The Farmer-heroes 135 



grave evils. But in Rome's early days there cannot have been any 

 great amount of such domain-land. That there was land-hunger, a 

 demand for several allotments in full ownership, on which a family 

 might live, is not to be doubted. And the formation of communities, 

 each with its village centre and its common pasture, was a very natural 

 means to promote mutual help and protection. That men so situated 

 worked with their own hands, and that the labour was mainly (and 

 often wholly) that of the father and his family, is as nearly certain as 

 such a proposition can be. But this does not imply or suggest that no 

 slave-labour was employed on the farms. It merely means that farms 

 were not worked on a system in which all manual labour was performed 

 by slaves. We have to inquire what is the traditional picture of agri- 

 cultural conditions in the early days of Rome, and how far that picture 

 is worthy of our belief. 



Now it so happens that .three striking figures stand out in the tra- 

 ditional picture of the Roman farmer-soldiers of the early Republic. 

 Others fill in certain details, but the names of Lucius Quinctius Cin- 

 cinnatus, Manius Curius Dentatus, and Gaius Fabricius Luscinus, were 

 especially notable in Roman legend as representing the strenuous 

 patriotic and frugal lives of the heroes of old. The story of Cincinnatus 1 

 is told by Cicero. Livy pionysius and Pliny the elder, and often referred 

 to by other writers. The hero is a Patrician of the old simple frugal 

 patriotic masterful type, the admiration and imitation of which these 

 edifying legends seek to encourage. He had owned seven iugera of 

 land, but had been driven to pledge or sell three of these 2 in order to 

 provide bail for his son, who had been brought to trial for disturbance 

 of the public peace and had sought safety in flight. The forfeit imposed 

 on the father left him with only four iugera. This little farm, on the 

 further side of the Tiber, he was cultivating, when deputies from the 

 Senate came to announce that he had been named Dictator to deal with 

 a great emergency. They found him digging or ploughing, covered 

 with dust and sweat: and he would not receive them till he had washed 

 and gowned himself. Then he heard their message, took up the duties 

 of the supreme office, and of course saved the state. It is to be noted that 

 he chose as his Master of the Horse (the Dictator's understudy) a man 

 of the same 3 sort, Patrician by birth, poor, but a stout warrior. We 

 may fairly suspect that a definite moral purpose has been at work, 

 modelling and colouring this pretty story. In a later age, when the 

 power of moneyed interests was overriding the prestige of Patrician 

 blood, the reaction of an 'old-Roman' party was long a vigorous force 



1 Cic Cato mat 56, Liv in 26, Dionys x 8, 17, Plin NH xvm 20, Valer Max iv 7. 

 The discrepancies in the versions do not concern us here. 



2 Liv in 13 8-10, Dionys x 8. 3 Liv in 27 i. 



