1 82 Criticism of his principles 



or too spirited, and to use sexual relations as a restraining tie, were 

 by this time common-places of slave-manafigment, and appear under 

 Cato in somewhat cruder practical forms. Rut Varro is involved in 

 the difficulties that have ever beset those who try to work on double 

 principles, to treat the slave as at once the chattel of an owner and a 

 partner in common humanity. So he tells his reader ' manage your 

 slaves as men, if you can get them to obey you on those terms ; if 

 not, well, you must make them obey flog them.' Humanitarian 

 principles have not gone far in the system of Varro, who looks solely 

 from the master's point of view. The master gets rather more out of 

 his slaves when they work to gain privileges than when they work 

 merely to escape immediate punishment. So he is willing to offer 

 privileges, and the prospect of promotion to the higher ranks of the 

 stafi^Overseers and the best of the common hands may form a little 

 quasi-property of their own by the master's leave. But these peculia 

 do not seem to be a step on the road to manumission, of which we 

 hear nothing in this treatise. We are left to infer that rustic slaves on 

 estates generally remained there when past active work, tolerated 

 hangers-on, living on what they could pick up, and that to have 

 acquired some peculium was a comfortable resource in old age. In 

 short, the hopes of the worn-out rustic bondman were limited indeed. 

 When we note Varro's attitude towards free labour we cannot 

 wonder that humanitarianism is not conspicuous in his treatment of 

 slavery. Hired men are more to be trusted than slaves, so you will 

 employ them, as Cato advised, for jobs that need care and honesty 

 and that cannot wait. But he adds a sinister hint as to employing 

 them on work dangerous to health. Your own slaves for whom you 

 have paid good money are too valuable to be exposed to such risks. 

 The great merit of the mercennarius is that, when the job is done and 

 his wage paid, you have done with him and have no further respon- 

 sibility. This brutally industrial view is closely connected with the 

 legal atmosphere of Roman civilization, in which Varro lived and 

 moved. The debtor discharging his debt by serving his creditor as a 

 farm-hand, once an ordinary figure in Italy, was now only found 

 abroad : Varro mentions this unhappy class, for he is not thinking of 

 Italy alone. It is interesting to hear from him that peasant-farmers 

 were not extinct in Italy. But we are not told whether they were still 

 numerous or whether they were mostly to be found in certain districts, 

 as from other authorities we are tempted to infer. Nor do we learn 

 whether men with small farms of their own often went out as wage- 

 earners ; nor again whether landless mercennarii were in his time a 

 numerous class. These omissions make it very difficult for us to form 

 any clear and trustworthy picture of rural conditions as they presented 



