Agriculture, Trade, and Commerce
Agriculture and commerce are so intimately bound up with the
constitution and the external history of states, that the former
must frequently be noticed in the course of describing the latter.
We shall here endeavour to supplement the detached notices which
we have already given, by exhibiting a summary view of Italian and
particularly of Roman economics.
Agriculture
It has been already observed(1) that the transition from a pastoral
to an agricultural economy preceded the immigration of the Italians
into the peninsula. Agriculture continued to be the main support
of all the communities in Italy, of the Sabellians and Etruscans
no less than of the Latins. There were no purely pastoral tribes
in Italy during historical times, although of course the various
races everywhere combined pastoral husbandry, to a greater or less
extent according to the nature of the locality, with the cultivation
of the soil. The beautiful custom of commencing the formation of
new cities by tracing a furrow with the plough along the line of
the future ring-wall shows how deeply rooted was the feeling that
every commonwealth is dependent on agriculture. In the case of
Rome in particular--and it is only in its case that we can speak of
agrarian relations with any sort of certainty--the Servian reform
shows very clearly not only that the agricultural class originally
preponderated in the state, but also that an effort was made
permanently to maintain the collective body of freeholders as the
pith and marrow of the community. When in the course of time a
large portion of the landed property in Rome had passed into the
hands of non-burgesses and thus the rights and duties of burgesses
were no longer bound up with freehold property, the reformed
constitution obviated this incongruous state of things, and the
perils which it threatened, not merely temporarily but permanently,
by treating the members of the community without reference to their
political position once for all according to their freeholding,
and imposing the common burden of war-service on the freeholders--a
step which in the natural course of things could not but be followed
by the concession of public rights. The whole policy of Roman war
and conquest rested, like the constitution itself, on the basis of
the freehold system; as the freeholder alone was of value in the
state, the aim of war was to increase the number of its freehold
members. The vanquished community was either compelled to
merge entirely into the yeomanry of Rome, or, if not reduced to
this extremity, it was required, not to pay a war-contribution or
a fixed tribute, but to cede a portion, usually a third part, of
its domain, which was thereupon regularly occupied by Roman farms.
Many nations have gained victories and made conquests as the Romans
did; but none has equalled the Roman in thus making the ground
he had won his own by the sweat of his brow, and in securing by
the ploughshare what had been gained by the lance. That which is
gained by war may be wrested from the grasp by war again, but it
is not so with the conquests made by the plough; while the Romans
lost many battles, they scarcely ever on making peace ceded Roman
soil, and for this result they were indebted to the tenacity with
which the farmers clung to their fields and homesteads. The strength
of man and of the state lies in their dominion over the soil; the
greatness of Rome was built on the most extensive and immediate
mastery of her citizens over her soil, and on the compact unity of
the body which thus acquired so firm a hold.
System of Joint Cultivation
We have already indicated(2) that in the earliest times the arable
land was cultivated in common, probably by the several clans; each
clan tilled its own land, and thereafter distributed the produce
among the several households belonging to it. There exists indeed
an intimate connection between the system of joint tillage and the
clan form of society, and even subsequently in Rome joint residence
and joint management were of very frequent occurrence in the case
of co-proprietors.(3) Even the traditions of Roman law furnish
the information that wealth consisted at first in cattle and the
usufruct of the soil, and that it was not till later that land
came to be distributed among the burgesses as their own special
property.(4) Better evidence that such was the case is afforded
by the earliest designation of wealth as "cattle-stock" or
"slave-and-cattle-stock" (-pecunia-, -familia pecuniaque-), and of
the separate possessions of the children of the household and of
slaves as "small cattle" (-peculium-) also by the earliest form
of acquiring property through laying hold of it with the hand
(-mancipatio-), which was only appropriate to the case of moveable
articles;(5) and above all by the earliest measure of "land of one's
own" (-heredium-, from -herus-lord), consisting of two -jugera-
(about an acre and a quarter), which can only have applied to
garden-ground, and not to the hide.(6) When and how the distribution
of the arable land took place, can no longer be ascertained. This
much only is certain, that the oldest form of the constitution was
based not on freehold settlement, but on clanship as a substitute
for it, whereas the Servian constitution presupposes the distribution
of the land. It is evident from the same constitution that the
great bulk of the landed property consisted of middle-sized farms,
which provided work and subsistence for a family and admitted of
the keeping of cattle for tillage as well as of the application of
the plough. The ordinary extent of such a Roman full hide has not
been ascertained with precision, but can scarcely, as has already
been shown,(7) be estimated at less than twenty -jugera-(12 1/2
acres nearly).
Culture of Grain
Their husbandry was mainly occupied with the culture of the cereals.
The usual grain was spelt (-far-);(8) but different kinds of pulse,
roots, and vegetables were also diligently cultivated.
Culture of the Vine
That the culture of the vine was not introduced for the first time
into Italy by Greek settlers,(9) is shown by the list of the festivals
of the Roman community which reaches back to a time preceding the
Greeks, and which presents three wine-festivals to be celebrated in
honour of "father Jovis," not in honour of the wine-god of more
recent times who was borrowed from the Greeks, the "father deliverer."
The very ancient legend which represents Mezentius king of Caere as
levying a wine-tax from the Latins or the Rutuli, and the various
versions of the widely-spread Italian story which affirms that the
Celts were induced to cross the Alps in consequence of their coming
to the knowledge of the noble fruits of Italy, especially of the
grape and of wine, are indications of the pride of the Latins in
their glorious vine, the envy of all their neighbours. A careful
system of vine-husbandry was early and generally inculcated by the
Latin priests. In Rome the vintage did not begin until the supreme
priest of the community, the -flamen- of Jupiter, had granted
permission for it and had himself made a beginning; in like manner a
Tusculan ordinance forbade the sale of new wine, until the priest
had proclaimed the festival of opening the casks. The early
prevalence of the culture of the vine is likewise attested not
only by the general adoption of wine-libations in the sacrificial
ritual, but also by the precept of the Roman priests promulgated
as a law of king Numa, that men should present in libation to the
gods no wine obtained from uncut grapes; just as, to introduce
the beneficial practice of drying the grain, they prohibited the
offering of grain undried.
Culture of the Olive
The culture of the olive was of later introduction, and certainly
was first brought to Italy by the Greeks.(10) The olive is said to
have been first planted on the shores of the western Mediterranean
towards the close of the second century of the city; and this view
accords with the fact that the olive-branch and the olive occupy
in the Roman ritual a place very subordinate to the juice of the
vine. The esteem in which both noble trees were held by the Romans
is shown by the vine and the olive-tree which were planted in the
middle of the Forum, not far from the Curtian lake.
The Fig
The principal fruit-tree planted was the nutritious fig, which was
probably a native of Italy. The legend of the origin of Rome wove
its threads most closely around the old fig-trees, several of which
stood near to and in the Roman Forum.(11)
Management of the Farm
It was the farmer and his sons who guided the plough, and performed
generally the labours of husbandry: it is not probable that slaves
or free day-labourers were regularly employed in the work of
the ordinary farm. The plough was drawn by the ox or by the cow;
horses, asses, and mules served as beasts of burden. The rearing
of cattle for the sake of meat or of milk did not exist at all as
a distinct branch of husbandry, or was prosecuted only to a very
limited extent, at least on the land which remained the property of
the clan; but, in addition to the smaller cattle which were driven
out together to the common pasture, swine and poultry, particularly
geese, were kept at the farm-yard. As a general rule, there was no
end of ploughing and re-ploughing: a field was reckoned imperfectly
tilled, in which the furrows were not drawn so close that harrowing
could be dispensed with; but the management was more earnest than
intelligent, and no improvement took place in the defective plough
or in the imperfect processes of reaping and of threshing. This
result is probably attributable rather to the scanty development
of rational mechanics than to the obstinate clinging of the farmers
to use and wont; for mere kindly attachment to the system of tillage
transmitted with the patrimonial soil was far from influencing the
practical Italian, and obvious improvements in agriculture, such
as the cultivation of fodder-plants and the irrigation of meadows,
may have been early adopted from neighbouring peoples or independently
developed--Roman literature itself in fact began with the discussion
of the theory of agriculture. Welcome rest followed diligent and
judicious labour; and here too religion asserted her right to soothe
the toils of life even to the humble by pauses for recreation and
for freer human movement and intercourse. Every eighth day (-nonae-),
and therefore on an average four times a month, the farmer went
to town to buy and sell and transact his other business. But rest
from labour, in the strict sense, took place only on the several
festival days, and especially in the holiday-month after the completion
of the winter sowing (-feriae sementivae-): during these set times
the plough rested by command of the gods, and not the farmer only,
but also his slave and his ox, reposed in holiday idleness.
Such, probably, was the way in which the ordinary Roman farm was
cultivated in the earliest times. The next heirs had no protection
against bad management except the right of having the spendthrift
who squandered his inherited estate placed under wardship as if he
were a lunatic.(12) Women moreover were in substance divested of
their personal right of disposal, and, if they married, a member
of the same clan was ordinarily assigned as husband, in order to
retain the estate within the clan. The law sought to check the
overburdening of landed property with debt partly by ordaining, in
the case of a debt secured over the land, the provisional transference
of the ownership of the object pledged from the debtor to the
creditor, partly, in the case of a simple loan, by the rigour of the
proceedings in execution which speedily led to actual bankruptcy;
the latter means however, as the sequel will show, attained its
object but very imperfectly. No restriction was imposed by law on
the free divisibility of property. Desirable as it might be that
co-heirs should remain in the undivided possession of their heritage,
even the oldest law was careful to keep the power of dissolving
such a partnership open at any time to any partner; it was good that
brethren should dwell together in peace, but to compel them to do
so was foreign to the liberal spirit of Roman law. The Servian
constitution moreover shows that even in the regal period of Rome
there were not wanting cottagers and garden-proprietors, with whom
the mattock took the place of the plough. It was left to custom and
the sound sense of the population to prevent excessive subdivision
of the soil; and that their confidence in this respect was not
misplaced and the landed estates ordinarily remained entire, is
proved by the universal Roman custom of designating them by permanent
individual names. The community exercised only an indirect influence
in the matter by the sending forth of colonies, which regularly led
to the establishment of a number of new full hides, and frequently
doubtless also to the suppression of a number of cottage holdings,
the small landholders being sent forth as colonists.
Landed Proprietors
It is far more difficult to perceive how matters stood with landed
property on a larger scale. The fact that such larger properties
existed to no inconsiderable extent, cannot be doubted from the
early development of the -equites-, and may be easily explained
partly by the distribution of the clan-lands, which of itself
could not but call into existence a class of larger landowners
in consequence of the necessary inequality in the numbers of
the persons belonging to the several clans and participating in
the distribution, and partly by the abundant influx of mercantile
capital to Rome. But farming on a large scale in the proper
sense, implying a considerable establishment of slaves, such as we
afterwards meet with at Rome, cannot be supposed to have existed
during this period. On the contrary, to this period we must refer
the ancient definition, which represents the senators as called
fathers from the fields which they parcelled out among the common
people as a father among his children; and originally the landowner
must have distributed that portion of his land which he was unable
to farm in person, or even his whole estate, into little parcels
among his dependents to be cultivated by them, as is the general
practice in Italy at the present day. The recipient might be the
house-child or slave of the granter; if he was a free man, his
position was that which subsequently went by the name of "occupancy
on sufferance" (-precarium-). The recipient retained his occupancy
during the pleasure of the granter, and had no legal means of
protecting himself in possession against him; on the contrary, the
granter could eject him at any time when he pleased. The relation
did not necessarily involve any payment on the part of the person
who had the usufruct of the soil to its proprietor; but such
a payment beyond doubt frequently took place and may, as a rule,
have consisted in the delivery of a portion of the produce. The
relation in this case approximated to the lease of subsequent times,
but remained always distinguished from it partly by the absence of
a fixed term for its expiry, partly by its non-actionable character
on either side and the legal protection of the claim for rent depending
entirely on the lessor's right of ejection. It is plain that it
was essentially a relation based on mutual fidelity, which could
not subsist without the help of the powerful sanction of custom
consecrated by religion; and this was not wanting. The institution
of clientship, altogether of a moral-religious nature, beyond
doubt rested fundamentally on this assignation of the profits of
the soil. Nor was the introduction of such an assignation dependent
on the abolition of the system of common tillage; for, just as
after this abolition the individual, so previous to it the clan
might grant to dependents a joint use of its lands; and beyond
doubt with this very state of things was connected the fact that
the Roman clientship was not personal, but that from the outset
the client along with his clan entrusted himself for protection
and fealty to the patron and his clan. This earliest form of Roman
landholding serves to explain how there sprang from the great
landlords in Rome a landed, and not an urban, nobility. As the
pernicious institution of middlemen remained foreign to the Romans,
the Roman landlord found himself not much less chained to his land
than was the tenant and the farmer; he inspected and took part in
everything himself, and the wealthy Roman esteemed it his highest
praise to be reckoned a good landlord. His house was in the country;
in the city he had only a lodging for the purpose of attending to
his business there, and perhaps of breathing the purer air that
prevailed there during the hot season. Above all, however, these
arrangements furnished a moral basis for the relation between the
upper class and the common people, and so materially lessened its
dangers. The free tenants-on-sufferance, sprung from families of
decayed farmers, dependents, and freedmen, formed the great bulk
of the proletariate,(13) and were not much more dependent on the
landlord than the petty leaseholder inevitably is with reference to
the great proprietor. The slaves tilling the fields for a master
were beyond doubt far less numerous than the free tenants. In all
cases where an immigrant nation has not at once reduced to slavery
a population -en masse-, slaves seem to have existed at first only
to a very limited amount, and consequently free labourers seem to
have played a very different part in the state from that in which
they subsequently appear. In Greece "day-labourers" (--theites--)
in various instances during the earlier period occupy the place
of the slaves of a later age, and in some communities, among the
Locrians for instance, there was no slavery down to historical times.
Even the slave, moreover, was ordinarily of Italian descent; the
Volscian, Sabine, or Etruscan war-captive must have stood in a
different relation towards his master from the Syrian and the Celt
of later times. Besides as a tenant he had in fact, though not
in law, land and cattle, wife and child, as the landlord had, and
after manumission was introduced(14) there was a possibility, not
remote, of working out his freedom. If such then was the footing
on which landholding on a large scale stood in the earliest times,
it was far from being an open sore in the commonwealth; on the
contrary, it was of most material service to it. Not only did it
provide subsistence, although scantier upon the whole, for as many
families in proportion as the intermediate and smaller properties;
but the landlords moreover, occupying a comparatively elevated and
free position, supplied the community with its natural leaders and
rulers, while the agricultural and unpropertied tenants-on-sufferance
furnished the genuine material for the Roman policy of colonization,
without which it never would have succeeded; for while the state
may furnish land to him who has none, it cannot impart to one who
knows nothing of agriculture the spirit and the energy to wield
the plough.
Pastoral Husbandry
Ground under pasture was not affected by the distribution of the
land. The state, and not the clanship, was regarded as the owner
of the common pastures. It made use of them in part for its
own flocks and herds, which were intended for sacrifice and other
purposes and were always kept up by means of the cattle-fines; and
it gave to the possessors of cattle the privilege of driving them
out upon the common pasture for a moderate payment (-scriptura-).
The right of pasturage on the public domains may have originally
borne some relation -de facto- to the possession of land, but no
connection -de jure- can ever have subsisted in Rome between the
particular hides of land and a definite proportional use of the
common pasture; because property could be acquired even by the
--metoikos--, but the right to use the common pasture was only
granted exceptionally to the --metoikos-- by the royal favour.
At this period, however, the public land seems to have held but
a subordinate place in the national economy generally, for the
original common pasturage was not perhaps very extensive, and the
conquered territory was probably for the most part distributed
immediately as arable land among the clans or at a later period
among individuals.
Handicrafts
While agriculture was the chief and most extensively prosecuted
occupation in Rome, other branches of industry did not fail to
accompany it, as might be expected from the early development of
urban life in that emporium of the Latins. In fact eight guilds of
craftsmen were numbered among the institutions of king Numa, that
is, among the institutions that had existed in Rome from time
immemorial. These were the flute-blowers, the goldsmiths, the
coppersmiths, the carpenters, the fullers, the dyers, the potters,
and the shoemakers--a list which would substantially exhaust the
class of tradesmen working to order on account of others in the very
early times, when the baking of bread and the professional art of
healing were not yet known and wool was spun into clothing by the
women of the household themselves. It is remarkable that there
appears no special guild of workers in iron. This affords a
fresh confirmation of the fact that the manufacture of iron was of
comparatively late introduction in Latium; and on this account in
matters of ritual down to the latest times copper alone might be
used, e.g. for the sacred plough and the shear-knife of the priests.
These bodies of craftsmen must have been of great importance in
early times for the urban life of Rome and for its position towards
the Latin land--an importance not to be measured by the depressed
condition of Roman handicraft in later times, when it was injuriously
affected by the multitude of artisan-slaves working for their
master or on his account, and by the increased import of articles
of luxury. The oldest lays of Rome celebrated not only the mighty
war-god Mamers, but also the skilled armourer Mamurius, who understood
the art of forging for his fellow-burgesses shields similar to the
divine model shield that had fallen from heaven; Volcanus the god
of fire and of the forge already appears in the primitive list of
Roman festivals.(15) Thus in the earliest Rome, as everywhere,
the arts of forging and of wielding the ploughshare and the sword
went hand in hand, and there was nothing of that arrogant contempt
for handicrafts which we afterwards meet with there. After the
Servian organization, however, imposed the duty of serving in the
army exclusively on the freeholders, the industrial classes were
excluded not by any law, but practically in consequence of their
general want of a freehold qualification, from the privilege of
bearing arms, except in the case of special subdivisions chosen
from the carpenters, coppersmiths, and certain classes of musicians
and attached with a military organization to the army; and this may
perhaps have been the origin of the subsequent habit of depreciating
the manual arts and of the position of political inferiority assigned
to them. The institution of guilds doubtless had the same object
as the colleges of priests that resembled them in name; the men of
skill associated themselves in order more permanently and securely
to preserve the tradition of their art. That there was some mode
of excluding unskilled persons is probable; but no traces are to be
met with either of monopolizing tendencies or of protective steps
against inferior manufactures. There is no aspect, however, of
the life of the Roman people respecting which our information is
so scanty as that of the Roman trades.
Inland Commerce of the Italians
Italian commerce must, it is obvious, have been limited in the
earliest epoch to the mutual dealings of the Italians themselves.
Fairs (-mercatus-), which must be distinguished from the usual weekly
markets (-nundinae-) were of great antiquity in Latium. Probably
they were at first associated with international gatherings and
festivals, and so perhaps were connected in Rome with the festival
at the federal temple on the Aventine; the Latins, who came for this
purpose to Rome every year on the 13th August, may have embraced
at the same time the opportunity of transacting their business
in Rome and of purchasing what they needed there. A similar and
perhaps still greater importance belonged in the case of Etruria
to the annual general assembly at the temple of Voltumna (perhaps
near Montefiascone) in the territory of Volsinii; it served at the
same time as a fair and was regularly frequented by Roman traders.
But the most important of all the Italian fairs was that which was
held at Soracte in the grove of Feronia, a situation than which
none could be found more favourable for the exchange of commodities
among the three great nations. That high isolated mountain, which
appears to have been set down by nature herself in the midst of the
plain of the Tiber as a goal for the traveller, lay on the boundary
which separated the Etruscan and Sabine lands (to the latter
of which it appears mostly to have belonged), and it was likewise
easily accessible from Latium and Umbria. Roman merchants regularly
made their appearance there, and the wrongs of which they complained
gave rise to many a quarrel with the Sabines.
Beyond doubt dealings of barter and traffic were carried on at these
fairs long before the first Greek or Phoenician vessel entered the
western sea. When bad harvests had occurred, different districts
supplied each other at these fairs with grain; there, too, they
exchanged cattle, slaves, metals, and whatever other articles were
deemed needful or desirable in those primitive times. Oxen and
sheep formed the oldest medium of exchange, ten sheep being reckoned
equivalent to one ox. The recognition of these objects as universal
legal representatives of value or in other words as money, as well
as the scale of proportion between the large and smaller cattle,
may be traced back--as the recurrence of both especially among the
Germans shows--not merely to the Graeco-Italian period, but beyond
this even to the epoch of a purely pastoral economy.(16) In
Italy, where metal in considerable quantity was everywhere required
especially for agricultural purposes and for armour, but few of its
provinces themselves produced the requisite metals, copper (-aes-)
very early made its appearance alongside of cattle as a second
medium of exchange; and so the Latins, who were poor in copper,
designated valuation itself as "coppering" (-aestimatio-). This
establishment of copper as a general equivalent recognized throughout
the whole peninsula, as well as the simplest numeral signs of
Italian invention to be mentioned more particularly below(17) and
the Italian duodecimal system, may be regarded as traces of this
earliest international intercourse of the Italian peoples while
they still had the peninsula to themselves.
Transmarine Traffic of the Italians
We have already indicated generally the nature of the influence
exercised by transmarine commerce on the Italians who continued
independent. The Sabellian stocks remained almost wholly unaffected
by it. They were in possession of but a small and inhospitable
belt of coast, and received whatever reached them from foreign
nations--the alphabet for instance--only through the medium of the
Tuscans or Latins; a circumstance which accounts for their want of
urban development. The intercourse of Tarentum with the Apulians
and Messapians appears to have been at this epoch still unimportant.
It was otherwise along the west coast. In Campania the Greeks and
Italians dwelt peacefully side by side, and in Latium, and still
more in Etruria, an extensive and regular exchange of commodities
took place. What were the earliest articles of import, may
be inferred partly from the objects found in the primitive tombs,
particularly those at Caere, partly from indications preserved in
the language and institutions of the Romans, partly and chiefly from
the stimulus given to Italian industry; for of course they bought
foreign manufactures for a considerable time before they began
to imitate them. We cannot determine how far the development of
handicrafts had advanced before the separation of the stocks, or
what progress it thereafter made while Italy remained left to its
own resources; it is uncertain how far the Italian fullers, dyers,
tanners, and potters received their impulse from Greece or Phoenicia
or had their own independent development But certainly the trade
of the goldsmiths, which existed in Rome from time immemorial, can
only have arisen after transmarine commerce had begun and ornaments
of gold had to some extent found sale among the inhabitants of the
peninsula. We find, accordingly, in the oldest sepulchral chambers
of Caere and Vulci in Etruria and of Praeneste in Latium, plates
of gold with winged lions stamped upon them, and similar ornaments
of Babylonian manufacture. It may be a question in reference to
the particular object found, whether it has been introduced from
abroad or is a native imitation; but on the whole it admits of
no doubt that all the west coast of Italy in early times imported
metallic wares from the East. It will be shown still more clearly
in the sequel, when we come to speak of the exercise of art, that
architecture and modelling in clay and metal received a powerful
stimulus in very early times through Greek influence, or, in
other words, that the oldest tools and the oldest models came from
Greece. In the sepulchral chambers just mentioned, besides the
gold ornaments, there were deposited vessels of bluish enamel or
greenish clay, which, judging from the materials and style as well
as from the hieroglyphics impressed upon them, were of Egyptian
origin;(18) perfume-vases of Oriental alabaster, several of them
in the form of Isis; ostrich-eggs with painted or carved sphinxes
and griffins; beads of glass and amber. These last may have come
by the land-route from the north; but the other objects prove the
import of perfumes and articles of ornament of all sorts from the
East. Thence came linen and purple, ivory and frankincense, as is
proved by the early use of linen fillets, of the purple dress and
ivory sceptre for the king, and of frankincense in sacrifice, as
well as by the very ancient borrowed names for them (--linon--,
-linum-; --porphura--, -purpura-; --skeiptron--, --skipon--, -scipio-;
perhaps also --elephas--, -ebur-; --thuos--, -thus-). Of similar
significance is the derivation of a number of words relating to
articles used in eating and drinking, particularly the names of
oil,(19) of jugs (--amphoreus--, -amp(h)ora-, -ampulla-, --krateir--,
-cratera-), of feasting (--komazo--, -comissari-), of a dainty dish
(--opsonion--, -opsonium-) of dough (--maza--, -massa-), and various
names of cakes (--glukons--, -lucuns-; --plakons--, -placenta-;
--turons--, -turunda-); while conversely the Latin names for dishes
(-patina-, --patanei--) and for lard (-arvina-, --arbinei--) have
found admission into Sicilian Greek. The later custom of placing
in the tomb beside the dead Attic, Corcyrean, and Campanian vases
proves, what these testimonies from language likewise show, the
early market for Greek pottery in Italy. That Greek leather-work
made its way into Latium at least in the shape of armour is apparent
from the application of the Greek word for leather --skutos-- to
signify among the Latins a shield (-scutum-; like -lorica-, from
-lorum-). Finally, we deduce a similar inference from the numerous
nautical terms borrowed from the Greek (although it is remarkable
that the chief technical expressions in navigation--the terms
for the sail, mast, and yard--are pure Latin forms);(20) and from
the recurrence in Latin of the Greek designations for a letter
(--epistolei--, -epistula-), a token (-tessera-, from --tessara--(21)),
a balance (--stateir--, -statera-), and earnest-money (--arrabon--,
-arrabo-, -arra-); and conversely from the adoption of Italian
law-terms in Sicilian Greek,(22) as well as from the exchange of
the proportions and names of coins, weights, and measures, which
we shall notice in the sequel. The character of barbarism which
all these borrowed terms obviously present, and especially the
characteristic formation of the nominative from the accusative
(-placenta- = --plakounta--; -ampora- = --amphorea--; -statera-=
--stateira--), constitute the clearest evidence of their great
antiquity. The worship of the god of traffic (-Mercurius-) also
appears to have been from the first influenced by Greek conceptions;
and his annual festival seems even to have been fixed on the ides
of May, because the Hellenic poets celebrated him as the son of
the beautiful Maia.
Commerce, in Latium Passive, in Etruria Active
It thus appears that Italy in very ancient times derived
its articles of luxury, just as imperial Rome did, from the East,
before it attempted to manufacture for itself after the models which
it imported. In exchange it had nothing to offer except its raw
produce, consisting especially of its copper, silver, and iron,
but including also slaves and timber for shipbuilding, amber from
the Baltic, and, in the event of bad harvests occurring abroad, its
grain. From this state of things as to the commodities in demand
and the equivalents to be offered in return, we have already
explained why Italian traffic assumed in Latium a form so differing
from that which it presented in Etruria. The Latins, who were
deficient in all the chief articles of export, could carry on only
a passive traffic, and were obliged even in the earliest times to
procure the copper of which they had need from the Etruscans in
exchange for cattle or slaves--we have already mentioned the very
ancient practice of selling the latter on the right bank of the
Tiber.(23) On the other hand the Tuscan balance of trade must
have been necessarily favourable in Caere as in Populonia, in Capua
as in Spina. Hence the rapid development of prosperity in these
regions and their powerful commercial position; whereas Latium
remained preeminently an agricultural country. The same contrast
recurs in all their individual relations. The oldest tombs constructed
and furnished in the Greek fashion, but with an extravagance to which
the Greeks were strangers, are to be found at Caere, while--with the
exception of Praeneste, which appears to have occupied a peculiar
position and to have been very intimately connected with Falerii
and southern Etruria--the Latin land exhibits only slight ornaments
for the dead of foreign origin, and not a single tomb of luxury
proper belonging to the earlier times; there as among the Sabellians
a simple turf ordinarily sufficed as a covering for the dead. The
most ancient coins, of a time not much later than those of Magna
Graecia, belong to Etruria, and to Populonia in particular: during
the whole regal period Latium had to be content with copper by
weight, and had not even introduced foreign coins, for the instances
are extremely rare in which such coins (e.g. one of Posidonia)
have been found there. In architecture, plastic art, and embossing,
the same stimulants acted on Etruria and on Latium, but it was only
in the case of the former that capital was everywhere brought to
bear on them and led to their being pursued extensively and with
growing technical skill. The commodities were upon the whole the
same, which were bought, sold, and manufactured in Latium and in
Etruria; but the southern land was far inferior to its northern
neighbours in the energy with which its commerce was plied. The
contrast between them in this respect is shown in the fact that
the articles of luxury manufactured after Greek models in Etruria
found a market in Latium, particularly at Praeneste, and even in
Greece itself, while Latium hardly ever exported anything of the
kind.
Etrusco-Attic, and Latino-Sicilian Commerce
A distinction not less remarkable between the commerce of the Latins
and that of the Etruscans appears in their respective routes or
lines of traffic. As to the earliest commerce of the Etruscans
in the Adriatic we can hardly do more than express the conjecture
that it was directed from Spina and Atria chiefly to Corcyra.
We have already mentioned(24) that the western Etruscans ventured
boldly into the eastern seas, and trafficked not merely with Sicily,
but also with Greece proper. An ancient intercourse with Attica
is indicated by the Attic clay vases, which are so numerous in the
more recent Etruscan tombs, and had been perhaps even at this time
introduced for other purposes than the already-mentioned decoration
of tombs, while conversely Tyrrhenian bronze candlesticks and gold
cups were articles early in request in Attica. Still more definitely
is such an intercourse indicated by the coins. The silver pieces
of Populonia were struck after the pattern of a very old silver
piece stamped on one side with the Gorgoneion, on the other merely
presenting an incuse square, which has been found at Athens and
on the old amber-route in the district of Posen, and which was in
all probability the very coin struck by order of Solon in Athens.
We have mentioned already that the Etruscans had also dealings, and
perhaps after the development of the Etrusco-Carthaginian maritime
alliance their principal dealings, with the Carthaginians. It is
a remarkable circumstance that in the oldest tombs of Caere, besides
native vessels of bronze and silver, there have been found chiefly
Oriental articles, which may certainly have come from Greek merchants,
but more probably were introduced by Phoenician traders. We must
not, however, attribute too great importance to this Phoenician trade,
and in particular we must not overlook the fact that the alphabet,
as well as the other influences that stimulated and matured native
culture, were brought to Etruria by the Greeks, and not by the
Phoenicians.
Latin commerce assumed a different direction. Rarely as we have
opportunity of instituting comparisons between the Romans and the
Etruscans as regards the reception of Hellenic elements, the cases
in which such comparisons can be instituted exhibit the two nations
as completely independent of each other. This is most clearly
apparent in the case of the alphabet. The Greek alphabet brought
to the Etruscans from the Chalcidico-Doric colonies in Sicily or
Campania varies not immaterially from that which the Latins derived
from the same quarter, so that, although both peoples have drawn
from the same source, they have done so at different times and
different places. The same phenomenon appears in particular words:
the Roman Pollux and the Tuscan Pultuke are independent corruptions
of the Greek Polydeukes; the Tuscan Utuze or Uthuze is formed from
Odysseus, the Roman Ulixes is an exact reproduction of the form of
the name usual in Sicily; in like manner the Tuscan Aivas corresponds
to the old Greek form of this name, the Roman Aiax to a secondary
form that was probably also Sicilian; the Roman Aperta or Apello
and the Samnite Appellun have sprung from the Doric Apellon, the
Tuscan Apulu from Apollon. Thus the language and writing of Latium
indicate that the direction of Latin commerce was exclusively towards
the Cumaeans and Siceliots. Every other trace which has survived
from so remote an age leads to the same conclusion: such as, the
coin of Posidonia found in Latium; the purchase of grain, when
a failure of the harvest occurred in Rome, from the Volscians,
Cumaeans, and Siceliots (and, as was natural, from the Etruscans
as well); above all, the relations subsisting between the Latin
and Sicilian monetary systems. As the local Dorico-Chalcidian
designation of silver coin --nomos--, and the Sicilian measure
--eimina--, were transferred with the same meaning to Latium as
-nummus- and -hemina-, so conversely the Italian designations of
weight, -libra-, -triens-, -quadrans-, -sextans-, -uncia-, which
arose in Latium for the measurement of the copper which was used
by weight instead of money, had found their way into the common
speech of Sicily in the third century of the city under the corrupt
and hybrid forms, --litra--, --trias--, --tetras--, --exas--,
--ougkia--. Indeed, among all the Greek systems of weights and
moneys, the Sicilian alone was brought into a determinate relation
to the Italian copper-system; not only was the value of silver set
down conventionally and perhaps legally as two hundred and fifty
times that of copper, but the equivalent on this computation of a
Sicilian pound of copper (1/120th of the Attic talent, 2/3 of the
Roman pound) was in very early times struck, especially at Syracuse,
as a silver coin (--litra argurion--, i.e. "copper-pound in
silver"). Accordingly it cannot be doubted that Italian bars of
copper circulated also in Sicily instead of money; and this exactly
harmonizes with the hypothesis that the commerce of the Latins
with Sicily was a passive commerce, in consequence of which Latin
money was drained away thither. Other proofs of ancient intercourse
between Sicily and Italy, especially the adoption in the Sicilian
dialect of the Italian expressions for a commercial loan, a prison,
and a dish, and the converse reception of Sicilian terms in Italy,
have been already mentioned.(25) We meet also with several, though
less definite, traces of an ancient intercourse of the Latins with
the Chalcidian cities in Lower Italy, Cumae and Neapolis, and with
the Phocaeans in Velia and Massilia. That it was however far less
active than that with the Siceliots is shown by the well-known
fact that all the Greek words which made their way in earlier times
to Latium exhibit Doric forms--we need only recall -Aesculapius-,
-Latona-, -Aperta-, -machina-. Had their dealings with the originally
Ionian cities, such as Cumae(26) and the Phocaean settlements,
been even merely on a similar scale with those which they had with
the Sicilian Dorians, Ionic forms would at least have made their
appearance along with the others; although certainly Dorism early
penetrated even into these Ionic colonies themselves, and their
dialect varied greatly. While all the facts thus combine to attest
the stirring traffic of the Latins with the Greeks of the western
main generally, and especially with the Sicilians, there hardly
occurred any immediate intercourse with the Asiatic Phoenicians,
and the intercourse with those of Africa, which is sufficiently
attested by statements of authors and by articles found, can only
have occupied a secondary position as affecting the state of culture
in Latium; in particular it is significant that--if we leave out of
account some local names--there is an utter absence of any evidence
from language as to ancient intercourse between the Latins and the
nations speaking the Aramaic tongue.(27)
If we further inquire how this traffic was mainly carried on, whether
by Italian merchants abroad or by foreign merchants in Italy, the
former supposition has all the probabilities in its favour, at
least so far as Latium is concerned. It is scarcely conceivable
that those Latin terms denoting the substitute for money and the
commercial loan could have found their way into general use in the
language of the inhabitants of Sicily through the mere resort of
Sicilian merchants to Ostia and their receipt of copper in exchange
for ornaments. Lastly, in regard to the persons and classes
by whom this traffic was carried on in Italy, no special superior
class of merchants distinct from and independent of the class of
landed proprietors developed itself in Rome. The reason of this
surprising phenomenon was, that the wholesale commerce of Latium was
from the beginning in the hands of the large landed proprietors--a
hypothesis which is not so singular as it seems. It was natural
that in a country intersected by several navigable rivers the great
landholder, who was paid by his tenants their quotas of produce in
kind, should come at an early period to possess barks; and there is
evidence that such was the case. The transmarine traffic conducted
on the trader's own account must therefore have fallen into the
hands of the great landholder, seeing that he alone possessed the
vessels for it and--in his produce--the articles for export.(28)
In fact the distinction between a landed and a moneyed aristocracy
was unknown to the Romans of earlier times; the great landholders
were at the same time the speculators and the capitalists. In
the case of a very energetic commerce such a combination certainly
could not have been maintained; but, as the previous representation
shows, while there was a comparatively vigorous traffic in Rome in
consequence of the trade of the Latin land being there concentrated,
Rome was by no means essentially a commercial city like Caere or
Tarentum, but was and continued to be the centre of an agricultural
community.
Notes for Book I Chapter XIII
1. I. II. Agriculture
2. I. III. Clan Villages, I. V. The Community
3. The system which we meet with in the case of the Germanic joint
tillage, combining a partition of the land in property among the
clansmen with its joint cultivation by the clan, can hardly ever
have existed in Italy. Had each clansman been regarded in Italy,
as among the Germans, in the light of proprietor of a particular
spot in each portion of the collective domain that was marked off
for tillage, the separate husbandry of later times would probably
have set out from a minute subdivision of hides. But the very
opposite was the case; the individual names of the Roman hides
(-fundus Cornelianus-) show clearly that the Roman proprietor owned
from the beginning a possession not broken up but united.
4. Cicero (de Rep. ii. 9, 14, comp. Plutarch, Q. Rom. 15) states:
-Tum (in the time of Romulus) erat res in pecore et locorum
possessionibus, ex quo pecuniosi et locupletes vocabantur--(Numa)
primum agros, quos bello Romulus ceperat, divisit viritim civibus-.
In like manner Dionysius represents Romulus as dividing the land into
thirty curial districts, and Numa as establishing boundary-stones
and introducing the festival of the Terminalia (i. 7, ii. 74; and
thence Plutarch, -Numa-, 16).
5. I. XI. Contracts
6. Since this assertion still continues to be disputed, we
shall let the numbers speak for themselves. The Roman writers on
agriculture of the later republic and the imperial period reckon on
an average five -modii- of wheat as sufficient to sow a -jugerum-, and
the produce as fivefold. The produce of a -heredium- accordingly
(even when, without taking into view the space occupied by
the dwelling-house and farm-yard, we regard it as entirely arable
land, and make no account of years of fallow) amounts to fifty, or
deducting the seed forty, modii. For an adult hard-working slave
Cato (c. 56) reckons fifty-one -modii-of wheat as the annual
consumption. These data enable any one to answer for himself the
question whether a Roman family could or could not subsist on the
produce of a -heredium-. The attempted proof to the contrary is
based on the ground that the slave of later times subsisted more
exclusively on corn than the free farmer of the earlier epoch, and
that the assumption of a fivefold return is one too low for this
earlier epoch; both assumptions are probably correct, but for both
there is a limit. Doubtless the subsidiary produce yielded by
the arable land itself and by the common pasture, such as figs,
vegetables, milk, flesh (especially as derived from the old and
zealously pursued rearing of swine), and the like, are specially
to be taken into account for the older period; but the older Roman
pastoral husbandry, though not unimportant, was withal of subordinate
importance, and the chief subsistence of the people was always
notoriously grain. We may, moreover, on account of the thoroughness
of the earlier cultivation obtain a very considerable increase,
especially of the gross produce--and beyond doubt the farmers of
this period drew a larger produce from their lands than the great
landholders of the later republic and the empire obtained (iii.
Latium); but moderation must be exercised in forming such estimates,
because we have to deal with a question of averages and with a mode
of husbandry conducted neither methodically nor with large capital.
The assumption of a tenfold instead of a fivefold return will be
the utmost limit, and yet it is far from sufficing. In no case
can the enormous deficit, which is left even according to those
estimates between the produce of the -heredium- and the requirements
of the household, be covered by mere superiority of cultivation.
In fact the counter-proof can only be regarded as successful, when
it shall have produced a methodical calculation based on rural
economics, according to which among a population chiefly subsisting
on vegetables the produce of a piece of land of an acre and a quarter
proves sufficient on an average for the subsistence of a family.
It is indeed asserted that instances occur even in historical times
of colonies founded with allotments of two -jugera-; but the only
instance of the kind (Liv. iv. 47) is that of the colony of Labici
in the year 336--an instance, which will certainly not be reckoned
(by such scholars as are worth the arguing with) to belong to the
class of traditions that are trustworthy in their historical details,
and which is beset by other very serious difficulties (see book
ii. ch. 5, note). It is no doubt true that in the non-colonial
assignation of land to the burgesses collectively (-adsignatio
viritana-) sometimes only a few -jugera- were granted (as e. g.
Liv. viii. ii, 21). In these cases however it was the intention
not to create new farms with the allotments, but rather, as a rule,
to add to the existing farms new parcels from the conquered lands
(comp. C. I. L. i. p. 88). At any rate, any supposition is better
than a hypothesis which requires us to believe as it were in
a miraculous multiplication of the food of the Roman household.
The Roman farmers were far less modest in their requirements than
their historiographers; they themselves conceived that they could
not subsist even on allotments of seven -jugera- or a produce of
one hundred and forty -modii-.
7. I. VI. Time and Occasion of the Reform
8. Perhaps the latest, although probably not the last, attempt
to prove that a Latin farmer's family might have subsisted on two
-jugera- of land, finds its chief support in the argument that Varro
(de R. R. i. 44, i) reckons the seed requisite for the -jugerum-
at five -modii- of wheat but ten -modii- of spelt, and estimates
the produce as corresponding to this, whence it is inferred that
the cultivation of spelt yielded a produce, if not double, at least
considerably higher than that of wheat. But the converse is more
correct, and the nominally higher quantity sown and reaped is simply
to be explained by the fact that the Romans garnered and sowed the
wheat already shelled, but the spelt still in the husk (Pliny, H.
N. xviii. 7, 61), which in this case was not separated from the
fruit by threshing. For the same reason spelt is at the present
day sown twice as thickly as wheat, and gives a produce twice as
great by measure, but less after deduction of the husks. According
to Wurtemberg estimates furnished to me by G. Hanssen, the average
produce of the Wurtemberg -morgen- is reckoned in the case of
wheat (with a sowing of 1/4 to 1/2 -scheffel-) at 3 -scheffel- of
the medium weight of 275 Ibs. (= 825 Ibs.); in the case of spelt
(with a sowing of 1/2 to 1 1/2 -scheffel-) at least 7 -scheffel- of
the medium weight of 150 lbs. ( = 1050 Ibs.), which are reduced
by shelling to about 4 -scheffel-. Thus spelt compared with wheat
yields in the gross more than double, with equally good soil perhaps
triple the crop, but--by specific weight--before the shelling not
much above, after shelling (as "kernel") less than, the half. It
was not by mistake, as has been asserted, but because it was fitting
in computations of this sort to start from estimates of a like
nature handed down to us, that the calculation instituted above was
based on wheat; it may stand, because, when transferred to spelt,
it does not essentially differ and the produce rather falls than
rises. Spelt is less nice as to soil and climate, and exposed
to fewer risks than wheat; but the latter yields on the whole,
especially when we take into account the not inconsiderable expenses
of shelling, a higher net produce (on an average of fifty years in
the district of Frankenthal in Rhenish Bavaria the -malter- of wheat
stands at 11 -gulden- 3 krz., the -malter- of spelt at 4 -gulden-30
krz.), and, as in South Germany, where the soil admits, the growing
of wheat is preferred and generally with the progress of cultivation
comes to supersede that of spelt, so the analogous transition of
Italian agriculture from the culture of spelt to that of wheat was
undeniably a progress.
9. I. II. Agriculture
10. -Oleum- and -oliva- are derived from --elaion--, --elaia--,
and -amurca- (oil-less) from --amorgei--.
11. But there is no proper authority for the statement that the
fig-tree which stood in front of the temple of Saturn was cut down
in the year 260 (Plin. H. N. xv. 18, 77); the date CCLX. is wanting
in all good manuscripts, and has been interpolated, probably with
reference to Liv. ii. 21.
12. I. XI. Property
13. I. VI. Class of --Metoeci-- Subsisting by the Side of the
Community
14. I. XI. Guardianship
15. I. XII. Oldest Table of Roman Festivals
16. The comparative legal value of sheep and oxen, as is well known,
is proved by the fact that, when the cattle-fines were converted
into money-fines, the sheep was rated at ten, and the ox at a
hundred asses (Festus, v. -peculatus-, p. 237, comp. pp. 34, 144;
Gell. xi. i; Plutarch, Poplicola, ii). By a similar adjustment the
Icelandic law makes twelve rams equivalent to a cow; only in this
as in other instances the Germanic law has substituted the duodecimal
for the older decimal system.
It is well known that the term denoting cattle was transferred to
denote money both among the Latins (-pecunia-) and among the Germans
(English fee).
17. I. XIV. Decimal System
18. There has lately been found at Praeneste a silver mixing-jug,
with a Phoenician and a hieroglyphic inscription (Mon. dell Inst.
x. plate 32), which directly proves that such Egyptian wares as
come to light in Italy have found their way thither through the
medium of the Phoenicians.
19. comp. I. XIII. Culture of the Olive
20. -Velum- is certainly of Latin origin; so is -malus-, especially
as that term denotes not merely the mast, but the tree in general:
-antenna- likewise may come from --ana-- (-anhelare-, -antestari-),
and -tendere- = -supertensa-. Of Greek origin, on the other
hand, are -gubenare-, to steer (--kubernan--); -ancora-, anchor
(--agkura--); -prora-, ship's bow (--prora--); -aplustre-,
ship's stern (--aphlaston--); -anquina-, the rope fastening the
yards (--agkoina--); -nausea-, sea-sickness (--nausia--). The
four chief winds of the ancients- -aquilo-, the "eagle-wind," the
north-easterly Tramontana; -voltumus- (of uncertain derivation,
perhaps the "vulture-wind"), the south-easterly; -auster- the
"scorching" southwest wind, the Sirocco; -favonius-, the "favourable"
north-west wind blowing from the Tyrrhene Sea--have indigenous
names bearing no reference to navigation; but all the other Latin
names for winds are Greek (such as -eurus-, -notus-), or translations
from the Greek (e.g. -solanus- = --apelioteis--, -Africus- =
--lips--).
21. This meant in the first instance the tokens used in the service
of the camp, the --xuleiphia kata phulakein brachea teleos echonta
charakteira-- (Polyb. vi. 35, 7); the four -vigiliae- of the
night-service gave name to the tokens generally. The fourfold
division of the night for the service of watching is Greek as well
as Roman; the military science of the Greeks may well have exercised
an influence--possibly through Pyrrhus (Liv. xxxv. 14)--in the
organization of the measures for security in the Roman camp. The
employment of the non-Doric form speaks for the comparatively late
date at which theword was taken over.
22. I. XI. Character of the Roman Law
23. I. VII. Relation of Rome to Latium
24. I. X. Etruscan Commerce
25. I. XI. Clients and Foreigners, I. XIII. Commerce, in Latium
Passive, in Etruria Active
26. I. X. Greek Cities Near Vesuvius
27. If we leave out of view -Sarranus-, -Afer-, and other local
designations (I. X. Phoenicians and Italians in Opposition to the
Hellenes), the Latin language appears not to possess a single word
immediately derived in early times from the Phoenician. The very
few words from Phoenician roots which occur in it, such as -arrabo-
or -arra- and perhaps also -murra-, -nardus-, and the like, are
plainly borrowed proximately from the Greek, which has a considerable
number of such words of Oriental extraction as indications of its
primitive intercourse with the Aramaeans. That --elephas-- and
-ebur- should have come from the same Phoenician original with or
without the addition of the article, and thus have been each formed
independently, is a linguistic impossibility, as the Phoenician
article is in reality -ha-, and is not so employed; besides the
Oriental primitive word has not as yet been found. The same holds
true of the enigmatical word -thesaurus-; whether it may have been
originally Greek or borrowed by the Greeks from the Phoenician
or Persian, it is at any rate, as a Latin word, derived from the
Greek, as the very retaining of its aspiration proves (xii. Foreign
Worships).
28. Quintus Claudius, in a law issued shortly before 534, prohibited
the senators from having sea-going vessels holding more than 300
-amphorae- (1 amph. = nearly 6 gallons): -id satis habitum ad fructus
ex agris vectandos; quaestus omnis patribus indecorus visus- (Liv.
xxi. 63). It was thus an ancient usage, and was still permitted,
that the senators should possess sea-going vessels for the transport
of the produce of their estates: on the other hand, transmarine
mercantile speculation (-quaestus-, traffic, fitting-out of vessels,
&c.) on their part was prohibited. It is a curious fact that the
ancient Greeks as well as the Romans expressed the tonnage of their
sea-going ships constantly in amphorae; the reason evidently being,
that Greece as well as Italy exported wine at a comparatively early
period, and on a larger scale than any other bulky article.