One point in which Columella’s system seems to record a change from earlier usage may be found in the comparative disuse of letting out special jobs to contractors. In one passage[1045], when discussing the trenching-work required in pastinatio, and devices for preventing the disputes arising from bad execution of the same, he refers to conductor as well as dominus. The interests of the two are liable to clash, and he tries to shew a means of ensuring a fair settlement between the parties without going to law. I understand the conductor to be a man who has contracted for the job at an agreed price, and exactor operis just below to be the landlord, whose business it is to get full value for his money. Thus conductor here will be the same as the redemptor so often employed in the scheme of Cato. I cannot find further traces of him in Columella. Nor is the sale of a hanging[1046] crop or a season’s lambs to a speculator referred to. But we have other authority for believing that contracts of this kind were not obsolete, and it is probable that the same is true of contracts for special operations. That such arrangements were nevertheless much rarer than in Cato’s time seems to be a fair inference. The manifest reluctance[1047] to hire external labour also points to the desire of getting, so far as possible, all farming operations performed by the actual farm-staff. If I have rightly judged the position of tenant farmers, it is evident that their stipulated services would be an important help in enabling the landlord to dispense with employment of contractors’ gangs on the farm. This was in itself desirable: that the presence of outsiders was unsettling to your own slaves had long been remarked, and in the more elaborate organization of Columella’s day disturbing influences would be more apprehensively regarded than ever.
It is hardly necessary to follow out all the details of this complicated system and enumerate the various special functions assigned to the members of the staff. To get good foremen even at high prices was one of the leading principles: an instance[1048] is seen in the case of vineyards, where we hear of a thoroughly competent vinitor, whose price is reckoned at about £80 of our money, the estimated value of about 4½ acres of land. The main point is that it is a system of slave labour on a large scale, and that Columella, well aware that such labour is in general wasteful, endeavours to make it remunerative by strict order and discipline. He knows very well that current lamentations over the supposed exhaustion[1049] of the earth’s fertility are mere evasions of the true causes of rural decay, neglect and ignorance. He knows that intensive cultivation[1050] pays well, and cites striking instances. But the public for whom he writes is evidently not the men on small holdings, largely market-gardeners[1051], who were able to make a living with or without slave-help, at all events when within reach of urban markets. He addresses men of wealth, most of whom were proud of their position as landlords, but presumably not unwilling to make their estates more remunerative, provided the effort did not give them too much trouble. This condition was the real difficulty; and it is hard to believe that Columella, when insisting on the frequent presence of the master’s eye, was sanguine enough to expect a general response. His attitude towards pastoral industry seems decidedly less enthusiastic than that of his predecessors. Stock[1052] must be kept on the farm, partly to eat off your own fodder-crops, but chiefly for the sake of supplying manure for the arable land. In quoting Cato’s famous saying on the profitableness of grazing, he agrees that nothing pays so quickly as good grazing, and that moderately good grazing pays well enough. But if, as some versions have it, he really said that even bad grazing was the next best thing for a farmer, Columella respectfully dissents. The breeding and fattening of all manner of animals for luxurious tables[1053] remains much the same as in the treatise of Varro. A curious caution is given[1054] in discussing the fattening of thrushes. They are to be fed with ‘dried figs beaten up with fine meal, as much as they can eat or more. Some people chew the figs before giving them to the birds. But it is hardly worth while to do this if you have a large number to feed, for it costs money to hire[1055] persons to do the chewing, and the sweet taste makes them swallow a good deal themselves.’ Now, why hire labour for such a purpose? Is it because slaves would swallow so much of the sweet stuff that your thrushes would never fatten?
It is well known that importation of corn from abroad led to great changes in Italian agriculture in the second century BC. The first was the formation of great estates worked by slave-gangs, which seems to have begun as an attempt to compete with foreign large-scale farming in the general production of food-stuffs. If so, it was gradually discovered that it did not pay to grow cereal crops for the market, unscrupulous in slave-driving though the master might be. Therefore attention was turned to the development on a larger scale of the existing culture of the vine and olive and the keeping of great flocks and herds. Food for these last had to be found on the farm in the winter, and more and more it became usual only to grow cereals as fodder for the stock, of course including the slaves. No doubt there was a demand for the better sorts, such as wheat, in all the country towns, but the farms in their immediate neighbourhood would supply the need. That Columella assumes produce of this kind to be normally consumed on the place, is indicated by his recommending[1056] barley as good food for all live-stock, and for slaves when mixed with wheat. Also by his treating the delicate[1057] white wheat, much fancied in Rome, as a degenerate variety, not worth the growing by a practical farmer. His instructions for storage shew the same point of view. The structure and principles of granaries[1058] are discussed at length, and the possibility of long storage[1059] is contemplated. The difficulties of transport by land had certainly been an important influence in the changes of Roman husbandry, telling against movements of bulky produce. Hence the value attached[1060] to situations near the seaboard or a navigable stream (the latter not a condition often to be realized in Italy) by Columella and his predecessors. Military roads served the traveller as well as the armies, but took no regard[1061] of agricultural needs. Moreover they had special[1062] drawbacks. Wayfarers had a knack of pilfering from farms on the route, and someone or other was always turning up to seek lodging and entertainment. Thus it was wise not to plant your villa close to one of these trunk roads, or your pocket was likely to suffer. But to have a decent approach[1063] by a country road was a great convenience, facilitating the landlord’s periodical visits and the carriage of goods to and from the estate.
Certain words call for brief notice. Thus opera, the average day’s work of an average worker, is Columella’s regular labour-unit in terms of which he expresses the labour-cost[1064] of an undertaking. In no other writer is this more marked. Occasionally operae occurs in the well-known concrete sense[1065] of the ‘hands’ themselves. The magistri mentioned are not always the foremen spoken of above, but sometimes[1066] directors or teachers in a general sense or even as a sort of synonym for professores. To recur once again to colonus, the word, as in other writers, often means simply ‘cultivator,’ not ‘tenant-farmer.’ The latter special sense occurs in a passage[1067] which would be useful evidence for the history of farm-tenancies, if it were not doubtful whether the text is sound.
There remains a question, much more than a merely literary problem, as to the true relation of Columella to Vergil. That he constantly quotes the poet, and cites him as an authority on agriculture, is a striking fact. One instance will shew the deep veneration with which he regards the great master. In speaking[1068] of the attention to local qualities of climate and soil needed in choosing an estate, he quotes lines from the first Georgic, the matter of which is quite traditional, common property. But he speaks of Vergil (to name the poet[1069] was unnecessary) as a most realistic[1070] bard, to be trusted as an oracle. Nay, so irresistible is to him the influence of Vergil, that he must needs cast his own tenth book into hexameter verse: the subject of that book is gardens, a topic on which Vergil had confessedly[1071] not fully said his say. And yet in the treatment of the land-question there is a fundamental difference between the two writers. Columella’s system is based on slave labour organized to ensure the completest efficiency: Vergil practically ignores slavery altogether. Columella advises you to let land to tenant farmers whenever you cannot effectively superintend the working of slave-organizations under stewards: Vergil ignores this solution also, and seems vaguely to contemplate a return to the system of small farms owned and worked by free yeomen in an idealized past. Columella is concerned to see that capital invested in land is so employed as to bring in a good economic return: Vergil dreams of the revival of a failing race, and possible economic success and rustic wellbeing are to him not so much ends as means. The contrast is striking enough. In the chapter on [Vergil] I have already pointed out that the poet had at once captured the adoration of the Roman world. It was not only in quotations or allusions, or in the incense of praise, that his supremacy was held in evidence so long as Latin literature remained alive. His influence affected prose style also, and subtle reminiscences of Vergilian flavour maybe traced in Tacitus. But all this is very different from the practice of citing him as an authority on a special subject, as Columella did and the elder Pliny did after him.
I would venture to connect this practice with the Roman habit of viewing their own literature as inspired by Greek models and so tending to move on parallel lines. Cicero was not content to be a Roman Demosthenes; he must needs try to be a Roman Plato too, if not also a Roman Aristotle. Now citation of the Homeric poems as a recognized authority on all manner of subjects, not to mention casual illustrations, runs through Greek literature. Plato and Aristotle are good instances. It is surely not surprising that we find Roman writers patriotically willing to cite their own great poet, more especially as the Georgics lay ready to hand. In the next generation after Columella, Quintilian framed his criticism[1072] of the two literatures (as food for oratorical students) on frankly parallel lines. Vergil is the pair to Homer: second to the prince of singers, but a good second: and he is quoted and cited throughout the treatise as Homer is in Aristotle’s Rhetoric. True, the cases are not really parallel. Whatever preexistent material may have served to build up the Homeric poems, they are at least not didactic poems, made up of precepts largely derived from technical writers, and refined into poetic form with mature and laborious skill. To quote the Georgics, not only for personal observation of facts but for guiding precepts, is often to quote a secondary authority in a noble dress, and serves but for adornment. But in such a consideration there would be nothing to discourage Roman literary men. To challenge Vergil’s authority on a rustic subject remained the prerogative of Seneca.
Additional note to [page 263]
Varro de lingua Latina VII § 105 says liber qui suas operas in servitutem pro pecunia quadam debebat dum solveret nexus vocatur, ut ab aere obaeratus. This antiquarian note is of interest as illustrating the meaning of operae, and the former position of the debtor as a temporary slave.