Annaeus Seneca=, a son of the rhetorician above referred to, and like
his father born in Spain. His life extended from 4 BC to 65 AD. For the
purpose of the present inquiry his surviving works are mainly of interest
as giving us in unmistakeable tones the point of view from which a man of
Stoic principles regarded slavery as a social institution. The society of
imperial Rome, in which he spent most of his life, was politically dead.
To meddle with public affairs was dangerous. Even a senator needed to
walk warily, for activity was liable to be misinterpreted by the Emperor
and by his powerful freedmen[936], who were in effect Imperial Ministers.
To keep on good terms with these departmental magnates, who had sprung
from the slave-market to be courted as the virtual rulers of freeborn
Roman citizens, was necessary for all men of note. Under such conditions
it is not wonderful that the wealthy were tempted to assert themselves in
ostentatious luxury and dissipation: for a life of careless debauchery
was on the face of it hardly compatible with treasonable conspiracy. The
immense slave-households of Rome were a part and an expression of this
extravagance; and the fashion of these domestic armies was perhaps at its
height in this period. Now, nothing kept the richer Romans in subjection
more efficiently than this habit of living constantly exposed to the
eyes and ears of their menials. Cruel laws might protect the master from
assassination by presuming[937] the guilt of all slaves who might have
prevented it. They could not protect him from the danger of criminal
charges, such as treason[938], supported by servile evidence: indeed the
slave was a potential informer, and a hated master was at the mercy of
his slaves. Under some Emperors this possibility was a grim reality, and
no higher or more heartfelt praise could be bestowed[939] on an Emperor
than that he refused to allow masters to be done to death by the tongue
of their slaves.
Meanwhile the slave was still legally[940] his (or her) master’s
chattel, and cases of revolting cruelty[941] and other abominations
occurred from time to time. Yet more humane and sympathetic views were
already affecting public sentiment, chiefly owing to the spread of
Stoic doctrines among the cultivated classes. Of these doctrines as
adapted to Roman minds Seneca was the leading preacher. Thus he cites
the definition of ‘slave’ as ‘wage-earner for life,’ propounded[942] by
Chrysippus: he insists on the human quality common to slave and free
alike: he reasserts the equality of human rights, only upset by Fortune,
who has made one man master of another: he sees that the vices of slaves
are very often simply the result of the misgovernment of their owners: he
reckons them as humble members[943] of the family circle, perhaps even
the former playmates of boyhood: he recommends a kindly consideration
for a slave’s feelings, and admits[944] that some sensitive natures
would prefer a flogging to a box on the ear or a harsh and contemptuous
scolding. We need not follow up his doctrines in more detail. The
general tone is evident and significant enough. But it is the relations
of the domestic circle that he has primarily in view. His references
to agriculture and rustic labour are few, as we might expect from the
circumstances of his life. But we are in a better position to judge
their value having considered his attitude towards slavery in general.
It should be noted, as a specimen of his tendency to Romanize Greek
doctrine, that he lays great stress on the more wholesome relations[945]
of master and slave in the good old times of early Rome,—here too without
special reference to the rustic households of the rude forefathers round
which tradition centred.
Judged by a modern standard, a defect in Stoic principles was the
philosophic aloofness from the common interests and occupations of
ordinary workaday life. To the Wise Man all things save Virtue are more
or less indifferent, and in the practice of professions and trades there
is little or no direct connexion with Virtue. Contempt for manual labour,
normal in the ancient world and indeed in all slaveowning societies, took
a loftier position under the influence of Stoicism. Hence that system,
in spite of its harsh and tiresome features, appealed to many of the
better Romans of the upper class, seeming as it did to justify their
habitual disdain. Seneca’s attitude towards handicrafts is much the same
as Cicero’s, only with a touch of Stoic priggishness added. Wisdom, he
says[946], is not a mere handworker (_opifex_) turning out appliances for
necessary uses. Her function is more important: her craft is the art of
living, and over other arts she is supreme. The quality of an artist’s
action[947] depends on his motive: the sculptor may make a statue for
money or to win fame or as a pious offering. Arts, as Posidonius[948]
said, range from the ‘liberal’ ones to the ‘common and mean’ ones
practised by handworkers: the latter have no pretence of moral dignity.
Indeed many of these trades are quite unnecessary, the outcome of
modern[949] extravagance. We could do without them, and be all the better
for it: man’s real needs are small. But to work for a living is not in
itself a degradation: did not the Stoic master Cleanthes draw water[950]
for hire? In short, the Wise Man may be a king or a slave, millionaire or
pauper. The externals cannot change his true quality, though they may be
a help or a hindrance in his growth to perfect wisdom.
In his references to agriculture and country matters it is to be remarked
that Seneca confirms the impression derived from other sources, that the
letting of land to tenant farmers was on the increase. Discoursing on the
greedy luxury of the rich, their monstrous kitchens and cellars, and the
toiling of many to gratify the desires of one, he continues ‘Look at all
the places where the earth is being tilled, and at all the thousands[951]
of farmers (_colonorum_) ploughing and digging; is this, think you, to
be reckoned one man’s belly, for whose service crops are being raised
in Sicily and in Africa too?’ The _coloni_ here mentioned may be merely
‘cultivators’ in a general sense. But I think they are more probably
tenants of holdings on great estates. In speaking of his arrival at his
Alban villa, and finding nothing ready for a meal, he philosophically
refuses to let so small an inconvenience make him angry with his cook
and his baker. ‘My baker[952] has got no bread; but the steward has
some, and so have the porter and the farmer.’ A coarse sort of bread, no
doubt, but you have only got to wait, and you will enjoy it when you are
really hungry. Here we seem to have an instance of what was now probably
an ordinary arrangement: the _villa_, homestead with some land round it,
kept as a country ‘box’ for the master by his steward, who would see to
the garden and other appurtenances, while the rest of the land is let to
a humble tenant farmer. In another passage we have an interesting glimpse
of a tenant’s legal position[953] as against his landlord. ‘If a landlord
tramples down growing crops or cuts down plantations, he cannot keep
his tenant, though the lease may be still in being: this is not because
he has recovered what was due to him as lessor, but because he has made
it impossible for him to recover it. Even so it often happens that a
creditor is cast in damages to his debtor, when he has on other grounds
taken from him more than the amount of the debt claimed.’ I gather from
this passage that damage done by the lessor to the lessee’s interest
in the farm deprived him of right of action against the lessee, in case
he wanted to enforce some claim (for rent or for some special service)
under the terms of the existing contract[954] of lease. If this inference
be just, the evidence is important. For the _colonus_ is conceived as a
humble person, whose interest a brutal inconsiderate landlord would be
not unlikely to disregard, and to whom a resort to litigation would seem
a course to be if possible avoided.
To this question of the rights of landlord and tenant Seneca returns
later, when engaged in reconciling the Stoic thesis that ‘all things
belong to the Wise Man’ with the facts of actual life. The Wise Man is
in the position of a King to whom belongs the general right of sovranty
(_imperium_) while his subjects have the particular right of ownership
(_dominium_). Illustrating the point he proceeds[955] thus. ‘Say I have
hired a house from you. Of its contents some belong to you and some to
me. The thing (_res_) is your property, but the right of user (_usus_)
of your property is mine. Just so you must not meddle with crops, though
grown on your own estate, if your tenant forbids it; and in a season of
dearness or dearth you will be like the man in Vergil wistfully gazing
at another’s plenteous store, though the land where it grew, the yard
where it is stacked, and the granary it is meant to fill, are all your
own property. Nor, when I have hired a lodging, have you a right to enter
it, owner though you be: when a slave of yours is hired for service
by me, you have no right to withdraw him: and, if I hire a trap from
you and give you a lift, it will be a good turn on my part, though the
conveyance belongs to you.’ I have quoted this at some length, in order
to make the farm-tenant’s position quite clear. His rights are presumed
to be easily ascertainable, and his assertion of them will be protected
by the law. His contract, whether a formal lease or not, is also presumed
to guarantee him complete control of the subject for the agreed term.
Whether encroachments by landlords and legal proceedings for redress by
tenants were common events in rural Italy, Seneca need not and does not
say. I suspect that personal interest on both sides was in practice a
more effective restraint than appeals to law.
There are other references to agricultural conditions, which though of
less importance are interesting as confirming other evidence as to the
_latifundia_ of this period. A good specimen is found in his denunciation
of human greed as the cause of poverty, by bringing to an end the
happy age of primitive communism, when all shared the ownership of all.
Cramped and unsatisfied, this _avaritia_ can never find the way back to
the old state of plenty and happiness. ‘Hence, though she now endeavour
to make good[956] what she has wasted; though she add field to field by
buying out her neighbours or wrongfully ejecting them; though she expand
her country estates on the scale of provinces, and enjoy the sense of
landlordism in the power of touring mile after mile without leaving her
own domains; still no enlargement of bounds will bring us back to the
point from whence we started.’ Again, in protesting against the luxurious
ostentation of travellers and others, he shews that they are really in
debt. ‘So-and-so is, you fancy, a rich man ... because he has arable
estates[957] in all provinces of the empire ... because his holding of
land near Rome is on a scale one would grudge him even in the wilds of
Apulia.’ Such a man is in debt to Fortune. In these as in other passages
the preacher illustrates his sermon by references calculated to bring
home his points. Naturally he selects for the purpose matters familiar to
his audience; and it is this alone that makes the passages worth quoting.
The same may be said of his sympathetic reference[958] to the hard lot of
a slave transferred from the easy duties of urban service to the severe
toil of farm labour. In general it may be remarked that the evidence of
Seneca and other literary men of this period is to be taken in connexion
with the treatise of Columella, who is the contemporary specialist
on agriculture. The prevalence of slave labour and the growth of the
tenant-farmer class are attested by both lines of evidence.
XXXII. LUCAN, PETRONIUS, AND OTHERS.
=Lucan=, Seneca’s nephew, has a few interesting references in his poem
on the great civil war. Thus, in the eloquent passage[959] lamenting
the decay of Roman vital strength, a long process to be disastrously
completed in the great Pharsalian battle, he dwells on the shrinkage of
free Roman population in Italy. The towns and the countryside alike are
empty, houses deserted, and it is by the labour of chained[960] slaves
that Italian crops are raised. Elsewhere[961] he looks further back,
and traces this decay to the effect of luxury and corruption caused by
the influx of vast wealth, the spoils of Roman conquests. Among the
symptoms of disease he notes the _latifundia_, which it was now becoming
the fashion to denounce, the land-grabbing passion that prompted men to
monopolize great tracts of land and incorporate in huge estates, worked
by cultivators unknown[962] to them, farms that once had been ploughed
and hoed by the rustic heroes of old. But all such utterances are merely
a part of a declaimer’s stock-in-trade. We may fairly guess that they are
echoes of talk heard in the literary circle of his uncle Seneca. That
they are nevertheless consistent with the land-system of this period, is
to be gathered from other sources, such as Petronius and Columella. It
remains to note that the word _colonus_ is used by Lucan in the senses of
‘cultivator’ and ‘farmer,’ rather suggesting ownership, and of ‘military
colonist,’ clearly implying it. That of ‘tenant’ does not occur: there
was no need for it in the poem. Again, he has _servire servilis_ and
_servitium_, but _servus_ occurs only in a suspected[963] line, and as an
adjective. His regular word for ‘slave’ is _famulus_.
The bucolic poems of this period are too manifestly artificial to serve
as evidence of value. For instance, when =Calpurnius= declares[964] that
in this blessed age of peace and prosperity the _fossor_ is not afraid
to profit by the treasure he may chance to dig up, we cannot infer that
a free digger is meant, though it is hardly likely that a slave would be
suffered to keep treasure-trove.
=Petronius=, in the curious mixed prose-verse satire of which part
has come down to us, naturally says very little bearing directly on
agriculture. But in depicting the vulgar freedman-millionaire Trimalchio
he refers pointedly to the vast landed estates belonging to this typical
figure of the period. He owns estates ‘far as the kites[965] can fly.’
This impression is confirmed in detail by a report delivered by the
agent for his properties. It is a statement[966] of the occurrences in
a domain of almost imperial proportions during a single day. So many
children, male and female, were born: so many thousand bushels of wheat
were stocked in the granary: so many hundred oxen broken in: a slave was
crucified for disloyalty to his lord: so many million sesterces were
paid in to the chest, no opening for investment presenting itself. On
one park-estate (_hortis_) there was a great fire, which began in the
steward’s house. Trimalchio cannot recall the purchase of this estate,
which on inquiry turns out to be a recent acquisition not yet on the
books. Then comes the reading of notices issued by officials[967] of the
manors, of wills[968] made by rangers, of the names of his stewards; of
a freedwoman’s divorce, the banishment of an _atriensis_, the committal
of a cashier for trial, and the proceedings in court in an action between
some chamberlains. Of course all this is not to be taken seriously, but
we can form some notion of the state of things that the satirist has in
mind. Too gross an exaggeration would have defeated his purpose. The book
is full of passages bearing on the history of slavery, but it is domestic
slavery, and that often of the most degrading character.
XXXIII. COLUMELLA.
The great interest taken in agriculture after the establishment of the
Roman peace by Augustus is shewn by the continued appearance of works on
the subject. The treatise of =Celsus=, who wrote in the time of Tiberius,
was part of a great encyclopaedic work. It was probably one of the most
important books of its kind: but it is lost, and we only know it as cited
by other writers, such as Columella and the elder Pliny. It is from the
treatise of =Columella=, composed probably under Nero, that we get most
of our information as to Roman husbandry (_rusticatio_, as he often calls
it) in the period of the earlier Empire. The writer was a native of
Spain, deeply interested, like other Spanish Romans, in the past present
and future of Italy. It is evident that in comparing the present with the
past he could not avoid turning an uneasy eye to the future. Like others,
he could see that agriculture, once the core of Roman strength, the nurse
of a vigorous free population, was in a bad way. It was still the case
that the choicest farm-lands of Italy were largely occupied by mansions
and parks, the property of non-resident owners who seldom visited their
estates, and hardly ever qualified themselves to superintend their
management intelligently. The general result was hideous waste. In modern
language, those who had command of capital took no pains to employ it in
business-like farming: while the remaining free rustics lacked capital.
Agriculture was likely to go from bad to worse under such conditions. The
Empire would thus be weakened at its centre, and to a loyal Provincial,
whose native land was part of a subject world grouped round that centre,
the prospect might well seem bewildering. Columella was from the first
interested in agriculture, on which his uncle[969] at Gades (Cadiz)
was a recognized authority, and his treatise _de re rustica_ is his
contribution to the service of Rome.
The serious consequences of the decay of practical farming, and the
disappearance of the small landowners tilling their own land, had long
been recognized by thoughtful men. But the settlement of discharged
soldiers on allotted holdings had not repopulated the countryside with
free farmers. The old lamentations continued, but no means was found
for solving the problem how to recreate a patient and prosperous yeoman
class, firmly planted on the soil. Technical knowledge had gone on
accumulating to some extent, though the authorities on agriculture, Greek
Carthaginian or Roman, appealed to by Columella are mainly the same as
those cited by Varro some eighty years before. The difficulty at both
epochs was not the absence of knowledge but the neglect of its practical
application. Columella, like his forerunners, insists on the folly[970]
of buying more land than you can profitably manage. But it seems that
the average wealthy landowner could not resist the temptation to round
off[971] a growing estate by buying up more land when a favourable
opportunity occurred. It is even hinted that ill-treatment[972] of a
neighbour, to quicken the process by driving him to give up his land,
was not obsolete. Moreover, great estates often consisted of separate
holdings in different parts of the country. For owners of vast, and
sometimes[973] scattered, estates to keep effective control over them
was an occupation calling for qualities never too common, technical
skill and indefatigable industry. The former could, if combined with
perfect honesty, be found in an ideal deputy; but the deputy, to be under
complete control, must be a slave: and, the more skilled the slave, the
better able he was to conceal dishonesty. Therefore, the more knowledge
and watchful attentiveness was needed in the master. Now it is just this
genuine and painstaking interest in the management of their estates that
Columella finds lacking in Roman landlords. They will not live[974]
in the country, where they are quickly bored and miss the excitements
of the city, and My Lady detests country life even more than My Lord.
But they will not even take the trouble to procure good[975] Stewards,
let alone watching them so as to keep them industrious and honest.
Thus the management of estates has generally passed from masters to
_vilici_, and the domestic part of the duties even more completely from
house-mistresses to _vilicae_. As to the disastrous effect of the change
upon rustic economy, the writer entertains no doubt. But the evil was
no new phenomenon. It may well be that it was now more widespread than
in Varro’s time; but in both writers we may perhaps suspect some degree
of overstatement, to which reformers are apt to resort in depicting
the abuses they are wishing to reform. I do not allow much for this
consideration, for the picture, confirmed by general literary evidence,
is in the main unquestionably true.
So much for the case of estates administered by slave stewards for the
account of their masters. But this was not the only way of dealing with
landed properties. We have already noted the system of letting farms to
cultivating tenants, and commented on the fewness of the references to it
in literature. This plan may have been very ancient in origin, but it was
probably an exceptional arrangement even in the time of Cicero. The very
slight notice of it by Varro indicates that it was not normal, indeed
not even common. In Columella we find a remarkable change. In setting
out the main principles[976] of estate management, and insisting on the
prime importance of the owner’s attention (_cura domini_), he adds that
this is necessary above all things in relation to the persons concerned
(_in hominibus_). Now the _homines_ are _coloni_ or _servi_, and are
unchained or chained. After this division and subdivision he goes on to
discuss briefly but thoroughly the proper relations between landlord and
tenant-farmer, the care needed in the selection of satisfactory tenants,
and the considerations that must guide a landlord in deciding whether to
let a piece of land to a tenant or to farm it for his own account. He
advises him to be obliging and easy in his dealings with tenants, and
more insistent in requiring their work or service (_opus_)[977] than
their rent (_pensiones_): this plan is less irritating, and after all it
pays better in the long run. For, barring risks of storms or brigands,
good farming nearly always leaves a profit, so that the tenant has not
the face to claim[978] a reduction of rent. A landlord should not be a
stickler for trifles or mean in the matter of little perquisites, such as
cutting firewood, worrying his tenant unprofitably. But, while waiving
the full rigour of the law, he should not omit to claim his dues in order
to keep alive his rights: wholesale remission is a mistake. It was well
said by a great landowner that the greatest blessing for an estate is
when the tenants are natives[979] of the place, a sort of hereditary
occupiers, attached to it by the associations of their childhood’s home.
Columella agrees that frequent changes of tenant are a bad business. But
there is a worse; namely the town-bred[980] tenant, who prefers farming
with a slave staff to turning farmer himself. It was a saying of Saserna,
that out of a fellow of this sort you generally get not your rent but a
lawsuit. His advice then was, take pains to get country-bred farmers[981]
and keep them in permanent tenancy: that is, when you are not free to
farm your own land, or when it does not suit your interest to farm it
with a slave staff. This last condition, says Columella, only refers to
the case of lands derelict[982] through malaria or barren soil.
There are however farms on which it is the landlord’s own interest to
place tenants rather than work them by slaves for his own account. Such
are distant holdings, too out-of-the-way for the proprietor to visit them
easily. Slaves out of reach of constant inspection will play havoc with
any farm, particularly one on which corn is grown. They let out the oxen
for hire, neglect the proper feeding of live stock, shirk the thorough
turning of the earth, and in sowing tending harvesting and threshing the
crop they waste and cheat you to any extent. No wonder the farm gets a
bad name thanks to your steward and staff. If you do not see your way
to attend in person to an estate of this kind, you had better let it to
a tenant. From these remarks it seems clear that the writer looks upon
letting land to tenant farmers as no more than an unwelcome alternative,
to be adopted only in the case of farms bad in quality or out of easy
reach. Indeed he says frankly that, given fair average conditions, the
owner can always get better returns by managing a farm himself than by
letting it to a tenant: he may even do better by leaving the charge
to a steward, unless of course that steward happens to be an utterly
careless or thievish fellow. Taking this in connexion with his remarks
about stewards elsewhere, the net result seems to be that a landlord must
choose in any given case what he judges to be the less of two evils.