196 Honesty. Manumission 



dispensator,w\\o seems to be a sort of slave clerk charged with registering 

 stores and serving out rations clothing etc. As this functionary seldom 

 meets us in the rustic system of the period, we may perhaps infer that 

 only large estates, where the vilicus had no time to spare from purely 

 agricultural duties, required such extra service. In saying that he can 

 read and write (litteras scit) Cicero may seem to imply that this is not 

 to be expected from the vilicus : but the inference is not certain, for 

 the agricultural writers require stewards to read at least. In another 

 passage 1 we read that in choosing a slave for the post of steward the 

 one thing to be kept in view is not technical skill but the moral 

 qualities, honesty industry alertness. Here it is plain that the orator 

 is warping the truth in order to suit his argument : Varro would never 

 have disregarded technical skill. For Cicero's point is that what the 

 state needs most in its ' stewards ' (that is, magistrates) is good moral 

 qualities. On the same lines he had some 16 years before compared 2 

 Verres to a bad steward, who has ruined his master's farm by dishonest 

 and wasteful management, and is in a fair way to be severely punished 

 for his offence. The tone of this passage is exactly that of old Cato, 

 put in the rhetorical manner of an advocate. 



A few words must be said on the subject of manumission. In his 

 defence of Rabirius, accused of high treason, Cicero launches 3 out into 

 a burst of indignation at the attempted revival of an obsolete barbarous 

 procedure designed for his client's destruction. The cruel method of 

 execution to which it points, long disused, is repugnant to Roman 

 sentiment, utterly inconsistent with the rights of free humanity. Such 

 a prospect 4 would be quite unendurable even to slaves, unless they 

 had before them the hope of freedom. For, as he adds below, when 

 we manumit a slave, he is at once freed thereby from fear of any such 

 penalties as these. Taken by itself, this passage is better evidence of 

 the liability of slaves to cruel punishment than of the frequent use of 

 manumission. But we know from Cicero's letters and from other sources 

 that freedmen were numerous. And from a sentence 5 in one of the 

 Philippics we may gather that it was not unusual for masters to grant 

 freedom to slaves after six years of honest and painstaking service. I 

 suspect that this utterance, in the context in which it occurs, should not 

 be taken too literally. That Romans of wealth and position liked to sur- 

 round themselves with retainers, humble and loyal, bound to their patron 

 by ties of gratitude and interest, is certain : and early manumissions 

 were naturally promoted by this motive. But the most pleasing instances 



1 pro Plancio 62. 2 II in Verrem III 119. 3 pro Rabirio 10-17. 



4 hanc condicionem...quam servi, si libertatis spem propositam non haberent, ferre nullo 

 modo possent. 



6 Philippic VIII 32. 



