140 mlicus. mercennarii 



made at the cost of the state (a) for cultivation of his farm 1 by contract 

 (b) for maintenance of his wife and children (c) for making good the 

 losses he had suffered. The reference of Pliny 2 rather confirms the 

 details of Valerius, who by himself is not a very satisfactory witness. 

 Livy is probably the source of all these versions. They are part of the 

 Roman tradition of the first Punic war. Polybius, whose narrative is 

 from another line of tradition, says not a word of this story. Indeed, 

 he declares 3 that Regulus, so far from wishing to be relieved, wanted 

 to stay on, fearing that he might hand over the credit of a final victory 

 to a successor. The two traditions cannot be reconciled as they stand. 

 Probably neither is complete. If we suppose the account of Polybius 

 to be true, it does not follow as a matter of course that the other story 

 is a baseless fiction. In any case, the relation of Regulus to the agri- 

 culture of his day, as represented by the story, seemed credible to 

 Romans of a later age, and deserves serious consideration. 



We are told that in the middle of the third century BC a man of 

 such position and recognized merit that he was specially chosen to fill 

 the place of a deceased consul in the course of a great war was a farmer 

 on an estate of seven iugera, from which he was supporting his wife 

 and family. In his absence on public duty he had left the farm in charge 

 of a vilicus. The only reference to the labour employed there speaks 

 of hired men (wage-earners, mercennarii}. It does not say that there 

 were no slaves. But the natural inference is that the vilicus had the 

 control of a staff consisting wholly or largely of free labourers. Now 

 that a slave vilicus might in the ordinary run of business be left in 

 control of labourers, slave or free, seems clear from directions given by 

 Cato 4 in the next century. The vilicus in this story was therefore 

 probably a slave, as they were generally if not always. His death left 

 the hired men uncontrolled, and they took the opportunity of robbing 

 their employer. Roused by the absent consul's complaints (whether 

 accompanied by a request for relief or not), the Senate took up the 

 matter and arranged to secure him against loss. We do not hear of the 

 punishment of the dishonest hirelings, or even of a search for them. 

 This may be merely an omitted detail : at any rate they had probably 

 left the neighbourhood. The curious thing is that we hear nothing of 

 the wife of Regulus: that a Roman matron submitted tamely to such 

 treatment is hard to believe. Was it she who made the complaints and 

 set the Senate in motion? The general outcome of the story is a con- 

 clusion that hired labour was freely employed in this age, not to 

 exclusion of slave labour, but combined with it : that is, that the wage- 



1 colendum locari. 3 Plin A^xvm 39. 3 Polyb I 31 4. 



4 Cato 5 4 (of duties of vilicus) operarium mercennarium politorem diutius ettndem ne 

 habeat die. 



