on these and other forms of luxury. Italy was not a great manufacturing
country. The regular dues from the Provinces flowed into the treasuries,
not openly into private pockets. Yet a good deal of these monies no doubt
did in the end become the reward of individuals, as salaries or amounts
payable to contractors, etc. These however would not by themselves
suffice to account for the immense squandering that evidently took place.
A source of incomes, probably much more productive than we might at first
sight imagine, existed in the huge estates owned by wealthy Romans in
the lands beyond the seas. Martial refers[1231] to such properties at
Patrae in Achaia, in Egypt, etc. The returns from these estates, however
badly managed, were in the total probably very large. And they were no
new thing. In Varro and in Cicero’s letters we find them treated as a
matter of course: the case of Atticus and his lands in Epirus is well
known. Pliny[1232] tells us of the case of Pompey, and also of the six
land-monopolizers whom Nero found in possession of 50% of the Province
of Africa. The practice of usury in the subject countries was no longer
so widespread or so remunerative as it had been in the last period of
the Republic, but it had not ceased, and the same is true of the farming
of revenues. Commerce was active: but we are rather concerned with the
means of paying for imported goods than with the fact of importation.
The anxiety as to the supply of corn from abroad shews itself in the
gossip[1233] of quidnuncs as to the fleet of freight-ships coming from
Alexandria. Puteoli and Ostia were doubtless very busy; all we need note
is that someone must have made money[1234] in the business of transport
and delivery. These considerations may serve to explain the presence of
so much ‘money in the country’ as we say, and the resulting extravagance.
But all this social and economic fabric rested on the security guaranteed
by the imperial forces on land and sea.
One of Martial’s epigrams[1235] is of special interest as describing
a manifestly exceptional estate. It was at or near Baiae, the famous
seaside pleasure-resort, which had been the scene of costly fancies
and luxurious living for more than a hundred years. The point of
the poem lies in the striking contrast of this place compared with
the unproductive _suburbanum_[1236] of another owner, which is kept
going by supplies from the Roman market. For the place is a genuine
unsophisticated country farm, producing corn and wine and good store of
firewood, and breeding cattle swine sheep and various kinds of poultry
and pigeons. When rustic neighbours come to pay their respects, they
bring presents, such as honey in the comb, cheese, dormice, a kid, a
capon. The daughters[1237] of honest tenants bring baskets of eggs. The
_villa_ is a centre of hospitality; even the slaves are well fed. The
presence of a slave-household brought from Town is particularly dwelt
on: what with fishing and trapping and with ‘light work’ in the garden,
these spoilt menials, even my lord’s pet eunuch, are happy enough. There
are also young home-bred slaves (_vernae_) probably the offspring of the
farm-slaves. The topsyturvydom of this epigram is so striking that one
may suspect Martial of laughing in his sleeve at the eccentric friend
whose farm he is praising. In any case this cannot be taken seriously
as a realistic picture of a country seat practically agricultural. The
owner evidently drew his income from other sources. And the sort of man
who treated himself to an eunuch can hardly have been much of a farmer,
even near Baiae. The mention of _probi coloni_ illustrates what has been
said above as to tenants, and that a farm could be described in such
words as _rure vero barbaroque_ is a candid admission that in too many
instances a place of the kind could only by courtesy be styled a farm,
since the intrusion of ‘civilization’ (that is, of refined and luxurious
urban elements) destroyed its practical rustic character. That the
estate in question produced enough to feed the owner and his guests, his
domestics brought from Rome, and the resident rustic staff as well, is
credible. But there is nothing to shew that it produced any surplus for
the markets: it may have done something in this direction, but that it
really paid its way, yielding a moderate return on the capital sunk in
land slaves and other farm-stock, is utterly incredible.
Whether in town or country, the life sketched by Martial is that of a
society resting on a basis of slavery. At the same time the supply of
new slaves[1238] was not so plentiful as it had been in days before the
Roman Peace under Augustus. Serviceable rustic slaves were valuable
nowadays. Addressing Faustinus, the wealthy owner of the above Baian
_villa_ and several others, the poet says ‘you can send this book[1239]
to Marcellinus, who is now at the end of his campaign in the North and
has leisure to read: but let your messenger be a dainty Greek page.
Marcellinus will requite you by sending you a slave, captive from the
Danube country, who has the making of a shepherd in him, to tend the
flocks on your estate by Tibur.’ Each friend is to send the other
what the other lacks and he is in a position to supply. This is a
single instance; but the suggested _do ut des_ is significant. As wars
became rarer, and prisoners fewer, the disposal of captives would be a
perquisite of more and more value. That the normal treatment of slaves
was becoming more and more humane, is certain. But whether humanitarian
sentiment in Stoic forms, as preached by Seneca and others, had much
to do with this result, is more doubtful. The wisdom of not provoking
discontent among the slaves, particularly in the country, was well
understood. The decline of the free rustic population had made the
absence of a regular police force a danger not to be ignored. Improved
conditions were probably in most cases due to self-interest and caution
much more than to humane sentiment. In Martial’s day we may gather from
numerous indications that in general the lot of slaves was not a hard one
if we except the legal right of self-disposal. Urban domestics were often
sadly spoilt, and were apt to give themselves great airs outside the
house or to callers at the door. But I believe that in respect of comfort
and happiness the position of a steward with a slave-staff in charge of
a country place owned by a rich man was in most cases far pleasanter.
Subject to the preparation for the master’s occasional visits and
entertainment of his guests, these men were left very much to their own
devices. The site of the _villa_ had been chosen for its advantages. So
long as enough work was done to satisfy the owner, they, his caretakers,
enjoyed gratis for the whole year[1240] the privileges and pleasures
which he paid for dearly and seldom used.
It seems certain that it was on such estates that most of the
slave-breeding took place. It was becoming a more regular practice, as we
see from Columella. And it had advantages from several points of view.
The slave allowed to mate with a female partner and produce children
was more effectively tied to the place than the unmated labourer on a
plantation was by his chain. So long as the little _vernae_ were not
brutally treated (and it seems to have been a tradition to treat them
well), the parents were much less likely to join in any rebellious
schemes. And, after all, the young of slaves were worth money, if sold;
while, if kept by the old master, they would work in what was the only
home they had known: they would be easier to train and manage than some
raw barbarian from Germany or Britain or the Sudan. But it must not be
forgotten that the recognition of slave-breeding foreboded the eventual
decline of slavery—personal slavery—as an institution, at least for
purposes of rustic life. I know of no direct evidence[1241] as to the
class or classes from which the unfree _coloni_ of the later Empire were
drawn. But it seems to me extremely probable that many of the _coloni_
of the period with which we are just now concerned were home-bred
slaves manumitted and kept on the estate as tenants. This conjecture
finds a reason for manumission, as the freedman would be capable of a
legal relation, which the slave was not. The freedman’s son would be
_ingenuus_, and would represent, in his economic bondage under cover of
legal freedom, a natural stage in the transition from the personal slave
to the predial serf.
That there were _vernae_ on the small suburban properties, the
rest-retreats of Martial and many others, is not to be doubted. But they
can hardly have been very numerous. These little places were often but
poorly kept up. The owners were seldom wealthy men, able to maintain
many slaves. Economy and quiet were desired by men who could not afford
ostentation. The normal use of the epithet _sordidus_[1242] (not peculiar
to Martial) in speaking of such places, and indeed of small farmsteads
in general, is characteristic of them and of the undress life led there.
The house was sometimes in bad condition. To patch up a leaky roof[1243]
a present of a load of tiles was welcome. A man buys a place the house
(_casa_) on which is horribly dark and old: the poet remarks that it is
close to the pleasure-garden (_hortos_) of a rich man. This explains
the purchase: the buyer will put up with bad lodging for the prospect
of good dinners at his neighbour’s table. The difficulty of finding a
purchaser for an estate of bad sanitary record, and the damage done to
riparian farms by the Tiber floods, are instances[1244] of the ordinary
troubles of the little landowners near Rome. A peculiar nuisance, common
in Italy, was the presence in some corner of a field of the tomb[1245]
of some former owner or his family. A slice of the land, so many feet
in length and breadth, was often reserved[1246] as not to pass with the
inheritance. What the heir never owned, that he could not sell. So, when
the property changed hands, the new owner had no right to remove what to
him might be nothing but a hindrance to convenient tillage. Altars[1247]
taken over from a predecessor may also have been troublesome at times,
but their removal was probably less difficult.
The picture of agricultural conditions to be drawn from =Juvenal= agrees
with that drawn from Martial. But, as said above, the point of view is
different in the satirist, whose business it is to denounce evils, and
who is liable to fall into rhetorical exaggeration. And to a native of
central Italy the tradition of a healthier state of things in earlier
ages was naturally a more important part of his background than it could
be to a man from Spain. Hence we find vivid scenes[1248] drawn from
legend, shewing good old Romans, men of distinction, working on the land
themselves and rearing well-fed families (slaves included) on the produce
of meagre little plots of two _iugera_. An ex-consul[1249] breaks off his
labours on a hillside, shoulders his mattock, and joins a rustic feast
at the house of a relative. The hill-folk of the Abruzzi are patterns of
thrifty contentment, ready to earn their bread[1250] with the plough. But
the civic duties are not forgotten. The citizen has a double function.
He serves the state in arms and receives a patch of land[1251] as his
reward for wounds suffered. He has to attend the Assembly before his
wounds[1252] are fully healed. In short, he is a peasant soldier who
does a public duty in both peace and war. The vital need of the present
day[1253] is that parents should rear sons of this type. Here we have the
moral which these scenes, and the frequent references to ancient heroes,
are meant to impress on contemporaries. A striking instance[1254] from
historical times is that of Marius, who is represented as having risen
from the position of a wage-earning farm-labourer to be the saviour of
Rome from the barbarians of the North. But the men of the olden time
led simple lives, free from the extravagance and luxury of these days
and therefore from the temptations and ailments that now abound. The
only wholesome surroundings[1255] now are to be found in out-of-the way
country corners or the homes of such frugal citizens as Juvenal himself.
But these are mere islets in a sea of wantonness bred in security: luxury
is deadlier[1256] than the sword, and the conquered world is being
avenged in the ruin of its conqueror. Perhaps no symptom on which he
enlarges is more significant and sinister from his own point of view than
that betrayed in a passing reference by the verbal contrast[1257] between
_paganus_ and _miles_. The peasant is no longer soldier: and in this fact
the weightiest movements of some 250 years of Roman history are virtually
implied.
So much for an appeal to the Roman past. But Juvenal, like Vergil before
him, was not content with this. He looks back to the primitive age[1258]
of man’s appearance on earth and idealizes the state of things in this
picture also. Mankind, rude healthy and chaste, had not yet reached
the notion of private property: therefore theft was unknown. The moral
is not pressed in the passage where this description occurs; but it is
worth noting because the greed of men in imperial Rome, and particularly
in the form of land-grabbing and villa-building, is a favourite topic
in the satires. All this side of contemporary life, viewed as the fruit
of artificial appetites and unnecessary passions, is evidence of a
degeneracy that has been going on ever since the beginnings of society.
And the worst of it is that those who thrive on present conditions are
the corrupt the servile and the mean, from whom no improvement can be
hoped for. Juvenal’s picture of present facts as he sees them is quite
enough to justify his pessimism. As a means of arresting degeneration he
is only able to suggest a change[1259] of mind, in fact to urge people
to be other than they are. But he cannot shew where the initiative is to
be found. Certainly not in the mongrel free populace of Rome, a rabble
of parasites and beggars. Nor in the ranks of the wealthy freedmen into
whose hands the chief opportunities of enrichment have passed, thanks to
the imperial jealousy of genuine Romans and preference of supple aliens.
These freedmen are the typical capitalists: they buy up everything, land
included; and Romans who despise these upstarts have nevertheless to fawn
on them. Nor again are leaders to be found in the surviving remnant of
old families. It is a sad pity, but pride of birth, while indisposing
them to useful industry, does not prevent them from debauchery or from
degrading themselves in public. Financial ruin and charges of high
treason are destroying them: even were this not so, who would look
to such persons for a wholesome example? Neither religion with its
formalities and excitements, nor philosophy with its professors belying
their moral preaching, could furnish the means of effecting the change of
heart needed for vital reform.
No, it was not from the imperial capital, the reeking hotbed of
wickedness, that any good could come. And when Juvenal turns to the
country it is remarkable how little comfort he seems to find in the
rural conditions of Italy. Like other writers, he refers to the immense
estates[1260] that extended over a great part of the country, both arable
and grazing lands (_saltus_), the latter in particular being of monstrous
size. We cannot get from him any hint that the land-monopoly, the canker
of the later Republic, had been effectually checked. Nor indeed had
it. One of the ways in which rich patrons[1261] rewarded clients for
services, honourable or (as he suggests) often dishonourable, was to give
the dependant a small landed estate. The practice was not new. Maecenas
had given Horace his Sabine farm. But the man who gave away acres must
have had plenty of acres to give. True, some of the great landlords had
earned[1262] their estates by success in an honourable profession: but
the satirist is naturally more impressed by the cases of those, generally
freedmen, whose possessions are the fruit of corrupt compliance or
ignoble trades. These upstarts, like the Trimalchio of Petronius, live
to display their wealth, and the acquisition of lands[1263] and erection
of costly villas are a means to this end. The fashion set by them is
followed by others, and over-buying and over-building are the cause of
bankruptcies. Two passages[1264] indicate the continued existence of an
atrocious evil notorious in the earlier period of the _latifundia_, the
practice of compelling small holders to part with their land by various
outrages. The live stock belonging to a rich neighbour are driven on to
the poor man’s farm until the damage thus caused to his crops forces him
to sell—of course at the aggressor’s price. A simpler form, ejectment
without pretence of purchase, is mentioned as an instance of the
difficulties in the way of getting legal redress, at least for civilians.
There would be little point in mentioning such wrongs as conceivable
possibilities: surely they must have occurred now and then in real life.
The truth, I take it, was that the great landlord owning a host of slaves
had always at disposal a force well able to carry out his territorial
ambitions; and possession of power was a temptation to use it. The
employment of slaves in rural border-raids was no new thing, and the
slave, having himself nothing to lose, probably found zest in a change of
occupation.
In Juvenal agriculture appears as carried on by slave labour, and the
employment of supplementary wage-earners is ignored; not unnaturally,
for it was not necessary to refer to it. The satirist himself[1265]
has rustic slaves, and is proud that they are rustic, when they on a
special occasion come in to wait at his table in Rome. Slaves are of
course included[1266] in the stock of an estate, great or small, given
or sold. All this is commonplace: what is more to the satirist’s purpose
is the mention[1267] of a member of an illustrious old family who has
come down in the world so low as to tend another man’s flocks for hire.
And this is brought in as a contrast to the purse-proud insolence of a
wealthy freedman. But more remarkable is the absence of any reference to
tenant _coloni_. Even the word _colonus_ does not occur in any shade of
meaning. This too may fairly be accounted for by the fact that little
could have been got out of references to the system for the purposes of
his argument. It was, as he knew, small peasant landowners, not tenants,
that had been the backbone of old Rome; and it was this class, viewed
with the sympathetic eye of one sighing for perished glories, that he
would have liked to restore. It is a satirist’s bent to wish for the
unattainable and protest against the inevitable. For himself, he can
sing the praises of rustic simplicity and cheapness and denounce the
luxury and extravagance of Roman society, though he dare not assail
living individuals. And in exposing the rottenness of the civilization
around him he attacks the very vices that had grown to such portentous
heights through the development of slavery. Idleness bore its fruit,
not only in the debauchery and gambling that fostered unholy greed and
crimes committed to procure the money that was ever vanishing, but in
the degradation of honest labour. Pampered menials were arrogant, poor
citizens servile. And vast tracts of Italian land bore witness to the
mournful fact that the land system, so far from affording a sound basis
for social and economic betterment, was itself one of the worst elements
of the situation.
At this stage it is well to recall the relation between agriculture and
military service, the farmer-soldier ideal. The long-since existing
tendency for the soldier to become a professional, while the free farmer
class was decaying, had never obliterated the impression of this ideal
on Roman minds. The belief that gymnastic exercises on Greek models
were no effective substitute for regular manual labour in the open air
as guarantees of military ‘fitness’ is still strong in Juvenal. It
shews itself in his pictures of life in Rome, where such exercises were
practised for the purpose of ‘keeping fit’ and ‘getting an appetite,’
much as they are now. Followed by baths and massage and luxurious
appliances of every kind, this treatment enabled the jaded city-dweller
to minimize the enervating effects of idleness relieved by excitements
and debauchery. He significantly lays stress on the fact that these
habits were as common among women as among men. The usual allowance must
be made for a satirist’s exaggeration; but the general truth of the
picture is not to be doubted. The city life was no preparation for the
camp with its rough appliances and ever-present need for the readiness
to endure cheerfully the hardships of the field. The toughness of the
farm-labourer was proverbial: the Latin word _durus_ is his conventional
epithet. In other words, he was a model of healthy hardness and vigour.
Now to Juvenal, as to others, the best object of desire[1268] was _mens
sana in corpore sano_, and he well knew that to secure the second
gave the best hope of securing the first. We might then expect him to
recommend field work as the surest way to get and keep vigorous health.
Yet I cannot find any indication of this precept save the advice to a
friend to get out of Rome and settle on a garden-plot in the country.
He says ‘there live devoted[1269] to your clod-pick; be the _vilicus_
of a well-tended garden.’ I presume he means ‘be your own steward, and
lend a hand in tillage as a steward would do.’ But an average _vilicus_
would be more concerned to get work out of his underlings than to exert
himself, and Juvenal is not very explicit in his advice, the main point
being to get his friend out of Rome. I have reserved for comparison
with this passage one from Martial[1270]. In a couplet on a pair of
_halteres_ (something rather like dumb-bells) he says ‘Why waste the
strength of arms by use of silly dumb-bells? If a man wants exercise,
he had better go and dig in a vineyard.’ This is much plainer, but one
may doubt whether it is seriously meant to be an ordinary rule of life.
Probably it is no more than a sneer at gymnastic exercises. For Martial
well knew that muscle developed by the practice of athletics[1271] is
very different from the bodily firmness and capacity for continuous
effort under varying conditions that is produced by a life of hard manual
labour. And the impression left on a reader’s mind by epigrammatist and
satirist alike is that in Rome and in the most favoured and accessible
parts of Italy the blessing of ‘corporal soundness’ was tending to become
a monopoly of slaves. For when Juvenal declares[1272] that nowadays the
rough _fossor_, though shackled with a heavy chain, turns up his nose at
the garden-stuff that fed a Manius Curius in the olden days, hankering
after the savoury fleshpots of the cook-shop, we need not take him too
seriously.
XLIII. PLINY THE YOUNGER.
The =younger Pliny=, one of the generation who remembered Vespasian,
lived through the dark later years of Domitian, and rejoiced in the
better times of Nerva and Trajan, is one of our most important witnesses.
Not being a technical writer on agriculture, it was not his business
to dwell on what ought to be done rather than what was being done.
Being himself a great landowner as well as a man of wide interests and
high reputation, he knew the problems of contemporary land-management
from experience, and speaks with intelligence and authority. He was
not a man of robust constitution, and like many others he found much
refreshment in rural sojournings. He is remarkable for keen appreciation
of beautiful scenery. Adopted by his uncle, the author of the _Natural
History_, well-educated and in touch with the literary circles and the
best social life of Rome, his letters illustrate the intellectual and
moral influences that prevailed in cultivated households of honest
gentlemen. In particular he is to us perhaps the very best example
of the humanizing tendency of the current philosophies of the day in
relation to the subject of slavery. He is deeply interested in promoting
manumissions[1273] whenever he gets a chance. His tender concern for the
welfare of his slaves constantly meets us, and he is only consoled for
the death of one by reflecting that the man was manumitted in time[1274]
and so died free. In fact he does not regard slavery as a normally
lifelong condition; and he allows his slaves to make informal wills and
respects their disposition of their savings among their fellows[1275]
in the household, which is to slaves a sort of commonwealth. Masters
who don’t feel the loss of their slaves are really not human. But this
all refers to domestics, and does not touch the case of the field-hand
toiling on the farm.