Agricola

by William Emerton Heitland

XLIV. SUETONIUS AND OTHERS.

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

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

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

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