Financial position of landlords 155 



landlords. These men, says 1 Cicero, though deep in debt, could quite 

 well pay what they owe by selling their lands. But they will not do 

 this : they are ' land-proud.' The income from their estates will not 

 cover the interest on their debts, but they go on foolishly trying to 

 make it do so. In this struggle they are "bound to be beaten. In other 

 words, the return on their landed estates is not enough to support a 

 life of extravagance in Rome. So they borrow, at high interest. The 

 creditors of course take good security, with a margin for risks. So, 

 in order to keep the social status of a great landlord, the borrower 

 takes a loan of less than the capital value of his land, while he has 

 to pay for the accommodation more than the income from the land. 

 Ruin is the certain end of such finance, and it is only in a revolution 

 that there is any hope of ' something turning up ' in favour of the 

 debtor. We must not suppose that all or most of the great landlords 

 of the day had reached the stage of embarrassment described by 

 Cicero. That there were some in that plight, is not to be doubted, 

 even when we have allowed freely for an orator's overstatements. But 

 it is hardly rash to suppose that there were some landlords who were* 

 not in debt, at least to a serious extent, either through good returns 

 from their lands or from other investments, or even from living 

 thriftily. What seems quite clear is that large-scale farming of land 

 was by no means so remunerative financially as other forms of invest- 

 ment ; and that though, as pointed out above, it was carried on with 

 not a few points in its favour. 



In the same descriptive passage 2 the orator refers to another class 

 of landowners ripe for revolution. These were the veterans of Sulla, 

 settled by him as coloni on lands of farmers dispossessed on pretext 

 of complicity with his Marian opponents. Their estates were no 

 doubt on a smaller scale than those of the class just spoken of above. 

 But they were evidently comfortable allotments. The discharged 

 soldiers made bad farmers. They -meant to enjoy the wealth suddenly 

 bestowed, and they had no notion of economy. Their extravagance, 

 one form of which was the keeping of a number 3 of slaves, soon 

 landed them hopelessly in debt. So they also saw their only chance 

 of recovery in a renewal of civil war and fresh confiscations. It was 

 said that a number of necessitous rustics (probably some of the very 

 men ejected from the farms) were ready to join them in a campaign 

 of plunder. Here we have a special picture of the military colonist, 

 one of the most sinister figures in the last age of the Republic. It is 



1 Cic in Catil II 18. 



2 Cic in Catil II 20, cf de lege agr II 78 fundos quorum subsidio familiarum magnitu- 

 dines sustentare possint. 



8 familiis magnis. 



