That small undertakings were still carried on in the neighbourhood of Rome and other urban centres, is evident from the market-gardens of the Imperial age. A notable case[745] is that of the bee-farm of a single iugerum worked at a good profit by two brothers about 30 miles north of Rome. Varro expressly notes that they were able to bide their time so as not to sell on a bad market. He had first-hand knowledge of these men, who had served under him in Spain. Clearly they were citizens. They can hardly have kept slaves. It seems to have been a very exceptional case, and to be cited as such: it is very different from that of the peasant farmer of early Rome, concerned first of all to grow food for himself and his family. Agriculture as treated by Varro is based on slave labour, and no small part of his work deals with the quarters, feeding, clothing, discipline, sanitation, and mating, of the slave staff. True to his legal bent, he is careful to safeguard the rights of the slaveowner by explaining[746] the formal details necessary to effect a valid purchase, with guarantee of bodily soundness, freedom from vice, and flawless title. Again, to keep slaves profitably it was urgently necessary to keep them constantly employed, so that the capital sunk in them should not lie idle and the hands lose the habit of industry. Therefore, while relying on local craftsmen for special skilled services occasionally needed, he insists that a number of rustic articles should be manufactured on the farm. ‘One ought not to buy anything that can be produced on the estate[747] and made up by the staff (domesticis = familia), such as wicker work and things made of rough wood.’ Moreover, the organization of the staff in departments is an elaborate slave-hierarchy. Under the general direction of the vilicus, each separate function of tillage or grazing, or keeping and fattening fancy-stock has its proper foreman. Such posts carried little privileges, and were of course tenable during good behaviour. Some foremen would have several common hands under them: none would wish to be degraded back to the ranks. It seems that some wealthy men kept[748] birdcatchers huntsmen or fishermen of their own, but Varro, writing for the average landlord, seems to regard these as being properly free professionals. As for the common hands, the ‘labourers’ (operarii), on whose bone and sinew the whole economic structure rested, their condition was much the same as in Cato’s time, but apparently somewhat less wretched. Varro does not propose to sell off worn-out slaves; this let us credit to humaner feelings. He shews a marked regard for the health and comfort of slaves; this may be partly humanity, but that it is also due to an enlightened perception of the owner’s interest is certain. He does not provide for an ergastulum, though those horrible prisons were well known in his day. Why is this? Perhaps partly because slave-labour was no longer normally employed on estates in the extremely crude and brutal fashion that was customary in the second century BC. And partly perhaps owing to the great disturbances of land-tenure since the measures of the Gracchi and the confiscations of Sulla. The earlier latifundia had been in their glory when the wealthy nobles sat securely in power, and this security was for the present at an end. But, if the slave operarii were somewhat better treated, their actual field labour was probably no less hard. Many pieces of land could not be worked with the clumsy and superficial plough then in use. Either the slope of the ground forbade it, or a deeper turning of the soil was needed, as for growing[749] vines. This meant wholesale digging, and the slave was in effect a navvy without pay or respite. No wonder that fossor became a proverbial term for mere animal strength and dull unadaptability. An interesting estimate of the capability of an average digger is quoted[750] from Saserna. One man can dig over 8 iugera in 45 days. But 4 day’s work is enough for one iugerum (about ⅝ of an acre). The 13 spare days allowed are set to the account[751] of sickness, bad weather, awkwardness, and slackness. Truly a liberal margin to allow for waste. It cannot have been easy to farm at a profit with slave-labour on such terms; for the slave’s necessary upkeep was, however meagre, a continual charge.
And yet we do not find Varro suggesting that free wage-earning labour might in the long run prove more economical than slave-labour even for rough work. Nay more, he does not refer to the employment of contractors with their several gangs, each interested in getting his particular job done quickly and the price paid. He only refers to mercennarii in general terms, as we saw above. Nor does he speak[752] of politio as a special process, as Cato does. It may be that he did not think it worth while to enter into these topics. But it is more probable that the results of agrarian legislation and civil warfare in the revolutionary period had affected the problems of rustic labour. The attempt to revive by law the class of small cultivating owners had been a failure. Military service as a career had competed with rustic wage-earning. Men waiting to be hired as farm hands were probably scarce. Otherwise, how can we account for the great armies raised in those days? To refer once more to a point mentioned above, Varro does not suggest that the charge of an estate might with advantage be entrusted to a freeman as vilicus. That we can discover all the reasons for the preference of slaves as stewards is too much to hope for. That it seemed to be a guarantee of honesty and devotion to duty, the manager being wholly in his master’s power, is a fairly certain guess. And yet Varro like others saw the advisability of employing free labour for occasional work of importance. Perhaps the permanent nature of a steward’s responsibilities had something to do with the preference. It may well have been difficult to keep a hold on a free manager. In management of a slave staff no small tact and intelligence were needed as well as a thorough knowledge of farming. General experience needed to be supplemented by an intimate knowledge[753] of the conditions of the neighbourhood and the capacities of the particular estate. And a free citizen, whose abilities and energy might qualify him for management of a big landed estate, had endless opportunities of turning his qualities to his own profit elsewhere. Whether as individuals or in companies, enterprising Romans found lucrative openings in the farming of revenues, in state-contracts, in commerce, or in money-lending, both in Italy and in the Provinces. Such employments, compared with a possible estate-stewardship, would offer greater personal independence and a prospect of larger gains. And freemen of a baser and less effective type would have been worse than useless: certainly far inferior to well-chosen slaves.
XXVI. CICERO.
It is hardly possible to avoid devoting a special section to the evidence of Cicero, though it must consist mainly of noting a number of isolated references to particular points. With all his many country-houses, his interest in agriculture was slight. But his active part in public life of all kinds makes him a necessary witness in any inquiry into the facts and feelings of his time; though there are few witnesses whose evidence needs to be received with more caution, particularly in matters that offer opportunity for partisanship. For our present purpose this defect does not matter very much. It is chiefly as confirming the statements of others that his utterances will be cited.
When we reflect that Cicero was himself a man of generous instincts, and that he was well read in the later Greek philosophies, we are tempted to expect from him a cosmopolitan attitude on all questions affecting individuals. He might well look at human rights from the point of view of common humanity, differentiated solely by personal virtues and vices and unaffected by the accident of freedom or servitude. But we do not find him doing this. He might, and did, feel attracted by the lofty nobility of the Stoic system; but he could not become a Stoic. No doubt that system could be more or less adapted to the conditions of Roman life: it was not necessary to make the Stoic principles ridiculous by carrying[754] priggishness to the verge of caricature. But the notion that no fundamental difference existed between races and classes, that for instance the Wise Man, human nature’s masterpiece, might be found among slaves, was more than Cicero or indeed any level-headed Roman could digest. The imperial pride of a great people, conscious of present predominance through past merit, could not sincerely accept such views. To a Roman the corollary of accepting them would be the endeavour (more or less successful) to act upon them. This he had no intention of doing, and a mere theoretical assent[755] to them as philosophical speculations was a detail of no serious importance. Taking this as a rough sketch of the position occupied by Romans of social and political standing, we must add to it something more to cover the case of Cicero. He was a ‘new man.’ He was not a great soldier. He was not a revolutionary demagogue. He was ambitious. In order to rise and take his place among the Roman nobles he had to fall in with the sentiments prevailing among them: the newly-risen man could not afford to leave the smallest doubt as to his devotion to the privileges of his race and class. Thus, if there was a man in Rome peculiarly tied to principles of human inequality, it was Cicero.
Therefore we need not be surprised to find that this quick-witted and warm-hearted man looked upon those engaged in handwork with a genial contempt[756] sometimes touched with pity. To him, as to the society in which he moved, bodily labour seemed to deaden interest[757] in higher things, in fact to produce a moral and mental degradation. In the case of slaves, whose compulsory toil secured to their owners the wealth and leisure needed (and by some employed) for politics or self-cultivation, the sacrifice of one human being for the benefit of another was an appliance of civilization accepted and approved from time immemorial. But the position of the freeman working for wages, particularly of the man who lived by letting out his bodily strength[758] to an employer for money, was hardly less degrading in the eyes of Roman society, and therefore in those of Cicero. We have no description of the Roman mob by one of themselves. That the rough element[759] was considerable, and ready to bear a hand in political disorder, is certain. But they were what circumstances had made them, and it is probable that the riotous party gangs of Cicero’s time were not usually recruited among the best of the wage-earners. It is clear that many slaves took part in riots, and no doubt a number of freedmen also. In many rural districts disputes between neighbours easily developed into acts of force and the slaves of rival claimants did battle for their several owners. Moreover, slaves might belong, not to an individual, but to a company[760] exploiting some state concession of mineral or other rights. In such cases ‘regrettable incidents’ were always possible. And the wild herdsmen (pastores) roaming armed in the lonely hill-country were a ready-made soldiery ever inclined to brigandage or servile rebellions, a notorious danger. It was an age of violence in city and country. Rich politicians at last took to keeping private bands[761] of swordsmen (gladiatores). And it is to be borne in mind that, while a citizen might be unwilling to risk the life of a costly[762] slave, his own property, a slave would feel no economic restraint to deter him from killing his master’s citizen enemy.
The employment of slaves in the affrays that took place in country districts over questions of disputed right is fully illustrated in the speeches[763] delivered in cases of private law. The fact was openly recognized in the legal remedies provided, for instance in the various interdicta framed to facilitate the trial and settlement of disputes as to possessio. The forms contemplated the probability of slaves being engaged in assailing or defending possession on behalf of their masters, and the wording even varied according as the force in question had been used by men armed or unarmed. Counsel of course made much or little of the happenings in each case according to the interest of their clients. But that bloodshed occurred at times in these fights is certain. And there was no regular police force to keep order in remote corners of the land. When slaves were once armed and set to fight, they would soon get out of hand, and a slaveowner might easily lose valuable men. Nay more, an epidemic of local brigandage might result, particularly in a time of civil war and general unrest, and none could tell where the mischief would end. We can only form some slight notion of the effect of such conditions as these on the prospects of peaceful agriculture. The speech pro Quinctio belongs to 81 BC, the pro Tullio to 71, the pro Caecina to 69. When we reflect that the slave rising under Spartacus lasted from 73 to 71, and swept over a large part of Italy, we may fairly conclude that this period was a bad one for farming.
The most striking picture of the violence sometimes used in the disputes of rustic life meets us in the mutilated speech pro Tullio, of which enough remains to make clear all that concerns us. First, the form of action employed in the case was one of recent[764] origin, devised to check the outrages committed by bands of armed slaves, which had increased since the disturbances of the first civil war. The need for such a legal remedy must have been peculiarly obvious at the time of the trial, for the rising of Spartacus had only just been suppressed. Cicero refers to the notorious scandal of murders committed by these armed bands, a danger to individuals and even to the state, that had led to the creation of the new form of action at law. In stating the facts of the case, of course from his client’s point of view, he gives us details[765] which, true or not, were at least such as would not seem incredible to a Roman court. Tullius owned an estate in southern Italy. That his title to it was good is taken for granted. But in it was reckoned a certain parcel of land which had been in undisputed possession of his father. This strip, which was so situated as to form a convenient adjunct to a neighbouring estate, was the cause of trouble. The neighbouring estate had been bought by two partners, who had paid a fancy price for it. The bargain was a bad one, for the land proved to be derelict and the farmsteads all burnt down. One of the partners induced the other to buy him out. In stating the area of the property he included the border strip of land claimed by Tullius as his own. In the process of settlement of boundaries for the transfer to the new sole owner he would have included the disputed ground, but Tullius instructed[766] his attorney and his steward to prevent this: they evidently did so, and thus the ownership of the border strip was left to be determined by process of law. The sequel was characteristic of the times. The thwarted claimant armed a band of slaves and took possession[767] of the land by force, killing the slaves who were in occupation on behalf of Tullius, and committing other murders and acts of brigandage by the way. We need not follow the case into the law-court. What concerns us is the evidence of unfortunate land speculation, of land-grabbing, of boundary-disputes, and of the prompt use of violence to supersede or hamper the legal determination of rights. The colouring and exaggeration of counsel is to be allowed for; but we can hardly reject the main outlines of the picture of armed slave-bands and bloodshed as a rural phenomenon of the sorely tried South of Italy.
The speech pro Caecina shews us the same state of things existing in Etruria. The armed violence alleged in this case is milder in form: at least the one party fled, and nobody was killed. Proceedings were taken under a possessory interdict issued by a praetor, and Cicero’s artful pleading is largely occupied with discussion of the bearing and effect of the particular formula employed. Several interesting transactions[768] are referred to. A man invests his wife’s dowry in a farm, land being cheap, owing to bad times, probably the result of the Sullan civil war. Some time after, he bought some adjoining land for himself. After his death and that of his direct heir, the estate had to be liquidated for purpose of division among legatees. His widow, advised to buy in the parcel of land adjoining her own farm, employed as agent a man who had ingratiated himself with her. Under this commission the land was bought. Cicero declares that it was bought for the widow, who paid the price, took possession, let it to a tenant, and held it till her death. She left her second husband Caecina heir to nearly all her property, and it was between him and the agent Aebutius that troubles now arose. For Aebutius declared that the land had been bought by him for himself, and that the lady had only enjoyed the profits of it for life in usufruct under her first husband’s will. This was legally quite possible. At the same time he suggested that Caecina had lost the legal capacity of taking the succession at all. For Sulla had degraded the citizens belonging to Volaterrae, of whom Caecina was one. Cicero is more successful in dealing with this side-issue than in establishing his client’s claim to the land. The dispute arising out of that claim, the armed violence used by Aebutius to defeat Caecina’s attempt to assert possession, and the interdict granted to Caecina, were the stages by which the case came into court. Its merits are not certain. But the greedy characters on both sides, the trickery employed by one side or other (perhaps both), and the artful handling of the depositions of witnesses, may incline the reader to believe that the great orator had but a poor case. At all events farming in Etruria appears as bound up with slave labour and as liable to be disturbed by the violence of slaves in arms.
In the above cases it suited Cicero’s purpose to lay stress on the perils that beset defenceless persons who were interested in farms in out-of-the-way[769] places. Yet the use of armed force was probably most habitual on the waste uplands, and his references to the lawless doings of the brigand slave-bands fully confirm the warnings of Varro. His tone varies according to the requirements of his client’s case, but he has to admit[770] that wayfarers were murdered and bloody affrays between rival bands ever liable to occur. He can on occasion[771] boldly charge a political opponent with deliberate reliance on such forces for revolutionary ends. Thus of C Antonius he asserts ‘he has sold all his live stock and as good as parted with his open pastures, but he is keeping his herdsmen; and he boasts that he can mobilize these and start a slave-rebellion whenever he chooses.’ There was no point in saying this if it had been absurdly incredible. Another glimpse of the utter lawlessness prevalent in the wilds appears in the story[772] of murders committed in Bruttium. Suspicion rested on the slaves employed by the company who were exploiting the pitch-works in the great forest of Sila under lease from the state. Even some of the free agents of the company were suspected. The case, which was dealt with by a special criminal tribunal, belongs to the year 138 BC, and attests the long standing of such disorders. And it is suggestive of guilty complicity on the part of the lessees that, though they eventually secured an acquittal, it was only after extraordinary exertions on the part of their counsel.