agrarian bill of Rullus. It refers to the _ager Campanus_, on the value
of which as a public asset[800] Cicero insists. This exceptionally
fertile district was, and had long been, let by the state to cultivating
tenants, whose regularly-paid rents were one of the safest items in
the Roman budget. These farms were no _latifundia_, but apparently of
moderate size, such that thrifty farmers could make a good living in
this favoured land. With the various political[801] changes, carrying
with them disturbances of occupancy, caused by wars in the past, we
are not here concerned. Cicero declares that one aim of the bill was
the assignation of this district to new freeholders, which meant that
the state treasury would lose a sure source of revenue. This, in the
interest of the aristocratic party, he was opposing, and undoubtedly
misrepresented facts whenever it suited his purpose. In matters of this
kind, he says, the cry is often raised[802] that it is not right for
lands to lie depopulated with no freemen left to till them. This no doubt
refers to the Gracchan programme for revival of the peasant farmers.
Cicero declares that such a cry is irrelevant to the present issue,
for the effect of the bill will be to turn out the excellent sitting
tenants[803] only to make room for new men, the dependants and tools of a
political clique. The reason why, after the fall of Capua in the second
Punic war, that city was deprived of all corporate existence, and yet
the houses were left standing, was this: the menace of a disloyal Capua
had to be removed, but a town-centre of some sort could not be dispensed
with. For marketing, for storage[804] of produce, the farmers must have
some place of common resort: and when weary with working on their farms
they would find the town homesteads a welcome accommodation. Allowing for
rhetorical colouring in the interests of his case, perhaps we may take it
from Cicero that a fair number of practical working farmers were settled
on the Campanian plain. His prediction[805] that, if this district were
to be distributed in freehold allotments, it would presently pass into
the hands of a few wealthy proprietors (as the Sullan allotments had been
doing) suggests a certain degree of sincerity. But taken as a whole the
utterances of Cicero are too general, and too obviously meant to serve
a temporary purpose, to furnish trustworthy data for estimating the
numerical strength and importance of the working farmers in the Italy of
his day.
XXVII. SALLUST AND OTHERS.
In the writings of Cicero’s contemporaries other than Varro there is very
little to be found bearing upon rustic life and labour as it went on in
their time. Literature was occupied with other themes appropriate to the
political conflicts or social scandals or philosophic questionings that
chiefly interested various individuals and the circles in which they
moved. The origins of civilization formed a fascinating problem for some,
for instance the Epicurean =Lucretius=: but his theory of the development
of agriculture deals with matters outside of our subject. The one helpful
passage of =Caesar=[806] has been noticed already. So too has the
contemptuous reference[807] of =Sallust= to agriculture as slaves’ work.
This writer in a few places touches on points of interest. For instance,
in speaking[808] of the various classes of men who were ripe for
revolution, he says ‘moreover there were the able-bodied men who had been
used to earn a hard living as hired labourers on farms; the attraction of
private and public bounties had drawn them into Rome, where they found
idle leisure preferable to thankless toil.’ Such statements, unsupported
by statistics, must be received with caution, but this assertion is so
far backed up by what we learn from other sources, that we can accept it
as evidence. How many such rustic immigrants of this class there were
at any given moment, is what we want to know, and do not. Again, in a
passage[809] describing the popularity of Marius in 108 BC, he says ‘in
short, the commons were fired with such enthusiasm that the handworkers
and the rustics of all sorts, men whose means and credit consisted in
the labour of their hands, struck work and attended Marius in crowds,
putting his election before their own daily needs.’ In this there is
perhaps some exaggeration, but the picture is probably true in the main.
The _agrestes_ may include both small farmers and labourers. But they
can hardly have come from great distances, and so were probably not very
numerous. The description is as loose as passages of the kind were in
ancient writers, and are still. The references to rustic slave-gangs, and
Catiline’s refusal to arm them in support of his rising, have been cited
above.
We now pass into the period in which the last acts of the Roman
Republican drama were played and the great senatorial aristocrats, in
whose hands was a great share of the best lands in Italy, lost the
power to exploit the subject world. Not only by official extortion in
provincial governorships, but by money-lending at usurious interest[810]
to client princes or provincial cities, these greedy nobles amassed
great sums of money, some of which was employed in political corruption
to secure control of government at home. Civil wars and proscriptions
now thinned their ranks, and confiscations threw many estates into the
market. The fall of Antony in 31 BC left Octavian master of the whole
empire of Rome, an emperor ruling under republican disguises. Now it
was naturally and properly his aim to neutralize the effects of past
disorders and remove their causes. He looked back to the traditions of
Roman growth and glory, and hoped by using the lessons thus learnt to
revive Roman prosperity and find a sound basis for imperial strength.
He worked on many lines: that which concerns us here is his policy
towards rustic life and agriculture. As he persuaded and pressed the
rich to be less selfish[811] and more public-spirited, to spend less
on ostentation and the adornment of their mansions and parks, and to
contribute liberally to works of public magnificence or utility, a
duty now long neglected; even so he strove to rebuild Italian farming,
to make it what it had been of yore, the seed-bed of simple civic
and military virtues. But ancient civilization, in the course of its
development in the Roman empire, had now gone too far for any ruler,
however well-meaning and powerful, to turn the tide. Socially it was
too concentrated and urban, economically too individualistic and too
dependent on the manipulation of masses of capital. In many directions
the policy of the judicious emperor was marvellously successful: but he
did not succeed in reviving agriculture on the old traditional footing
as a nursery of peasant farmers. He sought to bring back a traditional
golden age, and court-poets were willing to assert[812] that the golden
age had indeed returned. This was not true. The ever-repeated praises
of country life are unreal. Even when sincere, they are the voice of
town-bred men, weary of the fuss and follies of urban life, to which
nevertheless they would presently come back refreshed but bored[813]
with their rural holiday. That the science and art of agriculture were
being improved, is true; hence the treatise of Varro, written in his old
age. But technical improvements could not set the small farmers as a
class on their legs again. The small man’s vantage lay (and still lies)
in minute care and labour freely bestowed, without stopping to inquire
whether the percentage of profit is or is not an adequate return for
his toil. Moreover, technical improvements often require the command of
considerable capital. The big man can sink capital and await a return on
the investment: but this return must be at a minimum rate or he will feel
that it does not ‘pay.’ For in his calculations he cannot help comparing
the returns[814] on different kinds of investments.
Under such conditions it is no wonder that we find _latifundia_ still
existing under the early Empire in districts suited for the plantation
system. No doubt much of the large landholding was the outcome of social
ambitions. Men who had taken advantage of civil war and its sequels to
sink money in land took their profit either in a good percentage on
plantations, or in the enhanced importance gained by owning fine country
places, or in both ways. A new class was coming to the front under the
imperial régime and among them were wealthy freedmen. These had not yet
reached the predominant influence and colossal wealth that marked their
successors of the next generation. But they had begun to appear[815]
in the last age of the Republic, and were now a force by no means to
be ignored. Such landowners were not likely to favour the revival of
peasant farmers, unless the presence of the latter could be utilized
in the interest of the big estates. There were two ways in which this
result could be attained. A small freeholder might, from the small size
of his farm, have some spare time, and be willing to turn it to account
by working elsewhere for wages. Such a man would be a labourer of the
very best kind, but he could not be relied upon to be disengaged at a
particular moment; for, if not busy just then on his own farm, some other
employer might have secured his services. A small tenant farmer, to whom
part of a great estate was let, would be governed by any conditions
agreed upon between him and his landlord. That these conditions might
include a liability to a certain amount of actual service at certain
seasons on his landlord’s estate, is obvious. That the _coloni_ of later
times were normally in this position, is well known. That this system,
under which a tenant retaining personal freedom was practically (and at
length legally) bound to the soil, suddenly arose and became effective,
is most improbable. Whether we can detect any signs of its gradual
introduction will appear as our inquiry proceeds. We have already noted
the few references to tenant _coloni_ under the Republic. It is enough to
remark here that, whatever degree of improvement in agriculture may have
taken place owing to the reestablishment of peace and order, it could
hardly have been brought about without employing the best labour to be
had. If therefore we find reason to believe that the supply of skilled
free labour for special agricultural work was gradually found by giving
a new turn to the tenancy-system, we may hazard a guess that the first
tentative steps in this direction belong to the quiet developments of the
Augustan peace.
ROME—THE EMPIRE
XXVIII. AGRICULTURE AND AGRICULTURAL LABOUR UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION.
That the position of the working farmer in the fourth and fifth centuries
AD was very different from what it had been in the early days of the
Roman Republic, is hardly open to question. That in the last two
centuries of the Republic his position had been gravely altered for the
worse in a large (and that in general the best) part of Italy, is not
less certain. This period, from 241 to 31 BC, had seen the subjection
to Rome of the Mediterranean countries, and the Italian peninsula was
an imperial land. It was inevitable that from a dominion so vast and
various there should be some sort of reaction on its mistress, and
reaction there had been, mostly for evil, on the victorious Roman state.
The political social and moral effects of this reaction do not concern
us here save only in so far as the economic situation was affected
thereby. For instance, the plunder of the Provinces by bad governors
and the extortions practised by subordinate officials, the greed of
financiers and their agents, were the chief sources of the immense sums
of money that poured into Italy. The corruption promoted by all this
ill-gotten wealth expressed itself in many forms; but in no way was it
more effective than in degradation of agriculture. It was not merely that
it forwarded the movement towards great aggregations of _latifundia_.
It supplied the means of controlling politics by bribery and violence
and rendering nugatory all endeavours to reform the land-system and
give legislative remedies a fair trial. The events of the revolutionary
period left nearly all the land of Italy in private ownership, most of
it in the hands of large owners. The Sullan and Triumviral confiscations
and assignations were social calamities and economic failures. Of their
paralysing effect on agriculture we can only form a general notion, but
it is clear that no revival of a free farming peasantry took place.
Changes there had been in agriculture, due to influences from abroad.
Farming on a large scale and organization of slave labour had given it
an industrial turn. The crude and brutal form in which this at first
appeared had probably been somewhat modified by experience. The great
plantations clumsily adapted from Punic models were not easily made to
pay. More variety in crops became the fashion, and the specializing
of labour more necessary. In this we may surely trace Greek and
Greco-oriental influences, and the advance in this respect is reflected
in the more scientific precepts of Varro as compared with those of Cato.
But, so long as the industrial aim, the raising of large crops for the
urban market, prevailed, this change could not tend to revive the farming
peasantry, whose aim was primarily an independent subsistence, and who
lacked the capital needed for agricultural enterprise on industrial
lines. Meanwhile there was the large-scale slavery system firmly
established, and nothing less than shrinkage of the supply of slaves was
likely to shake it.
But the course of Roman conquest and formation of Provinces had brought
Italy into contact with countries in which agriculture and its relation
to governments stood on a very different footing from that traditional
in Roman Italy. The independent peasant farmer living by his own labour
on his own land, a double character of citizen and soldier, untroubled
by official interference, was a type not present to the eyes of Romans
as they looked abroad. Tribal ownership, still common in the West, had
been outgrown in Italy. The Carthaginian system, from which much had
been learnt, was an exploitation-system, as industrial as a government
of merchant princes could make it. In Sicily it met a Hellenistic system
set up by the rulers of Syracuse, and the two seem to have blended or
at least to have had common characteristics. The normal feature was
the payment of a tithe of produce (δεκάτη) to the State. For the State
claimed the property of the land, and reserved to itself a regular 10%
in acknowledgement thereof. This royal title had passed to Rome, and
Rome accordingly levied her normal _decumae_, exemption from which was
a special favour granted to a few communities. Now the principle that
the ultimate ownership of land is vested in the King[816] was well known
in the East, and is to be traced in several of the monarchies founded
by the Successors of Alexander. In the Seleucid and Attalid kingdoms
there have been found indications of it, though the privileges of cities
and temples checked its general application. But in Egypt it existed in
full vigour, and had done so from time immemorial. It was in fact the
most essential expression of oriental ideas of sovranty. Combined with
it was the reservation of certain areas as peculiarly ‘royal lands’ the
cultivators of which were ‘royal farmers,’ βασιλικοὶ γεωργοί, standing
in a direct relation to the King and controlled by his administrative
officials. The interest of the sovran was to extract a regular revenue
from the crown-lands: hence it was the aim of government to secure the
residence of its farmers and the continuous cultivation of the soil. The
object was attained by minute regulations applied to a submissive people
of small needs.
It is evident that agriculture under conditions such as these was based
on ideas fundamentally different from those prevalent in Italy. There
private ownership was the rule, and by the end of the Republic it was so
more than ever. The _latifundia_ had grown by transfers of property[817]
in land, whether the holdings so absorbed were original small freeholds
or allotments of state land granted under agrarian laws. Present estates,
whether large or small, were normally held under a full proprietary
title; and the large ones at least were valued as an asset of social and
political importance rather than as a source of economic profit. The
owner could do what he would with his own, and in Italy[818] there was
no tax-burden on his land. We may ask how it came about that the Italian
and Provincial systems stood thus side by side, neither assimilating
the other. The answer is that the contrast suited the interests of the
moneyed classes who controlled the government of Rome. To exploit the
regal conditions taken over by the Republic abroad was for them a direct
road to riches, and the gratification of their ambitions was achieved
by the free employment of their riches at home. The common herd of poor
citizens, pauperized in Rome or scattered in country towns and hamlets,
had no effective means of influencing policy, even if they understood
what was going on and had (which they had not) an alternative policy of
their own. So the Empire took over from the Republic a system existing
for the benefit of hostile aristocrats and capitalists, with whom it was
not practicable to dispense and whom it was not easy to control.
We cannot suppose that the classes concerned with agriculture had any
suspicion how far-reaching were the changes destined to come about under
the new government. They could not look centuries ahead. For the present,
the ruler spared no pains to dissemble his autocratic power and pose as
a preserver and restorer of the Past. Caution and a judicious patronage
inspired literature to praise the government and to observe a discreet
silence on unwelcome topics. The attitude of Augustus towards agriculture
will be discussed below. Here it is only necessary to remark that the
first aim of his policy in this as in other departments was to set the
machine working with the least possible appearance of change. As the
republican magistracies were left standing, and gradually failed through
the incompetence of senatorial guidance, so no crude agrarian schemes
were allowed to upset existing conditions, and development was left to
follow the lines of changing economic and political needs. It is well to
take a few important matters and see very briefly how imperial policy set
going tendencies that were in course of time to affect profoundly the
position of agriculture.
In the first place it was clear that no stable reconstruction was
possible without a large and steady income. To this end a great reform of
the old methods of revenue-collection was necessary. The wasteful system
of tax-farmers practically unchecked in their exactions was exchanged for
collection by officials of the state or of municipalities. In the case of
land-revenue this change was especially momentous, for in no department
had the abuses and extortions of _publicani_ been more oppressive. And
it was in the Emperor’s Provinces that this reform was first achieved.
Agriculture was by far the most widespread occupation of the subject
peoples; and the true imperial interest was, not to squeeze the most
possible out of them at a given moment, but to promote their continuous
wellbeing as producers of a moderate but sure revenue. That this wise
policy was deliberately followed is indicated by the separate[819]
treatment of Egypt. Augustus did not present his new acquisition to
the Roman state. He stepped into the position of the late Ptolemies,
and was king there without the name. As he found the cash of Ptolemaic
treasure a means of paying off debts and avoiding initial bankruptcy,
so by keeping up the existing financial system he enjoyed year by year
a large income entirely at his own disposal, and avoided the risk of
disturbing institutions to which the native farmers had been used from
time immemorial. The possession of this vast private revenue undoubtedly
had much to do with the successful career of Augustus in establishing the
empire.
So long as the empire was secure from invasion, and the collection of
taxes on a fair and economical plan afforded sufficient and regular
returns, general prosperity prevailed over a larger area than ever
before. The boon of peace was to the subject peoples a compensation for
the loss of an independence the advantages of which were uncertain and in
most cases probably forgotten. If the benumbing of national feelings was
in itself not a good thing, the central government was able to pay its
way, and emperors could at need appear as a sort of benign providence,
by grants of money or temporary remissions of taxation in relief of
extraordinary calamities. And yet, as we can now see in retrospect, the
establishment of the new monarchy had set in motion tendencies that
were destined to upset the social and economic structure and eventually
to give it a more Oriental character. Italy long remained a favoured
metropolitan land. But the great landowning nobles no longer ruled it
and the Provinces also. No dissembling could conceal the truth that
their political importance was gone. It may be[820] that some of the
great landlords gave more attention to their estates as economic units.
It is much more certain that large-scale landholding abroad[821] was
more attractive than that in Italy. It was not a new thing, and under
the republican government great provincial Roman landlords had enjoyed
a sort of local autocratic position, assured by their influence in
Rome. But an emperor’s point of view was very different from that of
the old republican Senate. He could not allow the formation of local
principalities in the form of great estates under no effective control.
These landlords had been bitter opponents of Julius Caesar: Augustus
had been driven to make away with some of them: the uneasiness of his
successors at length found full vent in the action of Nero, who put to
death six great landlords in Africa, and confiscated their estates. Half
Africa, the Province specially affected, thus passed into the category of
Imperial Domains, under the control of a departmental bureau, and later
times added more and more to these _praedia Caesaris_ in many parts of
the empire.
The convenient simplicity of having great areas of productive land
administered by imperial agents more or less controlled by the officials
of a central department, into which the yearly dues were regularly paid,
cannot have escaped the notice of emperors. But the advantages of such a
system had been a part of their actual experience[822] from the first in
the case of Egypt. Egypt too was the special home of finance based on a
system of regulated agriculture and hereditary continuity of occupation.
In particular, the interest of the government in the maintenance and
extension of cultivation was expressed in minute rules for land-tenure
and dues payable, and the care taken to keep the class of ‘royal farmers’
in a prosperous condition. Thus there was recognized a sort of community
of interest between peasant and king. That middlemen should not oppress
the former or defraud the latter was a common concern of both. Now in
the Roman empire we note the growth of a system resembling this in its
chief features. We find the tillage of imperial domains[823] carried on
by small farmers holding parcels of land, generally as sub-tenants of
tenants-in-chief holding direct from the emperor. These small farmers
were evidently workers, whether they to some extent used slave-labour
or not. Imperial policy favoured these men as steady producers turning
the land to good account, and thus adding to the resources of the empire
without being (like great landlords) a possible source of danger. Hence
great care was taken to protect the _coloni Caesaris_ from oppression
by middlemen: and, so long as head-tenants and official agents did not
corruptly combine to wrong the farmers, the protection seems to have been
effective. Moreover, the advantage of retaining the same tenants on the
land whose conditions they understood by experience, and of inducing them
to reclaim and improve further portions of the waste, was kept clearly in
view. A policy of official encouragement in these directions was in full
swing in the second century AD and may perhaps have been initiated by
Vespasian.