Tenancies 195 



an attorney in the technical sense, a plenipotentiary agent appointed 

 by an absentee principal with full legal formalities, is contemplated. 

 No, the brief formula covers agency of any kind : it will apply to your 

 tenant your neighbour your client or your freedman, in short to any 

 person acting on your behalf. In the great indictment of Verres 1 we 

 find a good instance of tenancy in Sicily, where it seems to have been 

 customary for large blocks of land to be held on lease from the state 

 by tenants-in-chief (aratores) who sometimes sublet parcels to coloni. 

 In this case the trouble arose out of the tithe to which the land was 

 liable. Verres, in order to squeeze an iniquitous amount out of a 

 certain farm, appointed a corrupt court charged to inquire whether the 

 (arable) acreage had been correctly returned by the colonus. Of course 

 they were instructed to find that the area had been fraudulently under- 

 stated. But the person against whom judgment was to be given was 

 not the colonus, but Xeno, who was not the owner of the farm. He 

 pleaded that it belonged to his wife, who managed her own affairs ; 

 also that he had not been responsible for the cultivation (non arasse). 

 Nevertheless he was not only compelled to pay a large sum of money 

 to meet the unfair damages exacted, but subjected to further ex- 

 tortion under threat of corporal punishment. The returns on which 

 the tithes were assessed would seem to have been required from the 

 actual cultivators, and the lessees of the year's tithe to have had a 

 right of action against the owners or chief-tenants of the land, if the 

 tenant farmer defaulted in any particular. So far we are able to 

 gather that tenant farmers were no exception at this time, though 

 perhaps not a numerous class ; and that they were not persons of 

 much social importance. That they were to a considerable extent 

 dependent on their landlords is probable, though not actually attested 

 by Cicero, for we have seen evidence of it in a passage of Caesar. 

 Cicero's reference 2 to the case of a lady who committed adultery with 

 a colonus is couched in such terms as to imply the man's social inferiority. 

 In another passage 3 we hear of a man in the Order of equites equo 

 publico being disgraced by a censor taking away his state-horse, and 

 of his friends crying out in protest that he was optimus colonus, thrifty 

 and unassuming. Here we have a person of higher social quality, no 

 doubt : but I conceive colonus to be used in the original sense of 

 ' cultivator.' To say ' he is a good farmer ' does not imply that he is a 

 mere tenant, any more than it does in the notable passage of Cato. 



The mlicus generally appears in Cicero as the slave steward familiar 

 to us from other writers. In one place 4 he is contrasted with the 



1 IT in Verrem ill 53-5, and/j.V/z. These arationes paid decumae. 



2 pro Cluentio 175, 182. 3 de orat II 287. 



4 de republ v 5, where the perfect ruler is a sort of blend of dispensator and mlicus. 



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