Development of Tenancies 161 



until an inspection of these private prisons was undertaken by the 

 government. Such phenomena are not likely to be the inventions of 

 sensational writers; for the government, heavily weighted with other 

 responsibilities, was driven to intervene and put down the scandal. 

 But to do this was not to supply the necessary labour. That problem 

 remained, and in the attempt to solve it an important development in 

 the organization of large estates seems to have taken place. While the 

 regular labour was as before furnished by the slave-staff, and greater 

 care taken 1 to avoid losses by sickness, and while even the breeding of 

 slaves under certain restrictions was found worthy of attention, the 

 need of extra hands at certain seasons was met by an arrangement for 

 retaining potential free labourers within easy reach. This was an ex- 

 tension of the system of tenant coloni. Parcels of the estate were let 

 to small farmers, whose residence was thereby assured. Columella 2 

 advises a landlord in dealing with his tenants to be more precise in 

 exacting from them work (opus} than rent (pensiones), and Weber 3 takes 

 opus to mean not merely the proper cultivation of their several plots 

 but a stipulated amount of labour on the lord's farm. The practice of 

 exacting labour from debtors 4 in discharge of their debt was not a new 

 one, and this arrangement seems to be the same in a more systematic 

 form. By taking care to keep the little farm sufficiently small, and 

 fixing the rent sufficiently high, the tenant was pretty certain to be 

 often behind with his rent In such conditions, even if the tenant did 

 not encumber himself by further borrowing, it is clear that he was very 

 liable to sink into a 'soccage' tenant, bound to render regular services 

 without wage. Nominally free, he was practically tied to the soil; 

 while the landlord, nominally but the owner of the soil, gradually 

 acquired what was of more value than a money rent, the ownership 

 of his tenant's services. In the growing scarcity of slave labour the 

 lord had a strong motive for insisting on his rights, and so the free 

 worker travelled down the road to serfdom. 



In reviewing the history of rustic slavery, and its bearing on the 

 labour-question, from the end of the second Punic war to the time of 

 Marcus Aurelius, it is not necessary to refer to every indication of the 

 discontents that were normal in the miserable slave-gangs. A few 

 actual outbreaks of which we have definite records will serve to illus- 

 trate the sort of sleeping volcano, ever liable to explode, on which 

 thousands of Italian landlords were sitting. The writers on agriculture 

 were fully conscious of the peril, and among various precepts designed 



1 Even a valetudinarium is provided. See Columella XI i 18, xn i 6, 3 7, 8. 



2 Columella I 7. 



3 Weber op cit pp 244-5. See the chapter on Columella for this interpretation. It can 

 hardly be considered certain, but it is not vital to the argument. 



* Varro I 17 2, cf Colum I 3 12. 



H. A. II 



