Confiscations. Wage-earners 193 



profitably in the chief agricultural districts of Italy. But it must be 

 remembered that many an estate changed hands in consequence of 

 civil war, and that many new landlords profited economically by ap- 

 propriating the capital sunk in farms by their predecessors. The case 

 of Sextus Roscius of Ameria gives us some light on this point. The 

 picture drawn 1 by Cicero of the large landed estate of the elder Roscius, 

 of his wealth and interest in agriculture, of his jealous and malignant 

 relatives, of the reasons why he kept his son Sextus tied to a rustic life, 

 is undoubtedly full of colouring and subtle perversions of fact. Let it 

 go for what it may be worth. The accused was acquitted of the crime 

 laid to his charge (parricide), but there is no sign that he was ever able 

 to recover the estate and the home from which his persecutors had 

 driven him. They had shared the plunder with Chrysogonus the 

 favoured freedman of Sulla, who himself bought the bulk of the property 

 at a mere fraction of its market value, and it is practically certain that 

 the rogues kept what they got. It was easy to make agriculture pay on 

 such terms. But what of the former owners of such properties, on whose 

 ruin the new men's prosperity was built? Can we believe that genuine 

 agricultural enterprise was encouraged by a state of things in which the 

 fruits of long patience and skill were liable to sudden confiscation ? 



In Cicero, as in other writers, we find evidence of a wage-earning 

 class living by bodily labour alongside of the slave-population. But 

 in passages where he speaks 2 of mercennarii it is often uncertain 

 whether freemen serving for hire, or slaves hired from another owner, 

 are meant. In his language the associations 3 of the word are mean. 

 It is true that you may buy for money not only the day's-work (operae) 

 of unskilled labourers but the skill (artes) of craftsmen. In the latter 

 case even Roman self-complacency will admit a certain dignity ; for 

 men of a certain social status 4 such professions are all very well. But 

 the mere ' hand ' is the normal instance ; and for the time of his em- 

 ployment he is not easily distinguished from a slave. Therefore Cicero 

 approves 6 a Stoic precept, that justice bids you to treat slaves as you 

 would hirelings don't stint their allowances (food etc), but get your 

 day's-work out of them. In passages 6 where the word mercennarius is 

 not used, but implied, there is the same tone of contempt, and it is not 

 always clear whether the workers are free or slaves. In short the word 

 is not as neutral as operarius> which connotes mere manual labour, 

 whether the labourer be free or not, and is figuratively used 7 to connote 



1 pro Roscio Amer 39-51. 2 pro Caecina 58, 63. 



8 Thus mpro Cluentio 163 a disreputable tool is mercennarius Oppianici. 

 4 de officiis I 151 quorum ordini conveniunt. 5 de officiis I 41. 



6 II in Verrem I 147, IV 77. 



7 Thus of orators, Brutus 297, de orat I 83, 263, cf II 40. Also opifex in Tusc 

 disp v 34. 



H. A. 13 



