Landlord and steward 159 



It has been briefly hinted above that the steward's obvious interest 

 lay in preventing his master from expecting too much in the way of 

 returns from the estate. The demand for net income, that is to say the 

 treatment of agriculture as an investment yielding a steady return year 

 in and year out, was economically unsound. A landlord in public life 

 wanted a safe income; interest on good debentures, as we should say. 

 But to guarantee this some capitalist was needed to take the risks of 

 business, of course with the prospect of gaining in good years more 

 than he lost in bad ones. Now the Roman landlord had no such protec- 

 tion. In a business subject to unavoidable fluctuations he was not only 

 entitled to the profits but liable to the losses. Imagine him just arrived 

 from Rome, pledged already to some considerable outlay on shows or 

 simple bribery, and looking for a cash balance larger than that shewn at 

 the last audit. Let the steward meet him with a tale of disaster, and con- 

 ceive his fury. Situations of this kind must surely have occurred, perhaps 

 not very seldom: and one of the two men was in the absolute power of 

 the other. We need not imagine the immediate 1 sequel. Stewards on 

 estates for miles round would be reminded of their own risks of disgrace 

 and punishment, and would look to their own security. I suggest that 

 the habitual practice of these trusted men was to keep the produce of 

 an estate down to a level at which it could easily be maintained; and, 

 if possible, to represent it as being even less than it really was. Thus 

 they removed a danger from themselves. This policy implied an easy- 

 going management of the staff, but the staff were not likely to resent or 

 betray it. A master like Cato was perhaps not to be taken in by a device 

 of the kind : but Catoswere rare, and the old man's advice to look sharply 

 after your vilicus sounds as if he believed many masters to be habitually 

 fooled by their plausible stewards. If such was indeed the case, here we 

 have at once a manifest cause of the decline of agriculture. The restric- 

 tion of production would become year by year easier to arrange and 

 conceal, harder and harder to detect. The employment of freemen 3 as v 

 stewards seems not to have been tried as a remedy; partly perhaps 

 because they would have insisted on good salaries, partly because they 

 were free to go, and, if rogues 3 , not empty-handed. 



The cause to which I have pointed is one that could continue 

 operating from generation to generation, and was likely so to continue 

 until such time as the free farmer should once more occupy the land. 

 The loving care that agriculture needs could only return with him. It 

 was not lack of technical knowledge that did the mischief; Varro's 

 treatise is enough to prove that. It was the lack of personal devotion 



1 As Cato 5 2 says, dominus inpune ne Sinat esse. 



2 Foreshadowed in Xenophon memor II 8. 



3 Compare the case of the mercennarius and Regulus referred to above. 



