124 Rustic life in Plautus 



Calderini also holds that as Greek industries and commerce declined 

 free labour competed more and more with slave-labour. So far as 

 urban trades are concerned, this is probably true : and likewise a cer- 

 tain decline in domestic slavery due to the straitened circumstances 

 of families and experience of the waste and nuisance of large slave- 

 households. This last point, already noticed 1 e.g. by Aristotle, is to be 

 found expressed in utterances of the comic poets. Rustic slavery 

 appears in the fragments of Menander's Tecopyo^ but the old farmer's 

 slaves are Barbarians, who will do nothing to help him when acci- 

 dentally hurt, and who are hardly likely to receive favours. The 

 ordinary view of agriculture in Menander's time seems most truly ex- 

 pressed in his saying 2 that it is a .slave's business. 



Mention of the comic poets may remind us that most of the sur- 

 viving matter of the later Comedy has reached us in the Latin versions 

 and adaptations of Plautus and Terence. It is necessary to speak of 

 their evidence separately, in particular where slavery is in question, 

 for the relative passages are liable to be touched with Roman colouring. 

 In the case of manumission this is especially clear, but to pursue the 

 topic in detail is beyond my present purpose. The passages of Plautus 

 bearing on rustic life are not many, but the picture so far as it goes is 

 clear and consistent. In general the master is represented as a man of 

 means with a house in town and a country estate outside. The latter 

 is worked by slaves under a slave-bailiff or steward (vilicus). The 

 town-house is staffed by slaves, but the headman is less absolute than 

 the steward on the farm : departmental chiefs, such as the cook, are 

 important parts of the household. This is natural enough, for the 

 master generally resides there himself, and only pays occasional 3 visits 

 to the farm. The two sets of slaves are kept apart. If the steward 4 or 

 some other trusted farm-slave has to come to town, he is practically a 

 stranger, and a quarrel is apt to arise with leading domestics : for his 

 rustic appearance and manners are despised by the pampered menials. 

 But he is aware that his turn may come: some day the master in 

 wrath may consign the offending town-slave to farm-labour, and 

 then . Apart from slavery, rustic life is regarded 5 as favourable to 

 good morals : honest labour, frugal habits, freedom from urban temp- 

 tations, commend it to fathers who desire to preserve their sons from 

 corrupting debauchery. In short, the urban moralist idealizes the farm. 

 Whether he would by choice reside there, is quite another thing. Clearly 

 the average young citizen would not. That the farm is occasionally used 8 



1 Ar Pol ii 3 4, cf saying of Diogenes in Stobyfor LXII 47. Menander fragm 760 K 

 els eo-ri SoDXos olidas 6 deffiroT-rjs. 



2 See above, chapter xm p 64. So Jove Poenulus 944-5. 



4 Casino. 97 foil, Poenulus 170-1, Mostellaria 1-83. 



5 Mercator 65 foil. 6 Mercator passim. 



