commercial point of view. Little though we hear of this in tradition, it
can hardly be doubted that it gave Rome a marked superiority in resources
to her less happily situated neighbours, and enabled her to take the
first great step forward by becoming dominant in central Italy. But the
consolidation and completion of her conquest of the peninsula was carried
out by means of an extended Roman agriculture. It was this that gave to
Roman expansion the solid character that distinguished republican Rome
from other conquering powers. What she took, that she could keep. When
the traditional story of early Rome depicts the Roman commons as hungry
for land, and annexation of territory as the normal result of conquest,
it is undoubtedly worthy of belief. When it shews us the devastation of
their enemies’ lands as a chief part—sometimes the whole—of the work of
a campaign, it is in full agreement with the traditions of all ancient
warfare. When we read[578] that the ruin of farms by raids of the enemy
brought suffering farmers into debt, and that the cruel operation of
debt-laws led to serious internal troubles in the Roman state, the story
is credible enough. The superior organization of Rome enabled her to
overcome these troubles, not only by compromises and concessions at
home, but still more by establishing her poorer citizens on farms at the
cost of her neighbours. As the area under her control was extended, the
military force automatically grew, and she surpassed her rivals in the
cohesion and vitality of her power. At need, her armies rose from the
soil. So did those of other Italian peoples. But in dealing with them she
enjoyed the advantage of unity as compared with the far less effective
cooperation of Samnite cantons or Etruscan cities. Even the capture
of Rome by the Gauls could not destroy her system, and she was able
to strengthen her moral position by proving herself the one competent
defender of Italy against invasion from the North. When the time came
for the struggle with Carthage, she had to face a different test. But no
blundering on the part of her generals, no strategy of Hannibal, could
avail to nullify the solid superiority of her military strength. And this
strength was in the last resort derived from the numbers and loyalty of
the farm-population: it was in fact the product of the plough rather than
the sword.
The agricultural conditions of early Rome[579] are a subject, and have
been the subject, of special treatises. Only a few points can be noticed
here. That a communal system of some kind once existed, whether in the
form of the associations known to inquirers as Village Communities or
on a gentile basis as Clan-estates, is a probable hypothesis. But the
evidence for it is slight, and, however just the general inferences
may be, they can hardly be said to help us much in considering the
labour-question. It may well be true that lands[580] were held by clans,
that they were cultivated in common, that the produce was divided among
the households, that parcels of the land were granted to the dependants
(_clientes_) of the clan as tenants at will (_precario_) on condition
of paying a share of their crops. Or it may be that the normal unit was
a village in which the members were several freeholders of small plots,
with common rights over the undivided common-land, the waste left free
for grazing and miscellaneous uses. And it is possible that at some stage
or other of social development both these systems may have existed side
by side. In later times we find Rome the mistress of a vast territory in
Italy, a large part of which was reserved as state-domain (_ager publicus
populi Romani_), the mismanagement of which was a source of grave
evils. But in Rome’s early days there cannot have been any great amount
of such domain-land. That there was land-hunger, a demand for several
allotments in full ownership, on which a family might live, is not to be
doubted. And the formation of communities, each with its village centre
and its common pasture, was a very natural means to promote mutual help
and protection. That men so situated worked with their own hands, and
that the labour was mainly (and often wholly) that of the father and his
family, is as nearly certain as such a proposition can be. But this does
not imply or suggest that no slave-labour was employed on the farms.
It merely means that farms were not worked on a system in which all
manual labour was performed by slaves. We have to inquire what is the
traditional picture of agricultural conditions in the early days of Rome,
and how far that picture is worthy of our belief.
Now it so happens that, three striking figures stand out in the
traditional picture of the Roman farmer-soldiers of the early
Republic. Others fill in certain details, but the names of Lucius
Quinctius Cincinnatus, Manius Curius Dentatus, and Gaius Fabricius
Luscinus, were especially notable in Roman legend as representing the
strenuous patriotic and frugal lives of the heroes of old. The story
of Cincinnatus[581] is told by Cicero Livy Dionysius and Pliny the
elder, and often referred to by other writers. The hero is a Patrician
of the old simple frugal patriotic masterful type, the admiration and
imitation of which these edifying legends seek to encourage. He had
owned seven _iugera_ of land, but had been driven to pledge or sell
three of these[582] in order to provide bail for his son, who had been
brought to trial for disturbance of the public peace and had sought
safety in flight. The forfeit imposed on the father left him with only
four _iugera_. This little farm, on the further side of the Tiber, he
was cultivating, when deputies from the Senate came to announce that
he had been named Dictator to deal with a great emergency. They found
him digging or ploughing, covered with dust and sweat: and he would not
receive them till he had washed and gowned himself. Then he heard their
message, took up the duties of the supreme office, and of course saved
the state. It is to be noted that he chose as his Master of the Horse
(the Dictator’s understudy) a man of the same[583] sort, Patrician by
birth, poor, but a stout warrior. We may fairly suspect that a definite
moral purpose has been at work, modelling and colouring this pretty
story. In a later age, when the power of moneyed interests was overriding
the prestige of Patrician blood, the reaction of an ‘old-Roman’ party
was long a vigorous force in Roman life, as we see from the career of
the elder Cato. Cato was a Plebeian, but any Plebeian who admired the
simple ways of early Rome was bound to recognize that Patricians were the
nobility of the olden time.
Now the fact of Cincinnatus working with his own hands is the one
material point in the story. We need not doubt that there were many such
men, and that a name (perhaps correct) was necessary in order to keep
the story current and to impress later generations with the virtues of
their ancestors. But, if the man had under him a slave or slaves, the
fact would be quite unimportant for the purpose of the legend. Therefore
it is no wonder that the versions of the story in general say nothing
of slaves. It is more remarkable that in the version of Dionysius we
read that Cincinnatus, after selling off most of his property to meet
the liabilities incurred through his son, ‘kept for himself one small
farm beyond the Tiber, on which there was a mean cabin: there he was
living a life of toil and hardship, tilling the soil with a few slaves.’
That Dionysius was a rhetorician with an eye for picturesque detail,
and liable to overdraw a picture, is certain: but it is not evident how
the mention of the slaves is to be accounted for by this tendency. The
impression of the hero’s poverty and personal labour is rather weakened
by mention of slaves. The writer derived his story from Roman sources.
Now, did the original version include the slaves or not? Did Livy and the
rest leave them out, or did Dionysius put them in? Were they omitted as
useless or embarrassing for the uses of edifying, or were they casually
inserted owing to the prepossessions of a Greek familiar only with a
developed slave-system, to whom ‘with a few slaves’ would fitly connote
poverty? To answer these questions with confidence is perhaps unwise. But
to me it seems far more likely that Roman writers left the detail out
than that a Greek student put it in.
If the tradition of the early wars is of any value at all, it may give a
general support to this opinion through the frequent references to the
existence of rustic slavery. The devastation of an enemy’s country is the
normal occupation of hostile armies. The capture of slaves[584], as of
flocks and herds and beasts of burden, is a common item in the tale of
booty from the farms. That writers of a later age may have exaggerated
the slave-element in the farm-labour of early times is highly probable.
The picturesque was an object, and it was natural to attempt it with
the use of touches suggested by daily circumstances of the world in
which they were living. But that they so completely misrepresented the
conditions of a past age as to foist into the picture so important a
figure as the slave, without authority or probability, is hardly to be
believed, unless there is good reason for thinking that slavery was
unknown in the age and country of which they speak. And the contrary is
the case. The dawn of Roman history shews us a people already advanced
in civilization to the stage of family and clan organization, and the
tradition allows for the presence of the slave in the _familia_ from the
first. True, he does not appear as the despised human chattel of later
times, but as a man whom misfortune has placed in bondage. His master
is aware that fortune may turn, and that his bondman is quite capable
of resuming his former position if restored in freedom to his native
home. The slave seems to be normally an Italian[585], a captive in some
war; he may have passed by sale from one owner to another. But he is
not a mere foreign animal, good bad or indifferent, a doubtful purchase
from a roguish dealer. He bears a name[586] that connects him with his
master, _Publipor Lucipor Marcipor Olipor_ and so on, formed by adding
the suffix _por_ to the forename of Publius Lucius Marcus or Aulus. But,
granting that all households might include a slave or two, and that many
so did, also that agriculture was a common and honourable pursuit,—is
it likely that a farming owner would himself plough or dig and leave
his slave[587] to look on? I conclude therefore that the age was one in
which agriculture prevailed and that the ordinary farmer worked himself
and employed slave-labour side by side with his own so far as his means
allowed. All was on a small scale. Passages of Livy or Dionysius that
imply the presence of great slave-gangs, and desertions on a large scale
in time of war are falsely coloured by ‘anticipation’ of phenomena well
known from the experience of more recent times. But, on however small a
scale, slavery was there. Until there came an impulse of an ‘industrial’
kind, prompting men to engage in wholesale production for a large market,
the slave remained essentially a domestic, bearing a considerable share
of the family labours, whatever the nature of those labours might be.
As there is no difficulty in believing that Cincinnatus and others
of his type in the fifth century BC worked with slaves beside them,
so it is evident that Curius and Fabricius in the first half of the
third century are meant to illustrate the same frugal life and solid
patriotism. In both cases the story lays particular stress on the
hero’s incorruptibility and cheerful endurance of poverty. A well-known
scene[588] represents Curius at his rustic villa eating a dinner of
herbs and refusing a gift of gold from Samnite ambassadors. He is an
honest farmer-citizen of the good old sort. Fabricius is another, famed
especially for his calm defiance of the threats and cajolery of Pyrrhus,
and impervious to bribes. Both these traditions received much legendary
colouring in course of time. The passage bearing most directly on my
present inquiry is a fragment[589] of Dionysius, in which Fabricius is
spurning the offers of king Pyrrhus, who is very anxious to secure the
good man’s services as his chief minister on liberal terms. He says ‘nor
need I tell you of my poverty, that I have but a very small plot of
land with a mean cottage, and that I get my living neither from money
at interest (ἀπὸ δανεισμάτων) nor from slaves (ἀπ’ ἀνδραπόδων).’ Below
he declares that living under Roman conditions he holds himself a happy
man, ‘for with industry and thrift I find my poor little farm sufficient
to provide me with necessaries.’ And his constitution (φύσις) does not
constrain him to hanker after unnecessary things. Here we have a good
specimen of the moral stories with which the later rhetoricians edified
their readers. But what does ‘from slaves’ mean? Is Fabricius denying
that he employs slave-labour on his farm? If so, I confess that I do
not believe the denial as being his own genuine utterance. I take it to
be put into his mouth by Dionysius, writing under the influence of the
agricultural conditions of a much later time, when great slaveowners drew
large incomes from the exploitation of slave-labour on great estates. But
I am not sure that Dionysius means him to be saying more than ‘I am not
a big capitalist farming on a large scale by slave-gangs.’ How far this
writer really understood the state of things in the third century BC,
is hard to say. In any case he is repeating what he has picked up from
earlier writers and not letting it suffer in the repetition. Taken by
himself, he is no more a sufficient witness to the practice of Fabricius
than to that of Cincinnatus. That there was slavery is certain: that
Fabricius had scruples against employing slaves is hardly credible.
In the ages during which Rome gradually won her way to the headship of
Italy the Roman citizen was normally both farmer and soldier: the soldier
generally a man called up from his farm for a campaign, the farmer of
military age always potentially a soldier. This state of things was
evidently not peculiar to Rome. What makes it striking in the case of
Rome is the well-considered system by which the military machine was kept
in working order. The development of fortress colonies and extension
of roads gave to Roman farmers in the border-lands more security than
any neighbouring power could give to its own citizens on its own side
of the border. Mobilization was more prompt and effective on the Roman
side under a central control: the fortresses served as a hindrance to
hostile invaders, as refuges to the rustics at need, and as bases for
Roman armies. It is no great stretch of imagination to see in this
organization a reason for the prosperity of Roman agriculture. Farms
were no doubt laid waste on both sides of the border, but the balance of
the account was in the long run favourable to Rome. Among the numerous
legends that gathered round the name of king Pyrrhus is a story[590] that
in reply to some discontent on the part of his Italian allies, to whom
his strategy seemed over-cautious, he said ‘the mere look of the country
shews me the great difference between you and the Romans. In the parts
subject to them are all manner of fruit-trees and vineyards: the land
is cultivated and the farm-establishments are costly: but the estates
of my friends are so laid waste that all signs of human occupation have
disappeared.’ The saying may be not authentic or merely overdrawn in
rhetorical transmission. But it probably contains the outlines of a true
picture of the facts. It was the power of giving to her farmer-settlers a
more effective protection than her rivals could give to their own farmers
that enabled Rome to advance steadily and continuously. The organization
was simple enough: the sword was ready to guard the plough, and the
plough to occupy and hold the conquests of the sword.
From the time of the first Punic war we have a remarkable story relating
to M Atilius Regulus, the man around whose name so much patriotic legend
gathered. He appears as one of the good old farmer-heroes. His farm[591]
of seven _iugera_ lay in an unhealthy part of the country, and the soil
was poor. His advice to agriculturists, not to buy good land in an
unhealthy district nor bad land in a healthy one, was handed down as the
opinion of a qualified judge. We are told[592] that after his victory
in Africa he desired to be relieved and return home; but the Senate did
not send out another commander, and so he had to stay on. He wrote and
complained of his detention. Among other reasons he urged in particular
his domestic anxiety. In the epitome of Livy XVIII this appears as
‘that his little farm had been abandoned by the hired men.’ In Valerius
Maximus[593] we find a fuller account, thus ‘that the steward in charge
of his little farm (seven _iugera_ in the _Pupinia_) had died, and the
hired man (_mercennarium_) had taken the opportunity to decamp, taking
with him the farm-stock: therefore he asked them to relieve him of his
command, for he feared his wife and children would have nothing to live
on now the farm was abandoned.’ On hearing this, the Senate ordered
that provision should at once be made at the cost of the state (_a_)
for cultivation of his farm[594] by contract (_b_) for maintenance of
his wife and children (_c_) for making good the losses he had suffered.
The reference of Pliny[595] rather confirms the details of Valerius,
who by himself is not a very satisfactory witness. Livy is probably the
source of all these versions. They are part of the Roman tradition of
the first Punic war. Polybius, whose narrative is from another line of
tradition, says not a word of this story. Indeed, he declares[596] that
Regulus, so far from wishing to be relieved, wanted to stay on, fearing
that he might hand over the credit of a final victory to a successor. The
two traditions cannot be reconciled as they stand. Probably neither is
complete. If we suppose the account of Polybius to be true, it does not
follow as a matter of course that the other story is a baseless fiction.
In any case, the relation of Regulus to the agriculture of his day, as
represented by the story, seemed credible to Romans of a later age, and
deserves serious consideration.
We are told that in the middle of the third century BC a man of such
position and recognized merit that he was specially chosen to fill the
place of a deceased consul in the course of a great war was a farmer on
an estate of seven _iugera_, from which he was supporting his wife and
family. In his absence on public duty he had left the farm in charge
of a _vilicus_. The only reference to the labour employed there speaks
of hired men (wage-earners, _mercennarii_). It does not say that there
were no slaves. But the natural inference is that the _vilicus_ had the
control of a staff consisting wholly or largely of free labourers. Now
that a slave _vilicus_ might in the ordinary run of business be left
in control of labourers, slave or free, seems clear from directions
given by Cato[597] in the next century. The _vilicus_ in this story was
therefore probably a slave, as they were generally if not always. His
death left the hired men uncontrolled, and they took the opportunity
of robbing their employer. Roused by the absent consul’s complaints
(whether accompanied by a request for relief or not), the Senate took up
the matter and arranged to secure him against loss. We do not hear of
the punishment of the dishonest hirelings, or even of a search for them.
This may be merely an omitted detail: at any rate they had probably left
the neighbourhood. The curious thing is that we hear nothing of the wife
of Regulus: that a Roman matron submitted tamely to such treatment is
hard to believe. Was it she who made the complaints and set the Senate
in motion? The general outcome of the story is a conclusion that hired
labour was freely employed in this age, not to exclusion of slave labour,
but combined with it: that is, that the wage-earning work of landless
men, such as appears in the earlier traditions, still went on. It was not
yet overlaid by the plantation-system, and degraded by the associations
of the slave-gang and the _ergastulum_.
When we pass on to the second Punic war, of which we have a fuller and
less legendary record, we find the circumstances somewhat changed, but
the importance of the Roman farmer’s grip of the land is recognized
as clearly as before. It is not unlikely that since the time of the
Pyrrhic war the practise of large-scale farming with slave-labour had
begun to appear[598] in Italy, but it can hardly as yet have been
widespread. Large or small, the farms in a large part of the country
had suffered from the ravages of Hannibal, and it would be the land of
Romans and their faithful allies that suffered most. Many rustics had
to seek shelter in walled towns, above all in Rome, and their presence
was no doubt in many ways embarrassing. Naturally, as the failure of
Hannibal became manifest, the Roman Senate was desirous of restoring
these refugees to the land and relieving the pressure on the city. Livy,
drawing no doubt from an earlier annalist, tells us[599] that in 206
BC the Senate instructed the consuls, before they left for the seat of
war, to undertake the bringing back of the common folk (_plebis_) on
to the land. They pointed out that this was desirable, and possible
under the better conditions now prevailing. ‘But it was for the people
(_populo_) not at all an easy matter; for the free farmers (_cultoribus_)
had perished in the war, there was a shortage of slaves (_inopia
servitiorum_), the live stock had been carried off, and the farmsteads
(_villis_) wrecked or burnt. Yet under pressure from the consuls a good
many did go back to the land.’ He adds that what had raised the question
at this particular juncture was the appeal of a deputation from Placentia
and Cremona. These two Latin colonies, founded twelve years before as
fortresses to hold the region of the Po, had suffered from Gaulish
raids and had no longer a sufficient population, many settlers having
gone off elsewhere. The Roman commander in the district was charged to
provide for their protection, and the truant colonists ordered to return
to their posts. It was evidently thought that with full numbers and
military support there would be an end to the derelict condition of their
territories, and that the two colonies would soon revive.
This attempt to reestablish the rustic population lays stress upon the
general identity of farmer and soldier and the disturbance of agriculture
by the ravages of war. But most notable is the mention of the shortage
of slave-labour as a hindrance to resumption of work on derelict farms.
It has been held[600] that this clause refers only to large estates
worked by slave-gangs, while the free farmers stand for the men on small
holdings, who presumably employed no slaves. Now it is quite conceivable
that this contrast may have been in Livy’s mind as he wrote in the days
of Augustus. That it was the meaning of the older author from whom he
took the facts is not an equally probable inference. No doubt lack of
slaves would hinder or prevent the renewal of tillage on a big estate.
But what of a small farm whose owner had fallen in the war? The absence
of the father in the army would be a most serious blow to the efficient
working of the farm. If the raids of the enemy drove his family to take
refuge in Rome, and the farm was let down to weeds, more labour than
ever would be needed to renew cultivation. When there was no longer
any hope of his return, the supply of sufficient labour was the only
chance of reviving the farm. Surely there must have been many cases in
which the help of one or two slaves was the obvious means of supplying
it. Therefore, if we recognize that slave-labour had long been a common
institution in Roman households, we shall not venture to assert that only
large estates are referred to. That such estates, worked by slave-gangs,
were numerous in 206 BC, is not likely: that small farmers often (not
always) eked out their own labour with the help of a slave, is far more
so. The actual shortage of slaves[601] had been partly brought about by
the employment of many in military service. Some had no doubt simply run
away. And the period of great foreign conquests and a full slave-market
had yet to come.