224 Landlords and their policy 



profit of personal labour. But that they meant to work with their own 

 hands I cannot believe. In the true spirit of their age, they would as 

 a matter of course take the profit, and delegate the duty to others. 



Two alternatives 1 presented themselves to a landowner. He might 

 let his estate whole or in parcels to a tenant or tenants. Or he might 

 work it for his own account, either under his own resident direction, 

 or through the agency of a steward. All the evidence bearing on the 

 revolutionary period tends to shew that the resident landlord of a 

 considerable estate, farming his own land, was a very rare type indeed. 

 It was found most convenient as a general rule to let an out-of-the-way 

 farm to a cultivating tenant at a money rent or on a sharing system. 

 A more accessible one was generally put under a steward and so kept 

 in hand by the owner. The dwelling-house was in such cases improved 

 so as to be a fit residence for the proprietor on his occasional visits. 

 Growing luxury often carried this change to an extreme, and made 

 the villa a ' place in the country/ a scene of intermittent extravagance, 

 not of steady income-producing thrift. True, it seems that the crude 

 and wasteful system of the earlier latifundia had been a good deal 

 modified by the end of the Republic. A wealthy man preferred to 

 own several estates of moderate size situated near main routes of 

 traffic. But this plan required more stewards. And the steward (yilicus\ 

 himself a slave, was the head of a slave-staff proportioned to the size 

 of the farm. Now the public effectually reached by the Georgics may 

 be supposed to have included the landowners of education and leisure, 

 whether they let their land to tenants or kept it in hand. I cannot 

 believe that the coloni farming hired land 2 came under the poet's in- 

 fluence. In other words, the Georgics, in so far as the poem made its 

 way beyond purely literary circles, appealed chiefly if not wholly to a 

 class dependent on slave-labour in every department of their lives. 



Maecenas, to whom the poem is in form addressed, had put pressure 

 on Vergil to write it. At the back of Maecenas was the new Emperor, 

 anxious to enlist all the talents in the service of the new dispensation. 

 The revival of rural Italy was one of the praiseworthy projects of 

 the Emperor and his confidential minister. It was indeed on every 

 ground manifestly desirable. But was it possible now to turn Romans 

 of property into working farmers? Would the man-about-Rome 

 leave urban pleasures for the plough-tail? Not he! Nor are we to 

 assume that Augustus was fool enough to expect it. Then what 



1 Most clearly stated in Columella I 7. 



2 For coloni of Cicero's time see II in Verr in 55, pro Caecina 94, pro Cluent 175, 

 182. The references in Horace are given below. That letting to tenants was practised about 

 100 BC or earlier, appears certain from the reference to Saserna's opinion on this policy in 

 Columella I 7 4. 



