208 coloni Caesaris 



generally as, subtenants of tenants-in-chief holding direct from the 

 emperor. These small farmers were evidently workers, whether they 

 to some extent used slave-labour or not. Imperial policy favoured 

 these men as steady producers turning the land to good account, and 

 thus adding to the resources of the empire without being (like great 

 landlords) a possible source of danger. Hence great care was taken to 

 protect the coloni Caesaris from oppression by middlemen : and, so long 

 as head-tenants and official agents did not corruptly combine to wrong 

 the farmers, the protection seems to have been effective. Moreover, the 

 advantage of retaining the same tenants on the land whose conditions 

 they understood by experience, and of inducing them to reclaim and 

 improve further portions of the waste, was kept clearly in view. A 

 policy of official encouragement in these directions was in full swing 

 in the second century AD and may perhaps have been initiated by 

 Vespasian. 



It is not necessary to assume that these arrangements were directly 

 copied from Oriental, particularly Egyptian, conditions. The convenience 

 of permanent tenants and the ever-pressing need of food-supply are 

 enough to account for the general aim, and experience of the East 

 would naturally help to mature the policy. The establishment of the 

 Empire made it possible. But we must plainly note the significance of 

 new ideas in respect of residence and cultivation. In the Roman land- 

 system of Italy private ownership was the rule, and the general 

 assumption that the owner cultivated on his own account: stewards 

 and slave-gangs were common but not essential phenomena. It is true 

 that the practice of letting farms to cultivating tenants existed, and that 

 in the first two centuries of the Empire it was on the increase, probably 

 promoted by the comparative scarcity of slaves in times of peace. But 

 tenancy was a contract-relation, and the law, while protecting the 

 tenant, gave to the landlord ample means of enforcing regular and 

 thorough cultivation. And this automatically ensured the tenant's 

 residence in any conditions short of final despair. We shall see that as 

 agriculturedeclined in Italy it became more and more difficult to find and 

 keep satisfactory tenants : but the tenant was in the last resort free to go, 

 and the man who had to be compelled to cultivate properly was just the 

 man on whom the use of legal remedies was least likely to produce the 

 desired practical effect. Now on the imperial domains abroad we find 

 a growing tendency to insist on residence, as a rule imposed from above. 

 The emperor could not leave his coloni simply at the mercy of his 

 head-tenants. He was very ready to protect them, but to have them 

 flitting at will was another matter. And this tendency surely points to 

 Egyptian analogies; naturally too, as the Empire was becoming more 

 definitely a Monarchy. 



