172 Special functions 



pastores. Even so, when a speculator buys the season's lambs, he 

 provides a pastor for two months, and the man is held in pledge 1 by 

 the landlord until the account is finally settled. 



There are casual references to other persons employed on the 

 estate whose condition has to be inferred from various indications 

 with more or less certainty. Thus the capulator, who draws off the 

 oil from the press into vessels, is connected with the custos* and is 

 not clearly distinct from him. He may be a slave, but the call for 

 strict cleanliness and care at this stage of the operations rather 

 suggests the free wage-earner. An epistates is mentioned 3 in a chapter 

 on food-rations (familiae cibaria), and grouped with the vilicus and 

 vilica and the opilio. They receive less food than the common hands 

 engaged in rough manual labour. They are probably all slaves, the 

 epistates being a foreman of some sort, and the opilio the head 

 shepherd, the magister pecoris of whom we often hear later. In the 

 estimates 4 of the equipment required for a farm with oliveyard or 

 vineyard the human staff is included with the other live and dead 

 stock. The operarii mentioned in this connexion are evidently slave 

 hands, and the bubulcus* subulcus asinarius opilio and salictarius are 

 the same, only specialized in function. For an oliveyard of 240 iugera 

 the human staff is put at 13 (summa homines xiii), for a vineyard of 

 100 iugera it is 1 6, and the operarii in particular are 10 as against 5. 

 The greater amount of digging 6 needed on a farm chiefly devoted to 

 vines is the reason of the difference. These estimates are for the 

 permanent staff, the familia, owned by the landlords in the same 

 way as the oxen asses mules sheep goats or pigs. So far as common 

 daily labour is concerned, this staff should make the farm self-sufficing. 



But there were many operations, connected with the life of the farm, 

 for performing which it was either not desirable or not possible to rely 

 on the regular staff. It would never have paid to maintain men skilled 

 in the work of special trades only needed on rare occasions. Thus for 

 erecting buildings the fader 7 is called in: the landlord finds materials, 

 the builder uses them and is paid for his work. Lime is needed for 

 various purposes, and it may be worth while 8 to have a kiln on the 

 estate and do the burning there. But even so it is well to employ a 

 regular- limeburner (calcarius) for the job. The landlord finds limestone 

 and fuel, and a way of payment is to work on shares (partiario) each 

 party taking his share of the lime. The same share-system (according 

 to Keil's text) is proposed for the operation known &$ politio, which 



1 Ibid 150. 2 Ibid 66-7. 3 Ibid 56. 4 Ibid 10 i, n i. 



5 It is to be noted that bubulci are to be indulgently treated, in order to encourage them 

 to tend the valued oxen with care. 5 6. 



6 Ibid 56 compeditis...ubi vineam fodere coeperint. Cf Columella I 9 4. 



7 Ibid 14. 8 ibid 1 6, 38. 



