216 The Sabine estate of Horace 



Wilkins I hold that they are free heads of households, and that they 

 are persons existing in the then present time, not imagined figures of 

 a former age. It seems also clear that they were living on the modest 

 estate (agellus) of Horace. If so, then they can hardly be other than 

 tenants of farms included therein. Therefore it has naturally been 

 inferred that the estate consisted of a villa with a home-farm managed 

 by a steward controlling the staff of eight slaves of whom we hear 

 elsewhere: and that the outlying portions were let to free farmers 1 on 

 terms of money rent or shares of produce. Horace would thus be the 

 landlord of five coloni, and his relations with them would normally be 

 kept up through the agency of the resident slave-steward of the home- 

 farm. All this agrees perfectly with other evidence as to the customary 

 arrangements followed on rural estates ; and I accept it as a valuable 

 illustration of a system not new but tending to become more and 

 more prevalent as time went on. But it is well to note that the case 

 is one from a hill district, and that we must not from it draw any 

 inference as to how things were moving on the great lowland estates, 

 the chief latifundial farm-areas of Italy. 



The/atfm- referred to are virtually patresfamilias*, free responsible 

 persons, probably Roman citizens, but tenants, not land-owning yeomen 

 of the ancient type. Whether their visits to Varia (Vicovaro) were to 

 bear their part in the local affairs of their market-town, or to buy and 

 sell, or for both purposes, is not quite clear ; nor does it here concern 

 us. But we should much like to know whether these five farmers, or 

 some of them, employed 3 any slaves. I do not see how this curiosity 

 is to be gratified. Perhaps we may argue that their assumed liberty 

 to come and go points to the employment of some labour other than 

 their own: but would this labour be slave or free? If we assume (as I 

 think we fairly may) that the labour needed would be mainly regular 

 routine-work and not occasional help, this points rather to slave-labour. 

 Nor is there any general reason for distrusting that conclusion ; only 

 it would probably mean slave-labour on a small scale. There is more- 

 over no reason to think that free wage-labourers for regular routine 

 work were plentiful in the Sabine hills. And these small farmers were 

 not likely to be creditors, served by debtors (pbaerati} working off 

 arrears of debt, a class of labour which according to Varro seems to 

 have been no longer available in Italy. There I must leave this question, 

 for I can add no more. 



1 So Cicero's estate at Arpinum is spoken of ad Aft xm 9 2 as praediola and was per- 

 haps let in the same way. 



2 Cf Seneca epist 47 14, 86 14. 



3 The ownership of the slaves is another matter, for in letting farms the dominus often 

 supplied the slaves. See Index, instrumentum. 



