136 Early rustic slavery 



in Roman life, as we see from the career of the elder Cato. Cato was 

 a Plebeian, but any Plebeian who admired the simple ways of early 

 Rome was bound to recognize that Patricians were the nobility of the 

 olden time. 



Now the fact of Cincinnatus working with his own hands is the one 

 material point in the story. We need not doubt that there were many 

 such men, and that a name (perhaps correct) was necessary in order to 

 keep the story current and to impress later generations with the virtues 

 of their ancestors. But, if the man had under him a slave or slaves, the 

 fact would be quite unimportant for the purpose of the legend. There- 

 fore it is no wonder that the versions of the story in general say nothing 

 of slaves. It is more remarkable that in the version of Dionysius we 

 read that Cincinnatus, after selling off most of his property to meet the 

 liabilities incurred through his son, 'kept for himself one small farm 

 beyond the Tiber, on which there was a mean cabin : there he was 

 living a life of toil and hardship, tilling the soil with a few slaves/ 

 That Dionysius was a rhetorician with an eye for picturesque detail, 

 and liable to overdraw a picture, is certain: but it is not evident how 

 the mention of the slaves is to be accounted for by this tendency. The 

 impression of the hero's poverty and personal labour is rather weakened 

 by mention of slaves. The writer derived his story from Roman sources. 

 Now, did the original version include the slaves or not? Did Livy and 

 the rest leave them out, or did Dionysius put them in? Were they 

 omitted as useless or embarrassing for the uses of edifying, or were 

 they casually inserted owing to the prepossessions of a Greek familiar 

 only with a developed slave-system, to whom 'with a few slaves' would 

 fitly connote poverty? To answer these questions with confidence is 

 perhaps unwise. But to me it seems far more likely that Roman 

 writers left the detail out than that a Greek student put it in. 



If the tradition of the early wars is of any value at all, it may give 

 a general support to this opinion through the frequent references to 

 the existence of rustic slavery. The devastation of an enemy's country 

 is the normal occupation of hostile armies. The capture of slaves 1 , as 

 of flocks and herds and beasts of burden, is a common item in the tale 

 of booty from the farms. That writers of a later age may have ex- 

 aggerated the slave-element in the farm-labour of early times is highly 

 probable. The picturesque was an object, and it was natural to attempt 

 it with the use of touches suggested by daily circumstances of the 

 world in which they were living. But that they so completely mis- 

 represented the conditions of a past age as to foist into the picture so 

 important a figure as the slave, without authority or probability, is 

 hardly to be believed, unless there is good reason for thinking that 



1 Liv x 36 17, Dionys vi 3, etc. 



