22O The Aeneid 



the rustic slaves of Italy. No doubt the contrast is painful. But we 

 must not presume to impute to the great and generous poet a light- 

 headed and callous indifference to the miseries daily inflicted by 

 capitalist exploiters of labour on their human chattels. We must not 

 forget that in hill districts, where large-scale farming did not pay, rural 

 life was still going on in old-fashioned grooves. Nor must we forget 

 that in his native Cisalpine slavery was probably of a mild character. 

 Some hundred years later we hear 1 that chained gangs of slave-labourers 

 were not employed there: and the great armies recruited therein Caesar's 

 time do not suggest that the free population had dwindled there as in 

 Etruria or Lucania. The song-loving shepherds are an importation from 

 the Sicily of Theocritus, an extinct past, an artificial world kept alive 

 in literature by the genius of its singer. In the hands of his great 

 imitator the rustic figures become even more unreal. Hence the extreme 

 difficulty of extracting any sure evidence on the status of these charac- 

 ters, or signs of the poet's own sentiments, from the language of the 

 Bucolics. 



In the Aeneid we have the legends of ancient Italy and the origin 

 of Rome subjected to epic treatment. The drift of the poem is condi- 

 tioned by modern influence, the desire of Augustus to gain support for 

 the new Empire by fostering every germ of a national sentiment. The 

 tale of Troy has to be exploited for the purpose, and with the s tale of 

 Troy comes the necessity of reproducing so far as possible the atmo- 

 sphere of the 'heroic' age. There is therefore hardly any reference to 

 the matters with which I am now concerned. When the poet speaks 2 

 of the peoples of ancient Italy it is in terms of general praise. Their 

 warlike vigour and hardihood, the active, life of hunters and farmers, 

 can be admired without informing the reader whether they employed 

 slave-labour or not. And in the rare references 3 to slavery in his own 

 day Vergil has in mind the relation of master and slave simply, without 

 any regard to agriculture. But in depicting the society of the 'heroic' 

 times, in which the adventures of Aeneas are laid, a substratum of 

 slavery was indispensable. It was therefore drawn from the Greek epic, 

 where it lay ready to hand. Yet the references to slaves are less 

 numerous than we might have expected. We find them employed in 

 table-service (I 701-6), or as personal attendants (ll 580, 712, IV 391, 

 V 263, IX 329, XI 34). We hear of a woman skilled in handicrafts 

 (V 284) given as a prize, and Camilla is dedicated as afamtila of Diana 

 (XI 558)- These are not very significant references. But that slavery 

 is assumed as an important element in the social scheme may be in- 

 ferred from the references to captives in war (II 786, III 323, IX 272-3). 

 They are liable to be offered up as inferiae to the dead (XI 81-2), 



1 Pliny epist in IQ 7. 2 Aen vn 641-817, ix 603-13. 3 e.g. Aen vi 613. 



