Agricola

by William Emerton Heitland

Considerations such as those set forth in the preceding paragraphs shew that in treating of ancient agriculture and farm-labour we are apparently faced by a curious paradox. Cultivation of land (including the keeping of live stock) is an honourable pursuit. That good health, sustenance, even comfort and profit, are its natural attendants, is not doubted. But the position of the labouring hands is painful and mean, so much so that a common punishment for urban house-slaves was to send them to work on a farm. The rustic slave’s lot differed for the better from that of the mine-slave in the healthier nature of the occupation, but in little else. And this degradation inevitably reacted on the estimate of rustic wage-earners, whenever employed. There may have been less repugnance to work side by side with slaves than has been felt in modern times, when a marked colour-line implied the disgrace of a ‘white’ man doing ‘niggers’ work.’ But it is not to be doubted that in agriculture as in other occupations the presence of slavery did degrade labour, at all events so soon as agriculture put on anything of an industrial character. The really ‘respectable’ person was the man who directed the operations, the γεωργός, agricola, or colonus (in the original sense): he was the man who worked the land and made it yield crops, whether he took part in the actual digging and ploughing or not. The larger the scale, the more he confined himself to direction, necessarily; but he was the producer, a pillar of public economy, none the less. He had provided the labour, bought or hired; in effect, the labour was his own. With the toiling yeoman farmer of tradition he had this in common, that both worked for themselves, not for another. And this position, attractive in all societies, was marked out with peculiar distinctness through the institution of slavery underlying the social fabric. Exploitation of man by man, the first beginnings of which elude our search and are only ascertained by inference, suggests some sort of superiority in the upper party. At all events the master, the man who has the upper hand, gets the credit of achievement, and in agriculture as elsewhere the subordinate operative is inevitably forgotten. It is from this point of view that we must regard the fine Roman legends of sturdy farmer-citizens, the fathers of the Republic. They are idylls conveying truth, dressed up by the imagination of a later age: and have their place in the region where history and poetry meet and blend. We must not gather from them that slavery was exceptional or a fact of no importance. Tradition habitually ignores what is normal and therefore assumed. The fairer inference is that, as I have already remarked, slavery was in those early days still a family institution, not an industrial system.

Some help towards the understanding of the different position of manual labour in ancient times as compared with modern may be got by considering Abolitionism. That a slave is a man, and as such not to be wholly ignored in respect of the claims of common humanity; that slave-labour is listless and ineffective, giving poor returns in proportion to the strength employed; these conclusions, moral and economic, were reached by the thinkers of the ancient world while their civilization was in full bloom. Why then do we find no movement corresponding to the Abolitionism of modern times? Two things were obviously necessary for such a movement; the motive to inspire it, and the force to give effect to it. Let men once be convinced that slavery is both wrong and unprofitable, and let them have the power to insist on putting an end to it, Abolitionism in some form or other is the necessary result.

Now in speaking of ancient conditions we must never lose sight of the fact that in its origin slavery was a favour. By the undissembled rule of force the conquered only retained his life through the mercy of the conqueror. By a contract tacit or expressed he was pledged for life to the service and profit of his master. And the master could, if his interest pointed that way, make over his rights to a third party. Hence the growth of a slave-market, and the relation of master and slave no longer was normally that of individual conqueror and conquered. But the original notion was by no means extinct, and it continued to colour the current view of slavery as ‘natural,’ a thing of course, an unquestioned social fact. Nor was there anything in the condition of the slave to arouse a feeling of horror, so long as patriarchal rule prevailed. If the Head of the family possessed absolute power over the slave, his power over members of the family in general was in kind the same. The bondman, a humble dependant rather than a mere chattel, was in a sense also a member of the family and under the protection of the household gods. What was there for an observer, let him be ever so kind-hearted, to object to? Accordingly, as the state developed, it too kept slaves of its own, employing them in mean functions for which it was needful to have a staff always at hand. In short, the institution was taken for granted, and growing intercourse with foreigners only served to reveal its universal prevalence.

How came it then that in course of time humanitarian scruples arose, and questioners were found to argue that the system was ‘unnatural’ and wrong? The answer must be sought in the application of an originally domestic institution to industrial ends. Once the stage was reached at which the products of labour were habitually put on the market, and the producer got his living by their regular sale, it was soon discovered that to produce and deal on a larger scale was more economical, and therefore more profitable, than on a smaller one. In the handicrafts this was so obvious that slave assistants were commonly kept by tradesmen: it was important to be sure of having the necessary help when wanted. The same was the case in the professions based on special training: the surgeon, the architect, the surveyor, the banker, employed slave subordinates, and had often been slaves themselves. In all these departments, not to mention domestic service, the position of the slave was affected by two important considerations. First, he was one of a few, and under immediate observation, so that escape from servitude was practically impossible. Secondly, there was a reasonable chance of earning manumission by long faithful service. But there were occupations in which it was far more difficult to reconcile the interests of the slave with those of the master. Such were the exploitation of mines and quarries, in which labour was simply applied in the form of brute force under direction. The direction, usually entrusted to slave or freedman overseers, was generally unsympathetic, sometimes cruel; for the overseer’s first thought was to please his master, even if he could only do so by working the slaves to death. The extension of agriculture as a means of profit rather than subsistence created conditions of the same kind in this occupation. It was here that the monstrous abuses incidental to slavery were most strikingly displayed. For, while quarries and mines were only worked in a few localities, the plan of working great landed estates by the labour of slave-gangs was applicable to vast areas of the best soil. And in Africa Sicily and Italy we find it so applied for the profit of the nobles and capitalists of a conquering race.

The evils of this system may be set down to the account of obsequious stewards heartlessly wringing profit for their masters out of human flesh and blood. But we must not ignore two considerations which suggest that the root of the evil lay not in the caprice or greed of individuals but in the attempt to carry on rural industry by slave labour at all. In the country, opportunities of escape were many; the slave-prison and the fetters could hardly be dispensed with if you meant to keep your farm-hands at disposal. And manumission, as a means of encouraging good service, was evidently not of much avail in country places. For after long years of exhausting labour the worn-out slave would be unable to earn a living by hard bodily work; and he knew no other. He had been bought as a flesh-and-blood machine; as such, to manumit him while still efficient would be a sacrifice of sunk capital for which nobody was prepared. It seems that the ordinary practice was to keep him at work till he could work no longer, and then to let him linger on the estate as an invalid retainer, feeding on what he could get and decaying in peace. But the industrializing of agriculture, heartlessly selfish in its aims, tempted landlords to shirk the unprofitable maintenance of spent labourers. When a slave was no longer worth his keep, it might pay to sell him at once for what he would fetch. There was thus a mouth less to be fed, and the problem of how to turn the remnant of his strength to account was shifted on to his new owner. This plan, approved by the elder Cato as a detail of farm-economy, marks the change of relations between master and slave in rustic life. The old domestic relation has disappeared in the brutal exploitation of a human animal for immediate profit. The crudely industrial system reproduced on great estates the horrid phenomena of the quarry and the mine.

That humane and thoughtful men should be disgusted with such doings was inevitable, and disgust was soon reinforced by reasonable alarm. For tillage was not the sole occupation of rustic enterprise. It was found that in many districts grazing paid better than tillage, and the two could be worked together remuneratively on a large scale. The charge of flocks and herds, shifting their pasture according to seasons, led to employment of able-bodied slaves in a duty responsible and at the same time removed from immediate control for months together. These slave herdsmen, hardy and used to a free life in wild uplands, had to face wolves and robbers, and therefore to bear arms. We need not dwell on the danger from such a class menacing the peace of a country unprotected by rural police. It was real enough. Being slaves, they had nothing but their lives to lose, and their lives it was their owners’ interest to protect. Meanwhile the unescorted traveller was at their mercy, and any peasants within reach would pay blackmail to escape their raids. Yet nothing was done to get rid of the nuisance and peril of this state of things. Servile risings were clumsily put down with appalling bloodshed, and left to recur. Meanwhile the free population of the countryside diminished, and prosperity could not be restored by new slave-gangs. Such was notoriously the condition of a great part of rural Italy under the later Republic, and contemporary evidence clearly shews that the improvement effected under the Empire was slight.

Now, when experience had proved the blighting influence of slavery, why was there no movement to do away with the system altogether? Truth is, there was at present no basis to start from. The moral enthusiasm, often sincere, that has inspired such movements in modern times, had no effective existence. Moral considerations were almost entirely confined to a section of rich or cultivated society. It was not expected that the common herd should rise above the meanest motives of crude self-interest. The artisan, who either employed, or hoped soon to employ, a slave or two, was not likely to condemn slavery: the parasitic loafer was not likely to welcome a mass of new competitors for the doles and bribes that he undeservedly enjoyed. During the last century of the Roman Republic no opposition to slavery as an institution could have arisen from the urban populace. And the wealthier classes were interested in slavery. Religion did not touch the question. A few scrupulous and thoughtful men might have supported an anti-slavery movement, had there been one; but we have not the smallest reason to think that any individual ever dreamt of starting humanitarian propaganda on his own account and at his own risk. There was no place in the ancient world for the reformer of this type. Even those leaders whose policy offered advantages to the free masses, such as the Gracchi or some Spartan kings, did not so fare in their enterprises as to encourage imitation. As for appealing to the slaves themselves, it was only desperate adventurers who did so, and that only to use their force in promoting criminal designs. Such cases only served to justify the cruel execution of cruel laws for protecting masters and the state in general from the imminent slave-peril. If we turn from the city, in which what passed for politics ran its troubled and futile course, to the countryside, we are at once in a scene from which all political life had departed. The farmer-citizens grew fewer and fewer, and the great majority of them were virtually disfranchised by distance. Nor were they likely to favour any movement that seemed to be for the benefit of slaves.

The establishment of the Empire did not, indeed could not, produce any material change in the way of arousing effective sentiment hostile to slavery. But it did much to promote internal order and far-reaching peace. Under the new model of government the corrupt circles of nobles and greedy capitalists were no longer in absolute control of the civilized world, and it might seem that there was now some chance of dealing with the canker of slavery. But no such movement was the result. Old notions remained in full vigour. Augustus had his hands too full, and the need of conciliating private interests was too pressing, for him to disturb them, even had he been minded to do so. And who else could take the initiative? But the fate of two moral influences is worth noting. Stoicism, the creed of not a few ardent spirits, might profess to rise superior to worldly distinctions and advantages and assert the potential dignity of man even in the humblest condition of life. But it was always a creed of the few: its aloofness, tending to a certain arrogance, made it unfitted[1809] to lead a great reform: it neither would nor could furnish the machinery of zealous propaganda. In the earlier Empire we find it politically allied with malcontent cliques in which smouldering resentment at the restraints on ‘freedom’ expressed itself by idealizing the Republic and hoping for a reaction. Thus it lost itself in impracticable dreams, and the hand of emperors under provocation sometimes fell heavily on its most virtuous men. The spread of Christianity came later, and was not diverted from its aims by a social affinity with the upper classes. Slaves bore no small part in its expansion to the West, and it was free to operate steadily as a humanitarian influence. But its claim to universality naturally exposed it to grave suspicion in a world that knew religion only as an affair of each several community, with a sort of overlordship vested in the conquering gods of Rome. Though it was a Church and not a philosophic system, though meant for all mankind and not for a cultivated few, it could only win its way by accepting civilization[1810] in the main as it stood. Therefore it was compelled to accept slavery as an institution, and to content itself with inculcating humanity on masters and conscientious devotion to duty on slaves. If Abolitionism was to spring from this seed, a long time had to be spent in waiting for the harvest.

Yet the establishment of the Empire did lead to effects that in their turn served as contributory causes undermining the old slave-system, particularly[1811] in agriculture. In a more peaceful age fewer slaves were brought to market, and this meant higher prices and put a premium on the economical employment of bought labour. To meet the situation, agricultural policy was developed on two lines, each of which was the improvement or extension of an existing practice. One was the more scientific organization of the labour-staff, so as to get better results from an equal amount of labour. The other was a more frequent resort to the plan of letting farms to tenants, whenever that arrangement seemed favourable to the landlord’s interest. Of these developments we have direct information from Columella, who still prefers the former plan wherever feasible. But it was with the system of tenancies on various conditions that the future really lay. I have endeavoured above to sketch the process[1812] by which tenants were gradually reduced to a condition of dependency on their landlords, and the difficulty of finding and keeping good tenants that was the other side of the movement. A very significant detail is the fact that slaves were put into farms[1813] as tenants: that this was no unusual practice is clear from the way in which the classical jurists refer to it as a matter of course. And so things slowly moved on, with ups and downs, the tenants slave or free becoming more and more bondsmen of the land, liable to task-services and not free to move at will. Thus by usage, and eventually by law, a system of serfdom was established, while personal slavery declined.