Indeed these great gangs of slaves in the service of publicani were in many parts of Italy and the Provinces a serious nuisance. Wherever the exploitation of state properties or the collection of dues was farmed out to contractors, a number of underlings would be needed. The lower grades were slaves: a few rose to higher posts as freedmen of the various companies. Now some of the enterprises, such as mines quarries woodlands and the collection of grazing dues on the public pastures, were generally in direct contact with rural life, and employed large staffs of slaves. The managers of a company were concerned to produce a high dividend for their shareholders: so long as this resulted from the labours of their men, it was a matter of indifference to them whether neighbouring farmers were robbed or otherwise annoyed. That we hear little or nothing of such annoyances is probably owing to the practice of locking up slave-labourers at night in an ergastulum, for fear of their running away, not to keep them from doing damage. Runaways do not appear singly as a rustic pest. But in bands there was no limit to the harm that fugitivi might do; witness the horrors of the slave-wars. In short, wherever slaves were employed in large numbers, the possibility of violence was never remote. Their masters had always at hand a force of men, selected for bodily strength and hardened by labour, men with nothing but hopeless lives to lose, and nothing loth to exchange dreary toil for the dangers of a fight in which something to their advantage might turn up. No doubt the instances of slaves called to arms in rustic disputes were far more numerous than those referred to by Cicero: he only speaks of those with which he was at the moment concerned.
Is it then true that in the revolutionary period farming depended on slave-labour while its security was ever menaced by dangers that arose directly out of the slave-system? I fear it is true, absurd though the situation may seem to us. Between the great crises of disturbance were spells of comparative quiet, in which men could and did farm profitably in the chief agricultural districts of Italy. But it must be remembered that many an estate changed hands in consequence of civil war, and that many new landlords profited economically by appropriating the capital sunk in farms by their predecessors. The case of Sextus Roscius of Ameria gives us some light on this point. The picture drawn[773] by Cicero of the large landed estate of the elder Roscius, of his wealth and interest in agriculture, of his jealous and malignant relatives, of the reasons why he kept his son Sextus tied to a rustic life, is undoubtedly full of colouring and subtle perversions of fact. Let it go for what it may be worth. The accused was acquitted of the crime laid to his charge (parricide), but there is no sign that he was ever able to recover the estate and the home from which his persecutors had driven him. They had shared the plunder with Chrysogonus the favoured freedman of Sulla, who himself bought the bulk of the property at a mere fraction of its market value, and it is practically certain that the rogues kept what they got. It was easy to make agriculture pay on such terms. But what of the former owners of such properties, on whose ruin the new men’s prosperity was built? Can we believe that genuine agricultural enterprise was encouraged by a state of things in which the fruits of long patience and skill were liable to sudden confiscation?
In Cicero, as in other writers, we find evidence of a wage-earning class living by bodily labour alongside of the slave-population. But in passages where he speaks[774] of mercennarii it is often uncertain whether freemen serving for hire, or slaves hired from another owner, are meant. In his language the associations[775] of the word are mean. It is true that you may buy for money not only the day’s-work (operae) of unskilled labourers but the skill (artes) of craftsmen. In the latter case even Roman self-complacency will admit a certain dignity; for men of a certain social status[776] such professions are all very well. But the mere ‘hand’ is the normal instance; and for the time of his employment he is not easily distinguished from a slave. Therefore Cicero approves[777] a Stoic precept, that justice bids you to treat slaves as you would hirelings—don’t stint their allowances (food etc), but get your day’s-work out of them. In passages[778] where the word mercennarius is not used, but implied, there is the same tone of contempt, and it is not always clear whether the workers are free or slaves. In short the word is not as neutral as operarius, which connotes mere manual labour, whether the labourer be free or not, and is figuratively used[779] to connote a merely mechanical proficiency in any art. Our ‘journeyman’ is sometimes similarly used.
There are other terms in connexion with land-management the use of which by Cicero is worth noting. Thus a landlord may have some order to give in reference to the cultivation of a farm. If he gives it to his procurator[780], it is as an instruction, a commission authorizing him to act; if to his vilicus, it is simply a command. For the former is a free attorney, able at need to represent his principal even in a court of law: the latter is a slave steward, the property of his master. The procurator is hardly a ‘manager’: he seldom occurs in connexion with agriculture, and seems then to be only required when the principal is a very ‘big man,’ owning land on a large scale, and probably in scattered blocks. In such cases it would be convenient for (say) a senator to give a sort of ‘power of attorney’ to an agent and let him supervise the direction of a number of farms, each managed by a steward. I take this policy to be just that against which the writers on agriculture warn their readers. It sins against the golden rule, that nothing is a substitute for the Master’s eye. Whether the agent referred to in the speech pro Tullio, who as well as the steward received[781] written instructions from Tullius, was guilty of any neglect or blunder, we cannot tell. That any act done to a procurator or by him was legally equivalent to the same done to or by his principal, is a point pressed in the pro Caecina, no doubt because it was safe ground and an excuse for not dwelling on weak points in a doubtful case.
The colonus as a tenant[782] farmer, whom we find mentioned in Varro but not in Cato, appears in Cicero. In the pro Caecina we read[783] that the widow lady took possession of the farm and let it (locavit); also that the tenant was after her death still occupying the farm, and that a visit of Caecina, in which he audited the accounts of the tenant, is a proof that Caecina himself was now in possession. That is, by asserting control of the sitting tenant Caecina made the man his agent so far as to retain possession through the presence of his representative. If the facts were as Cicero states them, the contention would be legally sound. For, as he points out in another passage, any representative[784] will serve for these purposes of keeping or losing possession. If the interdict-formula only says ‘attorney’ (procurator), this does not mean that only an attorney in the technical sense, a plenipotentiary agent appointed by an absentee principal with full legal formalities, is contemplated. No, the brief formula covers agency of any kind: it will apply to your tenant your neighbour your client or your freedman, in short to any person acting on your behalf. In the great indictment of Verres[785] we find a good instance of tenancy in Sicily, where it seems to have been customary for large blocks of land to be held on lease from the state by tenants-in-chief (aratores) who sometimes sublet parcels to coloni. In this case the trouble arose out of the tithe to which the land was liable. Verres, in order to squeeze an iniquitous amount out of a certain farm, appointed a corrupt court charged to inquire whether the (arable) acreage had been correctly returned by the colonus. Of course they were instructed to find that the area had been fraudulently understated. But the person against whom judgment was to be given was not the colonus, but Xeno, who was not the owner of the farm. He pleaded that it belonged to his wife, who managed her own affairs; also that he had not been responsible for the cultivation (non arasse). Nevertheless he was not only compelled to pay a large sum of money to meet the unfair damages exacted, but subjected to further extortion under threat of corporal punishment. The returns on which the tithes were assessed would seem to have been required from the actual cultivators, and the lessees of the year’s tithe to have had a right of action against the owners or chief-tenants of the land, if the tenant farmer defaulted in any particular. So far we are able to gather that tenant farmers were no exception at this time, though perhaps not a numerous class; and that they were not persons of much social importance. That they were to a considerable extent dependent on their landlords is probable, though not actually attested by Cicero, for we have seen evidence of it in a passage of Caesar. Cicero’s reference[786] to the case of a lady who committed adultery with a colonus is couched in such terms as to imply the man’s social inferiority. In another passage[787] we hear of a man in the Order of equites equo publico being disgraced by a censor taking away his state-horse, and of his friends crying out in protest that he was optimus colonus, thrifty and unassuming. Here we have a person of higher social quality, no doubt: but I conceive colonus to be used in the original sense of ‘cultivator.’ To say ‘he is a good farmer’ does not imply that he is a mere tenant, any more than it does in the notable passage of Cato.
The vilicus generally appears in Cicero as the slave steward familiar to us from other writers. In one place[788] he is contrasted with the dispensator, who seems to be a sort of slave clerk charged with registering stores and serving out rations clothing etc. As this functionary seldom meets us in the rustic system of the period, we may perhaps infer that only large estates, where the vilicus had no time to spare from purely agricultural duties, required such extra service. In saying that he can read and write (litteras scit) Cicero may seem to imply that this is not to be expected from the vilicus: but the inference is not certain, for the agricultural writers require stewards to read at least. In another passage[789] we read that in choosing a slave for the post of steward the one thing to be kept in view is not technical skill but the moral qualities, honesty industry alertness. Here it is plain that the orator is warping the truth in order to suit his argument: Varro would never have disregarded technical skill. For Cicero’s point is that what the state needs most in its ‘stewards’ (that is, magistrates) is good moral qualities. On the same lines he had some 16 years before compared[790] Verres to a bad steward, who has ruined his master’s farm by dishonest and wasteful management, and is in a fair way to be severely punished for his offence. The tone of this passage is exactly that of old Cato, put in the rhetorical manner of an advocate.
A few words must be said on the subject of manumission. In his defence of Rabirius, accused of high treason, Cicero launches[791] out into a burst of indignation at the attempted revival of an obsolete barbarous procedure designed for his client’s destruction. The cruel method of execution to which it points, long disused, is repugnant to Roman sentiment, utterly inconsistent with the rights of free humanity. Such a prospect[792] would be quite unendurable even to slaves, unless they had before them the hope of freedom. For, as he adds below, when we manumit a slave, he is at once freed thereby from fear of any such penalties as these. Taken by itself, this passage is better evidence of the liability of slaves to cruel punishment than of the frequent use of manumission. But we know from Cicero’s letters and from other sources that freedmen were numerous. And from a sentence[793] in one of the Philippics we may gather that it was not unusual for masters to grant freedom to slaves after six years of honest and painstaking service. I suspect that this utterance, in the context in which it occurs, should not be taken too literally. That Romans of wealth and position liked to surround themselves with retainers, humble and loyal, bound to their patron by ties of gratitude and interest, is certain: and early manumissions were naturally promoted by this motive. But the most pleasing instances were of course those in which a community of pursuits developed a real sympathy, even affection between owner and owned, as in the case of Tiro, on whose manumission[794] Quintus Cicero wrote to congratulate his brother. In all these passages, however, there is one thing to be noted. They do not look to the conditions of rustic life; and, so far as the evidence of Cicero goes, they do not shake my conviction that manumission was a very rare event on country estates.
A topic of special interest is the evidence of the existence of farmers who, whether employing slaves or not, worked on the land in person. What does Cicero say as to αὐτουργία, in his time? It has been pointed out above that, when it suits his present purpose, he not only enlarges on the homely virtues of country folk but refers to the old Roman tradition of farmer-citizens called from the plough to guide and save the state in hours of danger. He made full use of this topic in his defence of Sextus Roscius, and represented his client as a simple rustic, reeking of the farmyard,—how far truly, is doubtful. But he does not go so far as to depict him ploughing or digging or carting manure. It is reasonable to suppose that the slaves to whom he refers[795] did the rough farm-work under his orders. When he can make capital out of the wrongs of the humble labouring farmer, the orator does not shrink from doing so. One of the iniquities laid to the charge[796] of Verres is that he shifted the burden of taking legal proceedings from the lessees of the Sicilian tithes (decumani) to the tithe-liable lessees of the land (the aratores). Instead of the tithe-farmer having to prove that his demand was just, the land-farmer had to prove that it was unjust. Now this was too much even for those farming on a large scale: it meant in practice that they had to leave their farms and go off to make their appeals at Syracuse. But the hardship was far greater in the case of small farmers (probably sub-tenants), of whom he speaks thus: ‘And what of those whose means of tillage[797] consist of one yoke of oxen, who labour on their farms with their own hands—in the days before your governorship such men were a very numerous class in Sicily—when they have satisfied the demands of Apronius, what are they to do next? Are they to leave their tillages, leave their house and home, and come to Syracuse, in the hope of reasserting their rights at law against an Apronius[798] under the impartial government of a Verres?’ No doubt the most is made of these poor men and their wrongs. But we need not doubt that there were still some small working farmers in Sicily. In the half-century or so before the time of Verres we hear[799] of free Sicilians who were sorely disturbed by the great servile rebellions and even driven to make common cause with the insurgent slaves. Some such ‘small men’ were evidently still to be found wedged in among the big plantations.
Another important passage occurs in the artful speech against the agrarian bill of Rullus. It refers to the ager Campanus, on the value of which as a public asset[800] Cicero insists. This exceptionally fertile district was, and had long been, let by the state to cultivating tenants, whose regularly-paid rents were one of the safest items in the Roman budget. These farms were no latifundia, but apparently of moderate size, such that thrifty farmers could make a good living in this favoured land. With the various political[801] changes, carrying with them disturbances of occupancy, caused by wars in the past, we are not here concerned. Cicero declares that one aim of the bill was the assignation of this district to new freeholders, which meant that the state treasury would lose a sure source of revenue. This, in the interest of the aristocratic party, he was opposing, and undoubtedly misrepresented facts whenever it suited his purpose. In matters of this kind, he says, the cry is often raised[802] that it is not right for lands to lie depopulated with no freemen left to till them. This no doubt refers to the Gracchan programme for revival of the peasant farmers. Cicero declares that such a cry is irrelevant to the present issue, for the effect of the bill will be to turn out the excellent sitting tenants[803] only to make room for new men, the dependants and tools of a political clique. The reason why, after the fall of Capua in the second Punic war, that city was deprived of all corporate existence, and yet the houses were left standing, was this: the menace of a disloyal Capua had to be removed, but a town-centre of some sort could not be dispensed with. For marketing, for storage[804] of produce, the farmers must have some place of common resort: and when weary with working on their farms they would find the town homesteads a welcome accommodation. Allowing for rhetorical colouring in the interests of his case, perhaps we may take it from Cicero that a fair number of practical working farmers were settled on the Campanian plain. His prediction[805] that, if this district were to be distributed in freehold allotments, it would presently pass into the hands of a few wealthy proprietors (as the Sullan allotments had been doing) suggests a certain degree of sincerity. But taken as a whole the utterances of Cicero are too general, and too obviously meant to serve a temporary purpose, to furnish trustworthy data for estimating the numerical strength and importance of the working farmers in the Italy of his day.