XLV. APULEIUS.
The Province of Africa was in this period a flourishing part of the empire, giving signs of its coming importance in the next generation, when it produced several emperors. It was in fact a sort of successor of Spain, and like Spain it enjoyed the advantage of not fronting on the usual seats of war to the North and East. One of the most remarkable literary figures of the age was the African[1336] L Apuleius of Madaura, who travelled widely as student and lecturer, and was well acquainted with Greece and Italy. A philosopher of the mystical-Platonist type, he was in touch with practical life through his study of the Law, and was for some time a pleader in Rome. His native Province[1337] was notoriously addicted to litigation, and a modern scholar[1338] has shewn that the works of Apuleius abound in legal phraseology and are coloured with juristic notions. Now, it was not possible to go far in considering property and rights without coming upon questions relative to land: moreover, he himself owned land in Africa. Accordingly we find in him some references to land, and even to rustic labour and conditions of rural life. And, though his Metamorphoses is a fantastic romance, there is no reason to doubt that incidents and scenes (other than supernatural) are true to facts observed by the writer, and therefore admissible as evidence of a general kind. An instance may be found in the case of the ass, that is the hero of the story transformed into that shape by magic. He is to be sold, and the waggish auctioneer[1339] says to a possible bidder ‘I am well aware that it is a criminal offence to sell you a Roman citizen for a slave: but why not buy a good and trusty slave that will serve you as a helper both at home and abroad?’ Here we have a recognition of the fact of kidnapping, which is referred to elsewhere in the book; that in cases of Roman victims the law took a very serious view of the offence; while the point of the pleasantry lies in the circumstance that neither auctioneer nor company present are aware that the ass is a transformed man, liable to regain his human shape by magical disenchantment.
The scene of the Metamorphoses is laid in Greece, and the anecdotes included in it do not give us a favourable picture of that part of the Roman empire. There was surely nothing to tempt the writer to misrepresent the condition of the country by packing his descriptions with unreal details: he would thus have weakened the effect of his romance. Wealth in the hands of a few, surrounded by a pauper majority; shrunken towns, each with its more or less degraded rabble; general insecurity for life liberty and property; a cruel and arbitrary use of power; a spiritless acquiescence in this pitiful state of things, relieved by the excitements of superstition and obscenity: such was Roman Greece as Apuleius saw it. No doubt there was Roman Law to enforce honesty and order. But the administration of justice seldom, if ever, reaches the standard of legislation; and as yet the tendency of the Roman government was to interfere as little as possible with local authorities. Greece in particular had always been treated with special indulgence, in recognition of her glorious past. Whether the effects of this favour were conducive to the wellbeing of the country, may fairly be doubted. The insane vanity of Nero, masquerading as Liberator of Greece, had surely done more harm than good. Hadrian’s benefactions to Athens, dictated by sentimental antiquarianism, could not improve the general condition of the country, however satisfactory they might be to what was now an University town living on students and tourists.
One of the first things that strikes a reader of this book is the matter-of-fact way in which brigandage[1340] is taken for granted. These robbers work in organized bands under chosen captains, have regular strongholds as bases of operations, draw recruits from the poverty-stricken peasantry or slaves, and do not hesitate to attack and plunder great mansions, relying on the cowardice or indifference (or perhaps treachery) of the rich owner’s slaves. Murder is to them a mere trifle, and their ingenuity in torturing is fiendish. No doubt their activities are somewhat exaggerated as a convenient part of the machinery of the story, but the lament of Plutarch and the Euboic idyll of Dion forbid us to regard these brigand-scenes as pure fiction. They are another side of the same picture of distressful Greece. Nor is the impression produced thereby at all weakened by a specimen of military[1341] insolence. Greece was not a Province in which a large army was kept, but all Governors had some armed force to support their authority. The story introduces the ass with his present owner, a gardener, on his back. They are met by a swaggering bully of a soldier, who inquires where they are going. He asks this in Latin. The gardener makes no reply, not knowing Latin. The angry soldier knocks him off the ass, and repeats his question in Greek. On being told that they are on their way to the nearest town, he seizes the ass on the pretext of being wanted for fatigue duty in the service of the Governor, and will listen to no entreaties. Just as he is preparing to break the gardener’s skull, the gardener trips him up and pounds him to some purpose. He shams dead, while the gardener hurries off and takes refuge with a friend in the town. The soldier follows, and stirs up his mates, who induce the local magistrates to take up the matter and give them satisfaction. The gardener’s retreat is betrayed by a neighbour, and clever concealment nullified by an indiscretion of the ass. The wretched gardener is found and haled off to prison awaiting execution, while the soldier takes possession of the ass. This story again is surely not grotesque and incredible fiction. More likely it is made up from details heard by the African during his sojourn in Greece. If scenes of this kind were possible, the outlook of humble rustics[1342] can hardly have been a cheerful one.
That perils of robbers and military insolence were not the only troubles of the countryside, is shewn by the following anecdote[1343] describing the brutal encroachments of a big landlord on poorer neighbours. A landowner, apparently a man of moderate means, had three sons, well-educated and well-behaved youths, who were close friends of a poor man with a little cottage of his own. Bordering on this man’s little holding was the large and fertile landed estate belonging to a rich and powerful neighbour in the prime of life. This rich man, turning the fame of his ancestors to bad account, strong in the support of party cliques, in fact an autocrat[1344] within the jurisdiction of the town, was given to making raids on the poverty of his humble neighbour. He slaughtered his flocks, drove off his oxen, and trampled down his crops before they were ripe, till he had robbed him of all the fruit of his thrift. His next desire was to expel him altogether from his patch of soil: so he got up a baseless dispute over boundaries, and claimed the whole of the land as his own. The poor man, though diffident by nature, was bent upon keeping his hereditary ground if only for his own burial. The claim upset him greatly, and he entreated a number of his friends to attend at the settlement[1345] of boundaries. Among those present were the three brothers mentioned above, who came to do their little best in the cause of their injured friend. But the rich man, unabashed by the presence of a number of citizens, treated all efforts at conciliation with open contempt, and swore that he would order his slaves to pick the poor man up by the ears and chuck him ever so far from his cottage in less than no time. The bystanders were greatly incensed at this brutal utterance. One of the three brothers dared to say ‘It’s no good your bullying and threatening like this just because you are a man of influence; don’t forget that even poor[1346] men have found in the laws guarding freemen’s rights a protector against the outrages of the rich.’ Upon this the enraged tyrant let loose his ferocious dogs[1347] and set them on the company. A horrible scene followed. One of the three youths was torn to pieces, and the others also perished; one of them slain by the rich man himself, the other, after avenging his brother, by his own hand.
The mere aggression of the rich landlord on the poor is interesting as adding another instance of the encroachments to the occurrence of which many other writers testify. The most remarkable feature of the story is the insolent disregard of the Law shewn by the rich man from first to last. That the governor of the Province could prevent or punish such outrages, if his attention were called to them, is not to be doubted. But he could not be everywhere at once, and it is not likely that many of the poorer class would be forward to report such doings and appear as accusers of influential persons. The rich probably sympathized with their own class, and a poor man shrank from a criminal prosecution that would in any event expose him to their vengeance afterwards. True, the poor were the majority. But it was a very old principle of Roman policy to entrust the effective control of municipalities to the burgesses of property, men who had something to lose and who, being a minority, would earn their local supremacy by a self-interested obedience to the central government. Thus local magnates (their evil day was not yet come) were left very much to their own devices, and most provincial governors cared too much for their own ease and comfort to display an inquisitive zeal. Moreover, so far as the rich thought it judicious to keep the poorer contented, it would be the town rabble that profited chiefly if not exclusively by their liberalities: the more isolated rustic was more liable to suffer from their land-proud greediness. We must picture them as overbearing and arbitrary slaveholders, practically uncontrolled; and the worst specimens among them as an ever-present terror to a cowed and indigent peasantry. We are not to suppose that things were as bad as this in all parts of Greece, but that there was little or nothing to prevent their becoming so, even in happier districts.
From time immemorial the Greek tendency had been to congregate in towns, and after the early fall of the landowning aristocracies this tendency was strengthened by democratic movements. The country as a whole was never able to feed its population. But the population was now greatly reduced. Given due security, perhaps the rustics might now have been able to feed the towns. And that they were to some extent doing so may be inferred from the fact that the chief peasant figure in the rural life of the Metamorphoses is the market-gardener[1348]. If he is but left in peace, he seems to be doing fairly well. It is natural at this point to inquire whether a hortulanus might not also be a colonus, the former name connoting his occupation and the latter his legal position in relation to the land. Both terms often occur, but they seem to be quite distinct: I can find nothing to justify the application of both to the same person. And yet I cannot feel certain that Apuleius always means a tenant-farmer[1349] under a landlord whenever he uses the word colonus. Probably he does, as Norden seems to think. In any case the gardener is evidently in a smaller way of business than the average colonus, and it may be that his little scrap of land is his own. He certainly works[1350] with his own hands, and I find nothing to suggest that he is an employer of slaves, or that he himself is not free. That the tenant-farmers were often coloni partiarii, bound to deliver to their landlord a fixed share of their produce in kind, is highly probable. But this does not exclude the payment of money rents as well. Local usage probably varied in different districts. It is true that Apuleius several times[1351] uses partiarius metaphorically, but this only shews his addiction to legal language, and is no proof of the prevalence of the share-system in Greece. The coloni, nominally free, were as yet only bound to the soil by the practical difficulty of clearing themselves from the obligations that encumbered them and checked freedom of movement. But they were now near to the time when they were made fixtures by law.
Another work of Apuleius furnishes matter of interest, the so-called Apologia, a speech in his own defence when tried on a charge of magical arts about the year 158 AD. That the accused was in no little danger from this criminal prosecution has been shewn[1352] by Norden. What concerns us is the reference to rustic affairs that the speaker is led to make in the course of his argument, when demolishing some of the allegations of his enemies. The trial was in Africa at the regular provincial assize, and the conditions referred to are African. Apuleius, as a man of note in his native Province, takes high ground to manifest his confidence in the strength of his case. The prosecution want to draw him into an unseemly squabble over side-issues. As the chief alleged instance of his magic was connected with his marriage to a rich lady, a widow of mature age, whom he was said to have bewitched, being at the time a young man in need, it had evidently been thought necessary to discuss his financial position as throwing light upon his motives. If at the same time he could be represented as having acted in defiance of well-known laws, so much the better. If we may trust the bold refutation of Apuleius, they entangled themselves in a contradiction and betrayed their own blind malice. His reply[1353] is as follows. ‘Whether you keep slaves to cultivate your farm, or whether you have an arrangement with your neighbours for exchange[1354] of labour, I do not know and do not want to know. But you (profess to) know that at Oea, on the same day, I manumitted three slaves: this was one of the things you laid to my charge, and your counsel brought it up against me, though a moment before he had said that when I came to Oea I had with me but a single slave. Now, will you have the goodness to explain how, having but one, I could manumit three,—unless this too is an effect of magic. Was there ever such monstrous lying, whether from blindness or force of habit? He says, Apuleius brought one slave with him to Oea. Then, after babbling a few words, he adds that Apuleius manumitted three in one day at Oea. If he had said that I brought with me three, and granted freedom to them all, even that would not have deserved[1355] belief. But, suppose I had done so, what then? would not three freedmen be as sure a mark of wealth as three slaves of indigence?’
After this outburst the speaker is at pains to point out that to do with few slaves is a philosopher’s part, commended by examples not of philosophers only but of men famed in Roman history. The well-worn topic of the schools, that to need little is true riches, is set forth at large, with instances in illustration. He then asserts[1356] that he inherited a considerable property from his father, which has been much reduced by the cost of his journeys and expenses as a student and gifts to deserving friends. After this he turns upon his adversary. ‘But you and the men of your uneducated rustic class are worth just what your property is worth and no more, like trees that bear no fruit and are worth only the value of the timber in their stems. Henceforth you had better not taunt any man with his poverty. Your father left you nothing but a tiny farm at Zarat, and it is but the other day that you were taking the opportunity of a shower of rain to give it a good ploughing with the help of a single ass, and made it a three-days[1357] job. What has kept you on your legs is the quite recent windfalls of inheritances from kinsmen who died one after another.’ These personalities, in the true vein of ancient advocacy, do not tell us much, but it is interesting to note that the skilled pleader, a distinguished man of the world, quite naturally sneers at his opponent for having been a poor working farmer. Whether this was an especially effective taunt in the Province Africa, the home of great estates, it is hardly possible to guess.
Of small farmers in Africa, working their own land, we have, probably by accident, hardly any other record. But the reference above, to neighbours taking turns to help one another on their farms, comes in so much as a matter of course that we may perhaps conclude that there were such small free farmers, at least in some parts of the Province. For slaves we need no special evidence. But the lady whom Apuleius had married seems to have been a large slaveowner as well as a large landowner. He declares that he with difficulty persuaded her to quiet the claims of her sons by making over to them a great part of her estate in land and other goods; and one item consists[1358] of 400 slaves. We have also a reference to ergastula in a passage where he is protesting that to charge him with practising magic arts with the privity of fifteen slaves is on the face of it ridiculous[1359]. ‘Why, 15 free men make a community, 15 slaves make a household, and 15 chained ones a lock-up.’ I take these vincti to be troublesome slaves, not debtors. Again, in refuting the suggestion that he had bewitched the lady, he states as proof of her sanity that at the very time when she is said to have been out of her mind she most intelligently audited and passed the accounts of her stewards[1360] and other head-servants on her estates. And in general it has been well said[1361] that Apuleius, with all his wide interest in all manner of things, did not feel driven to inquire into the right or wrong of slavery in itself. He took it as he found it in the Roman world of his day. That he had eyes to see some of its most obvious horrors, may be inferred from the description[1362] of the condition of slaves in a flour-mill, put into the mouth of the man-ass. But with the humanitarian movements of these times he shews no sympathy; and he can depict abominable scenes of cruelty and bestiality without any warmth of serious indignation.