Pictures of humble labour 221 



and the victor takes the females as concubines at will (ill 323-9, ix 

 546). A discarded concubine is handed over to a slave-consort (ill 329), 

 and the infant children of a serva form part of a common unit with 

 their dam (v 285). 



Two passages are worth notice from an economic point of view. 

 In VIII 408-12, in a simile, we have the picture of a poor hard-working 

 housewife who rises very early to set her famulae to work on their 

 allotted tasks of wool, to 'keep the little home together/ One can hardly 

 say that no such scene was possible in real life under the conditions 

 of Vergil's time, though we may fairly doubt the reality of a picture in 

 which grim poverty and the desire to bring up a family of young 

 children are combined with the ownership and employment of a staff 

 of domestic slaves. For we find the not owning a single slave 1 used as 

 the most characteristic sign of poverty. And I shrink from describing 

 the situation industrially as the sweating of slave-labour to maintain 

 respectability. I do not think any such notion was in the poet's mind. 

 That the simile is suggested by Greek models is pointed out by 

 Conington, and to regard it as a borrowed ornament is probably the 

 safest conclusion in general. It is however to be noted that t\\& famulae 

 are not borrowed, but an addition of Vergil's own. The other passage, 

 XII 517-20, relates the death in battle of an Arcadian, who in his 

 home was a fisherman, of humble station. The last point is brought 

 out in the words 2 conductaque pater tellure serebat. This seems to mean 

 that he was a small tenant farmer, a colonus of the non-owning class. 

 Such a man might or might not have a slave or two. But, even were 

 there any indication (which there is not) to favour either alternative, 

 the man's home is in Arcadia, though the picture may be coloured by 

 the poet's familiarity with Italian details. Take it all in all, we are 

 perhaps justified in saying that in the Aeneid the realities of slavery 

 and of humble labour generally are very lightly touched. Is this wholly 

 due to the assumed proprieties of the heroic epic, dealing with characters 

 above the ordinary freeman in station or natural qualities? Or may we 

 surmise that to Vergil, with his intense human sympathies, the topic 

 was in itself also distasteful, only to be referred to when it was hardly 

 possible to avoid it? 



If little, in fact almost nothing, can be gleaned bearing on the sub- 

 ject of labour from the Bucolics and Aeneid, we might hope to find 

 plenty of information in the didactic poem specially addressed to farmers. 

 In the opening of the Georgics (I 41) Vergil plainly says that he feels 

 sorry for the rustic folk, who know not the path to success in their 

 vocation: he appeals to the gods interested in agriculture, and above 

 all to Augustus, to look kindly on his bold endeavour to set farmers in 



1 Ellis on Catullus xxiu i. 2 See page 217. 



