184 Small farmers of the day 



advantage may make all the difference whether a farm can be made to 

 pay or not. For instance, it is seldom worth while to keep skilled 

 craftsmen 1 of your own: the death of one such specialist sweeps away 

 the (year's) profit of the farm. Only rich landowners can provide for 

 such services in their regular staff. So the usual practice of coloni is to 

 rely on local men for such services, paying a yearly fee and having a 

 right to their attendance at call. The coloni here are simply 'farmers/ 

 and there is nothing to shew that they do not own their farms. The 

 connexion with the verb colere appears even more strongly where 

 pastor is contrasted 2 with colonus, grazier with tiller: and in that passage 

 the colonus is apparently identical with the dominus fundi just below. 

 The coloni of these passages can hardly be mere tenants, but on the other 

 hand they are certainly not great landowners. They seem to be men 

 farming their own land, but in a small way 3 of business. Whether 

 there were many such people in Varro's Italy, he does not tell us. Nor 

 do we find any indication to shew whether they would normally take 

 part in farm work with their own hands. When he deplores 4 the modern 

 tendency to crowd into the city, where men use their hands for ap- 

 plauding shows, having abandoned the sickle and the plough, he is 

 merely repeating the common lament of reformers. There is no sign 

 of any hope of serious reaction against this tendency: the importation 

 and cheap distribution of foreign corn is a degenerate and ruinous 

 policy, but there it is. ^/arro admired the small holdings and peasant 

 farmers of yore, but no man knew better that independent rustic citizens 

 of that type had passed away from the chief arable districts of Italy 

 never to return. 



That small undertakings were still carried on in the neighbourhood 

 of Rome and other urban centres, is evident from the market-gardens 

 of the Imperial age. A notable case 5 is that of the bee-farm of a single 

 iugerum worked at a good profit by two brothers about 30 miles north 

 of Rome. Varro expressly notes that they were able to bide their time 

 so as not to sell on a bad market. He had first-hand knowledge of 

 these men, who had served under him in Spain. Clearly they were 

 citizens. They can hardly have kept slaves. It seems to have been a 

 very exceptional case, and to be cited as such : it is very different from 

 that of the peasant farmer of early Rome, concerned first of all to 

 grow food for himself and his family. Agriculture as treated by Varro 

 is based on slave labour, and no small part of his work deals with the 



1 RR I 1 6 4 itaque in hoc genus coloni potius anniversaries habent 7)icinos, quibus 

 imperent, medicos fullonesfabros, quam in villa suos habeant. 



2 RR ilpraef 5, cf I 2 13 foil, and Columella v\praef% i, 2. 



3 They evidently own slaves, though not special craftsmen, and are distinct from the 

 Paiiperculi of I 17 a. 



4 RR n/?/ 3, 4. 5 RR m 16 10, ii. 



