138 The small farmer and slave labour 



defiance of the threats and cajolery of Pyrrhus, and impervious to 

 bribes. Both these traditions received much legendary colouring in 

 course of time. The passage bearing most directly on my present in- 

 quiry is a fragment 1 of Dionysius, in which Fabricius is spurning the 

 offers of king Pyrrhus, who is very anxious to secure the good man's 

 services as his chief minister on liberal terms. He says 'nor need I tell 

 you of my poverty, that I have but a very small plot of land with 

 a mean cottage, and that I get my living neither from money at 

 interest (CLTTQ Saveio-fjLaTcov) nor from slaves (air avSpairbbcov}? Below 

 he declares that living under Roman conditions he holds himself a 

 happy man, ' for with industry and thrift I find my poor little farm 

 sufficient to provide me with necessaries.' And his constitution (Averts) 

 does not constrain him to hanker after unnecessary things. Here we 

 have a good specimen of the moral stories with which the later 

 rhetoricians edified their readers. But what does 'from slaves' mean? 

 Is Fabricius denying that he employs slave-labour on his farm? If so, 

 I confess that I do not believe the denial as being his own genuine 

 utterance. I take it to be put into his mouth by Dionysius, writing 

 under the influence of the agricultural conditions of a much later time, 

 when great slave-owners drew large incomes from the exploitation of 

 slave-labour on great estates. But I am not sure that Dionysius means 

 him to be saying more than 'I am not a big capitalist farming on a 

 large scale by slave-gangs.' How far this writer really understood the 

 state of things in the third century BC, is hard to say. In any case he 

 is repeating what he has picked up from earlier writers and not letting 

 it suffer in the repetition. Taken by himself, he is no more a sufficient 

 witness to the practice of Fabricius than to that of Cincinnatus. That 

 there was slavery is certain : that Fabricius had scruples against em- 

 ploying slaves is hardly credible. 



In the ages during which Rome gradually won her way to the 

 headship of Italy the Roman citizen was normally both farmer and 

 soldier: the soldier generally a man called up from his farm for a cam- 

 paign, the farmer of military age always potentially a soldier. This 

 state of things was evidently not peculiar to Rome. What makes it 

 striking in the case of Rome is the well-considered system by which 

 the military machine was kept in working order. The development of 

 fortress colonies and extension of roads gave to Roman farmers in the 

 border-lands more security than any neighbouring power could give to 

 its own citizens on its own side of the border. Mobilization was more 

 prompt and effective on the Roman side under a central control: the 

 fortresses served as a hindrance to hostile invaders, as refuges to the 

 rustics at need, and as bases for Roman armies. It is no great stretch 



1 Dionys xix 15. 



