194 procurator 



a merely mechanical proficiency in any art. Our ' journeyman' is 

 sometimes similarly used. 



There are other terms in connexion with land-management the use 

 of which by Cicero is worth noting. Thus a landlord may have some 

 order to give in reference to the cultivation of a farm. If he gives it 

 to his procurator^) it is as an instruction, a commission authorizing him 

 to act ; if to his vilicus, it is simply a command. For the former is a 

 free attorney, able at need to represent his principal even in a court of 

 law : the latter is a slave steward, the property of his master. 'The pro- 

 curator is hardly a * manager ' : he seldom occurs in connexion with 

 agriculture, and seems then to be only required when the principal is 

 a very ' big man/ owning land on a large scale, and probably in scat- 

 tered blocks. In such cases it would be convenient for (say) a senator 

 to give a sort of ' power of attorney ' to an agent and let him supervise 

 the direction of a number of farms, each managed by a steward. I take 

 this policy to be just that against which the writers on agriculture 

 warn their readers. It sins against the golden rule, that nothing is a 

 substitute for the Master's eye. Whether the agent referred to in the 

 speech pro Tullio, who as well as the steward received 2 written in- 

 structions from Tullius, was guilty of any neglect or blunder, we cannot 

 tell. That any act done to a procurator or by him was legally equivalent 

 to the same done to or by his principal, is a point pressed in the/w 

 Caecina, no doubt because it was safe ground and an excuse for not 

 dwelling on weak points in a doubtful case. 



The colonus as a tenant 3 farmer, whom we find mentioned in Varro 

 but not in Cato, appears in Cicero. In the pro Caecina we read 4 that 

 the widow lady took possession of the farm and let it (locavit) ; also 

 that the tenant was after her death still occupying the farm, and that 

 a visit of Caecina, in which he audited the accounts of the tenant, is a 

 proof that Caecina himself was now in possession. That is, by asserting 

 control of the sitting tenant Caecina made the man his agent so far as 

 to retain possession through the presence of his representative. If the 

 facts were as Cicero states them, the contention would be legally sound. 

 For, as he points out in another passage, any representative 5 will serve 

 for these purposes of keeping or losing possession. If the interdict- 

 formula only says * attorney ' (procurator), this does not mean that only 



1 de orat I 249 si mandandum aliquid procurators de agri cultura aut imperandum vilico 

 tst. 



2 pro Tullio 1 7 mittit ad procuratorem litteras et ad vilicum. 



3 Cicero's own estate at Arpinum seems to have been let in praediola to tenants. See ad 

 Att xin 9 2. 



4 pro Caecina 17, 57, 94. 



6 pro Caecina 57, cf 63. So in 58 the word familia is shewn not to be limited to 

 slaves personally owned by the litigant referred to. 



