made up from details of the policy actually followed by the Emperor,
is I believe generally admitted. But I am not aware that the universal
income-tax suggested was imposed. The policy of encouraging agriculture
certainly formed part of the imperial scheme, and the function of the
_Georgics_ was to bring the power of literature to bear in support of the
movement. The poet could hardly help referring in some way to the crying
need of a great agricultural revival. He did it with consummate skill. He
did not begin by enlarging on the calamities of the recent past, and then
proceed to offer his remedies. Such a method would at once have aroused
suspicion and ill-feeling. No, he waited till he was able to glide easily
into a noble passage in which he speaks of the civil wars as a sort of
doom sanctioned by the heavenly powers. No party could take offence at
this way of putting it. Then he cries aloud to the Roman gods, not to
prevent the man of the hour (_hunc iuvenem_) from coming to the relief
of a ruined generation. The needs of the moment are such that we cannot
do without him. The world is full of wickedness and wars: ‘the plough is
not respected as it should be; the tillers of the soil have been drafted
away, and the land is gone to weeds; the crooked sickles are being forged
into straight swords.’ The passage comes at the end of the first book,
following a series of precepts delivered coolly and calmly as though
in a social atmosphere of perfect peace. The tone in which the words
recall the reader to present realities, and subtly hint at the obvious
duty of supporting the one possible restorer of Roman greatness, is an
unsurpassed feat of literary art. It is followed up at the end of the
second book in another famous passage, in which he preaches with equal
delicacy the doctrine that agricultural revival is the one sure road not
only to personal happiness but to the true greatness of the Roman people.
That this revival was bound up with the return to a system of farming
on a smaller scale, implying more direct personal attention on the
landlord’s part, is obvious. But the poet goes further. His model farmer
is to be convinced of the necessity and benefit of personal labour, and
so to put his own hand to the plough. The glorification of unyielding
toil[875] as the true secret of success was (and is) a congenial topic to
preachers of the gospel of ‘back to the land.’ It may well be that the
thoughtful Vergil had misgivings as to the fruitfulness of his doctrine.
A cynical critic might hint that it was easy enough for one man to urge
others to work. But a man like Maecenas would smile at such remarks. To
set other people to do what he would never dream of doing himself was to
him the most natural thing in the world. So the pressure of the patron
on the poet continued, and the _Georgics_ were born.
Let me now turn to certain passages of the poem in which farm-labour
is directly referred to, and see how far the status of the labourers
can be judged from the expressions used and the context. And first of
_aratores_. In I 494 and II 513 the _agricola_ is a plowman; free,
for all that appears to the contrary. In II 207, where he appears as
clearing off wood[876] and ploughing up the land, the _arator_ is called
_iratus_: this can hardly apply to an indifferent slave. The _arator_
of I 261, represented as turning the leisure enforced by bad weather to
useful indoor work, odd jobs in iron and wood work etc, may be one of a
slave-staff whom his master will not have idle. Or he may be the farmer
himself. The scene implies the presence of a staff of some kind, driven
indoors by the rain. And that the poet is not thinking of a solitary
peasant is further indicated by mention of sheep-washing, certainly
not a ‘one-man-job,’ in line 272. Why Conington (after Heyne) takes
_agitator aselli_ in 273 to be ‘the peasant who happens to drive the ass
to market,’ and not an _asinarius_ doing his regular duty, I cannot say.
On III 402, a very similar passage, he takes the _pastor_ to be probably
the farm-slave, not the owner, adding ‘though it is not always easy to
see for what class of men Virgil is writing.’ A remark which shews that
my present inquiry is not uncalled for. To return, there is nothing to
shew whether the ass-driver is a freeman or a slave. Nor is the status
of _messores_[877] clear. In I 316-7 the farmer brings the mower on to
the yellow fields; that is, he orders his hands to put in the sickle.
What is their relation to him we do not hear. So too in II 410 _postremus
metito_ is a precept addressed to the farmer as farmer, not as potential
labourer. On the other hand the _messores_ in the second and third
eclogues seem to be slaves, for there is reference to _domini_ in both
poems.
The _fossor_ is in literature the personification of mere heavy manual
labour. In default of evidence to the contrary, we must suppose him to
be normally[878] a slave. Thus the _fossor_ of Horace _odes_ III 18 is
probably one of the _famuli operum soluti_ of the preceding ode. But the
brawny digger of _Georgics_ II 264, who aids nature’s work by stirring
and loosening the caked earth, is left on a neutral footing. Nothing is
said. The reader must judge whether this silence is the result of pure
inadvertency. That _pastores_ very often means slave-herdsmen, is well
known. But Vergil seems to attribute to them a more real and intelligent
interest in the welfare of their charge than it is reasonable to expect
from rustic slaves. The _pastores_ of IV 278, who gather the medicinal
herb used in the treatment of bees, may be slaves: if so, they are not
mere thoughtless animals. And the scene is in the Cisalpine, where
we have noted that slavery was probably of a mild type. In III 420
the _pastor_ is called upon to protect his beasts from snakes. But we
know[879] that it was a part of slave-herdsmen’s duty to fight beasts of
prey, and that they were commonly armed for that purpose. In III 455 we
find him shrinking from a little act of veterinary surgery, which the
context suggests he ought to perform. But we know that the _magister
pecoris_ on a farm was instructed[880] in simple veterinary practice, and
it is hardly likely that other slaves, specially put in charge of beasts,
had no instructions. The _pastores_ (if more than one, the chief,) appear
as _pecorum magistri_ (II 529, III 445, cf _Buc_ III 101), a regular name
for shepherds: they are not the same as the _magistri_ of III 549, who
are veterinary specialists disguised under mythical names. In II 529-31
we have a holiday scene, in which the farmer (_ipse_) treats the _pecoris
magistri_ to a match of wrestling and throwing the javelin. If slaves
are meant, then Vergil is surely carrying back rustic slavery to early
days as part and parcel of the ‘good old times’ to which he points in the
following lines _hanc olim veteres vitam coluere Sabini_ etc. The _ipse_
will then be a genial farmer of the old school, whose slaves are very
different from the degraded and sullen chattels of more recent years. But
in this as in other cases the poet gives us no clear sign.
A passage[881] in which the reticence of which I am speaking has a
peculiar effect occurs in the description of the grievous murrain that
visited northern Italy some time before. One of a pair of oxen falls dead
while drawing the plough. The _tristis arator_[882] unyokes the other,
sorrow-stricken at the death of its fellow; he leaves the plough where
it stopped, and goes his way. Then follows a piece of highly-wrought
pathos[883] describing the dejection and collapse of the surviving ox.
‘What now avail him his toil or his services, his past work in turning
up the heavy land with the ploughshare?’ And the hardness of the poor
beast’s lot is emphasized by the reflexion that disease in cattle is
not induced by gluttony and wine-bibbing, as it often is in the case of
mankind, nor by the worries (_cura_) that rob men of refreshing sleep.
This much-admired passage may remind us of the high value set upon the ox
in ancient Italy, traditionally amounting to a kind of sanctity; for it
is said[884] that to kill an ox was as great a crime as to kill a man.
We may wonder too what the luxurious but responsible Maecenas thought
of the lines contrasting the simple diet and untroubled life of the ox
with the excesses and anxieties of man. But, if civilization owed much
to the labours of the ox, and if gratitude was due to man’s patient
helper, what about the human slave? Is it not a remarkable thing that the
_Georgics_ contain not a word of appreciative reference to the myriads of
toiling bondsmen whose sweat and sufferings had been exploited by Roman
landlords for at least 150 years? Can this silence on the part of a poet
who credits an ox with human affection be regarded as a merely accidental
omission?
Of poets in general it may I think be truly said that the relation
between the singer and his vocabulary varies greatly in various cases.
Personal judgments are very fallible: but to me, the more I read Vergil,
the more I see in him an extreme case of the poet ever nervously on
his guard[885] against expressing or suggesting any meaning or shade
of meaning beyond that which at a given moment he wishes to convey.
This is no original discovery. But in reaching it independently I have
become further convinced that the limitations of his vocabulary are
evidence of nice and deliberate selection. The number of well-established
Latin words, adaptable to verse and to the expression of ideas certain
to occur, that are used by other poets of note but not by him, is
considerable. I have a long list: here I will mention only one, the
adjective _vagus_. The word may have carried to him associations below
the pure dignity of his finished style. Yet Horace used it freely in the
_Odes_, and Horace was surely no hasty hack careless of propriety, and
no mean judge of what was proper. Now, when I turn to the _Georgics_,
Vergil’s most finished work, I am struck by the absence of certain words
the presence of which would seem natural, or even to be expected, in any
work professedly treating of agriculture in Roman Italy. Thus _servus_
does not occur at all, _serva_ in the _Aeneid_ only, and _servitium_ in
the strict sense only _Buc_ I 40 and _Aen_ III 327. In _Georg_ III 167-8
_ubi libera colla servitio adsuerint_ he is speaking of the breaking-in
of young oxen[886] in figurative language. So too _dominus_ and _domina_
occur in the _Bucolics_ and _Aeneid_ but not in the _Georgics_. The case
of _opera_ and the plural _operae_ may seem to be on a somewhat different
footing in so far as the special sense of _opera_ = ‘the average day’s
work[887] of a labourer’ would perhaps have too technical and prosaic a
flavour. In the single instance (_Aen_ VII 331-2), where it occurs in the
familiar phrase _da operam_, it is coupled with _laborem_, which rather
suggests a certain timidity in the use of a colloquial expression. The
plural, frequent in the writers on agriculture, he does not use at all,
whether because he avoids the statistical estimates in which it most
naturally comes, or from sheer fastidiousness due to the disreputable
associations of _operae_ in political slang. Perhaps neither of these
reasons is quite enough to account for the absence of the word from the
_Georgics_. That _famulus_ and _famula_ occur in the _Aeneid_ only is
not surprising, for they represent the δμῶες and δμωαὶ of Greek heroic
poetry. But _famula_ appears in the _Moretum_, of which I will speak
below.
That Vergil is all the while pointing the way to a system of small farms
and working farmers, though some topics (for instance stock-keeping)
seem to touch on a larger scale of business, may be gathered from his
references to _coloni_. The word is in general used merely as the
substantive corresponding to _colere_, and its place is often taken by
_agricola_ (I 300, II 459) or _rusticus_ (II 406) or other substitutes.
In II 433 _homines_ means much the same as the _agrestis_ of I 41, only
that the former need stimulus and the latter guidance. The typical
picture of the _colonus_ comes in I 291-302, where the small farmer
and his industrious wife are seen taking some relaxation in the winter
season, but never idle. It is surely a somewhat idealized picture. The
parallel in Horace (_epode_ II) is more matter-of-fact, and clearly
includes slaves, an element ignored by Vergil. The _colonus_ is not
a mere tenant farmer, but a yeoman tilling his own land, like the
_veteres coloni_ of the ninth eclogue, a freeman, and we may add liable
to military service, like those in I 507 whose conscription left the
farms derelict. A curious and evidently exceptional case is that of
the _Corycius senex_ (IV 125-46), said to be one of Pompey’s pirate
colonists. The man is a squatter on a patch of unoccupied land, which he
has cultivated as a garden, raising by unwearied industry quite wonderful
crops of vegetables fruit and flowers, and remarkably successful[888] as
a bee-keeper. Perhaps this transplanted Oriental had no slave, at least
when he started gardening. But I note that his croft was more than a
_iugerum_ (_pauca relicti iugera ruris_) at the time when Vergil saw it,
and I imagine the process of reclaiming the waste to have been gradual.
When this small holding was complete and in full bearing, would the work
of one elderly man suffice to carry it on? I wonder. But we get no hint
of a slave or a hireling, or even of a wife. All I can venture to say
is that this story is meant to be significant of the moral and material
wellbeing of the small cultivator. It is curious that just above (118,
cf 147-8) the poet is at pains to excuse his omission to discuss in
detail the proper management of _horti_, on the pretext of want of space.
For he was no mean antiquary, and Pliny tells[889] us that in the Twelve
Tables _hortus_ was used of what was afterwards called _villa_, a country
farm, while _heredium_ stood for a garden; and adds that in old time
_per se hortus ager pauperis erat_. But _hortus_ is to Vergil strictly a
garden, and the old Corycian is cited expressly as a gardener: his land,
we are told, was not suited for growing corn or vines.
The mention of gardening invites me to say a few words on the short
descriptive idyll _Moretum_ which has been regarded as a youthful
composition of Vergil (perhaps from a Greek original) with more justice
than some other pieces attributed to him. I see no strong objection to
admitting it as Vergilian, but it is of course crude and far removed from
the manner and finish of the mature _Georgics_. The peasant Simylus,
_exigui cultor rusticus agri_, is a poor small farmer whose thrift and
industry enable him to make a living ‘in a humble and pottering way,’
as Gilbert puts it. His holding is partly ordinary arable land, but
includes a _hortus_ as well. In the latter he skilfully grows a variety
of vegetables, for which he finds a regular market in the city. Poor
though he is, and accustomed to wait on himself, apparently unmarried,
he yet owns a slave (_famulam_, 93) and she is a negro, fully described
(31-5), woolly hair, thick lips, dark skin, spindle shanks, paddle feet,
etc. She probably would do the house-work, but the preparation of food is
a duty in which her master also bears a part. We hear of no male slave,
and the ploughing of fields and digging the garden are apparently done by
himself singlehanded. The yoke of oxen are mentioned in the last lines.
The picture is such as may have been true of some humble homesteads in
Italy, but the tradition of a Greek original, and the names Simylus and
Scybale, must leave us in some doubt as to whether the scene be really
Italian. The position is in fact much the same as it is in regard to the
_Bucolics_.
Whatever may be the correct view as to the authorship and bearing of
the _Moretum_, there are I think certain conclusions to be drawn from
an examination of the _Georgics_, which it is time to summarize. First,
the tendency of the poem is to advocate a system of smaller holdings and
more intensive cultivation than had for a long period been customary in
a large part of Italy. This reform is rather suggested by implication
than directly urged, though one precept, said to be borrowed[890] from
old Cato, recommends it in plain words. For the glorification of labour
in general is all the while pointing in this direction. Secondly, the
policy of the new Emperor, who posed as Restorer and Preserver rather
than Reformer, finds a sympathetic or obedient expression in this
tendency. For it is delicately conveyed that the reform of an evil
agricultural present virtually consists in the return to the ways of a
better past. And the poet, acting as poet simply, throws on this better
past the halo of a golden age still more remote. The virtues of the
Sabines of old[891] are an example of the happiness and honour attainable
by a rustic folk. But to Vergil, steeped in ancient legend, the historic
worthies of a former age are not the beginning of things. They come
‘trailing clouds of glory’ from the mythical origin[892] of mankind, from
a world of primeval abundance and brotherly communism, a world which
he like Lucretius pauses to portray. Thirdly, the reaction of Augustus
against the bold cosmopolitanism of Julius Caesar has I think left a
mark on the _Georgics_ in the fact that the poem is, as Sellar says, so
thoroughly representative of Italy. Roman Italy was not yet ready to
become merely a part of an imperial estate. If people were to acquiesce
in a monarchy, it had to be disguised, and one important disguise was
the make-believe that the Roman people were lords of the world. A very
harmless method of ministering to Roman self-complacency was excessive
praise of Italy, its soil, its climate, its natural features, its
various products, its races of men and their works, and all the historic
associations of the victorious past. It is a notable fact that this
panegyric[893] breaks out in the utterances of four very dissimilar
works that still survive: for beside the _Georgics_ I must place[894]
the so-called _Roman Antiquities_ of Dionysius, the _Geography_ of
Strabo, and the _de re rustica_ of Varro. These four are practically
contemporaries. It seems to me hardly credible that there was not some
common influence operative at the time and encouraging utterances of this
tone.
The actual success or failure of the attempt to revive Roman agriculture
on a better footing is not only a question of fact in itself historically
important: its determination will throw light on the circumstances in
which Vergil wrote, and perhaps help somewhat in suggesting reasons
for his avoidance of certain topics. If we are to believe Horace[895],
the agricultural policy of Augustus was a grand success: security,
prosperity, virtue, good order, had become normal: fertility had returned
to the countryside. I had better say at once that I put little faith in
these utterances of a court poet. Far more significant is the statement,
preserved by Suetonius[896], of the evils dealt with by Augustus in
country districts. Parties of armed bandits infested the country.
Travellers, slaves and freemen alike, were kidnapped and _ergastulis
possessorum supprimebantur_. He checked the brigandage by armed police
posted at suitable spots, and _ergastula recognovit_. But it is not said
that he did away with them: he cleared out of them the persons illegally
held in bondage (_suppressi_). Not only is rustic slavery in full swing
in the treatise of Varro: some 80 years later the _ergastulum_ is
adopted as a matter of course by Columella, and appears as a canker of
agriculture in the complaints of Pliny. The neglect of rustic industry
is lamented by all three writers, and to the testimony of such witnesses
it is quite needless to add quotations from writers of merely literary
merit. There is no serious doubt that the reconstruction of agriculture
on the basis of small farms tilled by working farmers was at best
successful in a very moderate degree; and this for many a long year.
Organized slave-labour remained the staple appliance of tillage until the
growing scarcity of slaves and the financial policy of the later Empire
brought about the momentous change by which the free farmer gradually
became the predial serf.
Another point to be noted in the _Georgics_ is the absence of any
reference to _coloni_ as tenants under a landlord. Yet we know that
this relation existed in Cicero’s time, and tenant farmers appear in
Varro[897] and Columella[898]. Vergil, but for a stray reference in the
_Aeneid_, might seem never to have heard of the existence of such people.
It is easy to say that the difference between an owner and a tenant is
a difference in law, and unsuited for discussion in a poem. But it also
involves economic problems. The landlord wants a good return on his
capital, the tenant wants to make a good living, and the conditions of
tenancy vary greatly in various cases. The younger Pliny[899] had to
deal with awkward questions between him and his tenants, and there is
no reason to suppose that his case was exceptional. Surely the subject
was one of immediate interest to an agricultural reformer, quite as
interesting as a number of the details set forth here and there in the
_Georgics_; that is, assuming that the author meant his farmer to be
economically prosperous as well as to set a good example. It may be
argued that the operations enjoined on the farmer would greatly improve
the farm and enhance the value of the land, and that no man in his senses
would do this unless the land were his own: there was therefore no need
to discuss tenancy, ownership being manifestly implied. The argument is
fair, so far as it goes. But it does not justify complete silence on what
was probably at the moment a question of no small importance in the eyes
of landowners.
Some passages of Horace may serve to shew that circumstances might
have justified or even invited some reference to this topic. In the
seventh _epistle_ of the first book he tells the story of how Philippus
played a rather scurvy trick on a freedman in a small way of business
as an auctioneer. As a social superior, his patronage turned the poor
man’s head. Taking him for an outing to his own Sabine country place,
he infected him with desire of a rustic life. He amused himself by
persuading him to buy a small farm, offering him about £60 as a gift and
a loan of as much more. The conversion of a regular town-bred man into
a thoroughgoing farmer was of course a pitiful failure. Devotion and
industry availed him nothing. The losses and disappointments incidental
to farming were too much for him. He seems to have had no slave: he
probably had not sufficient capital. He ended by piteously entreating
his patron to put him back into his own trade. The story is placed about
two generations before Horace wrote. But it would be pointless if it
were out of date in its setting, which it surely is not; it might have
happened to a contemporary, nay to Horace himself. It is addressed to his
own patron Maecenas, the generous donor of his own Sabine estate. Here
we have a clear intimation that to buy a little plot and try to get a
living out of it by your own labour was an enterprise in which success
was no easy matter. In the second _satire_ of the second book we have
the case of Ofellus, one of the yeomen of the old school. He had been a
working farmer on his own land, but in the times of trouble his farm had
been confiscated and made over to a discharged soldier. But this veteran
wisely left him in occupation as cultivator on terms. Whether he became
a sort of farm-bailiff, working for the new owner’s account at a fixed
salary, or whether he became a tenant, farming on his own account and
paying a rent, has been doubted. I am strongly of the second opinion.
For it was certainly to the owner’s interest that the land should be
well-farmed, and that his own income (the endowment of his later years)
should be well-secured by giving the farmer every motive for industry.
These considerations do not suit well with the former alternative, which
also makes _colonus_ hardly distinguishable from _vilicus_. Again, the
_colonus_ is on the farm[900] _cum pecore et gnatis_. The _pecus_, like
the children, is surely the farmer’s own, and it is much more likely that
the live-stock should belong to a rent-paying tenant than to a salaried
bailiff. Moreover, there is no mention of slaves. The man works the farm
with the help of his family. Is it likely that he would turn them into a
household of serfs? Therefore I render line 115 _fortem mercede colonum_
‘a sturdy tenant-farmer sitting at a rent’; that is, on a holding that
as owner he formerly occupied rent-free. He can make the farm pay even
now: as for the mere fact of ground-landlordship, that is an idle boast,
and in any case limited by the span of human life. I claim that these
two passages are enough to prove the point for which I am contending;
namely, that questions of the tenure under which agriculture could best
be carried on were matters of some interest and importance about the time
when Vergil was writing the _Georgics_.