Agricola

by William Emerton Heitland

XLVIII. DISCUSSION OF THE ABOVE INSCRIPTIONS.

In reviewing the state of things revealed to us by these inscriptions we must carefully bear in mind that they relate solely to the Province Africa. Conditions there were in many ways exceptional. When Rome took over this territory after the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC, it was probably a country divided for the most part into great estates worked on the Carthaginian system by slave labour. Gradually the land came more and more into the hands of Roman capitalists, to whose opulence Horace refers. Pliny tells us that in Nero’s time six[1422] great landlords possessed half the entire area of the Province, when that emperor found a pretext for putting them to death and confiscating their estates. Henceforth the ruling emperor was the predominating landlord[1423] in a Province of immense importance, in particular as a chief granary of Rome. We are not to suppose that any change in the system of large units was ever contemplated. Punic traditions, probably based on experience, favoured the system; though the Punic language, still spoken, seems to have been chiefly confined to the seaboard districts. What the change of lordship effected was not only to the financial advantage of the imperial treasury: it also put an end to the creation of what were a sort of little principalities that might some day cause serious trouble. At this point we are tempted to wonder whether the great landlords, before the sweeping measure of Nero, had taken any steps towards introducing a new organization in the management of their estates. Trajan’s statute refers to a lex Manciana and adopts a number of its regulations. These regulations clearly contemplate a system of head-tenants and sub-tenants, of whom the latter seem to be actual working farmers living of the labour of their own hands, as those who some 65 years later described themselves in appealing to Commodus. The former have stewards in charge of the cultivation of the ‘manor farms’ attached to the principal farmsteads, and evidently employ gangs of slaves: but at special seasons have a right to a limited amount[1424] of task-labour from the free sub-tenants of the small farms. That these labour-conditions were devised to meet a difficulty in procuring enough slaves to carry on the cultivation of the whole big estate, is an inference hardly to be resisted. That we find it on more than one estate indicates that for the time it was serving its purpose. But, in admitting that it probably began under the rule of great private landlords, we must not lose sight of the fact that it was liable to grievous abuse, and that even the regulations of Hadrian did not remove the necessity of pitiful appeals for redress.

An important characteristic of these estates was that they were outside the municipal[1425] system. Each of the so-called civitates had its own charter or statute (lex) conforming more or less closely to a common[1426] model, under which the municipal authorities could regulate the management of lands within its territory. But these great estates were independent[1427] of such local jurisdictions. And this independence would seem to date from the times of private ownership, before the conversion of many of them into imperial domains. Mommsen thought that this separate treatment of them as ‘peculiars’ began in Italy under the Republic, and was due to the influence of the landowning aristocracy, who were bent upon admitting no such concurrent authority on their latifundia. This may have been so, and the extension of large-scale possessions to the Provinces may have carried the system abroad. At all events there it was, and it suited the convenience of a grasping emperor: he had only to get rid of the present possessor and carry on the administration of the domain as before: his agents stepped into the place of those employed by the late landlord, and only slight modification of the current regulations would be required. He issued a statute for management of ‘crown-property’ as he would for a municipality. It was in effect a local law, and it does not appear that the common law administered by the ordinary courts could override it. The imperial procurator was practically the magistrate charged with its administration in addition to his financial duties, for government and extraction of revenue were really two sides of the same function. Obviously the interests of the emperor, of his agent, of the head-tenants, and of the peasant cultivators, were not the same. But the peasant, who wanted to pay as little as possible, and the emperor who wanted to receive steady returns—as large as possible, but above all things steady—had a common interest in preventing unlawful exactions, by which a stable income was imperilled and the prosperity of the cultivator impaired. On the other hand the procurator and the conductor could only make illicit profits through combining to rob the emperor by squeezing his coloni. How to accomplish this was no doubt a matter of delicate calculation. How much oppression would the coloni stand without resorting to the troublesome and risky process of an appeal? We only hear of one or two appeals made with success. Of those that were made and rejected or foiled by various arts, and of those abandoned in despair at an early stage, we get no record. Yet that such cases did occur, perhaps not seldom, we may be reasonably sure.

It is well to remember that Columella, in whose treatise letting of farms to tenants first appears, not as an occasional expedient but as part of a reasoned scheme of estate-management, makes provision for a procurator[1428] as well as a vilicus. One duty of the former is to keep an eye on the latter. In the management of great estates an atmosphere of mistrust is perhaps to some extent unavoidable. In an agricultural system based on slave labour, this mistrust begins at the very bottom of the structure and reaches to the very top, as is shewn by all experience ancient and modern. Industry in slaves, diligence and honesty in agents and stewards, are not to be relied on when these subordinates have no share in the profit derived from the practice of such virtues. And mistrust of slaves and freedmen did not imply a simple trust in free tenants. Columella only advises[1429] letting to tenants in circumstances that make it impracticable to cultivate profitably by a slave-staff under a steward. The plan is a sort of last resort, and it can only work well if the tenants stay on continuously. Therefore care should be taken to make the position of the coloni permanently attractive. This advice is primarily designed for Italy, but its principles are of general application, and no doubt justified by experience. Their extension to latifundia abroad, coupled with a falling-off in the supply of slaves, led to similar results: great estates might still be in part worked by slave labour under stewards, but letting parcels to small tenants became a more and more vital feature of the system. But to deal directly from a distance with a number of such peasant farmers would be a troublesome business. We need not wonder that it became customary to let large blocks of land, even whole latifundia, to big lessees, speculative men who undertook the subletting and rent-collecting of part of their holdings, while they could work the central manor-farm by slave labour on their own account, and generally exploit the situation for their own profit. Thus, as once the latifundium had absorbed little properties, so now its subdivision was generating little tenancies, with chief-tenants as a sort of middlemen between the dominus and the coloni. To protect the colonus, the powers of the conductor[1430] had to be strictly limited: to ease the labour-problem and retain the conductor, a certain amount of task-work had to be required of the colonus. And this last condition was ominous of the coming serfdom.

If the economic situation and the convenience of non-resident landlords operated to produce a widespread system of letting to small tenants, it was naturally an object to levy the rents in such a form as would best secure a safe and regular return. To exact a fixed money-rent would mean that the peasant must spend time in marketing his produce in order to procure the necessary cash, and thereby lessen the time spent in actual farm-labour. In bad years he would look for an abatement of his rent, nor would it be easy to satisfy him: here was material for disputes and discontent. Such difficulties were known in Italy and elsewhere, and jurists recognized[1431] an advantage of the ‘partiary’ system in this connexion. An abatement of rent due in a particular year need not imply that the landlord lost the amount of abatement for good and all. If the next year produced a ‘bumper’ crop, the landlord was entitled to claim restitution of last year’s abatement in addition to the yearly rent. This too, it seems, in the case of a tenant sitting at a fixed money-rent. But the partiarius colonus is on another footing: he shares gain and loss with the dominus, with whom he is a quasi-partner[1432]. It was surely considerations of this kind that led to the adoption of the share-rent system on these great African estates. By fixing the proportion on a moderate scale, the peasant was fairly certain to be able to pay his rent, and he would not be harassed with money transactions dependent on the fluctuations in the price of corn. Under such conditions he was more likely to be contented and to stay on where he was, and that this should be so was precisely what the landlord desired. On the other hand the big conductor might pay rent either in coin or kind. He was a speculator, doubtless well able to take care of his own interests: probably the normal case was that he agreed to a fixed cash payment, and only took the lease on terms that left him a good prospect of making it a remunerative venture. But on this point there is need of further evidence.

When the emperor took over an estate of this kind, such an existing organization would be admirably fitted to continue under the fiscal administration. Apparently this is just what happened. One small but important improvement would be automatically produced by the change. The coloni would now become coloni Caesaris[1433] and whatever protection against exactions of conductores they may have enjoyed under the sway of their former lords was henceforth not less likely to be granted and much more certain of effect. To the fiscal officials any course of action tending to encourage permanent tenancies and steady returns would on the face of it be welcome: for it was likely to save them trouble, if not to bring them credit. The only influence liable to incline them in another direction was corruption in some form or other, leading them to connive at misdeeds of the local agents secretly in league with the head-lessees on the spot. That cases of such connivance occurred in the period from Trajan to Severus is not to be doubted. During the following period of confusion they probably became frequent. But it was not until Diocletian introduced a more elaborate imperial system, and increased imperial burdens to defray its greater cost, that the evil reached its height. Then the corruption of officials tainted all departments, and was the canker ever gnawing at the vital forces of the empire. But that this deadly corruption was a sudden growth out of an existing purity is not to be imagined. All this is merely an illustration of that oldest of political truisms, that to keep practice conformable to principle is supremely difficult. The only power that seems to be of any effect in checking the decay of departmental virtue is the power of public opinion. Now a real public opinion cannot be said to have existed in the Roman Empire; and, had it existed, there was no organ through which it could be expressed. And the Head of the State, let him be ever so devoted to the common weal, was too overburdened with manifold responsibilities to be able to give personal attention to each complaint and prescribe an equitable remedy.

How far we are entitled to trace a movement of policy by the contents of these African inscriptions is doubtful. They are too few, and too much alike. Perhaps we may venture to detect a real step onward in the latest of them. The renewal of the encouragement of squatter-settlers[1434] on derelict lands does surely point to a growing consciousness that the food-question was becoming a more and more serious one. Perhaps it may be taken to suggest that the system of leasing the African domains to big conductores had lately been found failing in efficiency. But it is rash to infer much from a single case: and the African Severus may have followed an exceptional policy in his native province. It is when we look back from the times of the later Empire, with its frantic legislation to bind coloni to the soil, and to enforce the cultivation of every patch of arable ground, that we are tempted to detect in every record symptoms of the coming constraint. As yet the central government had not laid its cramping and sterilizing hand on every part of its vast dominions. Moreover the demands on African productivity had not yet reached their extreme limit. There was as yet no Constantinople, and Egypt still shared with Africa the function of supplying food to Rome. Thus it is probably reasonable to believe that the condition of the working tenant-farmers was in this age a tolerable[1435] one. If those on the great domains were bit by bit bound to their holdings, it was probably with their own consent, so far at least that, seeing no better alternative, they became stationary and more or less dependent peasants. In other parts of Africa, for instance near Carthage, we hear of wealthy landowners employing bodies of slaves. Some of these men may well have been Italians: at least they took a leading part later in the rising against Maximin and the elevation of Gordian.

In connexion with the evidence of this group of inscriptions it may be not out of place to say a few words on the view set forth by Heisterbergk, that the origin of the later serf-colonate was Provincial, not Italian. He argues[1436] that what ruined small-scale farming in Italy was above all things the exemption of Italian land from taxation. Landlords were not constrained by the yearly exaction of dues to make the best economic use of their estates. Vain land-pride and carelessness were not checked: mismanagement and waste had free course, and small cultivation declined. The fall in free rustic population was both effect and cause. In the younger Pliny’s time good tenants were already hard to find, but great landlords owned parks and mansions everywhere. In the Provinces nearly all the land was subject to imperial taxation in kind or in money, and owners could not afford to let it lie idle. The practical control of vast estates was not possible from a distance. The direction of agriculture, especially of extensive farming (corn etc) from a fixed centre was little less difficult. There was therefore strong inducement to delegate the business of cultivation to tenants, and to let the difference in amount between their rents and the yearly imperial dues represent the landlord’s profit. Thus the spread of latifundia swallowed up small holdings in the Provinces as in Italy; but it converted small owners into small tenants, and did not merge the holdings into large slave-gang plantations or throw them into pasture. The plan of leasing a large estate as a whole to a big head-tenant, or establishing him in the central ‘manor farm,’ was quite consistent with the general design, and this theory accounts for the presence of a population of free coloni, whom later legislation might and did bind fast to the soil.

This argument has both ingenuity and force, but we can only assent to it with considerable reservations. Letting to free coloni was a practice long used in Italy, and in the first century AD was evidently becoming more common. It was but natural that it should appear in the Provinces. Still, taken by itself, there is no obvious reason why it should develope into serfdom. With the admitted scarcity and rising value of labour, why was it that the freeman did not improve his position in relation to his lord, indeed to capitalists in general? I think the presence of the big lessee, the conductor, an employer of slave labour, had not a little to do with it. Labour as such was despised. The requirement of task-work to supplement that of slaves on the ‘manor farm’ was not likely to make labour more esteemed. Yet to get his little holding the colonus had to put up with this condition. It may be significant that we hear nothing of coloni working for wages in spare time. Was it likely that they would do so? Then, when the conductor came to be employed as collector of rents and other dues on the estate, his opportunities of illicit exaction gave him more and more power over them; and, combined with their reluctance to migrate and sacrifice the fruits of past labour, reduced them[1437] more and more to a state of de facto dependence. At the worst they would be semi-servile in fact, though free in law; at the best they would have this outlook, without any apparent alternative to escape their fate. This, I imagine, was the unhappy situation that was afterwards recognized by law.

I must not omit to point out that I have said practically nothing on the subject[1438] of municipal lands and their administration by the authorities of the several res publicae or civitates. Of the importance of this matter I am well aware, more particularly in connexion with the development of emphyteusis under the perpetual leases granted by the municipalities. In a general history of the imperial economics this topic would surely claim a significant place. But it seems to have little or no bearing on the labour conditions with which I am primarily concerned, while it would add greatly to the bulk of a treatise already too long. So too the incidence of taxation, and the effects of degradation[1439] of the currency, influences that both played a sinister part in imperial economics, belong properly to a larger theme. Even the writers on land-surveying etc, the agrimensores or gromatici, only touch my subject here and there when it is necessary to speak of tenures, which cannot be ignored in relation to labour-questions. All these matters are thoroughly and suggestively treated in Seeck’s great history of the Decline and Fall of the ancient world. Another topic left out of discussion is the practical difference, if any, between the terms[1440] fundus and saltus in the imperial domains. I can find no satisfactory materials for defining it, and it does not appear to bear any relation to the labour-question. The meaning of the term inquilinus is a more important matter. If we are to accept Seeck’s ingenious conclusions[1441], it follows that this term, regularly used by the jurists of a house-tenant (urban) as opposed to colonus a tenant of land (rustic), in the course of the second century began to put on a new meaning. Marcus settled large numbers of barbarians on Roman soil. These ‘indwellers’ were labelled as inquilini, a word implying that they were imported aliens, distinct from the proper residents. An analogous distinction existed in municipalities between unprivileged ‘indwellers’ (incolae) and real municipes. Now a jurist’s opinion[1442] in the first half of the third century speaks of inquilini as attached (adhaerent) to landed estates, and only capable of being bequeathed to a legatee by inclusion in the landed estate: and it refers to a rescript of Marcus and Commodus dealing with a point of detail connected with this rule of law. Thus the inquilinate seems to have been a new condition implying attachment to the soil, long before the colonate acquired a similar character. For the very few passages, in which the fixed and dependent nature of the colonate is apparently recognized before the time of Constantine, are with some reason suspected of having been tampered with by the compilers of the Digest, or are susceptible of a different interpretation. It is clear that this intricate question cannot be fully discussed here. If these rustic inquilini were in their origin barbarian settlers, perhaps two conclusions regarding them may be reasonable. First, they seem to be distinct from slaves, the personal property of individual owners. For the evidence, so far as it goes, makes them attached[1443] to the land, and only transferable therewith. Secondly, they are surely labourers, tilling with their own hands the holdings assigned to them. If this view of them be sound, we may see in them the beginnings of a serf class. But it does not follow that the later colonate was a direct growth from this beginning. We have noted above several other causes contributing to that growth; in particular the state of de facto fixity combined with increasing dependence, in which the free colonus was gradually losing his freedom. Whether the later colonate will ever receive satisfactory explanation in the form of a simple and convincing theory, I cannot tell: at present it seems best to admit candidly that, among the various influences tending to produce the known result, I do not see my way[1444] to distinguish one as supremely important, and to ignore the effect of others. The opinion[1445] of de Coulanges, that the origin of the later colonate is mainly to be sought in the gradual effect of custom (local custom), eventually recognized (not created) by law, is perhaps the soundest attempt at a brief expression of the truth.