ROME THE EMPIRE 



XXVIII. AGRICULTURE AND AGRICULTURAL 



LABOUR UNDER THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION. 



That the position of the working farmer in the fourth and fifth 

 centuries AD was very different from what it had been in the early 

 days of the Roman Republic, is hardly open to question. That in the 

 last two centuries of the Republic his position had been gravely altered 

 for the worse in a large (and that in general the best) part of Italy, is 

 not less certain. This period, from 241 to 3i "R(\ had seen the, safari-ton 

 to Rome of the Mediterranean countries, and the Italian peninsula 

 was an imperial land. It was inevitable that from a dominion so vast 

 and various there should be some sort of reaction on its mistress, and 

 reaction there had been, mostly for evil, on the victorious Roman 

 state. The political social and moral effects of this reaction do not 

 concern us here save only in so far as the economic situation was 

 affected thereby. Foj^nstance^Jjhgjjlunder Qf the provinces b v bad 

 governors and the extortions practised by subordinate officials, the greed 

 of financiers and their agents, were the chief sources of the immense 

 sums of money that poured into Italy. The corruption promoted by 

 all this ill-gotten wealth expressed itself in many forms ; but in no 

 way was it more effective trTan in degradation of agriculture. It was 

 not merely that it forwarded the movement towards great aggregations 

 of latifundia. It supplied the means of controlling politics by bribery 

 and violence and rendering nugatory 'all endeavours to reform the 

 land-system and give legislative remedies a fair trial. The events of 

 the revolutionary period left nearly all the land of Italy in private 

 ownership, most of it in the hands of large owners. The Sullan and 

 Triumviral confiscations and assignations were social calamities and 

 economic failures. Of their paralysing effect on agriculture we can 

 only form a general notion, but it is clear that no revival of a free farm- 

 ing peasantry took place. 



Changes there had been in agriculture, due to influences from 

 abroad. Farming on a large scale and organization of slave labour had 

 givenjt an industrial turn. The crude and brutal form in which this 

 at first appeareoTlrad probably been somewhat modified by experience. 

 The great plantations clumsily adapted from Punic models were not 

 easily made to pay. More variety in crops became the fashion, and 

 the specializing of labour more necessary. In this we may surely trace 



