The story of Manlius 145 



Now that there was land-hunger from the earliest times, and that 

 agriculture was in itself an honourable trade, we have no good reason 

 for doubting. But that the dislike of wage-earning labour as such was 

 the main motive of land-hunger is a more doubtful proposition. It 

 may be true, but it sounds very like an explanation supplied by a 

 learned but rhetorical historian. We know that Dionysius regarded 

 Rome as a city of Greek origin. The legends of early Attica were 

 doubtless familiar to him. We may grant that there was probably 

 some likeness between the labour-conditions of early Rome and early 

 Athens. But historians are ever tempted to detect analogies in haste 

 and remodel tradition at leisure. I suspect that the two features of 

 the same picture, the prevalence of rustic slavery and also of rustic 

 wage-earning, are taken from different lines of tradition, and both 

 overdrawn. 



In connexion with this question it is necessary to turn back to a 

 remarkable passage 1 of Livy referring to the year 362 BC. The famous 

 L Manlius the martinet (imperiosus) was threatened with a public 

 prosecution by a tribune for misuse of his powers as dictator in the 

 year just past. To create prejudice against the accused, the prosecutor 

 further alleged that he had treated his son Titus with cruel severity. 

 The young man was slow of wit and speech, but no wrongdoing had 

 been brought home to him. Yet his father had turned him out of his 

 city home, had cut him off from public life and the company of other 

 youths, and put him to servile work, shutting him up in what was 

 almost a slaves' prison (ergastulum). The daily affliction of such a life 

 was calculated to teach the dictator's son that he had indeed a martinet 

 for his father. To keep his son among the flocks in the rustic condition 

 and habit of a country boor was to intensify any natural defects of 

 his own offspring, conduct too heartless for even the brute beasts. But 

 the young Manlius upset all calculations. On hearing what was in con- 

 templation he started for Rome with a knife, made his way into the 

 tribune's presence in the morning and made him solemnly swear to 

 drop the prosecution by a threat of killing him then and there if he 

 did not take the oath. The tribune swore, and the trial fell through. 

 The Roman commons were vexed to lose the chance of using their 

 votes to punish the father for his arbitrary and unfeeling conduct, but 

 they approved the dutiful act of the son, and took the first opportunity 

 of electing him a military officer. This young man was afterwards the 

 renowned T Manlius Torquatus, who followed his father's example of 

 severity by putting to death his own son for a breach of military dis- 

 cipline. 



The story is a fine specimen of the edifying legends kept in circu- 



1 Liv vii 4, 5. A slightly different and shorter version in Cic de o/iil 112. 

 H. A. 10 



