Chapter 49

, labelled Βάρωνος, asserts the necessity of keeping such artisans as smiths carpenters and potters on the farm or near at hand. The tools have to be kept in good order, and visits to the town waste time. That this precept comes from Varro I 16 §§ 3, 4, seems more than doubtful: reference will shew that the passages differ considerably.

I would add that the argument prefixed to book III, a farmer’s calendar, at least in Beckh’s text, gives a list of the months from January to December, attaching to each Roman name the corresponding Egyptian one. The editor apparently accepts this double list as genuine. If it be so, has the fact any bearing on the relations between Constantinople and Egypt referred to above?

B. THE FARMER’S LAW.

The so-called ‘=Farmer’s Law=,’ νόμος γεωργικός, is now assigned by the critics to the time of the Iconoclast emperors, say about 740 AD. It is an official document of limited scope, not a general regulative code governing agricultural conditions in all parts of the eastern empire. Its text origin arrangement and the bearing of its evidence have been much discussed, and it will suffice here to refer to the articles of Mr Ashburner[1826] on the subject. What concerns me is the position of farmers under the Byzantine empire in the eighth century as compared with that of the fourth or fifth century _coloni_, and the different lines of development followed by country life in East and West. Therefore it is only necessary to consider some of the main features of the picture revealed to us by various details of the Farmer’s Law.

The first point that strikes a reader is that the serf[1827] _colonus_ has apparently disappeared. Land is held by free owners, who either themselves provide for its cultivation or let it to tenants who take over that duty. The normal organization is in districts (χωρία) each of which contains a number of landowners, who either farm their own land or, if short of means (ἄποροι), let it to other better-equipped farmers of the same district. Thus the transactions are locally limited, and the chief object of the law is to prevent misdeeds that might prejudicially affect the prosperity of the local farmers. These are in a sense partners or commoners (κοινωνοί), the ‘commonalty’ (κοινότης) of the district, which is a taxation-unit with its members jointly liable. The district seems to be regarded as originally common and then divided into members’ lots, with a part reserved perhaps as common pasture. Redivision is contemplated, and the lots seem to belong rather to the family than to the individual. To judge from the tone of the rules, it seems certain that the farmers and their families are a class working with their own hands. But there are also wage-earning labourers, and slaves owned or hired for farm work. Tenancy on shares, like the partiary system in Roman Law, appears as an established practice, and in one passage (clause 16) Mr Ashburner detects a farmer employed at a salary, in short a _mercennarius_.

Thus we find existing what are a kind of village communities, the landowning farmers in which are free to let land to each other and also to exchange farms if they see fit to do so. How far they are free to flit from one commune to another remains doubtful. And there is no indication that they are at liberty to dispose of their own land-rights to outsiders. There appears however side by side with these communal units another system of tenancies in which individual farmers hire land from great landlords. Naturally the position of such tenants is different from that of tenants under communal owners: the matter is treated at some length by Mr Ashburner. What proportion the corn crop generally bore to other produce in the agriculture of the Byzantine empire contemplated by these regulations, the document does not enable us to judge. Vineyards and figyards were clearly an important department, and also gardens for vegetables and fruit. Live stock, and damage done to them and by them, are the subject of many clauses, nor is woodland forgotten. But the olive does not appear. So far as one may guess, the farming was probably of a mixed character. The penalties assigned for offences are often barbarous, including not only death by hanging or burning but blinding and other mutilations of oriental use. At the same time the ecclesiastical spirit of the Eastern empire finds expression in the bestowal of a curse on one guilty of cheating, referring I suppose primarily to undiscovered fraud.

The state of things inferred from the provisions of the ‘Farmer’s Law’ is so remarkable in itself, and so different from the course of rustic development in the West, that we are driven to seek an explanation of some kind. Many influences may have contributed to produce so striking a differentiation. But one can hardly help suspecting that there was some one great influence at work in the eastern empire, to which the surprising change noted above was mainly due. In his _History of the later Roman Empire_[1828] Professor Bury has offered a conjectural solution of the problem. It is to be sought in the changes brought about in the national character and the external history of the Empire. Since the middle of the sixth century north-west Asia Minor and the Balkan country had been filled with Slavonic settlers, and other parts with other new colonists. Now the new settlers, particularly the Slavs, were not used to the colonate system or the rigid bond of hereditary occupations, and emperors busied in imperial defence on the North and East knew better than to force upon them an unwelcome system. Invasions had reduced the populations of frontier provinces and shattered the old state of serfdom. Resettlement on a large scale had to be carried out within the empire, and under new conditions to suit the changed character of the population. Among the new elements that produced this change the most important was the coming of the Slavs.

For the Slavs had themselves no institution corresponding to the German _laeti_. Slaves indeed they had, but not free cultivators attached to the soil. Therefore they could not, like the Germans in the West, adapt themselves to the Roman colonate; accordingly their intrusion led to its abolition. In support of this view the well-known Slavonic peasant communities are cited as evidence. Nor can it be denied that this consideration has some weight. But, while we may provisionally accept the conclusion that Slavonic influences had something, perhaps much, to do with the new turn given to the conditions of rustic life in the East, we must not press it so far as to infer that the colonate-system was extinct there. In no case could the ‘Farmer’s Law’ fairly be used to prove the negative: and moreover it is apparently the case according to Mr Ashburner that the document is not a complete agricultural code for all agricultural classes within the empire. If it is ‘concerned exclusively with a village community, composed of farmers who cultivate their own lands,’ it cannot prove the non-existence of other rustic conditions different in kind. Colonate seems to have disappeared, while slavery has not. But that is the utmost we can say. The slave at least is still there. As to the important question, whether the farmers contemplated in the Law enjoy a real freedom of movement, as has been thought, it is best to refer a reader to the cautious reserve of Mr Ashburner.

The one general inference that I venture to draw from these two authorities is that, however much or little the conditions of agriculture may have changed in the surviving Eastern part of the Roman empire, the employment of slave labour still remained.

C. EXTRACTS FROM MODERN BOOKS.

(1) =Hume=, Essay XI, _Of the populousness of antient nations_.

We must now consider what disadvantages the antients lay under with regard to populousness, and what checks they received from their political maxims and institutions. There are commonly compensations in every human condition; and tho’ these compensations be not always perfectly equal, yet they serve, at least, to restrain the prevailing principle. To compare them and estimate their influence, is indeed very difficult, even where they take place in the same age, and in neighbouring countries: But where several ages have intervened, and only scattered lights are afforded us by antient authors; what can we do but amuse ourselves by talking, _pro_ and _con_, on an interesting subject, and thereby correcting all hasty and violent determinations?

MODERN ITALIAN CONDITIONS.

(2) =Bolton King and Thomas Okey=, _Italy today_.

In _Italy today_, Messrs =Bolton King and Thomas Okey= furnish a most interesting collection of facts relative to Italian rural conditions. The extent to which the phenomena of antiquity reappear in the details of this careful treatise is most striking. Italy being the central land of my inquiry, and convinced as I am that the great variety of local conditions is even now not sufficiently recognized in Roman Histories, this excellent book is of peculiar value. In the course of (say) fifteen centuries Italy and her people have passed through strange vicissitudes, not merely political: a great change has taken place in the range of agricultural products: yet old phenomena of rural life meet the inquirer at every turn. Surely this cannot be dismissed lightly as a casual coincidence. I cannot find room to set out the resemblances in detail, so I append a short table of reference to passages in the book that have impressed me most. Supplementary to this, as a vivid illustration of conditions in a mountain district, the first three chapters of _In the Abruzzi_, by =Anne Macdonell=, are decidedly helpful. For instance, it appears that the old migratory pasturage still existed in full force down to quite recent times, but the late conversion of much Apulian lowland from pasture to tillage has seriously affected the position of the highland shepherds by reducing the area available for winter grazing. The chapter on brigandage has also some instructive passages.

REFERENCES TO _Italy today_.

Peasant contrasted with wage-earner, pp 64-6, 72, 74, 126, 166-8, 171-2, 175-6, 200, 312, and Index under _mezzaiuoli_ and _peasants_. Agricultural classes, pp 164-6. Partiaries, pp 168, 173. Emphyteusis, p 173. Improvements, p 173. Farming through steward, pp 174-5. Tenancies, pp 168-74, and Index under _peasants_. Rents in kind, p 171. Debt of various classes, pp 182-4, 366, 376. Taxes, p 140. Gangs of labourers, pp 166, 376. Wages, pp 126, 128, 168, 174, 366, 369-71. Food in wage, p 370. Emigration, pp 371, 396. Self-help in rural districts, pp 184-6, 376. Charities, pp 220 foll, 379 foll. Socialists and Peasantry, pp 64-6, 170, 172, cf 71-2.

(3) =R E Prothero=, _The pleasant land of France_. London 1908.

Chapters (essays) II and III, _French farming_ and _Tenant-right and agrarian outrage in France_, contain much of interest.

pp 91-2 Social advantages of the system of peasant proprietors. A training[1829] to the rural population. Element of stability. The answer to agitators ‘Cela est bien, mais il faut cultiver notre jardin.’ Difficulties which beset its artificial creation. _Métayage_ (under present conditions) has proved the best shelter for tenant-farmers against the agricultural storm. Need of implicit confidence between landlord and working partner.

pp 98-9 Tenant-right in Santerre (Picardy). Tenant considers himself a co-proprietor of the land. Former payment of rent in kind taken to be a sign of joint ownership. Now in money, but calculated upon market price of corn. Landlord’s loss of control. High money value of _droit de marché_.

p 104 Traces of Roman occupation. Roman soldier followed by farmer. ‘Under the empire the _colonus_ was not a slave, but the owner of slaves: he held his land in perpetuity; he could not leave it. He paid a fixed rent in kind, which could not be raised. Tenant-right therefore is explained as the recognition by the Frankish conquerors of this hereditary claim to the perpetual occupation of the soil.’ [One of the various explanations offered.]

p 119 Severe legislation failed to get rid of tenant-right, but since 1791 it has been recognized, and so its importance decreased. Under the _ancien régime_ leases were short—9 years—and precarious. They were governed by the Roman law maxim _emptori fundi necesse non est stare colonum_. That is, if property changed hands during the continuance of the lease, the new owner might evict the tenant. The _Code Civil_ confirms law of 1791—dispossession only if provision has been made (in lease) for it.

In general, land-tenures vary very greatly in the various provinces.

(4) =G G Coulton=, _Social life in Britain from the Conquest to the Reformation_. Cambridge 1918.

In Section VI _Manor and Cottage_ are a number of extracts throwing light on the rustic conditions of their times.

1. _A model Manor_ pp 301-6, describing the organization of an estate, with the duties of the several officials and departmental servants. Watchful diligence and economy, strict accountability and honesty are insisted on, that the rights of the Lord may not be impaired.

2. _The Manorial court_, pp 306-8.

3. _The peasant’s fare_, p 308.

4. _Incidents of the countryside_, p 309.

7. _Decay of yeomanry_, pp 310-12. (Latimer.)

8. _Decay of husbandry_, pp 312-14. (Sir T More.)

All these passages are of great interest as shewing how a number of phenomena observable in the case of ancient estates are repeated under medieval conditions. The typical Manor with its elaborate hierarchy and rules, the struggles of the small yeoman, the encroachments of big landlords, the special difficulties of small-scale tillage caused by growth of large-scale pasturage, the increase of wastrels and sturdy beggars, are all notable points, worthy the attention of a student of ancient farm life and labour.

THE BIG MAN AND THE SMALL FARMER.

(5) =Clifton Johnson=, _From the St Lawrence to Virginia_. New York 1913, p 21. Chapter on the Adirondack winter.

(_Conversation in an up-country store._)

‘I worked for Rockefeller most of that season. You know he has a big estate down below here a ways. There used to be farmhouses—yes and villages on it, but he bought the owners all out, or froze ’em out. One feller was determined not to sell, and as a sample of how things was made uncomfortable for him I heard tell that two men came to his house once and made him a present of some venison. They had hardly gone when the game warden dropped in and arrested him for havin’ venison in his house. All such tricks was worked on him, and he spent every cent he was worth fighting lawsuits. People wa’n’t allowed to fish on the property, and the women wa’n’t allowed to pick berries on it. A good deal of hard feeling was stirred up, and Rockefeller would scoot from the train to his house, and pull the curtains down, ’fraid they’d shoot him. Oh! he was awful scairt.’

EASTERN EUROPE.

(6) =Marion L Newbigin DSc=, _Geographical aspects of Balkan problems_. London 1915.

_Turks_—‘not all their virtues, not all their military strength, have saved them from the slow sapping of vitality due to their divorce alike from the actual tilling of the land and from trade and commerce.... He has been within the (Balkan) peninsula a parasite, chiefly upon the ploughing peasant, and the effect has been to implant in the mind of that peasant a passion for agriculture, for the undisturbed possession of a patch of freehold, which is probably as strong here as it has ever been in the world.’ p 137.

_Thessaly_—‘the landowners are almost always absentees, appearing only at the time of harvest’ (originally Turks, now mostly Greeks) ‘who have taken little personal interest in the land’ (no great improvement in condition of cultivator). (So in Bosnia—better in Serbia and Bulgaria) ‘lands mostly worked by the peasants on the half-shares system.’ p 175.

_Albania_—(poverty extreme—temporary emigration of the males, frequent in poor regions) ‘young Albˢ often leave their country during the winter, going to work in Greece or elsewhere as field labourers, and returning to their mountains in the spring.’ pp 183-4.

Generally—small holdings mostly in the Balkan states.

D. LIST OF SOME BOOKS USED.

This list does not pretend to be complete. Many other works are referred to here and there in the notes on the text. But I feel bound to mention the names of some, particularly those dealing with conditions that did or still do exist in the modern world. Miscellaneous reading of this kind has been to me a great help in the endeavour to understand the full bearing of ancient evidence, and (I hope) to judge it fairly. It is on the presentation and criticism of that evidence that I depend: for the great handbooks of Antiquities do not help me much. The practice of making a statement and giving in support of it a reference or references is on the face of it sound. But, when the witnesses cited are authors writing under widely various conditions of time and place and personal circumstances, it is necessary whenever possible to appraise each one separately. And when the aim is, not to write a technical treatise on ‘scientific’ lines, but to describe what is a highly important background of a great civilization, a separate treatment of witnesses needs no apology. I cannot cite in detail the references to conditions in a number of countries, for instance India and China, but I have given them by page or chapter so as to be consulted with ease.

(1) AGRICULTURE AND RUSTIC LIFE AND LABOUR.

M Weber, _Die Römische Agrargeschichte_, Stuttgart 1891.

C Daubeny, _Lectures on Roman husbandry_, Oxford 1857.

Ll Storr-Best, _Varro on farming_, translated with Introduction commentary and excursus, London 1912.

E de Laveleye, _Primitive Property_, English translation 1878.

H Blümner, article ‘Landwirtschaft’ in I Müller’s _Handbuch_ VI ii 2, ed 3 pp 533 foll.

A E Zimmern, _The Greek Commonwealth_, Oxford 1911.

Büchsenschütz, _Besitz und Erwerb_, Halle 1869.

_Columella of Husbandry_, translation (anonymous), London 1745.

(2) ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL MATTERS.

Adam Smith, _Wealth of Nations_, _passim_.

H Nissen, _Italische Landeskunde_, Berlin 1883-1902.

K W Nitzsch, _Geschichte der Römischen Republik_, vol II, Leipzig 1885.

L Bloch, _Soziale Kämpfe im alten Röm_, ed III Berlin 1913.

David Hume, _Essays_, ed 1760 (Essay XI of the populousness of antient nations).

J Beloch, _Die Bevölkerung der Griechisch-Römischen Welt_, Leipzig 1886.

H Francotte, _L’Industrie dans la Grèce ancienne_, Bruxelles 1900-1.

O Seeck, _Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt_, Berlin 1897-1913.

O Seeck, ‘Die Schatzungsordnung Diocletians,’ in _Zeitschrift für Social- und Wirthschaftsgeschichte_, Weimar 1896.

H Schiller, _Geschichte der Römischen Kaiserzeit_, Gotha 1883-7.

S Dill, _Roman society in the last century of the Western Empire_, London 1898.

G Gilbert, _Handbuch der Griechischen Staatsalterthümer_, vol II, Leipzig 1885.

(3) LAW AND THE LATER COLONATE.

Several of the books named under other heads deal with legal points, for instance Beauchet, Lipsius, Meier and Schömann, Calderini, M Clerc.

The Digest and Codex Justinianus have been used in the text of Mommsen and P Krüger.

_The Codex Theodosianus_ in text of Mommsen and P M Meyer, Berlin 1905 and in Ritter’s edition of Godefroi, Leipzig 1736-45.

P Girard, _Textes de droit Romain_, ed 4 Paris 1913.

F Zulueta, ‘De Patrociniis vicorum,’ in Vinogradoff’s _Oxford Studies_, Oxford 1909.

M Rostowzew, _Studien zur Geschichte des Römischen Colonates_, Leipzig and Berlin 1910.

B Heisterbergk, _Die Entstehung des Colonats_, Leipzig 1876.

A Esmein, _Mélanges d’histoire du Droit_, Paris 1886.

Fustel de Coulanges, ‘Le Colonat Romain,’ in his _Recherches sur quelques problèmes d’histoire_, Paris 1885.

H F Pelham, _Essays_ (No XIII), Oxford 1911.

I am sorry that inability to procure copies has prevented me from consulting the following works:

Beaudouin, _Les grands domaines dans l’empire Romain_, Paris 1899.

Bolkestein, _de colonatu Romano eiusque origine_, Amsterdam 1906.

(4) MANUMISSION AND KINDRED TOPICS.

A Calderini, _La manomissione e la condizione dei liberti in Grecia_, Milan 1908.

M Clerc, _Les métèques Athéniens_, Paris 1893.

L Beauchet, _Droit privé de la République Athénienne_, Paris 1897.

J H Lipsius, _Das Attische Recht etc._, Leipzig 1905.

Meier und Schömann, _Der Attische Process_, Berlin 1883-7.

Mommsen, _Römisches Staatsrecht_.

G Haenel, _Corpus legum_, Leipzig 1857.

C G Bruns, _Fontes Iuris Romani antiqui_.

Dareste, Haussoullier, Th Reinach, _Recueil des inscriptions juridiques Grecques_, Paris 1904. (Laws of Gortyn.)

Wescher et Foucart, _Inscriptions de Delphes_, Paris 1863.

Wilamowitz-Möllendorf, ‘Demotika der Metöken,’ in _Hermes_ 1887.

(5) SLAVERY AND SLAVE TRADE.

H Wallon, _Histoire de l’esclavage dans l’antiquité_, ed 2 Paris 1879.

J K Ingram, _A history of slavery and serfdom_, London 1895.

E H Minns, _Scythians and Greeks_, Cambridge 1913 (pages 438, 440, 461, 465, 471, 567).

V A Smith, _The early history of India_, Oxford 1914 (pages 100-1, 177-8, 441).

M S Evans, _Black and White in the Southern States_, London 1915.

” _Black and White in South-east Africa_, ed 2 London 1916.

J E Cairnes, _The Slave Power_, ed 2 London and Cambridge 1863.

W W Buckland, _The Roman Law of Slavery_, Cambridge 1908.

W E Hardenburg, _The Putumayo, the Devil’s Paradise_, with extracts from Sir R Casement’s report, London and Leipzig 1912.

H W Nevinson, _A modern Slavery_, London and New York 1906.

Sidney Low, _Egypt in transition_ (see under _Medieval and Modern conditions_).

Mrs M A Handley, _Roughing it in Southern India_, London 1911 (pages 193-4).

(6) MEDIEVAL AND MODERN CONDITIONS.

_Books illustrating matters of rustic life, peasant proprietorship, agricultural wage-labour, etc._

Bolton King and Thomas Okey, _Italy today_, new ed London 1909.

R E Prothero, _The pleasant land of France_, London 1908 (Essays II and III).

Anne Macdonell, _In the Abruzzi_, London 1908 (chapters 1-3).

G Renwick, _Finland today_, London 1911 (pages 59, 60).

Sir J D Rees, _The real India_, London 1908.

Marion L Newbigin, _Geographical aspects of Balkan problems_, London 1915.

Ralph Butler, _The new eastern Europe_, London 1919 (