XXXVI. PLINY THE ELDER.
Among the writers of this period who refer to agricultural matters the most important is the elder Pliny, who contrived in a life of public service[1108] in various departments to amass a prodigious quantity of miscellaneous learning and to write many erudite works. His naturalis historia, an extraordinary compilation of encyclopaedic scope, contains numerous references to agriculture, particularly in the eighteenth book. He collected and repeated the gleanings from his omnivorous reading, and the result is more remarkable for variety and bulk than for choice and digestion. As a recorder he is helpful, preserving as he does a vast number of details, some not otherwise preserved, others of use in checking or supplementing other versions. Far removed as the book is from being a smooth and readable literary work, the moralizing rhetoric of the age shews its influence not only in the constant effort to wring a lesson of some kind out of the topic of the moment, but in the longer sermonizing passages that lead up to some subject on which the writer feels deeply. One of these[1109] occurs in introducing agriculture, and in pursuing the subject he loses no opportunity of contrasting a degenerate present with a better past. We need not take his lamentations at their full face-value, but that they were in the main justified is not open to doubt. It has been so often necessary to cite him in earlier chapters, that we shall not have to dwell upon him at great length here.
The functions of compiler and antiquarian are apt to coincide very closely, and it is in his picture of the earlier conditions of Roman and Italian farming that Pliny’s evidence is most interesting. The old traditions[1110] of the simple and manly yeomen, each tilling his own little plot of ground, content with his seven iugera of land or even with two in the earliest times, Cincinnatus and the rest of the farmer-heroes, to whom their native soil, proud of her noble sons, responded[1111] with a bounteous fertility that she denies to the heartless labour of slave-gangs on modern latifundia,—these are the topics on which he enlarges with a rhetorical or even poetic warmth. The ruin of Italy, nay of Provinces too, through the land-grabbing and formation of vast estates, is denounced[1112] in a classic passage. He sees no end to the process. Six landlords held between them half the Province of Africa in the time of Nero. Wanting money, the emperor put them to death for the sake of their property. He does not add, but doubtless reflected, that such measures only added to the resources controlled by a tyrant ruler, not a desirable object. We may add further that such iniquities inevitably disposed virtuous emperors to leave the land-monopolizers a free hand, perhaps unwillingly; but these gentry were not breaking the law by buying land, and an emperor conscious of the burden of administration, and desiring to carry on his work undisturbed by internal disloyalty, had strong reasons for not provoking wealthy capitalists. To conciliate them, and if possible to engage their cooperation in schemes designed for the public good according to the ideas of the time, was to proceed on the line of least resistance.
Among the traditional precepts handed on by Pliny from Cato and others are many with which we are already familiar. Such is the rule of Regulus[1113], that in buying a farm regard must be had to the healthiness of the situation as well as to the richness of the soil. Another is the need of keeping a due proportion[1114] between farm-house and farm. Great men of the late Republic, Lucullus and Scaevola, erred on this point in opposite directions: Marius on the other hand laid out a villa so skilfully that Sulla said ‘here was a man at last with eyes in his head.’ The value of the master’s eye is another old friend. We have also seen above that Mago’s[1115] advice, when you buy a farm, to sell your town house, was not a policy to be followed by Romans of quality, who felt it a duty not to cut themselves off from touch with public affairs. Another tradition is that of the sentiment of the olden time, holding it criminal[1116] to slay man’s fellow-worker, the ox. In referring to the technical skill required in a steward, a favourite topic of Cato, Pliny gives his own view[1117] briefly, ‘the master ought to set the greatest store by his steward, but the fellow should not be aware of it.’ The calculation of labour-cost[1118] in terms of operae, as with others, so with him, is a regular way of reckoning. And we meet once more the saying that, while good cultivation is necessary, too high farming does not pay. He illustrates this by an instance[1119] of comparatively modern date. A man of very humble origin, who rose through military merit to the consulship, was rewarded by Augustus with a large sum of money: this he spent on buying land[1120] in Picenum and fancy-farming. In this course he ran through his property, and his heir did not think it worth his while to claim the succession. The general tendency of all these precepts and anecdotes is to commend moderation and to rebuke the foolish ambition of land-proud capitalists of his own day. His praise of the ancient ways and regret for their disappearance do not suggest any hope of their revival. To Pliny as to others it was only too clear that legends of conquering consuls setting their own hands to the plough had no practical bearing on the conditions of the present age.
Thoughtful men[1121] could not ignore the fact that the decline in production of cereal crops left Italy exposed to risk of famine. At any moment storms might wreck the corn-fleets from Egypt or Africa, and the strategic value of Egypt[1122] as a vital food-centre had been shewn quite recently in strengthening the cause of Vespasian. No wonder Pliny is uneasy, and looks back regretfully[1123] to the time when Italy was not fed by the Provinces, when thrifty citizens grew their own staple food-stuffs, and corn was plentiful and cheap. He quotes some prices from the time of the great Punic wars and earlier, which shew the remarkable cheapness of wine oil dried figs and flesh, as well as of various grains. This result was not due to great estates owned by individual landlords[1124] who elbowed out their neighbours, but to the willing work of noble citizens tilling their little holdings. To look for similar returns from the task-work of chained and branded slaves is a sheer libel on Mother Earth. That he treats at great length of agricultural details, not only of grain-crops in their various kinds, but fruits, vegetables, indeed everything he can think of, and all the processes of cultivation, is due to his encyclopaedic bent, and need not detain us here. When he tells us[1125] that vine-growing was a comparatively late development among the Romans, who long were content with grain-growing, it is a passing sigh over a vanished age of simple life. The meaning of words changes and records the change of things. When the Twelve Tables[1126] spoke of hortus, it was not a garden in the modern sense, a place of pleasure and luxury, that was meant, but a poor man’s small holding. By that venerable code it was made a criminal offence[1127] to cut or graze off under cover of night the crops raised on a man’s plough-land. A man whose farm was badly cultivated was disgraced by the censors. For, as Cato[1128] said, there is no life like the farmer’s for breeding sturdy men to make efficient soldiers and loyal citizens. The gist of these utterances, picked out of the mass, is that Pliny would like to see Italy able to provide for her own feeding and her own defence, but knows very well that no such ideal is within the range of hope.
His interest in agriculture such as he saw it around him is shewn in recording recent or contemporary doings, such as that of the man mentioned above who squandered a fortune on ill-judged farming. A more successful venture[1129] was that of Remmius Palaemon, apparently in the time of Claudius. He was a freedman, not a farmer, but a school-master (grammaticus) of repute, a vainglorious fellow. He bought some land, not of the best quality and let down by bad farming. To farm this he engaged another freedman, one Acilius Sthenelus, who had the vineyards thoroughly overhauled (pastinatis de integro). Before eight years were out, he was able to sell a hanging crop for half as much again as it had cost him to buy the land, and within ten years he sold the land itself to Seneca (not a man for fancy prices) for four times as much as he had given for it. Truly a fine speculation. Sthenelus had carried out another of the same kind[1130] on his own account. We must note that both were in the vine-culture, not in corn-growing, and the appearance of freedmen, probably oriental Greeks, as leaders of agricultural enterprise in Italy. There is nothing to shew that these undertakings were on a large scale: the land in Sthenelus’ own case is stated as not more than 60 iugera. But no doubt he was, like many of his tribe, a keen man of business[1131] and not too proud or preoccupied to give close attention to the matter in hand. Such a man would get the utmost out of his slaves and check waste: he would keep a tight grip on a slave steward if (which we are not told) he found it necessary to employ one at all. For Pliny, as for most Romans, a profitable speculation had great charms. He cannot resist repeating the old Greek story[1132] of the sage who demonstrated his practical wisdom by making a ‘corner’ in olive-presses, foreseeing a ‘bumper’ crop. Only he turns it round, making it a ‘corner’ in oil, in view of a poor crop and high prices, and tells it not of Thales but of Democritus.
There were of course many principles of agriculture that no economic or social changes could affect. The ‘oracle’ of Cato, as to the importance[1133] of thorough and repeated ploughing followed by liberal manuring, was true under all conditions. But just for a moment the veil is lifted to remind us that in the upland districts there was still an Italy agriculturally, as socially, very different from the lowland arable of which we generally think when speaking of Italian farming. ‘Ploughing on hillsides[1134] is cross-wise, and so toilsome to man that he even has to do ox-team’s work: at least the mountain peoples[1135] use the mattock for tillage instead of the plough, and do without the ox.’ It is to be regretted that we have so little evidence as to the condition of the dalesmen, other than the passages of such writers as Horace and Juvenal, who refer to them as rustic folk a sojourn among whom is a refreshing experience after the noise and bustle of Rome. For it seems certain that in these upland retreats there survived whatever was left of genuine Italian life, and we should like to be able to form some notion of its quantity; that is, whether the population of freemen on small holdings, living mostly on the produce of their own land, was numerically an important element in the total population of Italy. That great stretches of hill-forest were in regular use simply as summer pastures, and that the bulk of the arable lands were held in great estates, and slaves employed in both departments, we hear in wearisome iteration. But to get a true picture of the country as a whole is, in the absence of statistics, not possible.
I have not been able to discover in Pliny any definite repugnance to slavery as a system. It is true that he is alive to the evils of the domestic slavery prevalent in his day. The brigades of slaves (mancipiorum legiones)[1136] filling the mansions of the rich, pilfering at every turn, so that nothing is safe unless put under lock and seal, are a nuisance and a demoralizing influence. They are an alien throng (turba externa) in a Roman household; a sad contrast[1137] to the olden time, when each family had its one slave, attached to his master’s clan, when the whole household lived in common, and nothing had to be locked up. But this is only one of Pliny’s moralizing outbreaks, and it is the abuse and overgrowth of slavery, not slavery in itself, that he is denouncing. In speaking of agriculture he says ‘to have farms cultivated by slave-gangs[1138] is a most evil thing, as indeed are all acts performed by those who have no hope.’ Here the comparative inefficiency of workers who see no prospect of bettering their condition is plainly recognized; but it is the economic defect, not the outrage on a common humanity, that inspires the consciously futile protest. And at the very end of his great book, when he breaks out into a farewell panegyric[1139] on Italy, and enumerates the various elements of her preeminence among the countries of the world, he includes the supply of slave-labour[1140] in the list. Spain perhaps comes next, but here too the organized employment[1141] of slaves is one of the facts that are adduced to justify her praise. Now I do not imagine that Pliny was a hard unkindly man. But he evidently accepted slavery as an established institution, one of the economic bases of society. He saw its inferiority to free labour, but a passing protest seemed to him enough. Had he been asked, Why don’t you recommend free labour directly? I think he would have answered, Where are you going to find it in any quantity? And it is obvious that, slave labour once assumed, the great thing was to have enough of it. Nor again have I found him using colonus in the sense of tenant farmer. In that of ‘cultivator’ it occurs several times, as in the quotation[1142] from Cato, that to call a man bonum colonum was of old the height of praise. Figuratively it appears in comparisons, as when the guilt of the slayer of an ox is emphasized[1143] by the addition ‘as if he had made away with his colonus.’ So of the fertilizing Nile he says ‘discharging the duty[1144] of a colonus.’ In the passage where he warns his readers against too high farming[1145] he remarks ‘There are some crops that it does not pay to gather, unless the owner is employing his own children or a colonus of his own or hands that have on other grounds to be fed—I mean, if you balance the cost against the gain.’ Here it is just possible that he means ‘a tenant of his own,’ that is a tenant long attached to the estate, like the coloni indigenae of Columella: but I think it is quite neutral, and probably he has in mind either a relative or a slave. The ‘persons for whose keep he is responsible’ sums up to the effect that if you have mouths to fill you may as well use their labour, for it will add nothing to your labour-bill. So far as I have seen, the difference between ownership and tenancy is not a point of interest to Pliny.
In continuation of what has been said above as to the relations of Vergil and Columella, it is necessary to discuss briefly the attitude of Pliny towards these two writers. The indices to the Natural History at once disclose the fact that citations of Vergil[1146] are about six times as numerous as those of Columella. Indeed he seldom refers to the latter; very often to Varro, even more often to Cato. The frequent references to Vergil may reasonably be explained as arising from a wish to claim whenever possible the moral support of the now recognized chief figure of Roman literature. This was all the more easy, inasmuch as Vergil’s precepts in the Georgics[1147] are mostly old or borrowed doctrine cast into a perfect form. Columella had used them in a like spirit, but in dealing with the labour-question he faced facts, not only instructing his readers in the technical processes of agriculture, but setting forth the forms of labour-organization by which those processes were to be carried on. Now Pliny records an immense mass of technical detail, but of labour-organization he says hardly any thing; for his laments over a vanished past are only of use in relieving his own feelings. And yet the labour-question, and the tenancy-question connected therewith, were the central issues of the agricultural problem. It was not the knowledge of technical details that was conspicuously lacking, but the will and means to apply knowledge already copious. Not what to do, but how to get it done, was the question which Columella tried to answer and Pliny, like Vergil, did not really face. It is curious to turn out the eight distinct references to Columella in Pliny. In none of these passages is there a single word of approval, and the general tone of them is indifferent and grudging. Sometimes the words seem to suggest that his authority is not of much weight, or pointedly remark that it stands quite alone. In one place[1148] he is flatly accused of ignorance. When we consider that Pliny speaks of Varro with high respect, and positively worships Cato and Vergil, it is clear that there must have been some special reason for this unfriendly and half-contemptuous attitude. The work of Columella did not deserve such treatment. It evidently held its ground in spite of sneers, for Palladius in the fourth century cites it repeatedly as one of the leading authorities. It is not difficult to conjecture possible causes for the attitude of Pliny: but none of those that occur to me is sufficient, even if true, to justify it. I must leave it as one of the weak points in the Natural History.