of estate-management 1 67 



traditional description of virum bonum as being bonum agricolam 

 bonumque colonum. For his own scheme is not one for enabling a 

 poor man to win a living for himself and family out of a little patch 

 of ground. It is farming for profit ; and, though not designed for a 

 big latifundium, it is on a considerable scale. He contemplates 1 an 

 oliveyard of 240 iugera and a vineyard of 100 zugera, not to mention 

 all the other departments, and the rigid precepts for preventing waste 

 and getting the most out of everything are the most striking feature 

 of his book. The first business 2 of an owner, he says, is not to buy but 

 to sell. Fifthly, it is important to notice that he does not suggest 

 letting all or part of the estate to tenants. He starts by giving good 

 advice as to the pains and caution 3 needed in buying a landed property 

 But, once bought, he assumes that the buyer will keep it in hand and 

 farm it for his own account. It has been said on high authority 4 that 

 theTpIafi oFTetting farms to tenant coloni was ' as old as Italy.' I do 

 not venture to deny this. But my inquiry leads me to the conviction 

 that in early times such an arrangement was extremely rare: the 

 granting of a plot of land during pleasure (precario) by a patron to a 

 client was a very different thing. Cato only uses the word 5 colonus 

 in the general sense of cultivator, and so far as he is concerned we 

 should never guess that free tenant farmers were known in Italy. 

 Sixthly,%rhereas in Varro and Columella we find the influence of later 

 Greek thought shewn in a desire to treat even rustic slaves as human 

 and to appeal to the lure of reward rather than the fear of punish- 

 ment, to Cato the human chattel seems on the level of the ox. 

 When past work, "both ox and slave are to be sold 6 for what they will 

 fetch. This he himself says, and his d Jttrine was duly recorded by 

 Plutarch as a mark of his hard character: *t is therefore not surprising 

 that he makes no reference to slaves having any quasi-property 

 (peculium) of their own, though the custom of allowing this privilege 

 was surely well known to him, and was probably very ancient. If the 

 final fate of the slave was to be sold as rubbish in order to save his 

 keep, there was not much point in letting him keep a few fowls or 



1 Cato agr 10 i, n i. 



2 2 7 patrem familias vendacem non emacem esse oportet. 



3 Cato agr i. 4 Mommsen in Hermes xv p 408. 



5 praef% 2, i 4. According to a speaker in Seneca controv vn 6 17 Cato's later wife 

 was coloni sui filiam..,ingenuam. Plut Cat mai 24 makes her TreXdrtj', that is daughter of a 

 client. There seems to be no real contradiction. The cliens might be his patron's tenant. 



6 2 7 doves vetulos .. .servum senem, servum morbosum...vendat. Cf Plut Cat mai 5, 

 Martial xi 70, Juvenal x 268-70. In Terence Hautont 142-4 the Old Man, on taking to 

 farming, sells off all his household slaves save such as are able to pay for their keep opere 

 rustico faciundo. His motive for giving up domestic comfort and taking to hard manual 

 labour on the land is to punish himself. So ibid 65-74 he appears as neglecting to keep his 

 farm-hands at work. 



