XXXVII. TACITUS.
P Cornelius Tacitus, one of the great figures of Roman literature, passed through the time of the Flavian emperors, but his activity as a writer belonged chiefly to the reign of Trajan. Like most historians, he gave his attention to public and imperial affairs, and we get from him very little as to the conditions of labour. Of emperors and their doings evil or good, of the upper classes and their reactionary sympathies, their intrigues and perils, we hear enough: but of the poor wage-earners[1149] and slaves hardly anything, for to one who still regretted the Republic while accepting the Empire, an aristocrat at heart, the lower orders were of no more importance than they had been to Cicero. Indeed they were now less worthy of notice, as free political life had ceased and the city rabble, no longer needed for voting and rioting, had merely to be fed and amused. A populace of some sort was a necessary element in the imperial capital: that it was in fact a mongrel mob could not be helped, and year by year it became through manumissions of slaves a mass of more and more cosmopolitan pauperism. The Provinces and the frontier armies were matters of deep interest, but the wars of the succession after Nero only served to exhibit with irresistible stress the comparative unimportance of Italy. Tacitus, a Roman of good family, born in Italy if not in Rome, dignified and critical by temperament, was not the man to follow the fashion of idle and showy rhetoric. He does not waste time and effort in vainly deploring the loss of a state of things that could not be restored. That the present condition of Italy grieved him, we may feel sure. But he viewed all things in a spirit of lofty resignation. That he was led to contrast the real or assumed virtues of German barbarians with the flagrant vices of Roman life was about the limit of his condescension to be a preacher: and it is not necessary to assume that the pointing of a moral was the sole motive of his tract on the land and tribes of Germany.
I have already referred to the uneasiness of Tiberius as to the food-supply[1150] of Rome, dependent on importations of corn which were liable to be interrupted by foul weather and losses at sea. The risk was real enough, and the great artificial harbours constructed at the Tiber mouth by Claudius and Trajan were chiefly meant to provide accommodation for corn-fleets close at hand, with large granaries to store cargoes[1151] in reserve. The slave rising of 24 AD in south-eastern Italy, and its suppression, have also been mentioned[1152] above. These passages, and a passing reference to the unproductiveness[1153] of the soil (of Italy) are significant of the inefficiency of Italian agriculture in the time of Tiberius. But in reporting these matters Tacitus writes as historian, not as a contemporary witness, and enough has been said of them above. A curious passage, not yet referred to, is that describing the campaign[1154] against money-lenders in 33 AD. A law passed by Julius Caesar in BC 49 with the object of relieving the financial crisis without resorting to a general cancelling of debts, long obsolete, was raked up again, and there was widespread alarm, for most senators had money out on loan. It seems that some trials and condemnations actually took place, and that estates of the guilty were actually seized and sold for cash under the provisions of a disused law. Further trouble at once followed, for there was a general calling in of mortgages, while cash was scarce, the proceeds of the late sales having passed into one or other of the state treasuries. Eighteen months grace had been granted to enable offending capitalists to arrange their affairs in conformity with the law. Evidently these gentry were in no hurry to reinvest their money as it came in, but waited for a fall in the price of land, certain to occur as a consequence of dearer money. In order to guard against such a result, the Senate had ordered that each (that is, each paid-off creditor,) should invest ⅔ of his loanable capital in Italian real estate, and that each debtor[1155] should repay ⅔ of his debt at once. But the creditors were demanding payment in full, and it did not look well for the debtors to weaken their own credit (by practically confessing insolvency). So there was great excitement, followed by uproar in the praetor’s court: and the measures intended to relieve the crisis—the arrangements for sale and purchase—had just the opposite effect. For the capitalists had locked up all their money with a view to the (eventual) purchase of land. The quantity of land thrown on the market sent prices down, and the more encumbered a man was the more difficult he found it to dispose of his land (that is, at a price that would clear him of debt). Numbers of people were ruined, and the situation was only saved by Tiberius, who advanced a great sum of money to be used in loans for three years free of interest, secured in each case on real estate[1156] of twice the value. Thus confidence was restored and private credit gradually revived. But, Tacitus adds, the purchase of land on the lines of the Senate’s order was never carried through: in such matters it is the way of the world to begin with zeal and end with indifference.
If I have rightly given the sense of this passage, it furnishes some points of interest. It sets before us a state of things in which a number of landowners have raised money by mortgaging their real estate, disregarding the provisions (whatever they were) of a law practically disused. This reminds us that one very general use of Italian land was as a security on which money could at need be raised. It was the only real security always available, and this inclined people to keep their hold on it, though as a direct income-producer it seldom gave good returns. No doubt they had to pay on their borrowings a higher rate[1157] of interest than they got on their capital invested in land. To be forced suddenly to sell their lands in a glutted market was manifest ruin; for the whole strength of their position lay in the justified assumption that the capital value of their land in the market exceeded the amount of their mortgage debts. Otherwise, who would have lent them the money on that security? We can hardly avoid the suspicion that the frequent use of land as a pledge may have had something to do with that unsatisfactory condition of agriculture on which the evidence of Latin writers has driven us to dwell. The mortgagor, once he had got the money advanced, had less interest in the landed security: the mortgagee, so long as he got his good return on the money lent, was unconcerned to see that his debtor’s income was maintained; and that, in taking a mortgage, he had insisted on a large margin of security for his capital, is not to be doubted. For what purpose these loans were generally contracted, we are not told. Those who borrowed money to waste it in extravagance would surely have found it more business-like to sell their land outright. The number of those who preferred to keep it, though encumbered on onerous terms, simply from social pride, cannot have been really large; but they would hardly make wise landlords. Probably some men raised money to employ it in speculations[1158] that seemed to offer rich returns. So long as the empire stood strong, mercantile speculation was far-reaching and vigorous. But those engaged in this line of business would seldom be able to find large sums in ready cash at short notice. Hence to them, as to spendthrifts, the sudden calling in of mortgages was a grave inconvenience.
The picture of the wily capitalists, hoarding their money till the ‘slump’ in land-values had fully developed, is one of all ‘civilized’ peoples and ages. What is notable on this particular occasion is the sequel according to Tacitus. Once their design of profiting by their neighbours’ necessities was checked by the intervention of Tiberius, the investment in real estate was no longer attractive. The Senate’s order was not enforced and the money-lenders could, and did, reserve their ready cash for use in some more remunerative form of investment. The slackness of the Senate may have been partly due to careless neglect, as the words seem to suggest. But it may be suspected that some members of that body had private reasons for wishing the Order of the House not to be seriously enforced. Tacitus remarks that, on the matter being laid before the Fathers, they were thrown into a flutter, since there was hardly one among them[1159] that had not broken the law. This surely refers to the time-honoured trick of Roman senators, who, forbidden to engage in commerce (and money-lending was closely connected with commerce), evaded the restriction in various ways, such as holding shares in companies or lending through their freedmen as agents. So now, seeking a high rate of interest on their capital, they did not wish to lock up any more of it in land. Most of them would already own enough real estate for social purposes. From this episode we have some right to infer that in the period of the early Empire it had already become clear that very extensive landowning in Italy was an unwise policy for men who wanted a large income. Yet the preferential position of Italy had not ceased to be a fact; and even in the time of Trajan we have seen an imperial ordinance bidding new senators from the Provinces to invest ⅓ of their fortunes in Italian land. This might raise prices for the moment, but it had nothing directly to do with promoting agriculture. Practical farming seems to have been passing more and more into the hands of humbler persons, often freedmen, who treated it as a serious business.
That the attention of Tacitus had been directed to the methods of capitalists in Italy, and therewith to money-lending, landholding, and slavery, may be gathered from the remarks on these subjects in his Germany. He writes, as Herodotus and others had done before him, taking particular notice of customs differing from those prevalent in his own surroundings. Thus he notes[1160] the absence of money-lending at interest. He describes the system of communal ownership of land by village-units, and its periodic redistribution among the members of the community. The wide stretches of open plains[1161] enable the Germans to put fresh fields under tillage year by year, leaving the rest in fallow (no doubt as rough pasture). Intensive culture is unknown. To wring the utmost out of the soil by the sweat of their brow is not their aim: they have no orchards or gardens or fenced paddocks, but are content to raise a crop of corn. All this is in marked contrast with Italian conditions. Even to get rid of fallows was an ambition of agriculturists in Italy, and a rotation-system[1162] had been devised to this end. And, whatever may have been the case in prehistoric times, full property in land had long been established by the Roman Law, and there was in the Italian land-system no trace of redistribution for short terms of use. In treating of slavery, the first point made is its connexion[1163] with the inveterate German habit of gambling. Losers will end by staking their own freedom on a last throw; if this also fails, they will submit to be fettered and sold. To the Roman this seems a false notion of honour. He adds that to take advantage of this sort of slave-winning is not approved by German sentiment: hence the winner combines[1164] scruples with profit by selling a slave of this class into foreign lands. Other slaves are not employed in Roman fashion as an organized staff of domestics. Each has a lodging and home of his own: his lord requires of him a fixed rent[1165] of so much corn or live-stock or clothing, as of a tenant: and he renders no service beyond this. House-work is done by a man’s own wife and family. Slaves are seldom flogged or chained or put to task-work. The German may kill his slave, but it will not be as a penalty for disobedience, but in a fit of rage. Freedmen are of little more account than slaves, and are only of influence at the courts of the kings who rule some of the tribes. There they rise above the freeborn and noble: but in general the inferiority of freedmen serves to mark the superiority of the freeborn.
Tacitus had held an important official post in Belgic Gaul or one of the so-called ‘Germanies’ along the Rhine, and had been at pains to learn all he could of the independent barbarians to the East. The Rhine frontier was one of the Roman borders that needed most careful watching, and Roman readers took an uneasy interest in the doings of the warrior tribes whose numbers, in contrast to their own falling birth-rate, were ever renewed and increased by alarming fertility. He was not alone in perceiving the contrasts between Italian and German institutions and habits, or in reading morals therefrom, expressed or implied. Germans had been employed as mercenary soldiers by Julius Caesar, and were destined to become one of the chief elements of the Roman armies. But in Italy they were perhaps more directly known as slaves. We have just seen that Tacitus speaks of a regular selling of slaves over the German border, and another passage[1166] incidentally illustrates this fact in a curious manner. In the course of his conquest of Britain, Agricola established military posts on the NW coast over against Ireland. It seems to have been in one of these that a cohort of Usipi were stationed. They had been raised in the Roman Germanies, and apparently sent over in a hurry. Not liking the service, they killed their officer and the old soldiers set to train them, seized three vessels, and put to sea. After various adventures and sufferings in a voyage round the north of Britain, they fell into the hands of some tribes of northern Germany, who took them for pirates—those that were left of them. Of the fate reserved for some of these Tacitus remarks ‘Some were sold as slaves[1167] and, passing from purchaser to purchaser, eventually reached the Roman bank (of the Rhine), where their extraordinary story aroused much interest.’ Such were the strange possibilities in the northern seas and lands where the Roman and the German met.
NOTE ON AN AFRICAN INSCRIPTION.
It may be convenient to notice here an inscription[1168] relative to irrigation in Africa. In all parts of the empire subject to drought the supply of water to farmers was a matter of importance, as it is in most Mediterranean countries today. Good soils, that would otherwise have lain waste, were thus turned to account. In the African Provinces much was done to meet this need, as the remains of works for storage of water clearly testify. The period 69-180 AD seems to have been marked by a considerable extension of cultivation in these parts, and particularly in southern Numidia, which at that time was included in the Province Africa. In this district, between Sitifis (Setif) and Trajan’s great city Thamugadi (Timgad), lay the commune of Lamasba[1169], the members of which appear to have been mainly engaged in agriculture. There has been preserved a large portion of a great inscription dealing with the water-rights of their several farms. There is nothing to suggest that the holders of these plots were tenants under great landlords. They seem to be owners, not in the full sense of Roman civil law, but on the regular provincial[1170] footing, subject to tribute. To determine the shares of the several plots in the common water-supply was probably the most urgent problem of local politics in this community.
The date of the inscription has been placed in the reign of Elagabalus; but it is obviously based on earlier conditions and not improbably a revision of an earlier scheme. It deals with the several plots one by one, fixing the number of hours[1171] during which the water is to be turned on to each, and making allowance for variation of the supply according to the season of the year. A remarkable feature of this elaborate scheme is the division of the plots into those below the water level into which the water finds its way by natural flow (declives), and those above water level (acclives). To the latter it is clear that the water must have been raised by mechanical means, and the scale of hours fixed evidently makes allowance for the slower delivery accomplished thereby. For the ‘descendent’ water was to be left flowing for fewer hours than the ‘ascendent.’ As a specimen of the care taken in such a community to prevent water-grabbing by unscrupulous members this record is a document of high interest. That many others of similar purport existed, and have only been lost to us by the chances of time, is perhaps no rash guess.
The water-leet is called aqua Claudiana. The regulations are issued by the local senate and people (decreto ordinis et colonorum), for the place had a local[1172] government. Names of 43 possessors remain on the surviving portion of the stone. In form they are generally Roman[1173]. It is noted that only three of them have a praenomen. Of the quality of the men it is not easy to infer anything. Some may perhaps have been Italians. Whether they, or some of them, were working farmers must remain doubtful. At all events they do not seem to belong to the class of coloni of whom we shall have to speak below, but to be strictly cultivating possessors. What labour they employed it is hardly possible to guess.