TABLE OF CONTENTS
| PAGES | ||
| [INTRODUCTORY] | ||
| I. | Evidence | [1-7] |
| II. | Land and labour | [7-15] |
| [AUTHORITIES IN DETAIL—GREEK] | ||
| III. | The Iliad and Odyssey | [16-22] |
| IV. | Hesiod, Works and Days | [22-24] |
| V. | Stray notes from early poets | [24-26] |
| VI. | Traces of serfdom in Greek states | [26-28] |
| VII. | Herodotus | [28-30] |
| VIII. | The Tragedians | |
| Aeschylus and Sophocles | [31-33] | |
| Euripides | [33-37] | |
| IX. | The ‘Constitution of Athens’ or ‘Old Oligarch’ | [37-40] |
| X. | Aristophanes | [40-48] |
| XI. | Thucydides | [48-52] |
| XII. | Xenophon | [53-61] |
| XIII. | The Comic fragments | [61-65] |
| XIV. | Early Lawgivers and Theorists | [65-70] |
| XV. | Plato | [70-80] |
| XVI. | The earlier Attic Orators | [80-85] |
| XVII. | Aristotle | [85-103] |
| XVIII. | The later Attic Orators | [103-112] |
| XIX. | The Macedonian period and the Leagues | [112-130] |
| Polybius etc—Theocritus—Plautus and Terence—Inscriptions—Letter of Philip V to Larisa—Evidence preserved by Plutarch, Diodorus, Livy, etc | ||
| [ROME—EARLY PERIOD TO 200 BC] | ||
| XX. | The traditions combined and discussed | [131-149] |
| [No contemporary authors] | ||
| XXI. | Abstract of conclusions | [149-150] |
| [ROME—MIDDLE PERIOD] | ||
| XXII. | Introductory general view of period 200 BC-180 AD | [151-164] |
| Growth of slavery—Slave risings, etc | ||
| XXIII. | Cato | [164-173] |
| XXIV. | Agriculture in the revolutionary period | [174-177] |
| XXV. | Varro | [178-187] |
| XXVI. | Cicero | [187-199] |
| XXVII. | Sallust etc | [199-202] |
| [ROME—THE EMPIRE] | ||
| XXVIII. | Agriculture and agricultural labour under the Roman Empire. General introduction | [203-212] |
| [ROME—AUGUSTUS TO NERO] | ||
| XXIX. | Horace and Vergil | [213-241] |
| XXX. | The elder Seneca etc | [241-243] |
| XXXI. | Seneca the younger | [244-248] |
| XXXII. | Lucan, Petronius, etc | [248-250] |
| XXXIII. | Columella | [250-269] |
| [AGE OF THE FLAVIAN AND ANTONINE EMPERORS] | ||
| XXXIV. | General introduction | [270-274] |
| Note on emigration from Italy | [274-275] | |
| XXXV. | Musonius | [275-280] |
| XXXVI. | Pliny the elder | [281-287] |
| XXXVII. | Tacitus | [287-292] |
| Note on an African inscription | [293] | |
| XXXVIII. | Frontinus | [294-296] |
| XXXIX. | Inscriptions relative to alimenta | [296-300] |
| XL. | Dion Chrysostom | [300-303] |
| XLI. | New Testament writers | [303-305] |
| XLII. | Martial and Juvenal | [305-317] |
| XLIII. | Pliny the younger | [317-325] |
| XLIV. | Suetonius etc | [325-328] |
| XLV. | Apuleius | [328-335] |
| [COMMODUS TO DIOCLETIAN] | ||
| XLVI. | General introduction | [336-342] |
| XLVII. | The African inscriptions | [342-353] |
| XLVIII. | Discussion of the same | [353-361] |
| XLIX. | The Jurists of the Digest | [361-378] |
| L. | The later Colonate, its place in Roman history | [378-384] |
| Additional notes | [385] | |
| [FROM DIOCLETIAN] | ||
| LI. | General introduction | [386-399] |
| LII. | Libanius | [399-402] |
| LIII. | Symmachus | [402-409] |
| LIV. | Ammianus | [409-415] |
| LV. | Claudian | [415-417] |
| LVI. | Vegetius | [417-419] |
| [Christian Writers] | ||
| LVII. | Lactantius | [420-422] |
| LVIII. | Sulpicius Severus | [422-423] |
| LIX. | Salvian | [423-426] |
| LX. | Apollinaris Sidonius | [426-432] |
| LXI. | Concluding Chapter | [432-459] |
| [APPENDIX] | ||
| Some Byzantine authorities | ||
| A. | The Geoponica | [460-462] |
| B. | The ‘Farmer’s Law’ | [462-464] |
| C. | Modern books, a few interesting extracts and references | [465-46] |
| D. | List of some of the works found useful in this inquiry | [468-471] |
| [INDICES] | ||
| I. | General | [472-479] |
| II. | Words and phrases | [479-482] |
| III. | Passages cited | [483-489] |
| IV. | Modern authorities | [489-490] |
| V. | Countries, places and peoples | [490-492] |
INTRODUCTORY
I. EVIDENCE.
The inquiry of which the results are set forth in these pages was undertaken in the endeavour to satisfy my own mind on a very important question in the history of the past. Circumstances have compelled me to interest myself in the civilization of the Greco-Roman world. And it has always been a painful disadvantage to students of the ‘classical’ systems that the available record neither provides adequate labour-statistics nor furnishes a criticism of existing labour-conditions from the point of view of the handworkers. Accustomed as we are nowadays to continual agitations for increase of wages and reduction of working hours, with centuries of strange experience in the working of Poor-laws, we are in no danger of undervaluing the importance of the wage-earner in our social fabric. We are rather in danger of forgetting other (and perhaps not less vital) considerations, under pressure of the material claims of the labourer and his hire. Power goes by votes; the handworker is now a voter; and the voice of the handworker is loud in the land. No scheme is too wild to find advocates; and those who venture to assert the right of invention, organization and thrift to superior recognition as public benefits often think it necessary to adopt an apologetic tone. Now it may be that this is a passing phase, and that the so-called ‘working-class’—that is, handworkers for wages—will come to see that the civilization whose comforts they enjoy, and whose discomforts they resent, does not wholly depend upon the simple repeated acts of the handworkers themselves. Perhaps there are already signs of some such reaction. But, if so, the reaction must be voluntary; for no power exists in this country to constrain the handworker to take reasonable views, in short to face facts. In these words I am not implying any denial of the reasonableness of many of his claims. To offer an opinion on questions of more or less is no business of mine.
But, when we compare modern industries in general with those of the ancient world, we find ourselves in presence of a very different situation. The largest scale of operations attainable in antiquity seems small and crude by the side of recent achievements, for instance the building of the Pyramids compared with the Panama canal. Machinery, transport, and scientific discovery in general, have made it possible to carry out colossal undertakings with comparative ease and without wholesale destruction of human life. The greatest works of the ancients are for the most part silent witnesses to the ruthless employment of forced labour, either that of captives or bought slaves or that of the impressed subjects of an autocrat. Mere brute force, applied in unlimited quantity[1] with callous indifference to the sufferings of the toilers, was the chief means at disposal: mechanical invention had got so far as to render possible some tasks that without it could not have been performed at all. It gave extended effect to the mass of forced labour, and there it stopped, for we have no reason to think that it improved the labourer’s lot. The surviving evidence as to the condition[2] of slaves in mines and factories enables us to form some faint notion of the human wastage resulting from the cruel forced-labour system. We may then state the position briefly thus: to attempt great enterprises was only possible through the crude employment of labour in great masses: the supply of this labour was, or appeared to be, procurable only by compulsion: and compulsion was operative through the institution of slavery or the passive submission of cowed populations to the will of despots. But if slavery promoted large-scale enterprise, surely large-scale enterprise tended to establish slavery in the form of forced labour more firmly than ever. In the modern world the necessity of employing free labour has stimulated scientific invention, in mechanical and other departments, the tendency of which is to require greater intellectual[3] development in the labourer, and in the long run to furnish him with effective means of asserting his own freedom.
Under modern conditions, the gradual displacement of small handicraftsmen by the growth of great capitalistic combinations is going on, perhaps not always for good. The public accept this result as fate. And, if economy in production and prime-cost cheapness are the only things worth considering, it is not easy to condemn the process. But events are steadily demonstrating the fear once entertained, that handworkers in general would find their position weakened thereby, to be groundless. If the independent craftsman has lost ground, the wage-earning journeyman has gained. We need not follow out this topic in detail, but note the contrast presented by the ancient world. The ‘small man’ in crafts and trades was able to hold his own, for without steam-power the capitalist was not strong enough to suppress him. In a small way he was something of a capitalist himself, and commonly owned slave-apprentices. His part in ancient civilization was undoubtedly far more important than it appears in literature: for he ministered to the ordinary needs of every day, while literature, then as now and more than now, chiefly recorded the exceptional. When we turn to the wage-earner, who earns a living by hiring out his bodily powers to an employer, we are dealing with a wholly different class. These are the free men who in a slave-holding society have to compete with the slave. In the course of the present inquiry we must keep a sharp look-out for every reference or allusion to such persons in the department of agriculture, and in particular note numerous passages in which the status of labourers cannot be inferred with certainty from the language. But the importance of this special point is of course not confined to agriculture.
I have chosen to limit my inquiry to the case of agriculture for these reasons. First, because it was and is the industry on which human life, and therefore all other industries and all progress, did and do rest. Secondly, because its economic importance in the ancient world, so far from declining, manifestly increased. The problem of food-supply was always there. And it was never more pressing than in the later ages of Rome, when imperial efforts to enforce production, if successful, fed her barbarian armies, at the same time attracting the attention of barbarian invaders to lands that promised the food-crops which they themselves were too lazy to produce. Thirdly, because the importance of agriculture was and is not merely economic. Its moral value, as a nursery of steady citizens and, at need, of hardy soldiers, was and still should be recognized by thoughtful men. Therefore its conditions and its relative prosperity or decay deserve the attention of all historians of all periods. Unluckily statistical record of a scientific character is not available for the times that we call ancient, and numbers are notoriously liable to corruption in manuscripts. Therefore I have only ventured to give figures seldom and with reserve. For agriculture we have nothing on the scale of the inscriptions that record wages, for instance on public works at Athens. On the other hand we have for certain periods the evidence of specialists such as Cato, Varro and Columella, to whom we owe much information as to the actual or possible conditions of rustic enterprise and labour. The relation of agriculture and agricultural labour to the state as a whole is a subject illustrated by great theorists such as Plato and Aristotle. The practical problems of landowning and farming meet us now and then in the contemporary evidence of such men as Xenophon and the younger Pliny. Even orators, though necessarily partisan witnesses, at times give valuable help: they may distort facts, but it is not their interest to lessen their own power of persuasion by asserting what is manifestly incredible. The ancient historians tell us very little, even of the past; contemporary evidence from them is especially rare. They are preoccupied with public affairs, and the conditions of rustic life and labour only concern them at moments when serious distress or disorder compels attention. Rhetoricians and poets are doubtful witnesses. Like the orators, they use their matter freely and with much colouring for their immediate purposes. But they are not, like forensic orators, in direct contact with practical emergencies. The questions arising out of Vergil’s Georgics are problems to be discussed by themselves.