AGRICOLA
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AGRICOLA
A STUDY OF AGRICULTURE AND RUSTIC LIFE
IN THE GRECO-ROMAN WORLD FROM THE
POINT OF VIEW OF LABOUR
BY
W E HEITLAND MA
FELLOW OF ST JOHN’S COLLEGE
CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1921
_‘Inspect the basis of the social pile:_
_Inquire,’ said I, ‘how much of mental power_
_And genuine virtue they possess who live_
_By bodily toil, labour exceeding far_
_Their due proportion, under all the weight_
_Of that injustice which upon ourselves_
_Ourselves entail.’ Such estimate to frame_
_I chiefly looked (what need to look beyond?)_
_Among the natural abodes of men,_
_Fields with their rural works; recalled to mind_
_My earliest notices; with these compared_
_The observations made in later youth,_
_And to that day continued—For, the time_
_Had never been when throes of mighty Nations_
_And the world’s tumult unto me could yield,_
_How far soe’er transported and possessed,_
_Full measure of content; but still I craved_
_An intermingling of distinct regards_
_And truths of individual sympathy_
_Nearer ourselves._
WORDSWORTH, _Prelude_, book XIII.
PREFACE
Very few words are needed here, for the book is meant to explain its own
scope. I have only to thank those to whose kindness I am deeply indebted.
Professor Buckland was so good as to help me when I was striving to
utilize the evidence of the Roman jurists. Chapter XLIX in particular
owes much to his genial chastisement. On chapters II and LXI Mr G G
Coulton has given me most valuable criticism. Yet I thank these gentlemen
with some reluctance, fearing that I may seem to connect their names
with errors of my own. Mr T R Glover kindly read chapter XXIX. Professor
Housman called my attention to the ‘Farmer’s Law,’ and kindly lent me
Mr Ashburner’s articles, to which I have referred in Appendix B. To all
these, and to the Syndics of the University Press for undertaking the
publication of this unconventional work, I hereby express my sincere
gratitude. My reasons for adopting the method followed in this book are
given on pages 5-6 and 468.
W E HEITLAND
CAMBRIDGE
_August 1920_
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.
The contribution of encyclopaedic or occasional writers is in some
cases of value. I will here only name the elder Pliny and Apuleius.
Books of travel and geography, for instance Herodotus and Strabo, give
stray details, but generally in reference to distant countries, mostly
in the East and so hardly within my subject, save for purposes of
comparison. There are however two topics with which I am not directly
concerned, but which it is impossible wholly to ignore in speaking of
ancient agriculture. First, the relation of military duty to landholding
[the farmer as citizen soldier], and mercenary service [the rustic as
volunteer for pay]. This has been so fully treated in modern handbooks
that I need say little about it. Secondly, the various conditions of
tenure of land. That rustic life and therewith rustic labour were
directly and deeply affected by varieties of tenure, needs no proof. The
cited opinions of Roman lawyers in the Digest are the main authority on
points of this kind, and stray references elsewhere serve to illustrate
them. In conclusion I have only to insist again on the fact that we have
no direct witness of the labourer’s, or even the working farmer’s, point
of view. The evidence all comes from above; and therefore generally gives
us a picture of conditions as the law meant them to be and presumed them
normally to be. How far the practical working corresponded to the legal
position, is only to be guessed with caution from the admissions involved
in the elaboration of legal remedies; and, in the case of imperial
_coloni_, from the unique evidence of the notable African inscriptions.
It is I trust after the above considerations not unreasonable to devote
no special chapters to certain writers whom nevertheless it is often
necessary to cite in notes. Diodorus, Livy, Athenaeus, Macrobius,
Gellius, Palladius, are cases of the kind. Stray references in their
works are valuable, but there is nothing to require a treatment of
them as several wholes. Even Livy is chiefly useful as handing down
remains of past tradition: hence he (and Dionysius and Plutarch with
him) have a leading place in the introductory chapter on early Rome.
So too the writers of the so-called _historia Augusta_ and the laws of
the Theodosian and Justinian Codes find their place in the notes to
certain chapters. On the other hand (to omit obvious cases) Euripides,
Xenophon, the younger Seneca, Martial, the younger Pliny, Apuleius,
Ammianus, Symmachus, Apollinaris Sidonius, need careful treatment with
full regard to the periods and circumstances by which their evidential
values are severally qualified. And in order to place each witness in
his proper setting it is sometimes necessary to pause and group a number
of circumstances together in a special chapter. This arises from the
endeavour to preserve so far as possible the thread of continuity, which
is always really there, though at times very thin, owing to the loss of
many works in the course of ages. In such chapters one has to look both
backward and forward, and often to digress for a moment on topics only
connected indirectly with the main object.
I have tried to avoid needless repetitions, but some repetitions are
unavoidable, since the same point often serves to illustrate different
parts of the argument. To make a system of cross-references from chapter
to chapter quite complete is hardly possible, and would add immensely
to the bulk of footnotes. It has seemed better to attempt completeness
by elaboration of the Index. A few details from a period later than
that with which I am concerned are given in the Appendix, as being
of interest. Also the names of some books from which in a course of
miscellaneous reading I have derived more or less help, particularly in
noting modern survivals or analogies. For significant matter occurs in
quite unexpected quarters. And the observers who record facts of rustic
life and labour in Italy or France, in North or Central or South America,
without attempting to manipulate them in connexion with a theory, deserve
much gratitude.
It is evident that in the handling of evidence there is room for some
variety of method. And it seems reasonable to hold that the choice of
method should be mainly guided by two leading considerations, the nature
of the evidence available and the aim of the inquiry pursued. In the
present case the inquiry deals with a part, a somewhat neglected part,
of Greco-Roman history: and the subject is one that can by no means be
strictly confined to ascertaining the bare facts of farm life and labour.
That the conditions of agriculture were not only important in connexion
with food-supply, but had an extensive moral and political bearing, is
surely beyond dispute. And the nature of the surviving evidence favours,
or rather requires, the taking of a correspondingly wide view. Outside
the circle of technical writings, the literary evidence almost always
has an eye to the position of agriculture as related to the common
weal; nor is this point of view ignored even by the technical writers.
Therefore, in treating the subject as I have tried to treat it, it is
very necessary to take each witness separately so far as possible, and
not to appraise the value of his testimony without a fair consideration
of his condition and environment. This necessity is peculiarly obvious in
the case of the theorists, whose witness is instructive in a very high
degree, but only when we bear in mind the existing state of things from
observation of which their conclusions were derived. And the changes of
attitude in philosophic thought are sometimes highly instructive. Take
farm life and labour as it appears to Plato and Aristotle and later to
Musonius: a whole volume of history, economic moral and political, lies
in the interval of some 400 years. Inscriptions furnish little to the
student of this subject, but that little is worth having. To conclude
this paragraph, I do not apologize for putting my authorities in the
witness-box and questioning them one by one. For only thus do I see a
possibility of giving a true picture of the conditions with which I am
concerned. It is a long method, but perhaps not uninteresting, and I see
no other.
It may seem necessary to explain why I have not devoted special chapters
to rustic life and labour in Oriental countries, some of which eventually
became parts of the Roman empire. Such countries are for instance Egypt,
Palestine and Syria. One reason is that I could do nothing more than
compile conclusions of the inquirers who have lately rescued a vast mass
of detail, chiefly from the Egyptian papyri. Age forbade me to undertake
this task unless it seemed clear that my inquiry really depended on it.
But, inasmuch as I have not been trying to produce a technical treatise
upon ancient agriculture, I do not think it necessary. That there is
room for such a treatise, I have no doubt: nor that its writer will
need to have many years at his disposal and a good knowledge of several
sciences at his back. With regard to eastern countries other than Egypt,
practically the Seleucid empire, knowledge is at present very scanty,
as Rostowzew has to confess. Ancient India lies quite beyond my range,
as having never been a part of the Roman empire: but there is evidently
much of interest to be gathered in this field. From these extensive and
promising researches my limited effort is divided by a clearly marked
line. I am concerned with agriculture and agricultural labour not as the
occupation of passive populations merely producing so much food year by
year, peoples over whom centuries might pass without ascertainable change
of a moral social or political character. Such peoples, in short, as do
not get beyond the conception of ruler and ruled to that of state and
citizen, or at least have not yet done so. For of all conclusions to be
drawn from the history of the Greco-Roman world none seems to me more
certain than the fact that, while political social and moral movements
affected the conditions of agriculture, agricultural changes reacted
upon political social and moral conditions. Thus the general history of
the peoples, comprising the rise and fall of ancient efforts towards
self-government, must always be kept in view: the fluctuations of what
I may call civic values, and the position of farmers as labourers or
employers of labour cannot be treated in separate compartments and
their reciprocal effect ignored. That in the later stages of my inquiry
Oriental influences begin to dominate Roman imperial policy, is evident,
and I have not left this factor out of account. But this phenomenon
announces the end of the old world. The long struggle of the Empire in
the East and its final overthrow by the forces of Islam, its break-up in
the West and the foundation of new nation-states, are beyond my range. In
the Appendix I have put some remarks on two documents of the Byzantine
period, from which we get glimpses of changes that were proceeding in the
eastern empire while it still held its ground and was indeed the most
highly organized of existing powers. To these I have subjoined a list of
some of the books I have consulted and found helpful in various degrees,
particularly such as have furnished modern illustrations in the way of
analogy or survival. A few special quotations from some of these may
serve to shew how very striking such illustrations can be.
II. LAND AND LABOUR.
Of the many difficult questions connected with the past history of the
human race few have evoked such a difference of opinion as the practical
importance of slavery. By some inquirers it has been held that the
so-called ‘classical’ civilization of the Greco-Roman world rested upon
a slavery basis, in short that slavery alone enabled that civilization
to follow the lines of its actual development. In reply to this doctrine
it is urged[4] that its holders have been led astray by an unhistorical
method. They have been deeply impressed by the all-pervading evils of
the economic and domestic slave-system during the period (say 200 BC-200
AD roughly) when it was in full extension and vigour. The prepossession
thus created has led them to misinterpret the phenomena of earlier ages,
and to ignore the significance of the later period of decline. Prejudiced
eyes have detected slavery where it was not, and have seen in it where
existent an importance greater than impartial inquiry will justify.
Moreover the discussion of slavery-questions in modern times, conducted
with the intemperate warmth of partisan controversy, have had an
influence unfavourable to the statement of facts in their true relations,
and therefore to the exercise of cool judgment. According to this view
the facts of our record shew that, while slave-labour had its four
centuries or so of predominance, free-labour never ceased, and on it,
and not on slavery, the civilization of the ‘classical’ world was built
up. It is argued that in primitive conditions there was little slavery,
that growth of trade and exchange (and therewith of civilization) led
to division of labour and the growth of larger enterprises. On this
follows a time in which the employment of slave-labour becomes more and
more common, and ends by being for some centuries the basis of economic
and domestic life. In due course comes the period of decline, when for
various reasons slaves became less numerous, and the highly-organized
civilization of antiquity relapses into the primitive conditions of
the early Middle Age. Slavery is not extinct, but reverts generally to
various degrees of serfdom, resembling that which meets us in the early
traditions of Greek slavery. Things have gone round the full circle, and
the world takes a fresh start.
This version of the process is attractive. It presents to us a spectacle
of cyclic movement, pleasing from its simplicity and dignity. But it
seems to imply that the old civilization reached its height more or
less concurrently with the growth of slavery. One is driven to ask[5]
whether the concurrence was purely accidental or not. So far as concerns
the manufacture of articles for export by slave-industry, it can hardly
have been a mere chance: nor is it denied that in this department it
was the demand created by the needs of growing civilization that called
forth the supply. Luxury too is merely a name for such needs when they
clearly exceed strict necessaries of life: and here too the monstrous
extravagancies of domestic slavery were a characteristic feature of the
civilization of the Greco-Roman world. That neither of these forms of
servile employment could outlive the civilization that had produced them,
is surely no wonder. The case of slavery in agriculture is less simple,
and several questions may suggest themselves to anyone who considers this
subject with an open mind.
Agriculture was long regarded, from a social point of view, as superior
to other occupations dependent on bodily labour. This opinion dated
from very early times when, as traditions agree, the land was owned by
privileged nobles who as members of powerful clans formed aristocracies
of a more or less military character. War was waged by men fighting hand
to hand, and it was natural that handwork of a kind likely to promote
health and strength should be honoured above manual trades of a less
invigorating and even sedentary character. The development of cities and
urban life, which in many states led to the overthrow of the old clan
aristocracies, did not make handicraftsmen the equals of agriculturists
in popular esteem. Pressure to win a firm footing on the land was as
marked a feature in Athenian Attica as in Roman Latium. Agriculture was
a profession worthy of the free citizen, and the ownership of a plot of
land stamped the citizen as a loyal and responsible member of a free and
self-conscious community. The ruin of Attic farmers in the Peloponnesian
war, the disastrous changes in Italian agriculture after Rome became
imperial, still left the old prepossession. The charm of country life
and pursuits remained as an ineffective ideal. Greek philosophers were
impressed with the virtues of farmer-folk, virtues social moral and
ultimately political. From them Cicero and others learnt to praise
rustic life: the Gracchi made vain efforts to revive it: the poets, led
by Vergil, pictured the glories of old Italian agriculture: but the
aspirations were vain. The ‘classical’ civilization was urban in its
growth, and urban it remained. Writers on agriculture might lament that
free men, capable of tilling the land, loitered idly in the city. In
practice they had to take facts as they found them, and give elaborate
precepts for a farm-system in which slavery was the essential factor.
It was and is possible to regard agriculture from various points of
view. Three of these at least deserve a preliminary consideration. The
nakedly economic view, that the production of food is necessary for any
life above that of mere savages, and therefore is worthy of respect,
can never have been wholly absent from men’s minds in any age. It was
common property, and found frequent expression. Even when various causes
led to much dependence on imported corn, the sentiment still survived,
and its soundness was recognized by philosophers. The military view,
that the hardy peasant makes the best soldier, was generally accepted in
principle, but its relation to agriculture in the strict sense of tillage
was not always a direct one. The technical training of skilled combatants
began early in Greece. It was not only in the Spartan or Cretan systems
that such training was normal: the citizen armies of Athens consisted
of men who had passed through a long course of gymnastic exercises and
drill. During their training these young men can hardly have devoted
much labour to the tillage of farms, even those of them who were of
country birth. What percentage of them settled down in their later years
to farm-life, is just what one vainly wishes to know. The helot-system
supplied the tillage that fed the warrior-caste of Sparta. It would seem
that the toils of hunting played a great part in producing the military
fitness required of the young Spartiate. We may be pretty sure that
the Thessalian cavalry—wealthy lords ruling dependent cultivators—were
not tillers of the soil. Boeotia and Arcadia were both lands in which
there was a large farmer class. Boeotian infantry were notable for their
steadiness in the shock of battle. But they were not untrained, far from
it. United action was ever difficult in Arcadia, where small cities
lay scattered in the folds of mountains. Hence no Arcadian League ever
played a leading part in Greece. But the rustics of these country towns
and villages were man for man as good material for war-work as Greece
could produce. In the later age of professional soldering they, with the
Aetolians and others in the less civilized parts, furnished numbers of
recruits to the Greek mercenary armies. But the regular mercenary who had
the luck to retire in comfortable circumstances, on savings of pay and
loot, is portrayed to us as more inclined to luxury and wantonness in
some great city than to the simple monotony of rustic life. Nor must we
forget that slaves were often an important part[6] of war-booty, and that
the professional warrior was used to the attendance of slaves (male and
female) even on campaigns. So far the connexion of peasant and soldier
does not amount to much more than the admission that the former was a
type of man able to endure the hardships of a military career.
The national regular army formed by Philip son of Amyntas in Macedonia,
afterwards the backbone of Alexander’s mixed host, is in itself a
phenomenon of great interest: for in making it Philip made a nation.
That the ranks were mainly filled with country folk is certain. But,
what with wastage in wars and the settlement of many old soldiers in the
East, there is little evidence to shew whether any considerable number
of veterans returned to Macedon and settled on the land. I believe that
such cases were few. The endless wars waged by Alexander’s successors
with mixed and mongrel armies were hardly favourable to rustic pursuits:
foundation of great new cities was the characteristic of the times. When
we turn to Rome we find a very different story. Tradition represents
landowners settled on the land and tilling it as the persons responsible
for the defence of the state. Cincinnatus called from the plough to
be dictator is the typical figure of early patriotic legend. When the
Roman Plebeians dislodged the Patrician clans from their monopoly of
political power, the burden of military service still rested on the
_adsidui_, the men with a footing on the land. Tradition still shews us
the farmer-soldier taking the risk of disaster to his homestead during
his absence on campaigns. In the historical twilight of fragmentary
details, coloured by later imagination, thus much is clear and credible.
The connexion between landholding and soldiering was not openly
disregarded until the reforms of Marius. The age of revolution was then
already begun, and one of its most striking features was the creation
of a professional soldiery, a force which, as experience proved, was
more easy to raise than to disband. The method of pensioning veterans
by assigning to them parcels of land for settlement was in general a
failure, for the men were unused to thrift and indisposed to a life of
patient and uneventful labour. The problem of the Republic was inherited
by the Empire, and attempts at solution were only partially successful:
but the system of standing armies, posted on the frontiers, made the
settlement of veterans in border-provinces a matter of less difficulty.
From the third century AD onwards we find a new plan coming into use. Men
were settled with their families on lands near the frontiers, holding
them by a military tenure which imposed hereditary liability to service
in the armies. Thus the difficulty was for a time met by approaching it
from the other end. The superiority of the rustic recruit was as fully
recognized as ever: at the end of the fourth century it was reaffirmed[7]
by Vegetius.
I pass on to the third point of view, which I may perhaps call
philosophic. It appears in practice as the view of the statesman, in
theory as that of the speculative philosopher. Men whose life and
interests are bound up with agriculture are in general a steady class,
little inclined to wild agitations and rash ventures. On a farm there
is always something not to be left undone without risk of loss. The
operations of nature go on unceasingly, uncontrolled by man. Man must
adapt himself to the conditions of soil and weather: hence he must be
ever on the watch to take advantage of his opportunities, and this leaves
him scant leisure for politics. We may add that the habit of conforming
to nature’s laws, and of profiting by not resisting what cannot be
successfully resisted, is a perpetual education in patience. Working
farmers as a class were not men lightly to embark in revolutionary
schemes, so long as their condition was at all tolerable. It must be
borne in mind that before the invention of representative systems a
citizen could only vote by appearing in person at the city, where all the
Assemblies were held. Assemblies might be adjourned, and two journeys,
to the city and back, were not only time-wasting and tiresome, but
might have to be repeated. Accordingly we hear of the encouragement of
Attic farmers by Peisistratus[8] as being a policy designed to promote
the stability of his government. At Rome we find reformers alarmed at
the decay of the farmer-class in a great part of Italy, and straining
to revive it as the sound basis of a national life, the only practical
means of purifying the corrupted institutions of the state. Selfish
opposition on the part of those interested in corruption was too strong
for reformers, and the chance of building up a true Italian nation passed
away. The working farmer had disappeared from Roman politics. The swords
and the venal city mob remained, and the later literature was left to
deplore the consequences.
The course of agricultural decline in Greece was different in detail from
that in Italy, but its evil effects on political life were early noted,
at least in Attica. The rationalist Euripides saw the danger clearly,
during the Peloponnesian war; and the sympathy of the conservative
Aristophanes with the suffering farmers was plainly marked. The merits
of the farmer-class as ‘safe’ citizens, the backbone of a wise and
durable state-life, became almost a commonplace of Greek political
theory. Plato and Aristotle might dream of ideal states, governed by
skilled specialists professionally trained for their career from boyhood.
In their more practical moments, turning from aspirations to facts
of the world around them, they confessed the political value of the
farmer-class. To Aristotle the best hope of making democracy a wholesome
and tolerable form of government lay in the strengthening of this
element: the best Demos is the γεωργικὸς δῆμος, and it is a pity that it
so often becomes superseded by the growing population devoted to trades
and commerce. I need not carry further these brief and imperfect outlines
of the honourable opinion held of agriculture in the Greco-Roman world.
As producing necessary food, as rearing hardy soldiers, as favouring the
growth and maintenance of civic virtues, it was the subject of general
praise. Some might confess that they shrank from personal labour on the
land. Yet even in Caesarian Rome it is somewhat startling when Sallust[9]
dismisses farming in a few words of cynical contempt.
It is clear that the respect felt for agriculture was largely due to
the opinion that valuable qualities of body and mind were closely
connected with its practice and strengthened thereby. So long as it
was on the primitive footing, each household finding labour for its
own maintenance, the separation of handwork and direction could hardly
arise. This primitive state of things, assumed by theorists ancient and
modern, and depicted in tradition, had ceased to be normal in the time
of our earliest records. And the employment of persons, not members of
the household, as hired labourers, or of bondmen only connected with the
house as dependents, at once differentiated these ‘hands’ from the master
and his family. The master could not habitually hire day-labourers or
keep a slave unless he found it paid him to do so. For a man to work for
his own profit or for that of another were very different things. This
simple truism, however, does not end the matter from my present point of
view. It is necessary to ask whether the respect felt for agriculture
was so extended as to include the hired labourer and the slave as well
as the working master. We shall see that it was not. The house-master,
holding and cultivating a plot of land on a secure tenure, is the figure
glorified in traditions and legendary scenes. The Greek term αὐτουργός,
the man who does his own work, is specially applied to him as a man that
works with his own hands. It crops up in literature often, from Euripides
to Polybius and Dion Chrysostom; and sometimes, when the word is not
used, it is represented by equivalents. But both the hired labourer and
the slave were employed for the express purpose of working with their
own hands. And yet, so far as agriculture is concerned, I cannot find
that they were credited with αὐτουργία, the connotation[10] of which
is generally favourable, seldom neutral, never (I think) unfavourable.
It seems then that the figure present to the mind was one who not only
worked with his own hands, but worked for his own profit—that is, on his
own farm. And with this interpretation the traditions of early Rome fully
agree.
To admit this does not however imply that the working house-master
employed neither hired labourer nor slave. So long as he took a hand
in the farm-work, he was a working cultivator for his own profit. The
larger the scale of his holding, the more he would need extra labour.
If prosperous, he would be able to increase his holding or supplement
his farming[11] by other enterprises. More and more he would be tempted
to drop handwork and devote himself to direction. If still successful,
he might move on a stage further, living in the city and carrying on
his farms by deputy, employing stewards, hired freemen or slaves, or
freedmen, his former slaves. If he found in the city more remunerative
pursuits than agriculture, he might sell his land and the live and dead
stock thereon, and become simply an urban capitalist. So far as I know,
this last step was very seldom taken; and I believe the restraining
influence to have been the prestige attached to the ownership of land,
even when civic franchises had ceased to depend on the possession of that
form of property alone. If this view be correct, the fact is notable: for
the system of great landed estates, managed by stewards[12] on behalf of
wealthy owners who lived in the city, was the ruin of the peasant farmer
class, in whose qualities statesmen and philosophers saw the guarantee
for the state’s lasting vigour. No longer were αὐτουργοὶ a force in
politics: in military service the professional soldier, idling in the
intervals of wars, superseded the rustic, levied for a campaign and
looking forward to the hour of returning to his plough. It was in Italy
that the consummation of this change was most marked, for Rome alone
provided a centre in which the great landlord could reside and influence
political action in his own interest. To Rome the wealth extorted from
tributary subjects flowed in an ever-swelling stream. No small part of
the spoils served to enrich the noble landlords, directly or indirectly,
and to supply them with the funds needed for corrupting the city mob
and so controlling politics. Many could afford to hold their lands even
when it was doubtful whether estates managed by slaves or hirelings
were in fact a remunerative investment. If we may believe Cicero, it
was financial inability[13] to continue this extravagant policy that
drove some men of apparent wealth to favour revolutionary schemes. The
old-fashioned farmstead, the _villa_, was modernized into a luxurious
country seat, in which the owner might now and then pass a brief recess,
attended by his domestic slaves from Town, and perhaps ostentatiously
entertaining a party of fashionable friends.
We have followed the sinister progress of what I will call the
Agricultural Interest, from the ‘horny-handed’ peasant[14] farmer to
the land-proud capitalist. No doubt the picture is a highly coloured
one, but in its general outlines we are not entitled to question its
truth. Exceptions there certainly were. In hilly parts of Italy a rustic
population[15] of freemen survived, and it was from them that the jobbing
gangs of wage-earners of whom we read were drawn. And in the great plain
of the Po agricultural conditions remained far more satisfactory than in
such districts as Etruria or Lucania, where great estates were common.
A genuine farming population seems there to have held most of the land,
and rustic slavery appeared in less revolting form. But these exceptions
did not avail to stay the decline of rural Italy. True, as the supply
of slave-labour gradually shrank in the empire, the working farmer
reappeared on the land. But he reappeared as a tenant gradually becoming
bound[16] to the soil, worried by the exactions of officials, or liable
to a blood-tax in the shape of military service. He was becoming not a
free citizen of a free state, but a half-free serf helplessly involved in
a great mechanical system. Such a person bore little resemblance to the
free farmer working with his own hands for himself on his own land, the
rustic figure from whom we started. On the military side, he was, if a
soldier, now soldier first and farmer afterwards: on the civic side, he
was a mere subject-unit, whose virtues were of no political importance
and commanded no respect. In the final stage we find the government
recruiting its armies from barbarians and concerned to keep the farmer on
the land. So cogent then was the necessity of insuring the supply of food
for the empire and its armies.
At this point we must return to our first question, how far the
agriculture of the Greco-Roman world depended on free or slave labour.
It is clear that, while the presence of the slave presupposes the
freeman to control him, the presence of the freeman does not necessarily
imply that of the slave. Dion Chrysostom[17] was logically justified in
saying that freedom comes before slavery in order of time. And no doubt
this is true so long as we only contemplate the primitive condition of
households each providing for its own vital needs by the labour of its
members. But the growth of what we call civilization springs from the
extension of needs beyond the limits of what is absolutely necessary for
human existence. By what steps the advantages of division of labour were
actually discovered is a subject for the reconstructive theorist. But it
must have been observed at a very early stage that one man’s labour might
be to another man’s profit. Those who tamed and employed other animals
were not likely to ignore the possibilities offered by the extension of
the system to their brother men. It would seem the most natural thing
in the world. It might be on a very small scale, and any reluctance on
the bondsman’s part might be lessened by the compensations of food and
protection. A powerful master might gather round him a number of such
dependent beings, and he had nothing to gain by treating them cruelly.
On them he could devolve the labour of producing food, and so set free
his own kinsmen to assert the power of their house. In an age of conflict
stronger units tended to absorb weaker, and the formation of larger
societies would tend to create fresh needs, to encourage the division of
labour, and to promote civilization by the process of exchange. Labour
under assured control was likely to prove an economic asset of increasing
value. In agriculture it would be of special importance as providing food
for warriors busied with serving the community in war.
This imaginative sketch may serve to remind us that there are two
questions open to discussion in relation to the subject. First, the
purely speculative one, whether the early stages of progress in
civilization could have been passed without the help of slavery. Second,
the question of fact, whether they were so passed or not. It is the
latter with which I am concerned. The defects of the evidence on which
we have to form an opinion are manifest. Much of it is not at first
hand, and it will often be necessary to comment on its unsatisfactory
character. In proceeding to set it out in detail, I must again repeat
that two classes of free handworkers must be clearly kept distinct—those
who work for themselves, and those who work for others. It is the
latter class only that properly come into comparison with slaves. A man
habitually working for himself may of course work occasionally for others
as a wage-earner. But here, as in the case of the farmer-soldier, we have
one person in two capacities.
AUTHORITIES IN DETAIL—GREEK
III. THE HOMERIC POEMS.