the epistle, is this: the _vilicus_, once a common slave-labourer
(_mediastinus_) in Rome, hankers after town life, finding his rustic
stewardship dull on a small estate such as that of Horace. To Horace
the place is a charming retreat from the follies and worries of Rome.
To him the estate with its quiet homestead and the five tenants of the
outlying farms is an ideal property: he wants[853] a retreat, not urban
excitements. To the steward it seems that there is ‘nothing doing,’ while
the grandeur of a great estate is lacking. So the master is contented,
while the slave is discontented, with this five-farm property looked at
from their different points of view.
But the most serious problem that meets us in endeavouring to appraise
the evidence of the Augustan literature is connected with the _Georgics_
of Vergil. Passages from Horace will be helpful in this inquiry, in the
course of which the remarkable difference between these two witnesses
will appear. The stray references in other writers of the period are
for the most part not worth citing. =Tibullus= speaks of the farmer[854]
who has had his fill of steady ploughing, but this is in an ideal
picture of the origins of agriculture. His rural scenes are not of much
significance. In one place, speaking of hope[855] that sustains a man
in uncertainties, for instance a farmer, he adds ‘Hope it is too that
comforts one bound with a strong chain: the iron clanks on his legs, yet
he sings as he works.’ A rustic slave, no doubt. But that his hope is
hope of manumission is by no means clear: it may be hope of escape, and
the words are indefinite, perhaps left so purposely. That =Ovid=[856]
refers to the farmer statesmen and heroes of yore, who put their hands
to the plough, is merely an illustration of the retrospective idealism
of the Augustan age. Like Livy and the rest, he was conscious of the
decay of Roman vitality, and amid the glories and dissipations of Rome
recognized the vigour and simplicity of good old times. For him, and
for =Manilius=, speculation[857] as to the origins of civilization,
imaginings of a primitive communism, had attraction, as it had for
Lucretius and Vergil. It was part of the common stock: and in connexion
with the development of building it forms a topic of some interest[858]
in the _architectura_ of =Vitruvius=.
=Vergil.= All readers of Vergil’s _Georgics_ are struck by the poet’s
persistent glorification of labour and his insistence on the necessity
and profit of personal action on the farmer’s part. Yet on one very
important point there is singular obscurity. Is slave-labour meant to be
a part of his _res rustica_, or not? When he bids the farmer do this or
that, is he bidding him to do it with his own hands, or merely to see to
the doing of it, or sometimes the one and sometimes the other? So far as
I know, no sufficient attention[859] has been given to the curious, and
surely deliberate, avoidance of direct reference to slavery in this poem.
To this subject I propose to return after considering the references
in his pastoral and epic poetry. For in the artificial world of piping
shepherds and in the surroundings of heroic legend the mention of slaves
and slavery is under no restraint. This I hope to make clear; and, in
relation to the contrast presented by the _Georgics_, to emphasize, if
not satisfactorily to explain, one of the subtle reticencies of Vergil.
The _Bucolics_ place us in an unreal atmosphere. The scenic setting is a
blend of Theocritean Sicily and the poet’s own lowlands of the Cisalpine.
The characters and status of the rustics are confused in a remarkable
degree. Thus in the first eclogue Tityrus appears as a slave who has
bought his freedom late in life (lines 27-9), having neglected to amass a
_peculium_ in earlier years (31-2). It was only by a visit to Rome, and
the favour of Octavian, that he gained relief. But this relief appears,
not as manumission, but as the restoration of a landowner dispossessed by
a military colonist. The inconsistency cannot be removed by treating the
first version as symbolic or allegorical. It is there, and the poet seems
to have felt no sufficient inducement to remove it. Corydon in the second
eclogue has a _dominus_, and is therefore _servus_ (2). Yet he boasts
of his large property in flocks, which are presumably his _peculium_
(19-22). His dwelling is a lowly cot in the rough grubby surroundings
of the countryside (28-9). He is _pastor_ (1), but there are evidently
_aratores_ on the estate (66). He is warned that, if it comes to buying
favours with gifts, he cannot compete with his master Iollas (57). Had he
not better do some basket-work and forget his passion (71-3)?
In the third eclogue the status of Damoetas is far from clear. He appears
as _alienus custos_ of a flock, the love-rival of the owner (_ipse_),
whom he is robbing, profiting by the latter’s preoccupation with his
amour (1-6). He is in short head-shepherd (101 _pecoris magistro_), and
Tityrus (96) seems to be his underling. Menalcas in staking the cups
explains that he dare not risk any of the flock under his charge, which
belongs to his father and is jealously counted (32-43). He is owner’s
son, with no opportunities of fraud; probably free, for we can hardly
assume that the flock is a slave’s _peculium_. But whether Damoetas is
(_a_) a free hireling or (_b_) a slave hired from another owner or (_c_)
a slave of the flock-owner, is not to be inferred with confidence from
so indistinct a picture. In the ninth eclogue we are again[860] brought
across the rude military colonist (4) of the first eclogue. Moeris, who
seems to be the steward of Menalcas, speaks of _nostri_ (_agelli_, 2)
and _nostra_ (_carmina_, 12). Menalcas is _ipse_ (16), and supposed to
represent Vergil. I incline to believe that Moeris is a slave _vilicus_,
but cannot feel sure. So also in the tenth, we hear of _opilio_ and
_subulci_ (19), of _custos gregis_ and _vinitor_ (36). These would in the
Italy of Vergil’s time be normally slaves. But it is not the question of
their status that is uppermost in the poet’s mind. They appear in the
picture merely as figures suggesting the rustic environment on which he
loves to dwell. As for the fourth eclogue, it is only necessary to remark
that, however interpreted, it points to the return (6) of a blissful age,
and accordingly assumes the former existence of good old times.
It has been justly noted that the merry singing and easy life of the
swains in the _Bucolics_ are incongruous with the notorious condition
of the rustic slaves of Italy. No doubt the contrast is painful. But we
must not presume to impute to the great and generous poet a light-headed
and callous indifference to the miseries daily inflicted by capitalist
exploiters of labour on their human chattels. We must not forget that in
hill districts, where large-scale farming did not pay, rural life was
still going on in old-fashioned grooves. Nor must we forget that in his
native Cisalpine slavery was probably of a mild character. Some hundred
years later we hear[861] that chained gangs of slave-labourers were not
employed there: and the great armies recruited there in Caesar’s time do
not suggest that the free population had dwindled there as in Etruria or
Lucania. The song-loving shepherds are an importation from the Sicily of
Theocritus, an extinct past, an artificial world kept alive in literature
by the genius of its singer. In the hands of his great imitator the
rustic figures become even more unreal. Hence the extreme difficulty of
extracting any sure evidence on the status of these characters, or signs
of the poet’s own sentiments, from the language of the _Bucolics_.
In the _Aeneid_ we have the legends of ancient Italy and the origin of
Rome subjected to epic treatment. The drift of the poem is conditioned
by modern influence, the desire of Augustus to gain support for the new
Empire by fostering every germ of a national sentiment. The tale of Troy
has to be exploited for the purpose, and with the tale of Troy comes
the necessity of reproducing so far as possible the atmosphere of the
‘heroic’ age. There is therefore hardly any reference to the matters
with which I am now concerned. When the poet speaks[862] of the peoples
of ancient Italy it is in terms of general praise. Their warlike vigour
and hardihood, the active life of hunters and farmers, can be admired
without informing the reader whether they employed slave-labour or not.
And in the rare references[863] to slavery in his own day Vergil has
in mind the relation of master and slave simply, without any regard to
agriculture. But in depicting the society of the ‘heroic’ times, in
which the adventures of Aeneas are laid, a substratum of slavery was
indispensable. It was therefore drawn from the Greek epic, where it lay
ready to hand. Yet the references to slaves are less numerous than we
might have expected. We find them employed in table-service (I 701-6),
or as personal attendants (II 580, 712, IV 391, V 263, IX 329, XI 34).
We hear of a woman skilled in handicrafts (V 284) given as a prize, and
Camilla is dedicated as a _famula_ of Diana (XI 558). These are not very
significant references. But that slavery is assumed as an important
element in the social scheme may be inferred from the references to
captives in war (II 786, III 323, IX 272-3). They are liable to be
offered up as _inferiae_ to the dead (XI 81-2), and the victor takes the
females as concubines at will (III 323-9, IX 546). A discarded concubine
is handed over to a slave-consort (III 329), and the infant children of a
_serva_ form part of a common unit with their dam (V 285).
Two passages are worth notice from an economic point of view. In VIII
408-12, in a simile, we have the picture of a poor hard-working housewife
who rises very early to set her _famulae_ to work on their allotted
tasks of wool, to ‘keep the little home together.’ One can hardly say
that no such scene was possible in real life under the conditions of
Vergil’s time, though we may fairly doubt the reality of a picture
in which grim poverty and the desire to bring up a family of young
children are combined with the ownership and employment of a staff of
domestic slaves. For we find the not owning a single slave[864] used as
the most characteristic sign of poverty. And I shrink from describing
the situation industrially as the sweating of slave-labour to maintain
respectability. I do not think any such notion was in the poet’s
mind. That the simile is suggested by Greek models is pointed out by
Conington, and to regard it as a borrowed ornament is probably the safest
conclusion in general. It is however to be noted that the _famulae_ are
not borrowed, but an addition of Vergil’s own. The other passage, XII
517-20, relates the death in battle of an Arcadian, who in his home was
a fisherman, of humble station. The last point is brought out in the
words[865] _conductaque pater tellure serebat_. This seems to mean that
he was a small tenant farmer, a _colonus_ of the non-owning class. Such
a man might or might not have a slave or two. But, even were there any
indication (which there is not) to favour either alternative, the man’s
home is in Arcadia, though the picture may be coloured by the poet’s
familiarity with Italian details. Take it all in all, we are perhaps
justified in saying that in the _Aeneid_ the realities of slavery and
of humble labour generally are very lightly touched. Is this wholly due
to the assumed proprieties of the heroic epic, dealing with characters
above the ordinary freeman in station or natural qualities? Or may we
surmise that to Vergil, with his intense human sympathies, the topic was
in itself also distasteful, only to be referred to when it was hardly
possible to avoid it?
If little, in fact almost nothing, can be gleaned bearing on the subject
of labour from the _Bucolics_ and _Aeneid_, we might hope to find plenty
of information in the didactic poem specially addressed to farmers. In
the opening of the _Georgics_ (I 41) Vergil plainly says that he feels
sorry for the rustic folk, who know not the path to success in their
vocation: he appeals to the gods interested in agriculture, and above
all to Augustus, to look kindly on his bold endeavour to set farmers
in the right way. When he comes to speak of the peace and plenty, the
security and joys, of country life, he grows enthusiastic (II 458-74).
But among the advantages he does not omit to reckon the freedom from the
extravagance and garish display of city life, the freedom to drowse under
trees, the enjoyment of rural sights and sounds, in short the freedom to
take your ease with no lack of elbow-room (_latis otia fundis_). This
hardly portrays the life of the working farmer, to whom throughout the
poem he is ever preaching the gospel of toil and watchfulness. True,
he adds ‘there you find forest-lands (_saltus_) with coverts for wild
beasts, and a population inured to toil and used to scanty diet,’ among
whom yet linger survivals of the piety and righteousness of old. It is
fair to ask, who are these and what place do they fill in the poet’s
picture? Surely they are not the men who have fled from the vain follies
of the city: for they are genuine rustics. Surely not gang-slaves,
driven out to labour in the fields and back again to be fed and locked
up, like oxen or asses. To the urban slave transference to such a life
was a dreaded punishment. Are they free small-scale farmers? No doubt
there were still many of that class remaining in the upland parts of
Italy. But were they men of leisure, able to take their ease at will
on broad estates? I cannot think of them in such a character, unless I
assume them to own farms of comfortable size (of course not _latifundia_)
and to employ some labour of slaves or hirelings. And there is nothing
in the context to justify such an assumption. Lastly, are they poor
peasants, holding small plots of land and eking out a meagre subsistence
by occasional wage-earning labour? Such persons seem to have existed, at
least in certain parts of the country: but we know that some at least of
this labour hired for the job was performed[866] by bands of non-resident
labourers roaming in search of such employment. No, peasants of the
‘crofter’ type do not fit in with this picture of a rural life passed in
plenty and peaceful ease. I am therefore driven to conclude that the poet
was merely idealizing country life in general terms without troubling
himself to exercise a rigid consistency in the combination of details.
He has had many followers among poets and painters, naturally: but the
claim of the _Georgics_ to rank as a didactic treatise is exceptionally
strong, owing to the citations of Columella and Pliny. If then the poem
seems in any respect to pass lightly over questions of importance in the
consideration of farming conditions, we are tempted rather to seek for a
motive than to impute neglect.
But before proceeding further it is well to inquire in what sense the
_Georgics_ can be called didactic. What is the essential teaching of
the poem, and to whom is that teaching addressed? In outward form it
professes to instruct the bewildered farmers, suffering at the time from
effects of the recent civil wars as well as from economic difficulties of
old standing; and to convey sound precepts for the conduct of agriculture
in its various branches. But there is little doubt that the precepts are
all or most of them taken directly from earlier[867] writers, Roman or
Greek; and we may reasonably suppose that most of them (and those the
most practical ones) were well known to the very classes most concerned
in their application. It is absurd to suppose that agricultural tradition
had utterly died out. The real difficulty was to put it in practice.
Now, what class of farmers were to be benefited by the new poem? Was the
peasant of the uplands, soaked in hereditary experience, to learn his
business over again with the help of the poet-laureate’s fascinating
verse? Surely he spoke a rustic[868] Latin, and sometimes hardly that.
Was it likely that he would gradually absorb the doctrines of the
Vergilian compendium, offered in the most refined language and metre of
literary Rome? It is surely inconceivable. Nor can we assume that any
remaining intensive farmers of the Campanian plain were in much need
of practical instruction: what was needed there was a respite from the
unsettling disturbances of the revolutionary period. To suggest that a
part of the poet’s design was to supply much-needed teaching to the new
_coloni_ from the disbanded armies, would be grotesque in any case, and
above all in that of Vergil. If we are to find a class of men to whom
the finished literary art of the _Georgics_ would appeal, and who might
profit by the doctrines so attractively conveyed, we must seek them in
social strata[869] possessed of education enough to appreciate the poem
and sympathize with its general tone. Now all or most of such persons
would be well-to-do people, owners of property, often of landed property:
people of more or less leisure: in short, the cultured class, whose
centre was Rome. These people would view with favour any proposal for the
benefit of Italian agriculture. Many landowners at the time had got large
estates cheaply in the time of troubles, and to them anything likely to
improve the value of their lands, and to draw a curtain of returning
prosperity over a questionable past, would doubtless be welcome. They
would applaud the subtle grace with which the poet glorified the duty
and profit of personal labour. But that they meant to work with their
own hands I cannot believe. In the true spirit of their age, they would
as a matter of course take the profit, and delegate the duty to others.
Two alternatives[870] presented themselves to a landowner. He might
let his estate whole or in parcels to a tenant or tenants. Or he might
work it for his own account, either under his own resident direction,
or through the agency of a steward. All the evidence bearing on the
revolutionary period tends to shew that the resident landlord of a
considerable estate, farming his own land, was a very rare type indeed.
It was found most convenient as a general rule to let an out-of-the-way
farm to a cultivating tenant at a money rent or on a sharing system. A
more accessible one was generally put under a steward and so kept in hand
by the owner. The dwelling-house was in such cases improved so as to be a
fit residence for the proprietor on his occasional visits. Growing luxury
often carried this change to an extreme, and made the _villa_ a ‘place
in the country,’ a scene of intermittent extravagance, not of steady
income-producing thrift. True, it seems that the crude and wasteful
system of the earlier _latifundia_ had been a good deal modified by the
end of the Republic. A wealthy man preferred to own several estates
of moderate size situated near main routes of traffic. But this plan
required more stewards. And the steward (_vilicus_), himself a slave,
was the head of a slave-staff proportioned to the size of the farm. Now
the public effectually reached by the _Georgics_ may be supposed to have
included the landowners of education and leisure, whether they let their
land to tenants or kept it in hand. I cannot believe that the _coloni_
farming hired land[871] came under the poet’s influence. In other
words, the _Georgics_, in so far as the poem made its way beyond purely
literary circles, appealed chiefly if not wholly to a class dependent on
slave-labour in every department of their lives.
Maecenas, to whom the poem is in form addressed, had put pressure on
Vergil to write it. At the back of Maecenas was the new Emperor, anxious
to enlist all the talents in the service of the new dispensation. The
revival of rural Italy was one of the praiseworthy projects of the
Emperor and his confidential minister. It was indeed on every ground
manifestly desirable. But was it possible now to turn Romans of property
into working farmers? Would the man-about-Rome leave urban pleasures
for the plough-tail? Not he! Nor are we to assume that Augustus was
fool enough to expect it. Then what about Maecenas? His enjoyment of
luxurious ease[872] was a byword: that he retained his native commonsense
under such conditions is one of his chief titles to fame. No one can have
expected him to wield the spade and mattock or spread manure. The poet
writing with such a man for patron and prompter was not likely to find
his precepts enjoining personal labour taken too seriously. His readers
were living in a social and moral atmosphere in which to do anything
involving labour meant ordering a slave to do it. That the Emperor wished
to see more people interested in the revival of Italian agriculture was
well understood. But this interest could be shown by investing capital in
Italian land; and this is what many undoubtedly did. Recent proscriptions
and confiscations had thrown numbers of estates on the market. It was
possible to get a good bargain and at the same time win the favour of
the new ruler by a well-timed proof of confidence in the stability of
the new government. Now it is to say the least remarkable that Dion
Cassius, doubtless following earlier authorities, puts into the mouth of
Maecenas some suggestions[873] on this very subject. After advising the
Emperor to raise a standing army by enlisting the able-bodied unemployed
men in Italy, and pointing out that with the security thus gained, and
the provision of a harmless career for the sturdy wastrels who were at
present a cause of disorders, agriculture and commerce would revive, he
proceeds as follows. For these measures money will be needed, as it would
under any government: therefore the necessity of some exactions must be
faced. ‘The very first thing[874] then for you to do is to have a sale of
the confiscated properties, of which there are many owing to the wars,
reserving only a few that are specially useful or indispensable for your
purposes: and then to employ all the money so raised by lending it out
at moderate interest. If you do this, the land will be under cultivation
(ἐνεργός), being placed in the hands of owners who themselves work
(δεσπόταις αὐτουργοῖς δοθεῖσα): they will become more prosperous, having
the disposal of capital: and the treasury will have a sufficient and
perpetual income.’ He then urges the necessity of preparing a complete
budget estimate of regular receipts from the above and other sources,
and of the prospective regular charges both military and civil, with
allowance for unforeseen contingencies. ‘And your next step should be to
provide for any deficit by imposing a tax on all properties whatsoever
that bring a profit (ἐπικαρπίαν τινὰ) to the owner, and by a system of
tributary dues in all our subject provinces.’