In the writings of Cicero’s contemporaries other than Varro there is very little to be found bearing upon rustic life and labour as it went on in their time. Literature was occupied with other themes appropriate to the political conflicts or social scandals or philosophic questionings that chiefly interested various individuals and the circles in which they moved. The origins of civilization formed a fascinating problem for some, for instance the Epicurean Lucretius: but his theory of the development of agriculture deals with matters outside of our subject. The one helpful passage of Caesar[806] has been noticed already. So too has the contemptuous reference[807] of Sallust to agriculture as slaves’ work. This writer in a few places touches on points of interest. For instance, in speaking[808] of the various classes of men who were ripe for revolution, he says ‘moreover there were the able-bodied men who had been used to earn a hard living as hired labourers on farms; the attraction of private and public bounties had drawn them into Rome, where they found idle leisure preferable to thankless toil.’ Such statements, unsupported by statistics, must be received with caution, but this assertion is so far backed up by what we learn from other sources, that we can accept it as evidence. How many such rustic immigrants of this class there were at any given moment, is what we want to know, and do not. Again, in a passage[809] describing the popularity of Marius in 108 BC, he says ‘in short, the commons were fired with such enthusiasm that the handworkers and the rustics of all sorts, men whose means and credit consisted in the labour of their hands, struck work and attended Marius in crowds, putting his election before their own daily needs.’ In this there is perhaps some exaggeration, but the picture is probably true in the main. The agrestes may include both small farmers and labourers. But they can hardly have come from great distances, and so were probably not very numerous. The description is as loose as passages of the kind were in ancient writers, and are still. The references to rustic slave-gangs, and Catiline’s refusal to arm them in support of his rising, have been cited above.
We now pass into the period in which the last acts of the Roman Republican drama were played and the great senatorial aristocrats, in whose hands was a great share of the best lands in Italy, lost the power to exploit the subject world. Not only by official extortion in provincial governorships, but by money-lending at usurious interest[810] to client princes or provincial cities, these greedy nobles amassed great sums of money, some of which was employed in political corruption to secure control of government at home. Civil wars and proscriptions now thinned their ranks, and confiscations threw many estates into the market. The fall of Antony in 31 BC left Octavian master of the whole empire of Rome, an emperor ruling under republican disguises. Now it was naturally and properly his aim to neutralize the effects of past disorders and remove their causes. He looked back to the traditions of Roman growth and glory, and hoped by using the lessons thus learnt to revive Roman prosperity and find a sound basis for imperial strength. He worked on many lines: that which concerns us here is his policy towards rustic life and agriculture. As he persuaded and pressed the rich to be less selfish[811] and more public-spirited, to spend less on ostentation and the adornment of their mansions and parks, and to contribute liberally to works of public magnificence or utility, a duty now long neglected; even so he strove to rebuild Italian farming, to make it what it had been of yore, the seed-bed of simple civic and military virtues. But ancient civilization, in the course of its development in the Roman empire, had now gone too far for any ruler, however well-meaning and powerful, to turn the tide. Socially it was too concentrated and urban, economically too individualistic and too dependent on the manipulation of masses of capital. In many directions the policy of the judicious emperor was marvellously successful: but he did not succeed in reviving agriculture on the old traditional footing as a nursery of peasant farmers. He sought to bring back a traditional golden age, and court-poets were willing to assert[812] that the golden age had indeed returned. This was not true. The ever-repeated praises of country life are unreal. Even when sincere, they are the voice of town-bred men, weary of the fuss and follies of urban life, to which nevertheless they would presently come back refreshed but bored[813] with their rural holiday. That the science and art of agriculture were being improved, is true; hence the treatise of Varro, written in his old age. But technical improvements could not set the small farmers as a class on their legs again. The small man’s vantage lay (and still lies) in minute care and labour freely bestowed, without stopping to inquire whether the percentage of profit is or is not an adequate return for his toil. Moreover, technical improvements often require the command of considerable capital. The big man can sink capital and await a return on the investment: but this return must be at a minimum rate or he will feel that it does not ‘pay.’ For in his calculations he cannot help comparing the returns[814] on different kinds of investments.
Under such conditions it is no wonder that we find latifundia still existing under the early Empire in districts suited for the plantation system. No doubt much of the large landholding was the outcome of social ambitions. Men who had taken advantage of civil war and its sequels to sink money in land took their profit either in a good percentage on plantations, or in the enhanced importance gained by owning fine country places, or in both ways. A new class was coming to the front under the imperial régime and among them were wealthy freedmen. These had not yet reached the predominant influence and colossal wealth that marked their successors of the next generation. But they had begun to appear[815] in the last age of the Republic, and were now a force by no means to be ignored. Such landowners were not likely to favour the revival of peasant farmers, unless the presence of the latter could be utilized in the interest of the big estates. There were two ways in which this result could be attained. A small freeholder might, from the small size of his farm, have some spare time, and be willing to turn it to account by working elsewhere for wages. Such a man would be a labourer of the very best kind, but he could not be relied upon to be disengaged at a particular moment; for, if not busy just then on his own farm, some other employer might have secured his services. A small tenant farmer, to whom part of a great estate was let, would be governed by any conditions agreed upon between him and his landlord. That these conditions might include a liability to a certain amount of actual service at certain seasons on his landlord’s estate, is obvious. That the coloni of later times were normally in this position, is well known. That this system, under which a tenant retaining personal freedom was practically (and at length legally) bound to the soil, suddenly arose and became effective, is most improbable. Whether we can detect any signs of its gradual introduction will appear as our inquiry proceeds. We have already noted the few references to tenant coloni under the Republic. It is enough to remark here that, whatever degree of improvement in agriculture may have taken place owing to the reestablishment of peace and order, it could hardly have been brought about without employing the best labour to be had. If therefore we find reason to believe that the supply of skilled free labour for special agricultural work was gradually found by giving a new turn to the tenancy-system, we may hazard a guess that the first tentative steps in this direction belong to the quiet developments of the Augustan peace.
ROME—THE EMPIRE
XXVIII. AGRICULTURE AND AGRICULTURAL LABOUR UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE. GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
That the position of the working farmer in the fourth and fifth centuries AD was very different from what it had been in the early days of the Roman Republic, is hardly open to question. That in the last two centuries of the Republic his position had been gravely altered for the worse in a large (and that in general the best) part of Italy, is not less certain. This period, from 241 to 31 BC, had seen the subjection to Rome of the Mediterranean countries, and the Italian peninsula was an imperial land. It was inevitable that from a dominion so vast and various there should be some sort of reaction on its mistress, and reaction there had been, mostly for evil, on the victorious Roman state. The political social and moral effects of this reaction do not concern us here save only in so far as the economic situation was affected thereby. For instance, the plunder of the Provinces by bad governors and the extortions practised by subordinate officials, the greed of financiers and their agents, were the chief sources of the immense sums of money that poured into Italy. The corruption promoted by all this ill-gotten wealth expressed itself in many forms; but in no way was it more effective than in degradation of agriculture. It was not merely that it forwarded the movement towards great aggregations of latifundia. It supplied the means of controlling politics by bribery and violence and rendering nugatory all endeavours to reform the land-system and give legislative remedies a fair trial. The events of the revolutionary period left nearly all the land of Italy in private ownership, most of it in the hands of large owners. The Sullan and Triumviral confiscations and assignations were social calamities and economic failures. Of their paralysing effect on agriculture we can only form a general notion, but it is clear that no revival of a free farming peasantry took place.
Changes there had been in agriculture, due to influences from abroad. Farming on a large scale and organization of slave labour had given it an industrial turn. The crude and brutal form in which this at first appeared had probably been somewhat modified by experience. The great plantations clumsily adapted from Punic models were not easily made to pay. More variety in crops became the fashion, and the specializing of labour more necessary. In this we may surely trace Greek and Greco-oriental influences, and the advance in this respect is reflected in the more scientific precepts of Varro as compared with those of Cato. But, so long as the industrial aim, the raising of large crops for the urban market, prevailed, this change could not tend to revive the farming peasantry, whose aim was primarily an independent subsistence, and who lacked the capital needed for agricultural enterprise on industrial lines. Meanwhile there was the large-scale slavery system firmly established, and nothing less than shrinkage of the supply of slaves was likely to shake it.
But the course of Roman conquest and formation of Provinces had brought Italy into contact with countries in which agriculture and its relation to governments stood on a very different footing from that traditional in Roman Italy. The independent peasant farmer living by his own labour on his own land, a double character of citizen and soldier, untroubled by official interference, was a type not present to the eyes of Romans as they looked abroad. Tribal ownership, still common in the West, had been outgrown in Italy. The Carthaginian system, from which much had been learnt, was an exploitation-system, as industrial as a government of merchant princes could make it. In Sicily it met a Hellenistic system set up by the rulers of Syracuse, and the two seem to have blended or at least to have had common characteristics. The normal feature was the payment of a tithe of produce (δεκάτη) to the State. For the State claimed the property of the land, and reserved to itself a regular 10% in acknowledgement thereof. This royal title had passed to Rome, and Rome accordingly levied her normal decumae, exemption from which was a special favour granted to a few communities. Now the principle that the ultimate ownership of land is vested in the King[816] was well known in the East, and is to be traced in several of the monarchies founded by the Successors of Alexander. In the Seleucid and Attalid kingdoms there have been found indications of it, though the privileges of cities and temples checked its general application. But in Egypt it existed in full vigour, and had done so from time immemorial. It was in fact the most essential expression of oriental ideas of sovranty. Combined with it was the reservation of certain areas as peculiarly ‘royal lands’ the cultivators of which were ‘royal farmers,’ βασιλικοὶ γεωργοί, standing in a direct relation to the King and controlled by his administrative officials. The interest of the sovran was to extract a regular revenue from the crown-lands: hence it was the aim of government to secure the residence of its farmers and the continuous cultivation of the soil. The object was attained by minute regulations applied to a submissive people of small needs.
It is evident that agriculture under conditions such as these was based on ideas fundamentally different from those prevalent in Italy. There private ownership was the rule, and by the end of the Republic it was so more than ever. The latifundia had grown by transfers of property[817] in land, whether the holdings so absorbed were original small freeholds or allotments of state land granted under agrarian laws. Present estates, whether large or small, were normally held under a full proprietary title; and the large ones at least were valued as an asset of social and political importance rather than as a source of economic profit. The owner could do what he would with his own, and in Italy[818] there was no tax-burden on his land. We may ask how it came about that the Italian and Provincial systems stood thus side by side, neither assimilating the other. The answer is that the contrast suited the interests of the moneyed classes who controlled the government of Rome. To exploit the regal conditions taken over by the Republic abroad was for them a direct road to riches, and the gratification of their ambitions was achieved by the free employment of their riches at home. The common herd of poor citizens, pauperized in Rome or scattered in country towns and hamlets, had no effective means of influencing policy, even if they understood what was going on and had (which they had not) an alternative policy of their own. So the Empire took over from the Republic a system existing for the benefit of hostile aristocrats and capitalists, with whom it was not practicable to dispense and whom it was not easy to control.