil, trouble himself to seek more economical methods, the profits of which, if ever realized, he was not himself likely to enjoy?

LII. LIBANIUS.

In order to get so far as possible a living picture of the conditions of rustic life and labour we must glean the scattered notices preserved to us in the writers of the period of decline. Due allowance must be made for the general artificiality and rhetorical bent of authors trained in the still fashionable schools of composition and style. For even private letters were commonly written as models destined eventually to be read and admired by the public, while in controversial works and public addresses the tendency to attitudinize was dominant. The circulation of literary trivialities and exchange of cheap compliments, especially prevalent in Gaul, was kept up to the last by self-satisfied cliques when the barbarians were already established in the heart of the empire. Nevertheless valuable sidelights on questions of fact are thrown from several points of view. This evidence agrees with that drawn from the imperial laws, and is in so far better for our purpose that it deals almost exclusively with the present. When it looks to the future, it is in the form of petition or advice; while the normal substance of the laws is to confess the existence of monstrous abuses by threatening offenders with penalties ever more and more severe, and enjoining reforms that no penalties could enforce. A writer very characteristic of his age (about 315-400) is the ‘sophist’ =Libanius=, who passed most of his later years at Antioch, the luxurious chief city of the East. For matters under his immediate observation he is a good authority, and may help us to form a notion of the extent to which imperial ordinances were practically operative in the eastern parts of the empire.

Two of the ‘orations,’ or written addresses, of Libanius are particularly interesting as appeals to the emperor Theodosius for redress of malpractices affecting the rustic population and impairing the financial resources of the empire. The earlier[1616] (about 385) exposes gross misdeeds of the city magistrates of Antioch. What with the falling of old houses and clearing of sites for new buildings there were great quantities of mixed rubbish to be removed and deposited elsewhere. Apparently there was now no sufficient staff of public slaves at disposal; at all events the city authorities resorted to illegal means for procuring the removal. When the country folk came into town to dispose of their produce, the magistrates requisitioned their carts asses mules (and themselves as drivers) for this work. Thus the time of the poor rustics was wasted, their carts and sacks damaged, and they and their beasts sent back to their homes in a state of utter exhaustion. No law empowered the city magnates to act thus. From small beginnings a sort of usage had been created, which nothing short of imperial ordinance could now break and abolish. That the magistrates were conscious of doing wrong was shewn by what they avoided doing. They did not impress slaves or carts from houses in the city. They did not exact like services from the military or powerful landlords. Nor did they lay the burden on the estates[1617] of the municipality, the rents from which were part of the revenues of Antioch. Favour is only justified by equity; and there is, says Libanius, no equity in sparing the luxurious rich by ruining the poor. So he entreats his most gracious[1618] Majesty to protect the farms as much as the cities, or rather more. For the country is in fact the foundation on which cities rest. Without it they could never have existed: and now it is on the rise and fall of rural wellbeing that urban prosperity depends. This appeal speaks for itself. But it is significant that the skilled pleader thinks it wise to end on a note of imperial interest. ‘Moreover, Sire, it is from the country that your tribute is drawn. It is to the cities that you address your orders[1619] for taxation, but the cities have to raise it from the country. Therefore, to protect the farmers is to preserve your interests, and to maltreat the farmers is to betray them.’

In the oration numbered 47 the abuse dealt with is of a very different kind. The date is 391 or 392, and the subject is the ‘protections’ (_patrocinia_)[1620] of villages. The pressure of imperial taxation and the abuses accompanying its collection had driven the villagers to seek help in resisting the visits of the tax-gatherers. This help was generally found in placing the village under the protection of some powerful person, commonly a retired soldier, who acted as a rallying-centre and leader, probably in most cases backed by some retainers of his own class. Of course these men did not undertake opposition to the public authorities for nothing. But it seems that their exactions were, at least in the earlier stages, found to be less burdensome than those of the official collectors. The situation thus created was as follows. The local senators (_curiales_) whose turn it was to collect the dues from the district under their municipality (a duty that they were not allowed to shirk) went out to the villages for the purpose. They were beaten off[1621] by use of force, often wounded as well as foiled. They were still bound to pay over the tax, which they had not received, to the imperial treasury. In these latter days default of payment rendered them liable to cruel scourging. So the unhappy _curiales_ had to sell their own property to make up the amount due. The loss of their means strikes them out of the _curia_ for lack of the legal qualification. And this was not only a loss to their particular city: it damaged imperial interests, bound up as the whole system was with maintaining unimpaired the supply of qualified _curiales_. The evil of these ‘protections’ was, according to Libanius, great and widespread. The protectors had become a great curse to the villagers themselves by their tyranny and exactions. Their lawless sway had turned[1622] farmers into brigands, and taught them to use iron not for tools of tillage but for weapons of bloodshed. And the trouble was not confined to villages where the land belonged to a number of small owners: it extended also to those[1623] under one big proprietor. The argument that the villagers have a right to seek help in resistance to extortion, is only sound if the means employed are fair. To justify this limitation two significant analogies[1624] are applied. Cities near the imperial frontier must not call in the foreign enemy to aid them in settling their differences with each other: they must seek help within the empire. A slave must not invoke the aid of casual bystanders against ill-usage: he stands in no relation to outsiders, and must look to his master for redress. The full bearing of these considerations is seen when we remember that the farmers are serf-tenants. They are owned[1625] by masters, as the municipal city exists only in and for the empire, and the slave has no legal personality apart from his lord.

It is a fact, says[1626] Libanius, that through such evasion of their liabilities on the part of the rustics many houses have been ruined. He is surely referring to the _curiales_ and other landlords resident in the city, the numbers of which class it was the imperial policy to maintain at full strength. In moral indignation[1627] he urges the iniquity of beggaring poor souls who have nothing to live on but the income from their lands. ‘Say I have an estate, inherited or bought, farmed by sensible tenants who humbly faced the ups and downs of Fortune under my considerate care. Must you then stir them up by agitation, arousing unlooked-for conflicts, and reducing men of good family to indigence?’ This appeal would not sound overdrawn in the society of that age, though it might fall somewhat coldly upon modern ears. But the most notable point in this oration is the nature of the remedy[1628] for which the writer pleads, and which none but the emperor can supply. It is simply to enforce the existing law. Some years before, probably in 368, the emperor Valens had strictly forbidden[1629] the ‘protections’ that were the cause of this trouble. So now the appeal to Theodosius is ‘give the law sinews, make it a law indeed[1630] and not a bare exhortation.’ For, if it is not to be observed, it had better be repealed. That a leading writer of the day could so state the case to the ruler of the Roman world is a fact to be borne in mind by readers of the imperial laws.

LIII. SYMMACHUS

In passing on to =Q. Aurelius Symmachus=[1631] (about 345-405) we find ourselves in very different surroundings. The scene is in Italy, and the author a man of the highest station in what was still regarded as the true centre of the Roman world. He was _praefectus urbi_ in 384-5, consul in 391, and the leading figure in Roman society and literary circles. From the bulky collection of his letters, and the forty reports (_relationes_) addressed to the emperor by him as city prefect, we get much interesting evidence as to the condition of rural Italy and the anxieties of the corn-supply of Rome. With his championship of the old religion, by which he is best known, we have here nothing to do; and his literary affectations, characteristic of most writers of the later Empire, do not discredit him as a witness. A remarkable feature of his letters is their general triviality and absence of direct reference to the momentous events that were happening in many parts of the empire. His attention is almost wholly absorbed by matters with which he was immediately connected, his public duties, his private affairs, the interests of his relatives and friends, or the exchange of compliments. His time is mostly passed either in Rome or at one or other of his numerous country seats: for he was one of the great landlords of his day, and the condition of Italian agriculture was of great importance to him. As a representative of the landed interest and as a self-conscious letter-writer he resembles the younger Pliny, but is weaker and set in a less happy age.

A topic constantly recurring[1632] in his correspondence is the apprehension of famine in Rome and the disturbances certain to arise therefrom. The distribution of imperial powers among several seats of government (of which Rome was not one) since the changes of Diocletian had left to the ancient capital only a sort of traditional primacy. The central bureaus were elsewhere, and Rome was only the effective capital of the southern division of Italy. Yet the moral force of her great past was still a living influence that expressed itself in various ways, notably in the growth of the Papacy out of the Roman bishopric. For centuries it had been the licensed lodging of a pauperized mob, fed by doles to keep them quiet, enjoying luxurious baths at nominal cost, and entertained with exciting or bloody shows in the circus or amphitheatre. This rabble had either to be kept alive and amused or got rid of; but the latter alternative would surely have reduced Rome to the condition of a dead city. It was morally impossible for a Roman emperor to initiate so ominous a policy. So the wasteful abomination dragged on, and every hitch in the corn-supply alarmed not only the _praefectus annonae_ but the _praefectus urbi_ with the prospect of bread riots. And the assignment of the Egyptian corn to supply Constantinople made Rome more than ever dependent on the fortunes of the African[1633] harvest. When this failed, it was only by great departmental energy that temporary shortage was made good by importations[1634] from Macedonia Sardinia or Spain or even by some surplus from Egypt. Even lower Italy, where little corn was grown, was at a pinch made to yield some. But bad seasons were not the only cause of short supplies. The acts of enemies might starve out Rome, as the rebellion of Gildo in Africa (397-8) nearly did. Moreover the slackness and greed of officials[1635] sometimes ruined the efficiency of the department, and ‘profiteering’ was practised by unscrupulous[1636] capitalists. Nor even with good harvests abroad were the prefects always at ease, since the corn-fleets might be delayed or scattered by foul weather, and meanwhile the consumption did not cease. And it sometimes happened that the cargoes were damaged and the public health suffered[1637] from unwholesome food. Among these various cares the _praefectura annonae_ was no bed of roses. No wonder the worthy Symmachus tells us of private charity[1638] to relieve the necessities of the poor, and even gives a hint of voluntary rationing at the tables of the rich. But in appealing to the gods for succour he rather suggests that human benevolence would be unequal to the strain.

That agriculture was not on a sound footing in most of Italy is evident from several passages in the letters. In one of the earliest (before 376) he tells his father that, though he finds Campania charming, he should like to join him at Praeneste. ‘But’ he adds ‘I am in trouble about my property. I must go and inspect it wherever it lies, not in hope of making it remunerative, but in order to realize the promise of the land by further outlay. For things are nowadays come to such a pass[1639] that an owner has to feed the farm that once fed him.’ Some of the references to the management of estates are rather obscure. In speaking of one near Tibur he mentions[1640] stewards (_vilicorum_) and complains of their neglect. ‘The land is badly farmed, and great part of the returns (_fructuum_) is in arrear (_debetur_): the _coloni_ have no means left[1641] to enable them to clear their accounts or to carry on cultivation.’ The exact status of these stewards and tenants and their relations to each other are far from clear, and the case may have been a peculiar one. Again, writing to bespeak the good offices of an influential man on behalf of an applicant, he says ‘I do this for him rather as a duty[1642] than as an act of free grace, for he is a farm-tenant of mine.’ The tenant’s name is Theodulus, which invites a conjecture that this was a case of an oriental Greek slave placed as tenant on a farm, either for his master’s account, or for his own at a rent, and afterwards manumitted. A reference to _servi_, dependants (_obnoxii_)[1643] who are owing him rents which his agents on the distant estate in question do not take the trouble to collect, may point to the same sort of arrangement. In another passage he mentions[1644] a man who was for a long time _colonus_ under a certain landlord, but here too the lack of detail forbids inference as to the exact nature of the relation. That slave labour was still employed on some Italian farms appears from a request[1645] for help in recovering some runaways. They may have been house slaves, but if a neighbouring landlord gave them shelter no doubt he made them pay for it in work. The control of slaves in the country was never easy, and the quasi-military discipline described by Columella was a confession of this. And it was only on a large scale that a staff of overseers sufficient to work it could be provided. The time for it was indeed gone by. Slaves employed in hunting[1646] are mentioned by Symmachus as by Pliny. No doubt they took to this occupation with zest. The degeneracy of hunting by deputy is contemptuously noted as a sign of the times by the soldier critic[1647] Ammianus. But it was no new thing.

That the general state of the countryside was hardly favourable to the quiet development of agriculture may be gathered from many notices. For instance, when he would have been glad to be out of Rome for the good of his health, he complains[1648] that the prevalence of brigandage in the country near forces him to stay in the city. A friend urges him to come back to Rome for fear of a violent raid on an estate apparently suburban: he can only reply[1649] that a breach of possession during his absence will not hold good in law. Whether the _militaris impressio_[1650] on his farm at Ostia, to which he casually refers, was the raid of foreign foes suddenly landing on that coast, or the lawless outrage of imperial troops, is not certain: I rather suspect the latter. For, fifteen years later (398), after the overthrow of Gildo, he writes[1651] that the soldiers are all back from Africa, and the Appian way is clear: here the meaning seems plain. And his endeavour[1652] to prevent the commandeering of an old friend’s house at Ariminum for military quarters is significant of the high-handed treatment of civilians by army men in those days, of which we have other evidence. Nevertheless men were still willing to buy estates. Symmachus himself was still adding to his vast possessions. We see him in treaty[1653] for a place in Samnium, where there was apparently some queer practice on the part of the seller: in another case he is annoyed[1654] that his partner in a joint purchase has contrived to secure the whole bargain as sole transferee, and rather sulkily offers to waive his legal claims on being reimbursed what he has already paid to the transferor. It seems strange that a man who, beside his numerous properties in Italy, owned estates[1655] in Mauretania (where he complains that the governors allow his interests to suffer) and in Sicily (where the lessee is called _conductor_, probably a tenant in chief subletting to _coloni_), should have had an appetite for more investments of doubtful economic value. But other investments were evidently very hard to find in an age when industry and commerce were fettered by the compulsory gild-system. And a man of influence like Symmachus was better able than one of the common herd to protect his own interests by the favour of powerful officials.

We get glimpses of the condition of agriculture in Italy under the strain of events. It must be borne in mind that Italy was no longer exempt from the land-burdens of the imperial system. For many years, certainly from 383 to 398, Rome was hardly ever free from the fear of famine. It was necessary to scrape together all the spare food that could be found in the country in order to eke out the often interrupted importations from abroad. The decline of food-production in rich Campania is indicated by many scattered references. The district was probably too much given over to vines, and a great part of it occupied by unproductive villas. In 396 Symmachus is relieved to know that the corn-supply of Rome is assured, at least for twenty days. He goes on to mention[1656] that corn has been transferred from Apulia to Campania. Whether this was for Campanian consumption, or eventually to be forwarded to Rome, is not stated. I am inclined to the former alternative by the consideration of the quarrel between Tarracina and Puteoli referred to below. That corn should have been brought from Apulia[1657] is a striking fact. A great part of that province was taken up by pastures and oliveyards. It can only have had corn to spare by reason of sparse population and good crops. If we had the whole story of this affair, the explanation might prove to be simpler than it can be now. In 397 he writes[1658] to a friend that the Apulians are having a bad time. They are erroneously supposed to be in for a good harvest, and so are being required to supply corn. This will be stripping the province without materially helping the state. For winter is coming on, and there is not time left to bring such a great crop of ripeness. Symmachus had friends dependent on property in Apulia. Writing some four years later[1659] he refers to this estate as rated for taxation on a higher scale than its income would warrant: he asks the local governor to see that it shall not be crushed by ‘public burdens.’

For to Symmachus, as to all or most men in this passive and cruelly selfish age, the first thought was to protect their own interests and those of their friends by engaging the favour of the powerful. Many of the passages cited above illustrate this, and many more could be given. The candour of some of his applications is remarkable. On behalf of one dependant in trouble he says[1660] to the person addressed ‘but he will get more help from the partiality of your judgment, for he really has some right on his side.’ To another he writes[1661] that of course right is always to be considered, but in dealing with _nobiles probabilesque personas_ a judge should feel free to qualify strict rules, letting the fairness of his decision appear[1662] in the distinction made. This proposition introduces a request on behalf of his sister. Some farms of hers are overburdened with the dues exacted by the state, and are now empty for lack of tenants. Only the governor’s sanction can give them the relief needed to restore them to solvency; and Symmachus trusts that his friend will do the right thing by the lady. In another case[1663] he asks favour for a dependant, significantly adding a request that his friend will see to it that the case does not come before another judge. Now, what chance of asserting their own rights had humble folk in general, and poor working farmers in particular, when governors and judges of all sorts were solicited like this by men whose goodwill was worth securing,—men for the most part unscrupulous greedy and prone to bear grudges, not such as the virtuous and kindly Symmachus? Perhaps nothing shews the selfishness of the rich more than their attempts to shirk the duty of furnishing recruits for the army. Yet we find in one letter[1664] a request to a provincial governor to check the activities of the recruiting agents. That the writer accuses these latter of overstepping their legal powers can only be viewed with some suspicion, considering his readiness to use private influence. Early in 398, when a force was being raised to operate against Gildo, it was thought necessary to enlist slaves from the city households. The protests[1665] of their owners, in which Symmachus shared, were loud: the compensation allowance was too low, and so forth. Yet, if any one was interested in suppressing the rebel, it was surely these wealthy men.

That the obligation of providing for the sustenance of the idle populace of Rome was not only a worry to officials but a heavy burden on farmers in the Provinces whence the supplies were drawn, needs no detailed proof. But they were used to the burden, and bore it quietly in average years. A very bad season might produce dearth even in Africa, and call for exceptional measures[1666] of relief on the part of emperors. So Trajan had relieved Egypt. It was however an extreme step to ease the pressure in Rome by expelling[1667] all temporary residents, as was actually done during the famine of 383. These would be nearly all from the Provinces, and Symmachus uneasily refers[1668] to the resentment that the expulsion was certain to provoke. But in this age a rebellion of provincials to gain redress of their own particular grievances was not a conceivable policy. When discontent expressed itself in something more than a local riot, it needed a head in the form of a pretender making a bid for imperial power. But we are not to suppose that Rome, and later Constantinople, stood quite alone in receipt of food-favours. The case of two Italian municipalities, reported on[1669] by Symmachus in 384-5, proves the contrary, and we have no ground for assuming that they were the only instances. The important port-town of Puteoli was granted 150000 _modii_ of corn yearly towards the feeding of the city by Constantine. Constans cut down the allowance to 75000. Constantius raised it again to 100000. Under Julian a complication arose. The governor of Campania found Tarracina in sore straits (evidently for food) because of the failure[1670] of the supplies due from the towns long assigned for that purpose. Now Tarracina had a special claim to support, since it provided Rome with firewood for heating the baths and lime for the repair of the walls. It seems that the governor felt bound to keep this town alive, but had no new resources on which he could draw. So he took 5700 _modii_ from the allowance of Puteoli and gave them to Tarracina. Final settlement was referred to Julian, but not reached before his death in the Persian war (363). The next stage was that a deputation from Capua[1671] addressed the emperor Gratian, confining themselves to complaint of their own losses. By this one-sided representation they procured an imperial order, that the amount of corn allowance which Cerealis[1672] had claimed for the people of Rome should be given back to all the cities deprived of it by his act. But under this order the total recovered for sustenance of the provincials only reached 38000 _modii_ of corn that had been added to the stores of the eternal city. So Puteoli refused to hand over even the 5700 to Tarracina. And the provincial governor did not go carefully into the terms of the order, but ruled in favour of Puteoli. An appeal followed, and it came out that the grant of 5700 to Tarracina was not an ordinary bounty but an earmarked[1673] sum granted in consideration of services to Rome. The governor did not feel able either to confirm it or to take it away. Therefore the matter was referred to the emperors for a final settlement. This strange story gives us a momentary glimpse of things that make no figure in general histories. The abject dependence of the municipalities on imperial favour stands out clearly: not less so the precarious nature of such favours, a feature of the time amply illustrated by the later imperial laws, numbers of which were simply issued to withdraw privileges previously granted, under the stress of needs that made it impossible to maintain them. Again, we see that in addition to the normal jealousy of neighbours the competition for imperial favour was an influence tending to hinder rather than promote cohesion: tending in fact to weaken the fabric now menaced by the tribal barbarians. Above all, this affair strongly suggests the partiality of the central government to town populations. The farmers of the municipal territories were certainly liable to the land-burdens, and were the ultimate basis of imperial finance: but of them there is not a word. Lastly, we may suppose that inter-municipal disputes such as this were not of very frequent occurrence: but we have no reason to believe that this Campanian case was unique.

LIV. AMMIANUS.

In =Ammianus Marcellinus= (about 330 to 400) we have an oriental Greek from Antioch who passed a great part of his life in the military service of the empire. He had travelled much, campaigned in Gaul and the East, and was an observant man of wide interests, and in his history impartial to the best of his power. Whether in deliberate criticisms, or in casual references, he is an exceptionally qualified and honest witness as to the state of things in the empire. On one important point his evidence is of special value. All through the surviving portion of his work (353-378) he leaves us in no doubt that the internal evils of the empire were weakening it more than the pressure of barbarians from without. He does not argue this in a section devoted to the topic, but he takes occasion to notice the abuses that impaired the prosperity of the Provinces or led directly to grave disasters. The corruption jealousy greed cruelty and general misrule of officials high and low was no secret to him. That the ultimate sufferers from their misdeeds were the poor, and more particularly the poor farmers, may be gathered from many passages. That the centre of this all-pervading disease lay in the imperial court, a focus of intrigue and jobbery that the very best of emperors could never effectively check, he was surely aware. At least it is only on this assumption that we get the full flavour of his references to court-intrigues and his criticisms of emperors, his balanced discussions of their good and bad qualities and the effects of their policy and practice. In truth the whole system was breaking down. It lasted longer in the East than in the West, because the eastern peoples were more thoroughly tamed. They had been used to despotic government long before the coming of Rome. And the assaults of external enemies were more formidable and persistent in the North and West than in the South and East. Yet, so long as the empire held together, imperial despotism was inevitable. Neither Ammianus nor any other writer of that age did or could offer a possible alternative. Christianity might capture the empire and spread among the barbarians, but it had no constructive solution for the problems of imperial government.

A remarkably plain-spoken passage[1674] occurs in reference to the events of 356, where he describes the administration of Julian in Gaul. By his victories over the Germans he relieved the impoverished Gauls, but this was by no means his only benefit. For instance, where he found at his first coming a tax-unit[1675] of 25 gold pieces demanded as the _tributum_, at his departure (360) he left things so much improved that seven of these sufficed to meet all dues. Great was the joy in Gaul. As a particular example of his thoughtful care, Ammianus cites his policy in the matter of arrears of tribute. There were occasions, especially in provinces liable to invasion, when it was certain that such arrears could not be recovered in the ordinary course. It was not to the interest of the central government to ruin or turn adrift farmers whose places it would not be easy to fill. This consideration was no doubt used to procure from emperors orders of remission, _indulgentiae_[1676] as they were called. Julian to the last would not give relief by thus waiving the imperial rights. ‘For he was aware[1677] that the effect of that step would be to put money into the pockets of the rich; the universal practice, as everyone knows, being for the poor to be made to pay up the due amount in full directly the order of collection is issued, and allowed no time of grace.’ It seems then that it was not the amount of the imperial taxation, but the iniquities perpetrated in connexion with its collection, that were the real burden crushing the vitality of the Provinces. So thought Julian, rightly: and in the next year we find him firmly upholding his principles in the face of exceptional difficulties. The emperor Constantius had felt compelled to make Julian Caesar, and to place him at the head of the Western section of the empire. But his jealousy and fear of the Caesar’s winning glory in Gaul led him to surround Julian with officers devoted to himself and secretly encouraged to hamper their titular chief in every possible way. The court of Constantius was a hotbed of intrigue and calumny. Private reports of the doings of Julian were being regularly received. Any reforms that he was able to make in Gaul had to be effected in the teeth of imperial malignity.

A flagrant instance[1678] is seen in the efforts made to thwart his reforming energy during the winter of 357-8. After defeating and humbling aggressive German tribes, he set himself to relieve the distress of the landowners, who had suffered great losses. There was at the time a great need of money. The praetorian prefect of the Gauls, Florentius, proposed to raise the sums required[1679] by an additional levy, and procured from Constantius an order to that effect. Julian would rather die than allow this. He knew what would happen in carrying it out, and that such ‘precautions’ (_provisiones_)[1680] or rather destructions (_eversiones_) had often brought provinces into the extremities of want. The Prefect, to whose department the matter in strictness belonged, protested loudly, relying on the powers given him by Constantius. But Julian stood firm, and tried to soothe him by calmly proving that there was no necessity for the proposed measure. Careful calculations shewed that the normal impost (_capitatio_) would produce enough to furnish the needful supplies, and something to spare. He would have nothing to do with the order[1681] for an extra levy. The Prefect duly reported this to Constantius, who reprimanded the Caesar for his obstinacy. Julian replied that the provincials had been exposed to ravages from various quarters, and that if they were still able to render the usual dues[1682] the government had reason to be thankful. To wring more out of men in distress by punishments was impossible. And he did manage to prevent extraordinary exactions in Gaul. In the winter of 358-9 he continued the same policy. He saw to the equitable assessment[1683] of the tribute, and kept at bay the horde of rascally officials who made fortunes[1684] out of injuring the people. The corruption of the law-courts he checked by hearing the important cases himself. No wonder that in an age of Christian emperors the virtuous pagan earned a reputation as a restorer of Roman greatness far beyond the boundaries of Gaul. Whether the fact that adherents of polytheism were now chiefly to be found among rustics (_pagani_) had anything to do with Julian’s clear appreciation of the sufferings of countryfolk, is a question on which I cannot venture to offer an opinion.

That all or most of the corn levied by imperial taxation was in the frontier Provinces required for the military commissariat is well known, and the granaries for storing it were a leading feature of permanent camps and garrison towns. The feeding of armies in the field, always wasteful, no doubt consumed a great deal. In the case of Gaul (for to live on the country was starvation to a force invading wild Germany) the quantity to be brought up to the front seems to have been normally more than Gaul could spare. It was usual to rely on the harvests[1685] of Britain. Transport was the main difficulty. Saxon pirates infested the narrow seas, and the navigation of the Rhine was blocked by Franks. Julian’s energy cleared away these obstacles, and saw to the erection or repair of granaries in the Rhineland towns to receive the British corn. These measures enabled him to do without making extra demands on the farmers of Gaul, a step sometimes unavoidable when there was war on the frontiers. Of course such commandeering was very unpopular, and wise generals avoided it whenever possible. Ammianus draws particular attention[1686] to this matter when narrating the campaign of Theodosius in Mauretania (373). He forbade the levy of supplies from the provincials, announcing that he would make the stores of the enemy[1687] provide the commissariat, and the landowners were delighted.

Among the interesting references that occur in the course of the work are some that throw further light on the conditions of life in the parts of the empire subject to invasion. It is not necessary to cite the frequent mention of various kinds of fortified posts from great strongholds to mere blockhouses. These remind us that the strength of the imperial armies could never be so maintained as to guard the frontier at all times on all points. Barbarian raiders slipped through[1688] the inevitable gaps, and wide stretches of country were laid waste long before sufficient forces could be gathered to expel them. We do not need the descriptions of their cruel ravages to convince us that agriculture near the Danube or Rhine borders was a perilous calling. If the farmer were not carried away into bondage or slain, he was left robbed of his all, and in imminent danger of starving: for the barbarians ate up everything, and hunger was a principal motive in leading them to come and warning them to return home. Naturally it was the custom in these border-lands to provide fortified refuges here and there in which local farmers could find temporary shelter with their belongings, and homesteads of any importance were more or less equipped for defence. This was the state of things even in Mauretania. We read of a farm[1689] (_fundus_) which the brother of Firmus the rebel leader (373) ‘built up after the fashion of a city’; also of one girt with a strong[1690] wall, a very secure refuge for the Moors, to destroy which Theodosius had to employ battering-rams. These are not the only instances. And forts (_castella_) and walled towns are often referred to. Along the northern borders the necessity for such precautions was much greater. Still it seems that few if any in the latter part of the fourth century foresaw that frontier defences would at no distant date give way before the barbarian flood. A high imperial official, with whose corrupt connivance[1691] gross wrongs had been perpetrated (370) in Africa, on being superseded in office withdrew to his native Rhineland, and ‘devoted himself[1692] to rural affairs.’ The retired ease for which he apparently hoped was soon ended, though not by barbarian raiders. The malignity of a praetorian prefect tracked him to his retreat and by persecution drove him to suicide.

This last episode may remind us that the weakening of the empire was not wholly due to failure of an economic kind or to decay of military skill. The farmers might raise crops enough, the armies might prove their superiority in the field, but nevertheless the great organism was in decline. A general mistrust, fatal to loyal cooperation for the common good, was the moral canker by which the exertions of farmer and soldier were hampered and rendered vain. Officials seeking to ruin each other, emperors turning to murders and confiscations as a source of revenue, all classes bound fast in rigid corporations or gilds under laws which it was their study to evade; the failure of individual enterprise, lacking the joy of individual freedom, and the stimulus of expected reward; in short, everyone ready to sacrifice his neighbour to save his own skin: how was a society characterized by such phenomena to maintain a moral advantage over the rude barbarians? That it was now protected by alien swords, that aliens were even commanding[1693] the Roman armies, was not the main cause of its overthrow. As a rule these barbarians kept their bargain, and shed their blood freely for the empire that enlisted them in masses. But we must distinguish between two or three different classes of these alien defenders. The mere mercenaries need not detain us. More significant were the contingents taken over in large bodies by agreement with the tribes. A good instance[1694] is that of the year 376, when a vast host of Goths sought leave to pass the Danube with the hope of settling on vacant lands south of the river. We are told that the Roman commanders on that front got over their first alarm and took the line that really the emperor was in luck. Here was a huge supply of recruits[1695] brought to him from the ends of the earth, an unlooked-for reinforcement ready to be blended with his own troops, and to make up an unconquerable army. Instead of spending the yearly payments of the provinces[1696] on filling up the ranks, the treasury would gain a great sum of gold. It would seem that they reported to the emperor in favour of the request, for Valens granted the petition of a Gothic embassy. Arrangements were made for transporting them over the river, and it was understood that they had leave to settle in the parts of Thrace. But now troubles began. Greedy Roman officials fleeced and maltreated the hungry horde, who were at length driven into rebellion. With the sequel, the great battle (378) near Adrianople, and the death of Valens, we are not here concerned. But the account[1697] of their ravages in Thrace gives us a picture of the countryside in a harassed province and of the slave labour employed. The rebels, unable to take fortified places by regular siege, overran the country in raiding bands. Captives guided them to places stocked with food. But they were especially encouraged and strengthened by the great number of people of their own race who came pouring in to join them. Ammianus describes[1698] these deserters as men who had long before been sold (into slavery of course) by traders, and with them very many whom at the time of their passing the river, when they were perishing of hunger, they had bartered for thin wine or worthless scraps of bread.

This scene may serve to remind us that slavery and the sale of slaves to Roman dealers were recognized features of German tribal life as described by Tacitus. It also gives us a glimpse of the way in which opportunities of imperial advantage could be wasted or turned into calamities by the unpatriotic and selfish greed of Roman officials. In this case potential recruits were turned into actual enemies; and the barbarian slaves, who should have been tilling Thracian fields in the interest of Rome, were left to guide and recruit the hostile army of their kinsmen. It must not be supposed that all schemes for raising barbarian troops in large bodies were thus by gross mismanagement brought to a disastrous end. The value of sound flesh and blood in the ranks was well understood, and a successful campaign against German tribes could be made profitable from this point of view. Thus in 377, when Gratian had a whole tribe at his mercy, he required of them a contingent[1699] of sturdy recruits to be incorporated in Roman army-units, on delivery of whom he set free the rest to return to their native homes. That such recruits became under Roman discipline so far Romanized as to provide efficient armies is clear from the victories that still delayed the fall of the empire. But ‘Roman’ was becoming more than ever a mere name-label: there had never been a Roman nation. Of the third class of alien soldiery little need be said. Military colonists of barbarian origin had for a long time past been brought into the empire, some as frontier guards holding land on condition of army service, others more in the interior, even[1700] in Italy; and these latter undoubtedly furnished many recruits, on whatever terms. The general result may be summed up in saying that, when the barbarian invaders at last came to stay, they found their kindred already there at home.

LV. CLAUDIAN.

In =Claudian=, who wrote about 400, we have another oriental Greek, who wrote chiefly in Latin with far more mastery of that language than Ammianus. Stilicho his patron, the great barbarian head of the Roman army, was at the height of his power, and Claudian’s most congenial occupation was to sing his praises and denounce his opponents. He was also poet laureate of the feeble emperor Honorius. Writing mainly on contemporary themes, he is, if allowance be made for his bias, a witness worth citing; but the passages relevant to the present subject are naturally few. In common with other writers of the later ages of Rome he is constantly looking back to a great and glorious past, contrasting painfully with that present which he nevertheless is striving to glorify. Thus he not only refers with enthusiasm[1701] to the old heroes of Roman history and legend, the common material of Roman literature, but even dreams[1702] of a golden age to be, when the earth of her own accord shall render all good things in abundance to a people living happily in communistic brotherhood. This fancy however is no more than a piece of unreal rhetoric, an echo of Vergil. It is inspired by the victories of Stilicho, and the world-dominion under which this beatific vision is to be realized is—the rule of Honorius.

In January 395 the great Theodosius died, and the empire was divided between his two sons. In November, Rufinus, who dominated Arcadius at Constantinople, was murdered. His place was soon taken by the eunuch Eutropius. On these two personages Claudian poured out a flood of invective, speaking for Stilicho and the West. The greed of Rufinus is depicted[1703] as ruinous to the landed interests. ‘The fertility of his land was the ruin of the landlord: a good crop[1704] made the farmers tremble. He drives men from their homes, and thrusts them out of their ancestral borders, either robbing the living or seizing the estates of the dead.’ The jealousy of the West expresses itself in a passage[1705] referring to the famine created in Rome by the rebellion of Gildo in Africa. Honorius (that is Stilicho) is effusively praised for its relief by importations from other Provinces, chiefly from Gaul. That, owing to the claim of the New Rome to the corn of Egypt, the Old Rome should be so dependent on Africa, is a situation indignantly resented[1706] in eloquent lines. A symptom ominous of imperial failure was the attempt to wrest eastern Illyricum from the rule of Arcadius (407-8) an enterprise[1707] secretly concerted between Stilicho and Alaric. Fugitives from Epirus sought refuge in Italy. Stilicho treated them as prisoners of war from an enemy’s country, and handed them over to Italian landlords as slaves or _coloni_. When Alaric and his Goths moved towards Italy, some of these refugees, aided by a law issued for their protection, found their way home again. Claudian unblushingly declares[1708] that none but Stilicho will be able to heal the empire’s wound: ‘at length the _colonus_ will return to his own borders and the court will once more be enriched by the tributes of Illyricum.’

A Roman view of the intruding barbarians and their capacity of peaceful settlement is in one place[1709] put into the mouth of Bellona the war-goddess. She addresses a Gothic chief in bitter sarcasm. ‘Go and be a thorough ploughman, cleaving the soil: teach your comrades to lay aside the sword and toil at the hoe. Your Gruthungians[1710] will make fine cultivators, and tend vineyards in accordance with the seasons.’ She taunts him with degenerating from the good old habits of his race, war and plunder, and scornfully describes him as one captured[1711] by the glamour of fair dealing, who had rather live as a serf on what is granted him than as a lord on what he takes by force. In short, he is a coward. Now no doubt there were Goths and others, Huns in particular, of this war-loving work-hating type approved by the war-goddess. But abundant evidence shews that many, perhaps most, of the barbarians were quite ready to settle down in peace and produce their own food. When Claudian himself speaks[1712] of the ‘Teuton’s ploughshare’ as one of the agencies producing corn that relieved famine in Rome, he is most likely referring to the many Germans already settled in Gaul as well as to inhabitants of the ‘Germanies,’ the two provinces along the Rhine.

A curious passage[1713] in the poem on the Gothic war and Stilicho’s defeat of Alaric at Pollentia (402) is of interest in connexion with the Roman army and the recruiting system. Of the confidence revived in Rome by the appearance of Stilicho and his troops a vivid picture is drawn, and he continues ‘henceforth[1714] no more pitiful conscription, no more of reapers laying down the sickle and wielding the inglorious javelin ... nor the mean clamorous jangling of amateur leaders: no, this is the presence of a genuine manhood, a genuine commander, a scene of war in real life.’ If this means anything, it implies that hasty levies[1715] of raw countrymen were notoriously unfit to face hordes of barbarian tribesmen in the field. True, no doubt; professional training had been the basis of efficiency in Roman armies ever since the days of Marius. But the words surely suggest further that conscription within the empire was in Claudian’s time not found a success, that is in producing a supply of fit recruits to keep the legions up to strength. This also was doubtless true, as much other evidence attests, and was the main reason why the ‘Roman’ soldiery of the period were mostly barbarians. But here, as usual, the witness of the court-poet is in the form of admission rather than statement. His business was to be more Roman than Rome. It remains only to mention two similes, one of which perhaps refers to free labour. An old crone[1716] has ‘poor girls’ under her engaged in weaving. They beg for a little holiday, but she keeps them at work ‘to earn their joint livelihood.’ This may be a scene from life, but is more likely an echo from earlier poetry. When he illustrates[1717] the effect of Stilicho’s coming on the peoples rising against Rome by comparing them to slaves, deceived by false report of their lord’s death, and caught revelling by him when he unexpectedly returns, it is a scene that might be enacted in any age. The little poem on the old man of Verona is famous as a picture of humble contentment in rustic life. But the main point of it as evidence is that the case is exceptional.

LVI. VEGETIUS.

=Vegetius=, a contemporary of Ammianus and Claudian, is credited with two surviving works, one on the military system, the other on veterinary practice. Both are largely compilations, and belong to the class of technical writings which formed a great part of the literature of this age. In discussing army matters the author looks back with regret to the sounder conditions of the past. Speaking[1718] of the quality of recruits, he says ‘It can surely never have been matter of doubt that the common countryfolk are more fit (than townsfolk) to bear arms, reared as they are in toil under the open sky, able to stand the heat of the sun and caring not for the shade, with no experience of baths or knowledge of luxuries, straightforward and frugal, with limbs hardened to endure any kind of toil; for the wearing of armour, digging of trenches, and carrying their kit, are continuations of rustic habit.’ It is true that sometimes town-bred recruits have to be levied, but they need long and careful training to fit them for active service. True, the Romans of old went out to war from the city. But luxury was unknown in those days: the farmer of today was the warrior of tomorrow, by change of weapons. Cincinnatus went straight from the plough to be dictator. A little after, speaking[1719] of the standard of height, he tells us that it has always been usual to have a standard tested by actual measurement, below which no recruit was passed for service in certain crack units. But there were then[1720] larger numbers to draw from, and more men followed the combatant service, for the civil service[1721] had not as yet carried off the pick of those in military age. Therefore, if circumstances require it, strength rather than height should be the first consideration. I am loth to infer much[1722] from this passage, the period referred to in ‘then’ being undefined. What it does shew is that in the writer’s own time a considerable number of men of military age (Romans being meant) were attracted by the civil career of the new imperial service, which in all its grades was technically styled[1723] a _militia_. Nor does it appear certain that in preferring the rustic recruit to the urban Vegetius implies the existence of a plentiful supply of the former among the subjects of the empire. His words rather suggest to me the opposite conclusion, which is in agreement with the evidence from other sources.

Turning to the veterinary work (_ars mulomedicinae_) we come upon a chapter devoted[1724] to the management of horses. It is well to keep a free space near the stable for the beasts to get exercise by rolling, for they need exercise. ‘And for this end it is very helpful to have them mounted[1725] often and ridden gently. Unskilful riders spoil both their paces and their temper. Most mischievous is the recklessness[1726] of slaves. When the master is not there, they urge his horses to gallop, using spur as well as whip, in matches of speed with their mates or in fiercely-contested races against outsiders: it never occurs to them to halt or check their mounts. For they give no thought[1727] to what is their master’s loss, being well content that it falls on him. A careful owner will most strictly forbid such doings, and will only allow his cattle to be handled by suitable grooms who are gentle and understand their management.’ We must bear in mind that the horse was not used in agriculture or as an ordinary beast of burden. Horse-breeding was kept up to supply chargers for war, racers for the circus, mounts for men of the wealthier classes in hunting or occasionally for exercise, for solemn processions and such like. When Vegetius treats of a stable or stud of horses, he has in mind the establishment of a gentleman of means, and it is worth noting that such an establishment could be contemplated by a writer of about 400 AD. This harmonizes with the picture of Italian conditions that we get from the letters of Symmachus and other sources. A few rich were very rich, the many poor usually very poor. The carelessness, wastefulness, thievishness, of slaves is a very old story, and in the middle of the fourth century had been bitterly referred to[1728] by the emperor Julian. That Vegetius does not advise the owner of these slave grooms to make a _vilicus_ responsible for seeing that his orders are obeyed, is probably due to the rigidly technical character of the treatise: he is not writing on the management of estates.

CHRISTIAN WRITERS

LVII. LACTANTIUS.

When we turn to the Christian writers, whom it is convenient to take by themselves, we pass into a different atmosphere. Of rhetoric there is plenty, for most of them had been subjected to the same literary influences as their Pagan contemporaries. But there is a marked difference of spirit, more especially in one respect very important from the point of view of the present inquiry. Christianity might counsel submission to the powers that be: it might recognize slavery as an institution: it might enjoin on the slave to render something beyond eye-service to his legal master. But it could never shake off the fundamental doctrine of the equal position of all men before their Almighty Ruler, and the prospect of coming life in another world, in which the standards and privileges dominating the present one would go for nothing. Therefore a Christian writer differed from the Pagan in his attitude towards the poor and oppressed. He could sympathize with them, not as a kindly though condescending patron, but as one conscious of no abiding superiority in himself. The warmth with which the Christian witnesses speak is genuine enough. The picture may be somewhat overdrawn or too highly coloured, and we must allow for some exaggeration, but in general it is surely true to fact.

First comes =Lactantius=, who has already[1729] been once quoted. Writing under Constantine, he speaks of the Diocletian or Galerian persecution as a contemporary. The passage[1730] to be cited here describes the appalling cruelty of the fiscal exactions ordered by Galerius to meet the pressing need of the government for more money. It was after the abdication of Diocletian and Maximian in 305. The troubles that ensued had no doubt helped to render financial necessities extreme. The remark, that he now practised against all men the lessons of cruelty learnt in tormenting the Christians, must refer to Galerius. The account of the census[1731], presumably that of 307, is as follows. ‘What brought disaster on the people and mourning on all alike, was the sudden letting loose of the census on the provinces and cities. Census-officers, sparing nothing, spread all over the land, and the scenes were such as when an enemy invades a country and enslaves the inhabitants. There was measuring of fields clod by clod, counting of vines and fruit trees, cataloguing of every sort of animals, recording of the human[1732] heads. In the municipalities (_civitatibus_) the common folk of town and country put on the same[1733] footing, everywhere the market-place crammed with the households assembled, every householder with his children and slaves. The sounds of scourging and torturing filled the air. Sons were being strung up to betray parents; all the most trusty slaves tortured to give evidence against their masters, and wives against husbands. If all these means had failed, men were tortured for evidence against themselves, and when they broke down under the stress of pain they were credited with admissions[1734] never made by them. No plea of age or infirmity availed them: informations were laid against the invalids and cripples: the ages of individuals were recorded by guess, years added to those of the young and subtracted from those of the old. All the world was filled with mourning and grief.’ In short, Romans and Roman subjects were dealt with as men of old dealt with conquered foes. ‘The next step was the paying[1735] of moneys for heads, a ransom for a life. But the whole business was not entrusted to the same body of officials (_censitoribus_); one batch was followed by others, who were expected to make further discoveries: a continual doubling of demands went on, not that they discovered more, but that they made additions arbitrarily, for fear they might seem to have been sent to no purpose. All the while the numbers of live stock were falling, and mankind dying; yet none the less tribute was being paid on behalf of the dead, for one had to pay for leave to live or even to die. The only survivors were the beggars from whom nothing could be wrung, immune for the time from wrongs of any sort by their pitiful destitution.’ He goes on to declare that, in order to prevent evasion of the census on pretence of indigence, a number of these poor wretches were taken out to sea and drowned.

In this picture[1736] we may reasonably detect high colouring and perhaps downright exaggeration. Probably the grouping together of horrors reported piecemeal from various quarters has given to the description as a whole a somewhat deceptive universality. That the imperial system, though gradually losing ground, held its own against unorganized barbarism for several more centuries, seems proof positive that no utter destruction of the economic fabric took place in the census to which Lactantius refers. But that the pressure exerted by the central power, and the responsive severity of officials, were extreme, and that the opportunities for extortion were seized and cruelly used, may fairly be taken for fact on his authority. This was not the beginning of sufferings to the unhappy tillers of the soil, nor was it the end. One census might be more ruinous to their wellbeing than another: it was always exhausting, and kept the farmers in terror. But they had not as yet reached the stage of thinking it better to bear the yoke of barbarian chieftains than to remain under the corrupt and senseless maladministration of imperial Rome.

LVIII. SULPICIUS SEVERUS.

The life and doings of the famous saint of Gaul, Martin of Tours, a Pannonian by birth, were chronicled by =Sulpicius Severus=, writing soon after 400, in an enthusiastic biography still in existence. In another work occurs a passage[1737] narrating one of his hero’s many miracles; and the story is too artlessly illustrative of the behaviour of the military and the state of things on the public roads, not to be mentioned here. Martin was travelling on his ecclesiastical duties, riding on an ass with friends in company. The rest being for a moment detained, Martin went on alone for a space. Just then a government car (_fiscalis raeda_) occupied by a party of soldiers was coming along the road. The mules drawing it shied at the unfamiliar figure of the saint in his rough and dark dress. They got entangled in their harness, and the difficulty of disentangling them infuriated the soldiers, who were in a hurry. Down they jumped and fell upon Martin with whips and staves. He said not a word, but took their blows with marvellous patience, and his apparent indifference only enraged them the more. His companions picked him up all battered and bloody, and were hastening to quit the scene of the assault, when the soldiers, on trying to make a fresh start, were the victims of a miracle. No amount of beating would induce the mules to stir. Supernatural influence was suspected and made certain by discovery of the saint’s identity. Abject repentance was followed by gracious forgiveness, and mules and soldiers resumed their journey. Now the point of interest to us is the matter-of-fact way in which this encounter is narrated. That a party of the military should bully peaceful civilians on the high road is too commonplace an event to evoke any special comment or censure. But it is clearly an edifying fact that violence offered to a holy man did not escape divine punishment. There is no suggestion that similar brutality to an ordinary rustic would have met with any punishment human or divine. Laws framed for the protection of provincials[1738] against illegal exactions and to prevent encroachments of the military[1739] remained on the statute-book, but in remote country parts they were dead letters. It is interesting to recall that Martin had in his youth served for some years as a soldier. As the son of a veteran, his enrolment[1740] came in the ordinary course. But, though he is said to have been efficient, he did not like the profession and got his discharge with relief. His life covered about the last three quarters of the fourth century.

LIX. SALVIAN.

The calamities that befel the Roman world in the fourth century led to much recrimination between Pagan and Christian, each blaming the other for misfortunes generally regarded as the signal expression of divine wrath. Symmachus had been answered by Ambrose, and Christian interpretation of the course of human history produced its classic in Augustine’s great work _de civitate Dei_ early in the fifth century. About the same time Orosius wrote his earnest but grotesque _historiae adversus paganos_, an arbitrary and superficial distortion of history, interesting as a specimen of partisan composition. But it is not till the middle of the century that we come upon a Christian author who gives us a graphic picture of the sufferings of the people in a Province of the empire, and a working theory of their causes, strictly from a pious Christian’s point of view. This is =Salvian=, an elder of the Church at Massalia. His evidence is cited by all historians, and must be repeated here. The main thesis is that all the woes and calamities of the age are judgments of God provoked by the gross immorality[1741] of the Roman world. So far from imputing all vices and crimes to the Heathen and the Pagan, he regards them as shared by all men: but he draws a sharp line between those who sin in ignorance, knowing no better, and those who profess the principles of a pure Christianity and yet sin against the light that is in them. For the barbarians are either Heathen or Heretics (he is thinking of the Arians), while in the empire the Orthodox church prevails. And yet the barbarians prosper, while the empire decays. Why? simply because even in their religious darkness the barbarians are morally superior to the Romans. For our present purpose it is the economic and social phenomena as depicted by Salvian that are of interest, and I proceed to give an abstract of the passage[1742] in which he expounds his indictment of Roman administration and the corrupt influences by which it is perverted from the promotion of prosperity and happiness to a cause of misery and ruin.

The all-pervading canker is the oppression of the poor by the rich. The heavy burdens of taxation are thrown upon the poor. When any relief is granted, it is intercepted by the rich. Franks Huns Vandals and Goths will have none of these iniquities, and Romans living among those barbarians also escape them. Hence the stream of migration sets from us to them, not from them to us. Indeed our poor folk would migrate in a body, but for the difficulty of transferring their few goods their poor hovels and their families. This drives them to take another course. They put themselves under the guardianship and protection of more powerful persons, surrendering[1743] to the rich like prisoners of war, and so to speak passing under their full authority and control. But this protection is made a pretext for spoliation. For the first condition of protection is the assignation[1744] of practically their whole substance to their protectors: the children’s inheritance is sacrificed to pay for the protection of their parents. The bargain is cruel and one-sided, a monstrous and intolerable wrong. For most of these poor wretches, stripped of their little belongings and expelled from their little farms, though they have lost their property, have still to bear the tribute on the properties lost: the possession is withdrawn, but the assessment[1745] remains: the ownership is gone, but the burden of taxation is crushing them still. The effects of this evil are incalculable. The intruders (_pervasores_) are settled down (_incubant_) on their properties, while they, poor souls, are paying the tributes on the intruders’ behalf. And this condition passes on to their children. So they who have been despoiled by the intrusion[1746] of individuals are being done to death by the pressure of the state (_publica adflictione_), and their livelihood is taken from them by squeezing as their property was by robbery. Some, wiser or taught by necessity, losing their homes and little farms through intrusions or driven by the tax-gatherers to abandon them through inability to keep them, find their way to the estates of the powerful, and become[1747] serf-tenants (_coloni_) of the rich. Like fugitives from the enemy or the law, not able to retain their social birthright, they bow themselves[1748] to the mean lot of mere sojourners: cast out of property and position, they have nothing left to call their own, and are no longer their own masters. Nay, it is even worse. For though they are admitted (to the rich men’s estates) as strangers (_advenae_), residence operates to make them[1749] natives of the place. They are transformed as by a Circe’s cup. The lord of the place, who admitted them as outside[1750] aliens, begins to treat them as his own (_proprios_): and so men of unquestioned free birth are being turned into slaves. When we are putting our brethren into bondage, is it strange[1751] that the barbarians are making bondsmen of us?

This is something beyond[1752] mere partisan polemic. It finds the source of misery and weakness in moral decay. Highly coloured, the picture is surely none the less true. The degradation of the rustic population presents itself in two stages. First, the farmer, still owning his little farm (_agellus_, _rescula_), finds that, what with legal burdens and illegal extortions, his position is intolerable. So he seeks the protection[1753] of a powerful neighbour, who exploits his necessities. Apparently he acquires control of the poor man’s land, but contrives to do it in such a form as to leave him still liable to payment of the imperial dues. That this iniquity was forbidden[1754] by law mattered not: corrupt officials shut their eyes to the doings of the rich. From the _curiales_ of the several communities no help was to be looked for. Salvian declares[1755] that they were tyrants to a man. And we must not forget that they themselves were forced into office and held responsible for paying in full the dues they were required to collect. The great machine ground all, and its cruel effects were passed on from stronger to weaker, till the peasant was reached and crushed by burdens that he could not transmit to others. The second stage is the inevitable sequel. The poor man’s lot is more intolerable than before. His lesson is learnt, and he takes the final step into the status of a rich man’s _colonus_. Henceforth his lord is liable[1756] for his dues, but he is himself the lord’s serf, bound to the soil on which his lord places him, nominally free, but unable to stir from the spot[1757] to which his labour gives a value. If he runs away, the hue and cry follows him, and he is brought ignominiously back to the servile punishment that awaits him—unless he can make his way to some barbarian tribe. Whether he would find himself so much better off in those surroundings as Salvian seems to imply, must be left doubtful. Any family that he might leave behind would remain in serfage under conditions hardly improved by his desertion.

LX. APOLLINARIS SIDONIUS.

The last of our array of witnesses is =Apollinaris Sidonius=[1758] (about 430-480), a writer whose life is singularly illustrative of the confused period in which the Roman empire was tottering and the series of luckless emperors was ended in the West. Britain had been finally lost in the time of Honorius. The Armorican provinces had rebelled, and even now the hold of Rome on them was slight and precarious. The rest of Gaul and much of Spain and Africa had been subject to barbarian inroads, and numbers of the invaders were settled in the country: for instance, the Western Goths were fully established in Aquitania. But the Roman civilization was by no means wiped out. Roman landlords still owned large estates: Romans of culture still peddled with a degenerate rhetoric and exchanged their compositions for mutual admiration. Panegyrics on shadowy emperors were still produced in verse and prose, and the modern reader may often be amazed to note the way in which the troubles of the time could be complacently ignored. Above all, there was the Church, closely connected with Rome, claiming to be Catholic and Orthodox, a stable organization, able to make itself respected by the barbarians. That the latter were Arian heretics was indeed a cause of friction, though the Arians were destined to go under. The conversion of the Franks under the Catholic form did not give Roman Christianity the upper hand till 496. But the power of bishops, ever growing[1759] since the days of Constantine, was throughout a powerful influence holding the various communities together, maintaining law and order, and doing much for the protection of their own people. A native of Lugudunum, the chief city of Gaul, Sidonius came of a noble and wealthy family, and his social position evidently helped him in his remarkable career. In 468 he was city prefect at Rome, barely eight years before Odovacar removed the last of the titular Western emperors. We find him anxiously concerned[1760] with the old food-question, like his predecessor Symmachus, and not less endeavouring to cooperate harmoniously with the _praefectus annonae_. For a hungry rabble, no doubt fewer in number, still hung about the Eternal city, though its services in the way of applause were no longer in appreciable demand.

From about 471 Sidonius was bishop[1761] of Arverni (Clermont in Auvergne), and performed his difficult duties with efficiency and dignity, a sincerely pious man with a good deal of the _grand seigneur_ about him. Moving about on duty or seeking restful change, he was often visiting country houses, his own or those of friends, receiving or returning hospitality. His references to these visits lead to descriptions[1762] of many pleasant places, and pictures of life in the society of cultivated gentlemen to which he belonged. There is hardly any mention of the suffering farmers of whom Salvian speaks so eloquently. Yet I hesitate to charge Salvian with gross exaggeration and imaginative untruth. Not only do the two men look from different points of view. Sidonius is writing some twenty years later than Salvian, and much had happened in the meantime. The defeat of Attila in 451 by the armies of the Romans and Western Goths had not only saved Gaul from the Huns, but had greatly improved the relations between Goth and Roman. And it is to be noted that, in a passage[1763] mentioning the victory of the allies and the reception of Thorismund the Gothic king as a guest at Lugudunum, Sidonius praises his correspondent[1764] for his share in lightening the burdens of the landowners. Now Salvian knows nothing of the battle of 451, and indeed does not regard the Huns as being necessarily enemies of Rome. It seems certain that for the rustics things were changed for the better. Not that the farmer was his own master, but that the great Roman taxing-machine was no longer in effective action. A great part of Gaul had passed under Teutonic lords. If the subjects were exposed to their caprice, it was of a more personal character, varying with individuals and likely to be modified by their personal qualities. This was a very different thing from the pressure of the Roman official hierarchy, the lower grades of which were themselves squeezed to satisfy the demands of the higher, and not in a position to spare their victims, however merciful their own inclinations might be.

But though the establishment of barbarian kingdoms, once the raiding invasions were over, had its good side from the working farmer’s point of view, much of the old imperial system still lingered on. The power of the Catholic Church stood in the way of complete revolution, and the Church was already[1765] a landowner. Roman traditions died hard, and among them it is interesting to note the exertion of private interest on behalf of individuals and causes in which an honourable patron felt some concern. Thus we find Sidonius writing[1766] on behalf of a friend who wants to buy back an ancestral estate with which recent troubles have compelled him to part. Great stress is laid on the point that the man is not grasping at pecuniary profit but actuated by sentimental considerations: in short, the transaction proposed is not a commercial one. The person addressed is entreated to use his influence[1767] in the applicant’s favour; and we can only infer that he is asked to put pressure on the present owner to part with the property, probably to take for it less than the market price. Another letter[1768] is to a bishop, into whose district (_territorium_) the bearer, a deacon, fled for refuge to escape a Gothic raid. There he scratched a bit of church-land and sowed a little corn. He wants to get in his crop without deductions. The bishop is asked to treat him with the consideration usually shewn to the faithful[1769]; that is, not to require of him the season’s rent[1770]. If this favour is granted him, the squatter reckons that he will do as well as if he were farming in his own district, and will be duly grateful. Very likely a fair request, but Sidonius does not leave it to the mere sense of fairness in a brother bishop. To another bishop he writes a long letter[1771] of thanks for his thoughtful munificence. After the devastation of a Gothic raid, further damage had been suffered by fires among the crops. The ensuing distress affected many parts of Gaul, and to relieve it this worthy sent far and wide bountiful gifts of corn. The happy results of his action have earned the gratitude of numerous cities, and Sidonius is the mouthpiece of his own Arverni. The affair illustrates the beneficence of good ecclesiastics in troubled times. For Gaul was not enjoying tranquil repose. The barbarians were restless, and the relations[1772] between their kings and the failing empire were not always friendly. Religious differences too played a part in preventing the coalescence of Gallo-Roman and Teuton. The good bishop just referred to is praised by Sidonius as a successful converter of heretics.

The fine country houses with their vineyards and oliveyards and general atmosphere of comfort and plenty shew plainly that the invasions and raids had not desolated all the countryside. The first need of the invaders was food. Wanton destruction was not in their own interest, and the requisitioning of food-stuffs was probably their chief offence, naturally resented by those who had sown and reaped for their own consumption. If we admit this supposition, it follows that their operations, like those of other successful invaders, would be directed mainly to the lowland districts, where most of the food-stuffs were produced. Now the country houses of Sidonius and his friends were, at least most of them, situated in hilly country, often at a considerable distance from the main[1773] roads, among pleasant surroundings which these kindly and cultivated gentlemen were well qualified to enjoy. It is evident that some, perhaps many, of these snug retreats were not seriously[1774] molested, at all events in southern and south-eastern Gaul. Roughly speaking, the old and most thoroughly Romanized provinces, the chief cities of which were Lugudunum and Narbo, were still seats (indeed the chief seats) of Roman civilization. It was there that the culture of the age survived in literary effort sedulously feeding on the products and traditions of the past. Sidonius thinks it a pity[1775] that men of education and refinement should be disposed to bury their talents and capacity for public service in rural retreats, whether suburban or remote. The truth probably was that town life had ceased to be attractive to men unconcerned in trade and not warmly interested in religious partisanship. The lord of a country manor, surrounded by his dependants, could fill his store-rooms and granaries[1776] with the produce of their labour. He still had slaves[1777] to wait on him, sometimes even to work on the land. With reasonable kindliness and care on his part, he could be assured of comfort and respect, the head of a happy rustic community. The mansions of these gentry, sometimes architecturally[1778] fine buildings, were planted in spots chosen for local advantages, and the library was almost as normal a part of the establishment as the larder. Some of the owners of these places gave quite as much of their time and attention to literary trifling as to the management of their estates. The writing of letters, self-conscious and meant for publication, after the example of Pliny the younger, was a practice of Sidonius. The best specimen of this kind is perhaps the long epistle[1779] in which he describes minutely a place among the foot-hills of the Alps. Every attraction of nature seconded by art is particularized, down to the drowsy tinkling of the bells on the mountain flocks accompanied by the shepherd’s pipe. No doubt the effective agriculture[1780] of Gaul had little in common with these Arcadian scenes. The toiling _coloni_, serfs of a barbarian chief or a Roman noble, were all the while producing the food needed to support the population; and it is a convincing proof of the superficiality of Sidonius as an observer of his age that he practically ignores them.

To attempt a full description of society in Roman Gaul of the fifth century is quite beyond my scope. It has already been admirably done by Sir Samuel Dill. But there are a few points remaining to be discussed as relevant to my subject. That the decline of the middle class, and the passing of large areas of land into few hands, was a process forwarded by inability to pay debts incurred, is extremely probable. It had been going on for many centuries. But I do not see that the evidence of Sidonius suggests that this evil was in his time especially prevalent. The case cited[1781] is peculiar. The borrower is expressly stated not to have mortgaged any of his land. The loan was only secured by a written bond which fixed the interest[1782] at 12% per annum. This had been ten years in arrear, and the total debt was now doubled. The debtor fell ill, and pressure was put on him by officials employed to collect debts. I infer that the lack of real security prompted this dunning of a sick man, for fear the personal security might lapse by his death. Sidonius, a friend of the creditor, undertook to plead with him for at least some stay of action. This man had lately been ordained, and Sidonius (not yet himself in orders, I think,) was evidently surprised to note the simple religious life led by him in his country villa. And he needed little entreaty, but acted up to what he considered his duty to a brother Christian. He not only granted further time for payment, but remitted the whole of the accrued interest, claiming only the principal sum lent. Such conduct may have been, and probably was, exceptional; but I cannot argue from it that heartless usurers were eating up the small landowners of Gaul.

So too the case of the young man[1783] of good position who cast off a slave mistress and wedded a young lady of good family, reputation, and property, may have been exceptional. Sidonius takes it all very coolly, and mildly improves the occasion. A far more interesting affair is one in a lower station of life, of which I must say a few words. In a brief letter[1784] to his friend Pudens he says ‘The son of your nurse has raped my nurse’s daughter: it is a shocking business, and would have made bad blood between you and me, only that I saw at once you did not know what to do in the matter. You begin by clearing yourself of connivance, and then condescend to ask me to condone a fault committed in hot passion. This I grant, but only on these terms, that you release[1785] the ravisher from the status of a Sojourner, to which he belongs by birth; thus becoming his patron instead of his lord. The woman is free already. And to give her the position of a wedded wife, and not the plaything of caprice, there is but one way. Our scamp for whom you intercede must become your Client[1786] and cease to be a Tributary, thus acquiring the quality of an ordinary Commoner rather than that of a Serf.’ Sidonius is as usual ready to make the best[1787] of a bad job. From his proposal I draw the following conclusions. First, as to the nurses. The _nutrix_, like the Greek τροφός, held a position of trust and respect in the household, consecrated by immemorial tradition. No slave had a higher claim to manumission, if she desired it. It would seem that Sidonius’ ‘mammy’ was ending her days as a freedwoman, and hence her daughter was free. It looks as if the nurse of Pudens were still a slave, and her son an _inquilinus_ on the estate of Pudens. He may very well have been tenant of a small holding, practically a serf-tenant. Pudens is still his _dominus_. His quality of _inquilinus_ attaches to him in virtue of his _origo_; that is, he is registered in the census-books[1788] as a human unit belonging to a particular estate and taken into account in estimating taxation-units. Therefore he is _tributarius_[1789]. Sidonius proposes to divest him of the character of serf and make him an ordinary Roman citizen. The difference this would make is probably a purely legal one. Being at present a Serf, probably in strict law a slave also, his connexion with the girl is a _contubernium_. His manumission[1790] (for such it really is) will enable him to convert it into a _matrimonium_, carrying the usual legal responsibilities. The practical change in his economic position will probably be nil. He will still remain a dependent _colonus_, but he may perhaps enjoy the privilege of paying his own share[1791] of taxes. That Sidonius speaks of his present condition first as Inquilinate and then as Colonate, is one of many proofs that the two terms now connoted virtually[1792] the same thing. Such had already been stated as a fact in a law of Honorius, which was retained by Tribonian in the code of Justinian. Whether the _inquilini_ were barbarian bondsmen (_hörige_), tenants bound to the soil like _coloni_ but the personal property of their landlords, as Seeck holds; or usually descendants of _coloni_, as Weber thought; is more than I can venture to decide. I do not think that either hypothesis[1793] exhausts all the possibilities, and the point is not material to the present inquiry. In any case it can hardly be doubted that both classes consisted of men who worked with their own hands, only aided in some cases by slave labour which was far from easy to procure.

LXI. CONCLUDING CHAPTER.

After so long a discussion of the surviving evidence, it is time to sum up the results and see to what conclusions the inquiry leads us in respect of the farm life and labour of the Greco-Roman world. And first as to the figures of the picture, the characters with whose position and fortunes we are concerned. We find three classes, owner farmer labourer, clearly marked though not so as to be mutually exclusive. We can only begin with ownership in some form, however rudimentary; for the claim to resist encroachment on a more or less ill-defined area is a phenomenon of even the rude life of hunter-tribes. How private property grew out of common ownership is a question beyond the range of the present inquiry. It is enough that the owner, whether a clan or a family or an individual, has a recognized right to use the thing owned (here land) and to debar others from doing so. But it is clear that he may also be the actual manager of its use: he may even supply in person all the labour needed for turning it to account: in short, he may be his own farmer and his own labourer. And legend asserts or implies that such was the primitive condition of man when he passed from nomadic to settled existence. Differentiation of function is therefore a product of time and circumstance, a development varying in date and degree among various races and in various portions of the world. Once the stage of civilization is reached at which the regular cultivation of the same piece of land year by year is the normal means of sustaining human life, we meet the simplest economic figure, the peasant who supplies his own needs by his own methods, tilling the soil which in some sense he claims as his own. Whether it is his own permanently as an individual, or temporarily as a member of a village community, is a difference immaterial from the present point of view. Nor does it matter that his method of dealing with the land may be regulated by principles conventional in the society to which he belongs.

Delegation of management is a momentous step, destined to bring important unforeseen consequences. Many reasons may have rendered it necessary or at least convenient. It appears in two forms, the actual and relative dates of which are hardly to be determined with certainty. Either the owner keeps the profit of the undertaking and bears the loss, or some division of profit and loss between the owner and the manager is the condition of the arrangement between the two parties. Ownership is not abdicated: nor is it easy to see how, without a clear recognition of ownership, any system of delegation could arise. But on the first plan the owner owns not only the land but the service of his delegate. Whether the man be a client bound to his patron by social custom, or an agent earning a wage, or a slave the property of his master, he is merely a servant in charge. He can be superseded at any moment at the landowner’s will. The free tenant on the other hand is a creature of contract, and his existence presupposes a community in which the sanctity of deliberate bargains is considerably developed. Whether the tenant’s obligation consists in the payment of a fixed rent in money or kind, or in a share of produce varying with the season’s crop, does not matter. He is bound by special law, however rudimentary; and it is the interest of the community to see that such law is kept in force: for no one would enter into such bargains if their fulfilment were not reasonably assured. Whether a certain reluctance to enter into such a relation may perhaps account for the rare and doubtful appearance of tenancy in early Roman tradition, or whether it is to be set down simply to defects of record, I do not venture to decide. The landlord’s obligation is to allow his tenant the enjoyment and free use of a definite piece of land on certain terms for a stipulated period. Further stipulations, giving him the right to insist on proper cultivation and the return of the land in good condition at the end of the tenancy, were doubtless soon added at the dictation of experience. That tenant farmers with their families usually supplied labour as well as management, is surely not to be doubted. That, in the times when we begin to hear of this class as non-exceptional, they also employed slave labour, is attested: that we do not hear of them as engaging free wage-earners, may or may not be an accidental omission.

Labour, simply as labour, without regard to the possible profit or loss attending its results, was no more an object of desire, engaged in for its own sake, in ancient times than it is now. Domestication of animals, a step implying much attentive care and trouble, was a great advance in the direction of securing a margin of profit on which mankind could rely for sustenance and comfort. The best instance is perhaps that of the ox, whose services, early exploited to the full, were cheaply obtained at the cost of his rearing and keep. Hence he was kept. But in ages of conflict, when might was right, the difference[1794] between an ox-servant and a man-servant had in practice no existence, and the days of theory were as yet in the far future. A human enemy, captured and spared, could be put to use in the same way as a domesticated ox. His labour, minus the cost of his keep, left a margin of profit to his owner. At the moment of capture, his life was all he had: therefore his conqueror had deprived him of nothing, and the bargain was in his favour, though economically in his owner’s interest. No wonder then that our earliest records attest the presence of the slave. Even nomad tribes were attended by slaves[1795] in their migrations, nor indeed has this custom been wholly unknown in modern times. On the other hand it is remarkable how very little we hear of wage-earning labour in ancient agriculture. Nothing seems to imply that it was ever a normal resource of cultivation. When employed, it is almost always for special work at seasons of pressure, and it seems to have remained on this footing, with a general tendency to decline. In other words, the margin of profit on the results of wage-earning labour seemed to employers less than that on the results of slave labour, so far as ordinary routine was concerned. And we are not in a position to shew that in their given circumstances their judgment was wrong. But we need to form some notion of the position of the wage-earning labourer in a civilization still primitive.

The main point ever to be borne in mind is that the family household was a close union of persons bound together by ties of blood and religion under a recognized Head. A common interest in the family property carried with it the duty of common labour. The domestic stamp was on everything done and designed. Even the slave had a humble place in the family life, and family religion did not wholly ignore him. He was there, and was meant to stay there. Farm-work was the chief item in the duties of the household, and he bore, and was meant to bear, his full share of it. But the hired labourer stood in no such relation to the household union, however friendly his connexion with his employer might be. He did his work, took his wage, and went: no tie was severed by his going, and any other person of like capacity could fill his place if and when the need for help-service arose. In short, his labour was non-domestic, irregular, occasional: and therefore less likely to receive notice in such records as have come down to us. But if we conclude (as I am inclined to do) that wage-labour was not much employed on the land in early times, we must admit that this is rather an inference than an attested tradition.

The distinction between domestic regular service and non-domestic help-service is essential, and on a small holding from which a family raised its own sustenance the line of division was easy to draw. Later economic changes tended to obscure it, and we find Roman jurists[1796] of the Empire striving to discover a full and satisfactory answer to a much later question, namely the distinction between a domestic and a rustic slave. But by that time ‘domestic’ appears as ‘urban,’ for the effect of centuries has been to draw a really important line of division, not between slave and free but between two classes of slaves. There is however in the conditions of early slavery, when ‘domestic’ and ‘rustic’ were merely two aspects of the same thing, another point not to be overlooked, since it probably had no little influence on the development of human bondage. It is this. The human slave differs from the domesticated ox through possession of what we call reason. If he wished to escape, he was capable of forming deep-laid plans for that purpose. Now the captives in border wars would be members of neighbouring tribes. If enslaved, the fact of being still within easy reach of their kindred was a standing temptation to run away, sure as they would be of a welcome in their former homes. No kindness, no watchfulness, on the master’s part would suffice to deaden or defeat such an influence. To solve the problem thus created, a way was found by disposing of captives to aliens more remote and getting slaves brought from places still further away. This presupposes some commercial intercourse. In the early Greek tradition we meet with this slave-trade at work as a branch of maritime traffic chiefly in the hands of Phoenician seamen. In Italy we find a trace of it in the custom[1797] of selling ‘beyond Tiber,’ that is into alien Etruria. At what stage of civilization exactly this practice became established it is rash to guess: we cannot get behind it. The monstrous slave-markets of the historical periods shew that it developed into a normal institution of the ancient world. But it is not unreasonable to suppose that an alien from afar was less easily absorbed into his master’s family circle than a man of a neighbouring community though of another tribe. Are we to see in this the germ of a change by which the house-slave became less ‘domestic’ and tended to become a human chattel?

The exploitation of some men’s labour for the maintenance of others could and did take another form in ages of continual conflict. Successful invaders did not always drive out or destroy the earlier inhabitants of a conquered land. By retaining them as subjects to till the soil, and making the support of their rulers the first charge upon their produce, the conquerors provided for their own comfort and became a leisured noble class. In the Greek world we find such aristocracies of a permanently military character, as in Laconia and Thessaly. Colonial expansion reproduced the same or very similar phenomena abroad, as in the cases of Heraclea Pontica and Syracuse. The serfdom of such subject populations was a very different thing[1798] from slavery. It had nothing domestic about it. There is no reason to suppose that the serf was under any constraint beyond the regular performance of certain fixed duties, conditions imposed by the state on its subjects, not the personal orders of an individual owner. In some cases at least the serf seems to have enjoyed a measure of protection[1799] under public law. Whether the original Roman _plebs_ stood on much the same footing as the Greek serfs is perhaps doubtful, but their condition presents certain analogies. The main truth is that the desire of conquerors to profit by the labour of the conquered was and is an appetite almost universal: moral revulsion against crude forms of this exploitation is of modern, chiefly English, origin; even now it is in no small degree a lesson from the economic experience of ages. But it is well to remember that we use ‘serfdom’ also as the name for the condition of rural peasantry in the later Roman Empire, and that this again is a different relation. For it is not a case of conquered people serving their conquerors. Rather is it an affliction of those who by blood or franchise represent the conquering people. Step by step they sink under the loss of effective freedom, though nominally free, bound down by economic and social forces; influences that operate with the slow certainty of fate until their triumph is finally registered by imperial law.

That the institution of Property is a matter of slow growth, is now generally admitted by sincere inquirers. It had reached a considerable stage of development when a clan or household (still more when an individual) was recognized as having an exclusive right to dispose of this or that material object presumably useful to others also. For instance, in the right of an owner to do as he would with an ox or a slave. Individual property in land was certainly a later development, the appropriation being effected by a combination of personal acquisitiveness with economic convenience. From my present point of view the chief interest of the property-question is in its connexion with debt-slavery. That farmers, exposed to the vicissitudes of seasons, are peculiarly liable to incur debts, is well known from experience ancient and modern. But ancient Law, if rudimentary, was also rigid; and tradition depicts for us the small peasant as a victim of the wealthy whose larger capital enabled them to outlast the pressure of bad times. How far the details of this picture are to be taken literally as evidence of solid fact has not unreasonably been doubted. But that a farmer in straits could pledge not only his land but his person as security for a debt seems hardly open to question. For we find the practice still existing in historical periods, and political pressure exerted to procure mitigation of the ancient severity. Now, if a man gave himself in bondage to a creditor until such time as his debt should be discharged, he became that creditor’s slave for a period that might only end with his own life. Here we have another way in which the man of property could get the disposal of regular labour without buying a slave in the market or turning to work himself. A later form of the practice, in which a debtor worked off his liability[1800] by service at an estimated rate, a method of liquidation by the accumulation of unpaid wages, seems to have been a compromise avoiding actual slavery. Evidently subsequent to the abolition of debt-slavery, it died out in Italy, perhaps partly owing to the troublesome friction that would surely arise in enforcing the obligation.

It is natural to ask, if we find small trace of eagerness to labour in person on the land, and ample tradition of readiness to devolve that labour on slaves and subjects, how comes it that we find agriculture in honour, traditionally regarded as the manual labour beyond all others not unworthy of a freeman? To reply that human life is supported by the produce of the land is no sufficient answer. To recognize the fact of necessity does not account for the sentiment of dignity. Now, in the formation of such unions as may fairly be called States, the commonest if not universal phenomenon is the connexion of full citizenship with ownership of land. Political movement towards democracy is most significantly expressed in the struggles of landless members of inferior right to gain political equality. Whether the claim is for allotments of land, carrying a share of voting-power, or for divorcing the voting-power from landholding, does not matter much here. At any rate it was the rule that no alien could own land within the territory of the state, and state and territory were coextensive. Only special treaties between states, or a solemn act of the sovran power in a state, could create exceptions to the rule. From this situation I would start in attempting to find some answer to the above question. In a village community I think it is generally agreed that all true members had a share of the produce, the great majority as cultivators, holding lots of land, not as tenants at will or by contract, but in their own right, though the parcels might be allotted differently from time to time. If a few craftsmen were left to specialize in necessary trades for the service of all, and drew their share in the form of sustenance provided by the cultivating members, the arrangement presented no insuperable difficulty on a small scale. But the tillers of the soil were the persons on whose exertions the life of the community primarily and obviously depended. The formation of a larger unit, a State, probably by some successful warrior chief, made a great change in the situation. A city stronghold established a centre of state life and government, and villages exchanged the privileges and perils of isolation for the position of local hamlets attached to the common centre of the state, and in this new connexion developing what we may fairly call political consciousness. Under the new dispensation, what with growth of markets, the invention of coined money, and greater general security, the movement towards individual property proceeded fast. Noble families engrossed much of the best land: and tradition[1801] credibly informs us that in one mode or other they imposed the labour of cultivation on the poorer citizens, of course on very onerous terms.

At this point in the inquiry some help may be got from taking the military view. War, at least defensive war, was a possibility ever present. Kings, and the aristocracies that followed them, had as their prime function to secure the safety of the state. A sort of regular force was provided by the obligation of army service that rested upon all full citizens. The warrior nobles and their kinsmen formed a nucleus. But the free peasant farmers were indispensable in the ranks, and, as their farms usually lay near the frontier, they furnished a hardy and willing militia for border warfare. The craftsmen, smith potter cobbler etc, were now more concentrated in the city, and were always regarded as ill-fitted for service in the field. Naturally the classes that bore a direct part in defence of the state stood higher in general esteem. But to say this is not to say that bodily labour on the land was, as labour, honoured for its own sake. The honour belonged to those who, owning land, either worked it with their own hands or employed the labour of others. I can find no trace of traditional respect for the labourer as labourer until a much later age, when a dearth of free rustic labourers had begun to be felt. Then it appeared in the form of yearning[1802] for a vanished past, side by side with humanitarian views in relation to slavery. Meanwhile a stage had been traversed in which slavery was recognized as necessary in spite of its admitted evils, and therefore requiring justification; a movement most clearly illustrated by the special pleading of Aristotle. That great writer was fully alive to the manifold merits of the farmer class as citizens and producers, but his trust in the power of self-interest proves him a confirmed individualist. How to combine self-interest with patriotic devotion to the common welfare is the vital problem, even now only solved ideally on paper. That coldly-reasoned conclusions of thinkers were really the foundation of the esteem in which we find the working farmer held, I cannot believe. Much more likely is it that it sprang mainly from immemorial tradition of a time when ownership and cultivation went together, and that theory merely absorbed and revived what was still an indistinct impression in the minds of men.

The Greeks had a significant word, ἀυτουργός, the usage of which may serve to illustrate my meaning. That it connotes the fact of a man’s bearing a personal part in this or that work is clear on the face of it. That no other person also bears a part, is sometimes implied by the context, but it is not necessarily contained in the word itself. To put it differently, he does his own work, not necessarily all his own work. I note two points in connexion with it that seem to me important. First, it is so often used as descriptive of rustic labour that it seems to have carried with it associations of farm-life: most of the other uses are almost metaphorical, some distinctly so. Secondly, I have never found it applied to the case of a slave. Why? I think, because it conveyed the further notion of working not only yourself but for yourself. If in some passages it is not quite certain that an owner (rather than a tenant) is referred to, surely this extension of meaning is not such as to cause surprise. It is not enough to suggest serious doubt that the common and full sense of the word was that a man did work with his own hands on his own account on his own land. This was the character to which immemorial tradition pointed; and, whenever tenancy under landlords began, the word fitted the working tenant-farmer well enough. The Romans had the tradition in the most definite form, though Latin furnished no equivalent word. Their literature, moralizing by examples and unapt for theory, used it as material for centuries. But neither in the Greek world nor in Italy can I detect any reason for believing that the peasant farmer, idealized by later ages, is rightly to be conceived as a person unwilling to employ slave labour—if and when he could get it. The tradition, in which rustic slaves appear from very early times, seems to me far more credible than late legends of a primitive golden age in which there were no slaves at all. That a man, to be enslaved, must first have been free, is a piece of speculation with which I am not here concerned.

Tradition then, looking back to times when landowner and citizen were normally but different sides of the same character, both terms alike implying the duty of fighting for the state, idealized and glorified this character with great but pardonable exaggeration of virtues probably not merely fictitious. The peasant citizen and producer was its hero. As the devolution of bodily labour upon slaves or hirelings became more common with the increase of commerce and urban life, and the solid worth of a patriot peasantry became more evident in the hour of its decay, men turned with regret to the past. And the contrast of the real present with an idealized past naturally found a significant difference in the greater or less willingness of men to work with their own hands, particularly on the land. But it was the labour of free citizens, each bearing an active part in the common responsibilities of the state and enjoying its common protection, that was glorified, not labour as in itself meritorious or healthy. The wholesomeness of rustic toil was not ignored, but to urge it as a motive for bodily exertion was a notion developed by town-bred thinkers. That it coloured later tradition is not wonderful: its recognition is most clearly expressed in the admission of superior ‘corporal soundness’ in the sparely-fed and hard-worked slave or wage-earner. But labour as labour was never, so far as I can learn, dignified and respected in Greco-Roman civilization. Poverty, not choice, might compel a man to do all his own work; but, if he could and did employ hired or slave labour also, then he was an ἀυτουργός none the less. This I hold to be an underlying fact that Roman tradition in particular is calculated to obscure. It was voluntary labour, performed in a citizen’s own interest and therefore a service to the state, that received sentimental esteem.

The power of military influences in ancient states is often cited as a sufficient explanation of the social fact that non-military bodily labour was generally regarded with more or less contempt. The army being the state in arms, the inferiority of those who did not form part of it though able-bodied was manifest to all. This is true as far as it goes, but there was something more behind. Why does not the same phenomenon appear in modern states with conscript armies, such as France or Italy or above all Switzerland? I think the true answer is only to be found by noting a difference between ancient and modern views as to the nature and limits of voluntary action. It is only of states in which membership is fairly to be called citizenship that I am speaking; and as usual it is Greek conditions and Greek words that supply distinct evidence. Not that the Roman conditions were materially different, but they were perhaps less clearly conceived, and the record is less authentic and clear. Now, beyond the loyal obedience due from citizen to state, any sort of constraint determining the action of one free man by the will of others was feared and resented to a degree of which we cannot easily form an adequate notion. In the gradual emancipation of the commons from the dominion of privileged nobles, the long struggle gave a passionate intensity to the natural appetite for freedom. And the essence of freedom was the power of self-disposal. This power was liable to be lost permanently by sale into slavery, but also from time to time by the effect of temporary engagements. The most obvious instance of the latter condition was the bondage created by unpaid debt. Hence the persistent and eventually successful fight to make it illegal to take a borrower’s person as security for his debt. But, suppose the debt cancelled by the seizure of his goods, the man was left a pauper. His only resource was to work for wages, and this placed him for the time of his engagement at the full disposal[1803] of his employer. If he was not a master’s slave for good and all, he would be passing from master to master, ever freshly reminded of the fact that his daily necessities subjected him to the will of others, nullifying his freeman’s power of self-disposal. If he worked side by side with slaves, there was a further grievance. For the slave, in whom his owner had sunk capital, had to be kept fed and housed to retard his depreciation: the free labourer depended[1804] on his wage, liable to fail. The situation, thus crudely stated, was intolerable. In practice it was met, first by devotion to handicrafts as a means of livelihood in which the winning of custom by skill relieved the worker from direct dependence on a single master; but also by allotments of land in annexed territory, and sometimes (as at Athens) by multiplication of paid state-employments.

Of ordinary artisans, as distinct from artists, it may be said that their position varied according as their special trades were more or less esteemed by contemporary sentiment. The successful could and did employ[1805] helpers, usually slaves. In urban populations they were an important element, particularly in those where military considerations were not predominant. The accumulation of capital, and the introduction of industries on a larger scale in factory-workshops with staffs of slaves, may have affected some trades to their disadvantage, but on the whole the small-scale craftsmen seem generally[1806] to have held their ground. Unskilled labour on the other hand was generally despised. It was as a matter of course chiefly performed by slaves. If a citizen was compelled by want to hire out his bodily strength, this was not voluntary: complete submission to another’s will, even for a short time, made the relation on his part virtually servile. Accordingly philosophers, when they came to discuss such topics, came to the conclusion that the need of such unskilled labour proved slavery to be ‘according to nature,’ a necessary appliance of human society. When the Stoic defined a slave as a lifelong hireling, he gave sharp expression to what had long been felt as a true analogy. For, if the slave was a lifelong hireling, the hireling must be a temporary slave. Romans could borrow the thought, but with them practice had preceded theory.

In making comparisons between wage-earning ancient and modern we come upon a difficulty which it is hardly possible to set aside or overcome. A slave could be hired from his owner, just as a freeman could be hired from himself. The difference between the two cases would be clearly marked[1807] in the modern world, and language would leave no room for misunderstanding. But many passages in ancient writers leave it quite uncertain whether the hirelings referred to are free or slave. The point is an important one, particularly to inquirers who attempt to estimate the relative economic efficiency of free and slave labour. For the immediate interest of the freeman is to get a maximum of wage for a minimum of work: the ultimate interest of the hired slave was often to improve his own prospect of manumission. The custom was to allow the slave to retain a small portion of his wage. Now this stimulus to exertion was manifestly to the interest of the employer, who may even have made it a part of his bargain with the owner. The slave, alive to the chance of laying up a little store for the eventual purchase of his freedom, was induced to work well in order to be kept employed on these terms. The owner drew a steady income from his capital sunk in slaves, and the system was thus convenient to all parties. We may add that, by causing a slave to take thought for his own future, this plan encouraged him to take reasonable care of his own health, and so far retarded his progressive deterioration as an investment; while his owner stood to recover the slave’s hoarded wage-portion in the form of redemption-money on manumission of his worn-out slave. There is reason to think that slave labour under these conditions was often more efficient than free. Unhappily we have no direct discussion of the question from ancient observers, who did not take this point of view, though well aware of the influence of prospective manumission in producing contentment.

But how far was this comparatively genial arrangement applicable to the ruder forms of unskilled labour? Take for instance mining. Freemen would have none of it, and the inhuman practices of exploiters were notorious. Yet hired slaves were freely employed. Owners knew that their slaves were likely to waste rapidly under the methods in use, and at Athens a common stipulation was that on the expiry of a contract the gang hired should be returned in equal number, the employer making good the losses certain to occur in their ranks. Here we have the mere human chattel, hopeless and helpless, never likely to receive anything but his keep, as an engine receives its fuel and oil, but differing in this, that he was liable to cruel punishment. Such labourers could not work for a freedom that they had no prospect of living to enjoy. And how about the case of agriculture? That freemen did work for wages on farms we know, but we hear very little of them, and that little almost entirely as helpers at certain seasons. So far as I have been able to learn, free wage-labour did not really compete with slave labour in agriculture: moreover the hired man might be a hired slave, while migratory harvesters, probably freemen, appear at least in some cases as gangs hired for the job under a ganger of their own, responsible to the employer for their conduct and efficiency. Most significant is the almost complete absence of evidence that rustic slaves had any prospect of manumission. In former chapters I have commented on this fact and noted the few faint indications of such an arrangement. At all events the crude plantation-system, while it lasted, was a work-to-death system, though worn-out survivors may have had a better lot than miners, if allowed to exist as old retainers on the estate. But cultivation by slave labour for the purpose of raising an income for the landlord was, even in its later improved organization, a system implying brutal callousness, if not downright cruelty. Slave stewards and overseers, at the mercy of the master themselves, were naturally less concerned to spare the common hands than to escape the master’s wrath. When writers on agriculture urge that on all grounds it is wise to keep punishments down to a minimum, the point of their advice is surely a censure of contemporary practice.

Now in modern times, humanitarian considerations being assumed, the prevailing point of view has been more and more a strictly economic and industrial one. It has been assumed that the freedom of an individual consists first and foremost in the freedom to dispose of his own labour on the best available terms. And this freedom rests on freedom to move from place to place in search of the best labour-market from time to time. But the movement and the bargaining have been regarded as strictly voluntary, as in a certain sense they are. The power to migrate or emigrate with the view of ‘bettering himself’ is conferred on the wage-earner by modern facilities for travel, and new countries readily absorb additional labour. But experience has shewn that free bargaining for wages is not seldom illusory, since the man of capital can bide his time, while the poor man cannot. Still, when every allowance has been made on this score, it is true that the modern labourer, through freedom of movement, has far more power of self-disposal than the wage-earner of the Greco-Roman world. That his position is strengthened and assured by the possession of political power, is not without ancient analogies: but a difference in degree if not in kind is created by the wide extension of the franchise in modern states, and its complete separation in principle from the ownership of land. That is, the basis of citizenship is domicile: for citizen parentage is not required, but easily supplemented[1808] by legal nationalization. Moreover, religion is no longer a necessary family inheritance, but the choice of individuals who can generally gratify their preferential sentiments in surroundings other than their birthplace. Compare this position with the narrow franchises of antiquity and their ineffectiveness on any large scale, their normally hereditary character, the local and domestic limitation of religious ties, the restricted facilities for travel, not to mention its ever-present perils. Remember that to reside in another state as an alien did not, in default of special treaty or act of legislative grace, give the resident any claim to civic rights in his place of residence, while misfortune might at any time reduce him to slavery in a foreign land. Surely under such conditions the limits of purely voluntary action were narrow indeed. The lure of the wage and the fear of unemployment are often a severe form of pressure, but they are, as fetters on freedom, a mere nothing in comparison with this.

Considerations such as those set forth in the preceding paragraphs shew that in treating of ancient agriculture and farm-labour we are apparently faced by a curious paradox. Cultivation of land (including the keeping of live stock) is an honourable pursuit. That good health, sustenance, even comfort and profit, are its natural attendants, is not doubted. But the position of the labouring hands is painful and mean, so much so that a common punishment for urban house-slaves was to send them to work on a farm. The rustic slave’s lot differed for the better from that of the mine-slave in the healthier nature of the occupation, but in little else. And this degradation inevitably reacted on the estimate of rustic wage-earners, whenever employed. There may have been less repugnance to work side by side with slaves than has been felt in modern times, when a marked colour-line implied the disgrace of a ‘white’ man doing ‘niggers’ work.’ But it is not to be doubted that in agriculture as in other occupations the presence of slavery did degrade labour, at all events so soon as agriculture put on anything of an industrial character. The really ‘respectable’ person was the man who directed the operations, the γεωργός, _agricola_, or _colonus_ (in the original sense): he was the man who worked the land and made it yield crops, whether he took part in the actual digging and ploughing or not. The larger the scale, the more he confined himself to direction, necessarily; but he was the producer, a pillar of public economy, none the less. He had provided the labour, bought or hired; in effect, the labour was his own. With the toiling yeoman farmer of tradition he had this in common, that both worked for themselves, not for another. And this position, attractive in all societies, was marked out with peculiar distinctness through the institution of slavery underlying the social fabric. Exploitation of man by man, the first beginnings of which elude our search and are only ascertained by inference, suggests some sort of superiority in the upper party. At all events the master, the man who has the upper hand, gets the credit of achievement, and in agriculture as elsewhere the subordinate operative is inevitably forgotten. It is from this point of view that we must regard the fine Roman legends of sturdy farmer-citizens, the fathers of the Republic. They are idylls conveying truth, dressed up by the imagination of a later age: and have their place in the region where history and poetry meet and blend. We must not gather from them that slavery was exceptional or a fact of no importance. Tradition habitually ignores what is normal and therefore assumed. The fairer inference is that, as I have already remarked, slavery was in those early days still a family institution, not an industrial system.

Some help towards the understanding of the different position of manual labour in ancient times as compared with modern may be got by considering Abolitionism. That a slave is a man, and as such not to be wholly ignored in respect of the claims of common humanity; that slave-labour is listless and ineffective, giving poor returns in proportion to the strength employed; these conclusions, moral and economic, were reached by the thinkers of the ancient world while their civilization was in full bloom. Why then do we find no movement corresponding to the Abolitionism of modern times? Two things were obviously necessary for such a movement; the motive to inspire it, and the force to give effect to it. Let men once be convinced that slavery is both wrong and unprofitable, and let them have the power to insist on putting an end to it, Abolitionism in some form or other is the necessary result.

Now in speaking of ancient conditions we must never lose sight of the fact that in its origin slavery was a favour. By the undissembled rule of force the conquered only retained his life through the mercy of the conqueror. By a contract tacit or expressed he was pledged for life to the service and profit of his master. And the master could, if his interest pointed that way, make over his rights to a third party. Hence the growth of a slave-market, and the relation of master and slave no longer was normally that of individual conqueror and conquered. But the original notion was by no means extinct, and it continued to colour the current view of slavery as ‘natural,’ a thing of course, an unquestioned social fact. Nor was there anything in the condition of the slave to arouse a feeling of horror, so long as patriarchal rule prevailed. If the Head of the family possessed absolute power over the slave, his power over members of the family in general was in kind the same. The bondman, a humble dependant rather than a mere chattel, was in a sense also a member of the family and under the protection of the household gods. What was there for an observer, let him be ever so kind-hearted, to object to? Accordingly, as the state developed, it too kept slaves of its own, employing them in mean functions for which it was needful to have a staff always at hand. In short, the institution was taken for granted, and growing intercourse with foreigners only served to reveal its universal prevalence.

How came it then that in course of time humanitarian scruples arose, and questioners were found to argue that the system was ‘unnatural’ and wrong? The answer must be sought in the application of an originally domestic institution to industrial ends. Once the stage was reached at which the products of labour were habitually put on the market, and the producer got his living by their regular sale, it was soon discovered that to produce and deal on a larger scale was more economical, and therefore more profitable, than on a smaller one. In the handicrafts this was so obvious that slave assistants were commonly kept by tradesmen: it was important to be sure of having the necessary help when wanted. The same was the case in the professions based on special training: the surgeon, the architect, the surveyor, the banker, employed slave subordinates, and had often been slaves themselves. In all these departments, not to mention domestic service, the position of the slave was affected by two important considerations. First, he was one of a few, and under immediate observation, so that escape from servitude was practically impossible. Secondly, there was a reasonable chance of earning manumission by long faithful service. But there were occupations in which it was far more difficult to reconcile the interests of the slave with those of the master. Such were the exploitation of mines and quarries, in which labour was simply applied in the form of brute force under direction. The direction, usually entrusted to slave or freedman overseers, was generally unsympathetic, sometimes cruel; for the overseer’s first thought was to please his master, even if he could only do so by working the slaves to death. The extension of agriculture as a means of profit rather than subsistence created conditions of the same kind in this occupation. It was here that the monstrous abuses incidental to slavery were most strikingly displayed. For, while quarries and mines were only worked in a few localities, the plan of working great landed estates by the labour of slave-gangs was applicable to vast areas of the best soil. And in Africa Sicily and Italy we find it so applied for the profit of the nobles and capitalists of a conquering race.

The evils of this system may be set down to the account of obsequious stewards heartlessly wringing profit for their masters out of human flesh and blood. But we must not ignore two considerations which suggest that the root of the evil lay not in the caprice or greed of individuals but in the attempt to carry on rural industry by slave labour at all. In the country, opportunities of escape were many; the slave-prison and the fetters could hardly be dispensed with if you meant to keep your farm-hands at disposal. And manumission, as a means of encouraging good service, was evidently not of much avail in country places. For after long years of exhausting labour the worn-out slave would be unable to earn a living by hard bodily work; and he knew no other. He had been bought as a flesh-and-blood machine; as such, to manumit him while still efficient would be a sacrifice of sunk capital for which nobody was prepared. It seems that the ordinary practice was to keep him at work till he could work no longer, and then to let him linger on the estate as an invalid retainer, feeding on what he could get and decaying in peace. But the industrializing of agriculture, heartlessly selfish in its aims, tempted landlords to shirk the unprofitable maintenance of spent labourers. When a slave was no longer worth his keep, it might pay to sell him at once for what he would fetch. There was thus a mouth less to be fed, and the problem of how to turn the remnant of his strength to account was shifted on to his new owner. This plan, approved by the elder Cato as a detail of farm-economy, marks the change of relations between master and slave in rustic life. The old domestic relation has disappeared in the brutal exploitation of a human animal for immediate profit. The crudely industrial system reproduced on great estates the horrid phenomena of the quarry and the mine.

That humane and thoughtful men should be disgusted with such doings was inevitable, and disgust was soon reinforced by reasonable alarm. For tillage was not the sole occupation of rustic enterprise. It was found that in many districts grazing paid better than tillage, and the two could be worked together remuneratively on a large scale. The charge of flocks and herds, shifting their pasture according to seasons, led to employment of able-bodied slaves in a duty responsible and at the same time removed from immediate control for months together. These slave herdsmen, hardy and used to a free life in wild uplands, had to face wolves and robbers, and therefore to bear arms. We need not dwell on the danger from such a class menacing the peace of a country unprotected by rural police. It was real enough. Being slaves, they had nothing but their lives to lose, and their lives it was their owners’ interest to protect. Meanwhile the unescorted traveller was at their mercy, and any peasants within reach would pay blackmail to escape their raids. Yet nothing was done to get rid of the nuisance and peril of this state of things. Servile risings were clumsily put down with appalling bloodshed, and left to recur. Meanwhile the free population of the countryside diminished, and prosperity could not be restored by new slave-gangs. Such was notoriously the condition of a great part of rural Italy under the later Republic, and contemporary evidence clearly shews that the improvement effected under the Empire was slight.

Now, when experience had proved the blighting influence of slavery, why was there no movement to do away with the system altogether? Truth is, there was at present no basis to start from. The moral enthusiasm, often sincere, that has inspired such movements in modern times, had no effective existence. Moral considerations were almost entirely confined to a section of rich or cultivated society. It was not expected that the common herd should rise above the meanest motives of crude self-interest. The artisan, who either employed, or hoped soon to employ, a slave or two, was not likely to condemn slavery: the parasitic loafer was not likely to welcome a mass of new competitors for the doles and bribes that he undeservedly enjoyed. During the last century of the Roman Republic no opposition to slavery as an institution could have arisen from the urban populace. And the wealthier classes were interested in slavery. Religion did not touch the question. A few scrupulous and thoughtful men might have supported an anti-slavery movement, had there been one; but we have not the smallest reason to think that any individual ever dreamt of starting humanitarian propaganda on his own account and at his own risk. There was no place in the ancient world for the reformer of this type. Even those leaders whose policy offered advantages to the free masses, such as the Gracchi or some Spartan kings, did not so fare in their enterprises as to encourage imitation. As for appealing to the slaves themselves, it was only desperate adventurers who did so, and that only to use their force in promoting criminal designs. Such cases only served to justify the cruel execution of cruel laws for protecting masters and the state in general from the imminent slave-peril. If we turn from the city, in which what passed for politics ran its troubled and futile course, to the countryside, we are at once in a scene from which all political life had departed. The farmer-citizens grew fewer and fewer, and the great majority of them were virtually disfranchised by distance. Nor were they likely to favour any movement that seemed to be for the benefit of slaves.

The establishment of the Empire did not, indeed could not, produce any material change in the way of arousing effective sentiment hostile to slavery. But it did much to promote internal order and far-reaching peace. Under the new model of government the corrupt circles of nobles and greedy capitalists were no longer in absolute control of the civilized world, and it might seem that there was now some chance of dealing with the canker of slavery. But no such movement was the result. Old notions remained in full vigour. Augustus had his hands too full, and the need of conciliating private interests was too pressing, for him to disturb them, even had he been minded to do so. And who else could take the initiative? But the fate of two moral influences is worth noting. Stoicism, the creed of not a few ardent spirits, might profess to rise superior to worldly distinctions and advantages and assert the potential dignity of man even in the humblest condition of life. But it was always a creed of the few: its aloofness, tending to a certain arrogance, made it unfitted[1809] to lead a great reform: it neither would nor could furnish the machinery of zealous propaganda. In the earlier Empire we find it politically allied with malcontent cliques in which smouldering resentment at the restraints on ‘freedom’ expressed itself by idealizing the Republic and hoping for a reaction. Thus it lost itself in impracticable dreams, and the hand of emperors under provocation sometimes fell heavily on its most virtuous men. The spread of Christianity came later, and was not diverted from its aims by a social affinity with the upper classes. Slaves bore no small part in its expansion to the West, and it was free to operate steadily as a humanitarian influence. But its claim to universality naturally exposed it to grave suspicion in a world that knew religion only as an affair of each several community, with a sort of overlordship vested in the conquering gods of Rome. Though it was a Church and not a philosophic system, though meant for all mankind and not for a cultivated few, it could only win its way by accepting civilization[1810] in the main as it stood. Therefore it was compelled to accept slavery as an institution, and to content itself with inculcating humanity on masters and conscientious devotion to duty on slaves. If Abolitionism was to spring from this seed, a long time had to be spent in waiting for the harvest.

Yet the establishment of the Empire did lead to effects that in their turn served as contributory causes undermining the old slave-system, particularly[1811] in agriculture. In a more peaceful age fewer slaves were brought to market, and this meant higher prices and put a premium on the economical employment of bought labour. To meet the situation, agricultural policy was developed on two lines, each of which was the improvement or extension of an existing practice. One was the more scientific organization of the labour-staff, so as to get better results from an equal amount of labour. The other was a more frequent resort to the plan of letting farms to tenants, whenever that arrangement seemed favourable to the landlord’s interest. Of these developments we have direct information from Columella, who still prefers the former plan wherever feasible. But it was with the system of tenancies on various conditions that the future really lay. I have endeavoured above to sketch the process[1812] by which tenants were gradually reduced to a condition of dependency on their landlords, and the difficulty of finding and keeping good tenants that was the other side of the movement. A very significant detail is the fact that slaves were put into farms[1813] as tenants: that this was no unusual practice is clear from the way in which the classical jurists refer to it as a matter of course. And so things slowly moved on, with ups and downs, the tenants slave or free becoming more and more bondsmen of the land, liable to task-services and not free to move at will. Thus by usage, and eventually by law, a system of serfdom was established, while personal slavery declined.

Looked at from an Abolitionist point of view, we are here dealing with a sheer evasion of the slavery-question. But this was inevitable. The imperial government, which alone had the power necessary for attempting solutions of grave problems, was doomed to become more and more mechanical. Under great strains in the third century it lost its vital forces to such a degree that it was powerless for internal betterment. The later despotic Empire, seeing the failure of past policy, could find no better way than to do as before[1814], only more mechanically and more thoroughly. What little of freedom of movement and of self-disposal still remained to the toiling classes accordingly disappeared. Once a certain number had been slaves; now none were practically free. Diminution of personal slavery had not increased personal freedom. The attempt to confine all labour to fixed grooves and rigid rules was a last desperate effort to control and employ the resources of ancient civilization, in the hope of thus finding means sufficient to endure the ever-growing strain upon the empire. This system might serve its purpose for the moment, but it was a vain device, killing enterprise and working out its own ruin through its own stagnation. In agriculture, on which the whole fabric rested, its effects were particularly ruinous: for in no occupation is there greater need of constant forethought and loving care, which the prospect of private advantage alone can guarantee. All these phenomena may assure us that as yet there was no clear understanding of the value of free self-disposal as the economic basis of society. From the moral point of view no genuine progress was to be looked for in a stagnant age. The transition from normal slavery to gild-bondage and normal land-serfdom does not seem to have been affected by the spiritual levelling of Christianity. But that as she gained power, the Church did something to mitigate[1815] the hardness of the time, is not to be doubted.

I need not dwell at length on the contrast presented by modern anti-slavery movements. The influence of religion, personal and humanitarian, is alone enough to account for the new spirit aroused and organized by Clarkson and Wilberforce. To put down the slave-trade because it was wrong was a momentous step, and emancipation its inevitable corollary, costly though it might be. That the reform was carried out two generations before the handworking masses of England gained political power is a most notable fact. For it is not possible to connect the achievement with the natural jealousy of free labour objecting to competition of slave labour. In the United States the motives for Abolition were necessarily more mixed, but sincere fanatics, religious and violent, were the leaders of the crusade. But the repugnance of free labour to the recognition of slavery in any part of the Republic (and it was this sentiment that furnished the necessary voting-power) was not so purely philanthropic. Students of American history are well aware of the moral change brought about by a single mechanical invention in the southern states. The economic advantages of the cotton-gin made slavery so profitable that existing tendencies towards emancipation died out in the South. A new life was given to a confessed evil, and the developed plantation-system, industrialized for the profit of a few, went down the road of fate to end in tragedy. The result of the great civil war at all events settled one question. Henceforth labour was to stand on a footing of self-disposal and wage-earning, with freedom to improve its conditions on those lines. The solution, obtained at an awful cost, was final for the time: what will be its ultimate outcome is at present (1919) a matter of some doubt, for reasons not to be discussed here.

The fact that Abolitionism is a phenomenon of the modern[1816] world, and not of the ancient, will not seem insignificant to those who have read widely in the ancient writers and remarked how very little we hear of free wage-earning labour. If we deduct the references to independent artisans practising trades on a small scale (and their cases are not relevant here), what we hear of mere wage-earners is very little indeed. And of this little again only a part concerns agriculture. I take it that we may fairly draw one conclusion from this: the wishes of the free wage-earning class, whatever their numbers may have been, were practically of no account in the ancient world. From first to last the primitive law of superior force, the ‘good old rule’ of which slavery was a product, was tacitly accepted. Civilization might undergo changes of character, periods of peace might alternate with periods of war: still bondage and labour were closely connected in men’s minds, and honest labour as such commanded no respect. How could it? Of a golden age, in which all men were free and slavery unknown, we have nothing that can be called evidence. The curtain rises on a world in which one man is at the full disposal of another. What is at first a small domestic matter contains the germ of later developments; and in the case of agriculture we see clearly how demands of an industrial nature transformed single bond-service into the wholesale and brutal exploitation of human chattels in slave-gangs. We have no good reason to believe that men ever in the ancient world abstained from employing slave labour out of humanitarian scruples. Scarcity of slaves, or lack of means to buy them, were certainly the main restrictive influences. The institution was always there, ready for extension and adaptation as changing conditions might suggest. If ancient civilization did not rest on a basis of slavery, on what did it rest? Assuredly not on free self-disposal. The man free to dispose of himself claimed the right to dispose of others, up to the limits of his own power and will. In this there is nothing wonderful. We need not flatter ourselves that the rule of force is now extinct. True, personal bondage to individuals is forbidden by law, but effective freedom of self-disposal, perhaps an impossible dream, is not yet realized: only its absence is dissembled under modern forms.

When I say that ancient civilization rested on a basis of slavery, the condition present to my mind is this. A social and political structure requires for its stability a reasonably sound economic foundation. This foundation is found in the assured and regular use of natural resources. And this use implies the constant presence of an obedient labour-force that can be set to work and kept working as and when needed. This force is now more and more supplied by machinery, the drudge that cannot strike. Antiquity made the slave its quasi-mechanical drudge: the more or less of slavery at a given moment simply depended on circumstances.

In returning to my original questions, whether the growth of Greco-Roman civilization was in fact achieved through the system of slavery, and whether it could conceivably have been accomplished without slavery, I have I think given my answer to the first, that is, so far as agriculture is concerned. And agriculture was the vital industry, on which the whole fabric principally rested. As to the second question, I can give no satisfactory answer. For my part, I agree with those who hold that, in the conditions of antiquity as depicted in our traditions and inferred by modern inquirers, slavery in some form and degree was an indispensable condition of progress. States, organizations of a lasting kind, had to be established by force. Captive labour, added to the resources of conquerors, seems to be a powerful means of increasing their economic strength and abridging the wasteful periods of conflict. But, once the stage had been reached at which a state was sufficiently stable and strong to provide for order within and to repel invaders, a slave-system became a canker, economic, social, ultimately political. I believe that the maladies from which the old Greco-Roman civilization suffered, and which in the end brought about its decay and fall, were indirectly or directly due to this taint more than to any other cause. I know of no case ancient or modern in which a people have attained to a sound and lasting prosperity by exploiting the servitude of other men. Serfdom or slavery, it matters not. So far as human experience has gone, it appears that all such conditions are eventually ruinous[1817] to the rulers.

For it is not merely the degradation of manual labour that results from slavery. The deadening of inventive genius and economic improvements is fatally promoted through the tendency to remedy all shortcomings by simply using up more flesh and blood. Man abdicates a most important function of his reason, and accepts a mere superiority of animal over animal. This is surely not following the true law of his development. It is from this point of view that the great scientific inventions of modern times present an encouraging spectacle, as the earlier abuses of their exploitation are gradually overcome, and the operative citizen vindicates his claims as a human being. That ancient slavery did in some ways act for good by guaranteeing leisure to classes some of whom employed it well, may be freely admitted. But I do not think we can sincerely extend the admission to include the case of Politics, whatever Greek philosophers may have thought. Nor can we without reservations apply it in the field of Art. On the other hand Literature surely owed much to the artificial leisure created by slavery. Even in its most natural utterances Greco-Roman literature is the voice of classes privileged because free, not restrained by the cramping influences of workaday life and needs. Its partisan spirit is the spirit of the upper strata of society, ignoring the feelings, and often the existence, of the unfree toilers below. In the main aristocratic, it tells us next to nothing of the real sentiments of even the free masses, particularly on the labour-questions that have now for some time increasingly occupied the public mind. That we are, for good or for evil, viewing all matters of human interest on a different plane from that of the ‘classic’ writers, is a consideration that students of the Past are in duty bound never to forget.

But, when we are told[1818] that ancient civilization in its early stages (as seen in the Homeric poems etc) may fairly be labelled as Medieval, while it may be called Modern when in its full bloom, we shall do well to pause before accepting a dogma that may imply more than we are prepared to grant. That mankind had to make a fresh start in the Middle Ages, ancient civilization having run its course and failed, is a proposition dangerously true. If it implies that the ‘free’ labour of modern times is not a direct development from ancient slavery, so far good. If we are to hold that ancient slave labour and modern free labour, when and so far as each is a factor of economic importance, are practically identical phenomena of capitalism eager to make a profit out of cheap labour, we may ask—is the parallelism so exact as it is thus represented to be? When we are told that the capitalist would nowadays prefer to employ slave labour if it were to be had, and that the legal form in which labour is supplied is a secondary consideration from the economic point of view, we begin to hesitate: is this really true? Was not the ineffectiveness of slave labour detected in ancient times? Was it not proved to demonstration in America, as attested by the evidence of both Northern and Southern witnesses? To reply that what capital wants is not mere slave labour but efficient slave labour, would be no answer. Capital is not, and never was, blind to the inefficiency of slave labour as compared with free labour. In the pursuit of profit it needs a supply of labour at its immediate and certain disposal; therefore it takes what it can get. In the ancient world the unquestioned institution of slavery offered a source of supply, not ideal, but such as could be relied on. Therefore capital employed slavery to extend its operations, simply turning existing conditions to account. And the admission, that the most flourishing period of Greco-Roman civilization was also the period in which slavery reached its greatest development, is surely a virtual denial that the basis of that civilization was free labour. That is, free wage-earning labour. For the independent farmer or artisan had nothing to do with the matter: he worked for himself, not for another, and was on a different plane from either wage-earner or slave. If he did not employ either wage-earner or slave, it was because he found such help too costly or a doubtful boon.

The case of agriculture at once reveals what was found to be the strong point of slave labour, the feasibility of employing it in large masses. Much of the work consisted in the mere mechanical use of brute force, and one overseer could direct many hands. In operations dependent on the seasons, the labour must be at hand to utilize opportunities. The choice lay between slaves not working with a will and free wage-earners not likely to be on the spot when wanted. Why were slaves preferred? Because their presence in sufficient number could be relied on in the existing conditions of the world. The history of industrial agriculture was a long tale of effort so to organize slave labour as to get out of it the greatest possible margin of profit. Not that slavery was thought preferable in itself; but a means of wholesale cultivation had to be found, and the then available resources of civilization offered no other. When the supply of slaves began to fail, landlords sought a remedy in letting some or all of their land to tenant farmers (extending an old practice), not in attempting to farm on their own account with hired labour. Hired labour remained as before, an occasional appliance to meet temporary needs.

The use of the terms Medieval and Modern as labels[1819] for ancient civilization in two clearly marked stages has, I repeat, just enough truth in it to be dangerous. As a rhetorical flourish it may pass. But it conveys by suggestion much that cannot be accepted. No doubt it is not meant to imply that what we call the Middle Ages is to be ignored. But it inevitably tends to stifle a belief in historical continuity, a faith in which is the soul of historical inquiry as generally understood in the present day. That modern labour-conditions shew a powerful reaction against medieval, is obvious: that medieval conditions have not influenced the modes of this reaction, is to me incredible. I do not believe that the modern free wage-earning system could have grown out of the ancient slave-labour system, had there been no such intervening period as the ‘Middle Ages.’ That the aims of the capitalist ancient and modern are the same, is a mere truism: but is not the same true of the medieval capitalist also?

That the wage-earning handworker often finds his freedom of self-disposal limited in practice, though his position is very far removed from slavery, I have pointed out above. Also, that modern facilities for movement have helped materially to assert and enlarge his freedom. From this point of view the discovery of the New World was the turning-point of European history. But in course of time capitalistic phenomena appeared there also, and on a larger scale. And now, almost the whole world over, the handworker is striving, not only for higher wages but for more complete self-disposal. This necessitates some control of the industries in which he works. Individual effort being vain, he forms unions to guard his interests. The unions, acting by strike-pressure, come into conflict with governments representing the state. The next step is to employ political pressure by gaining and using votes under representative systems, so as to remodel legislation and administration in a sense favourable to the handworker. This movement, now well under way in the most civilized countries, is not perhaps socialistic in principle, and we do not yet know how far it is likely to take that turn. In order to fight exploitation, the handworker has to surrender a good deal of his individual freedom: whether he will be content to surrender a good deal more, the coming age will see. This much at least is clear,—the handworking wage-earners are no longer, as in the ancient world, a class of no account. That they have wrung so many great concessions from unwilling capitalists seems to me a proof that their freedom, even under medieval[1820] restrictions, had always in it something real, some quality that sharply distinguished it from ancient slavery. In ancient slavery I can see no germ out of which betterment of labour-conditions could conceivably arise. It simply had to die, and modern attempts to revive it have had to die also.

In the foregoing pages I have recognized two lines of distinction. One is that commonly admitted, the line that parts freeman from slave. The other is that between free wage-earner and slave. In looking back from modern circumstances to ancient, the latter is much the more important. For, now that slavery in the proper sense has been abolished by modern civilized peoples, the conditions of wage-earning stand out as presenting the most momentous issues of the present age. To the statesmen the questions raised are full of anxiety as to the probable influence of present policies on future wellbeing. A student of Greco-Roman civilization must ask himself whether modern labour-questions and their attempted solutions may not indirectly furnish help in appraising and judging the conditions of the past. Now it so happens that in the case of agriculture recent events in Russia possess very marked significance, and it is therefore hardly possible to leave them unnoticed here.

It seems to be established[1821] beyond reasonable doubt that the genuine and effective doctrine of Leninite Bolshevism, in its definition of the ‘working class,’ excludes the peasantry. They are not ‘proletarian.’ That is, the great majority of peasants have something. This each wants to keep, and if possible to augment. In short, they are Individualists. Now Bolshevism builds on dogmas of Marxian Socialism, however much it may warp their application, however widely it may depart from Marxian theory in its choice of methods. Therefore it sees in the peasants only a class of petty bourgeoisie with the anti-socialistic instincts of that hated class, and will spare no effort to exclude them from political power. It disfranchises employers, even though the work they do is productive and useful to society. We need go no further: these principles of the Bolshevik creed, be it prophetic vision or be it crazy fanaticism blind to the facts of human nature and devoid of all practical sense of proportion, are enough for my present purpose. It results from them that all wage-earning is wrong: no man has the right to employ another man for his own purposes: that the relation benefits both employer and employed, even if true, is a consideration[1822] wholly irrelevant. For it is promised that the new civilization, recast on the Bolshevik model, will leave no room for wage-service of one man to another.

I am not to criticize this scheme of social and economic life, but to look at it coolly as an illustrative fact. It is surely a significant thing that, while slavery and serfdom are now reckoned as virtually obsolete phenomena of the past, the old distinction, between the man who works himself for himself and the man who works for another, is still before us as the vital line of division in labour-questions. Bloodshed and torture as means of enforcing the dogma may be confined to Russia, but the distinction is at the bottom of industrial unrest all over the world. Most significant of all is the admission that peasant landholders are not a ‘proletariate.’ Of course they are not. But to philosophers and statesmen of antiquity they appeared as an all-important class, not only as producers of food but as a solid element of population, promoting the stability of state governments. This stability was favourable to continuity of policy and enabled all interests to thrive in peace. Have the development of machinery and transport in recent times so far altered the conditions of agriculture that this is no longer the case? In other words, is the agricultural labourer, the present wage-earner, to supersede the peasant landholder as the dominant figure of rustic life? Is the large-scale farmer to survive only as the impotent figurehead of rural enterprises? Is a political proletariate competent to regulate the conduct of an industry directly dependent on soil climate and seasons? Wherever man is in immediate contact with forces of nature, in farm-life as in seafaring, the bodily energies of many can only be effective through subordination to the mind of one. How far, under the modern factory system, where the mill goes on as usual in all weathers, direction by wage-earners may be a practicable proposition, I cannot tell. That such a plan would be a failure on a farm, I have no doubt whatever.

My general conclusion then is that the old distinction observable under Greco-Roman civilization was in itself a sound one. Yet it led to no lasting and satisfactory solution of agricultural labour-problems. Many causes no doubt contributed to this failure; but the lack of a satisfactory labour-system was probably the greatest. Neither slavery nor serfdom was capable of meeting the need, and the wage-earning system never grew so as efficiently to supersede them. Now, after centuries of the wage-system, we are uneasily asking ourselves whether modern civilization is gravely endangered through the failure of this system also. It seems that in agriculture at least there are two possible alternatives, either a final settlement of the wage-question on a footing satisfactory to the labourer, or a return to αὐτουργία. Probably neither of these will be found to exclude the other or to be equally applicable to the circumstances of all countries. That communal ownership and shifting tenure can be revived seems impossible under modern conditions, whatever some Socialists may fancy. On the other hand voluntary cooperation in marketing seems to have a great future before it. Of a movement in that direction I have found no traces among the ancients: but modern developments in the way of transport may remove many difficulties. At any rate it is in such efforts of adaptation and compromise that expert agriculturists seem to be looking for help. As to labour, slavery and serfdom being excluded from modern civilized states, the coming problem is how to secure the performance of agricultural work. The choice lies between attractive wage-conditions, appealing to individual interest, and the Socialist scheme of tasks carried out under official direction, assumed to be in the best interests of a whole community. Both plans offer a substitute for the crude compulsory methods vainly employed in the ancient world. Which plan is the more suited to the demands of human nature, whether self-disposal or communism is to be the dominant aim and note of society, coming generations must decide.

APPENDIX.

SOME BYZANTINE AUTHORITIES.

To follow up the history of agricultural labour under the so-called Byzantine empire, after the Roman empire had fallen in the West, is beyond my scope. Yet there are certain matters on which light is thrown by surviving documents that it is hardly possible wholly to ignore. That the position of the agricultural classes did not follow the same lines of development in East and West, is in itself a fact worth noting, though not surprising. It may be said to run parallel with the general fate of the two sections of the once Roman world. In the West[1823] the growth of what we call Feudalism and the rise of new nation-states are the phenomena that in the course of centuries gradually produced our modern Europe. In the East the Empire long preserved its organization, declining in efficiency and power, but rallying again and again, serving as a bulwark of Christian Europe, and not extinguished finally till 1453. It might perhaps have been guessed that the conditions of rustic life would undergo some change, for the system of the later Roman colonate was already shewing signs of coming failure in the time of Arcadius and Honorius. The need of some system more favourable to individual energy and enterprise, more to be trusted for production of food, was surely not to be ignored. Food must have been a need of extreme urgency, with armies constantly engaged in northern or eastern wars, and the mouths of Constantinople ever hungry at home. After the Saracen conquest of Egypt in the seventh century, the food-resources on which the government could rely must have been seriously reduced, and the need greater than ever. Thus we are not to wonder if we find indications of great interest taken in agriculture, and direct evidence of reversion to a better land-system than that of the later Roman colonate.

A. GEOPONICA.

The curious collection known as =Geoponica=[1824] comes down to us in a text attributed to the tenth century, which is supposed to be a badly-edited version of an earlier work probably of the sixth or early seventh century. It is in a scrap-book form, consisting of precepts on a vast number of topics, the matter under each heading being professedly drawn from the doctrine of some author or authors whose names are prefixed. Some of these are Byzantine writers, others of much earlier date, including Democritus and Hippocrates, and the Roman Varro. Modern critics consider these citations of names untrustworthy, the collector or editor having dealt very carelessly with the work of his predecessors. I can only say that an examination of the chapters that are of special interest to me fully bears out this censure. I would add that a reference to the index shews that Cato Columella Pliny (elder) and Palladius are never cited, and express my suspicion that the omission of names is not always a proof that those authors were disregarded as sources. The general character of the work is unscientific and feeble, abounding in quackery and superstition. Technical and dogmatic, it has nevertheless an air of unreality, perhaps due in part to the later editor, but probably in part to the original compiler, whose name is given as Cassianus Bassus, a lawyer (σχολαστικός), apparently a Byzantine.

It has been remarked that the cultivation of corn fills but a small space in the Geoponica, being evidently quite a subordinate department of farm-life as there contemplated. Is this an indication that Constantinople was still drawing plenty of corn from Egypt, and may we infer that this feature is due to the original compiler, writing before the loss of that granary-province? I do not venture to answer the question.

The passages interesting from my point of view occur in the second book, where some reference, scanty and obscure though it be, is made to labour and labourers. A chapter (2) on the classes of labourers suited for various kinds of work is a good specimen of this unsatisfactory treatise. It is labelled Βάρωνος, but we may well hesitate to ascribe the substance to Varro. The rules given are for the most part quite commonplace, and I cannot trace them in Varro’s _res rustica_. On the other hand some of them correspond to precepts of Columella. Whether this is their real source, or whether they are traditional rules handed down carelessly by previous compilers, perhaps on even earlier authority, I see no sure means of determining. The doctrine that boys (παῖδες) should be employed in field-labour (ἐργασία), to watch and learn from their experienced elders, and the remark that their suppleness fits them better for stooping jobs (weeding etc.), is new to me. Varro[1825] at least puts the minimum age for field-hands at 22. Perhaps this doctrine comes from some later authority, of a time when the old supply of adult field-hands was evidently failing.

Another chapter, labelled as drawn from Florentinus (? first half of third century), deals with the qualifications and duties of the ἐπίτροπος or οἰκονόμος, the Roman _vilicus_. This chapter (44) is also quite commonplace, and can be copiously illustrated out of many authors, from Xenophon and Cato to Columella and Pliny. The exact meaning of one passage (§ 3) is not clear to me, but its general drift is in agreement with the rest. The notable point about the chapter is that it discusses the steward and his staff as forming the ordinary establishment of a farm. Are we to infer that this system was normal at the time when the compiler put together the precepts under this head? Or is this a case of unintelligent compilation, a mere passing-on of doctrines practically obsolete by a town-bred writer in his study? I cannot tell. The consideration of further details may give some help towards a judgment.

The next chapter (45), with the same label, treats of the steward’s diary and the organization of the hands (ἐργάται). The main doctrine is that every day must have its task, and every plan be punctually carried out, since one delay upsets the whole course (τὴν τῆς ἐργασίας τάξιν) and is bad for both crops and land. This again is stale enough, and may be illustrated from Cato and Columella. The rules for organizing the hands in groups of suitable size, so as to get a maximum of efficiency with a minimum of overseers, agree closely with what we find in Columella. Thus there is a strong probability that the labour intended is that of slaves.

In