Contrast with Italy 205 



farmers and the continuous cultivation of the soil. The object was 

 attained by minute regulations applied to a submissive people of small 

 needs. 



It is evident that agriculture under conditions such as these was 

 based on ideas fundamentally different from those prevalent in Italy. 

 There private ownership was the rule, and by the end of the Republic 

 it was so more than ever. The latifundia had grown by transfers 

 of property 1 in land, whether the holdings so absorbed were original 

 small freeholds or allotments of state land granted under agrarian laws. 

 Present estates, whether large or small, were normally held under a full 

 proprietary title; and the large ones at least were valued as an asset of 

 social and political importance rather than as a source of economic J 

 profit. The owner could do what he would with his own, and in Italy 2 y 

 there was no tax-burden on his land. We may ask how it came about 

 that the Italian and Provincial systems stood thus side by side, neither 

 assimilating the other. The answer is that the contrast suited the in- 

 terests of the moneyed classes who controlled the government of Rome. 

 To exploit the regal conditions taken over by the Republic abroad was 

 for them a direct road to riches, and the gratification of their ambitions 

 was achieved by the free employment of their riches at home. The 

 common herd of poor citizens, pauperized in Rome or scattered in 

 country towns and hamlets, had no effective means of influencing policy, 

 even if they understood what was going on and had (which they had 

 not) an alternative policy of their own. So the Empire took over from 

 the Republic a system existing for the benefit of hostile aristocrats and 

 capitalists, with whom it was not practicable to dispense and whom it 

 was not easy to control. 



We cannot suppose that the classes concerned with agriculture had 

 any suspicion how far-reaching were the changes destined to come 

 about under the new government. They could not look centuries ahead. 

 For the present, the ruler spared no pains to dissemble his autocratic 

 power and pose as a preserver and restorer of the Past. Caution and a 

 judicious patronage inspired literature to praise the government and 

 to observe a discreet silence on unwelcome topics. The attitude of 

 Augustus towards agriculture will be discussed below. Here it is only 

 necessary to remark that the first aim of his policy in this as in other 

 departments was to set the machine working with the least possible 

 appearance of change, As the republican magistracies were left standing, 

 and gradually failed through the incompetence^of senatorial guidance, 

 so no crude agrarian schemes were allowed to upset existing conditions, 



1 In Greenidge, History pp 292-3, there are some good remarks on the process. 



2 Frontinus grom I p 35, Columella in 3 u, and Heisterbergk's remarks cited below. 

 See Index, Italian land and taxation. 



