Status of labourers 227 



So the pressure of the patron on the poet continued, and the Georgics 

 were born. 



Let me now turn to certain passages of the poem in which farm- 

 labour is directly referred to, and see how far the status of the labourers 

 can be judged from the expressions used and the context. And first 

 of aratores. In I 494 and II 513 the agricola is a plowman ; free, for 

 all that appears to the contrary. In II 207, where he appears as clearing 

 off wood 1 and ploughing up the land, the arator is called iratus : this 

 can hardly apply to an indifferent slave. The arator of I 261, repre- 

 sented as turning the leisure enforced by bad weather to useful indoor 

 work, odd jobs in iron and wood work etc, may be one of a slave-staff 

 whom his master will not have idle. Or he may be the farmer himself. 

 The scene implies the presence of a staff of some kind, driven indoors 

 by the rain. And that the poet is not thinking of a solitary peasant is 

 further indicated by mention of sheep- washing, certainly not a 'one- 

 man-job,' in line 272. Why Conington (after Heyne) takes agitator 

 aselli in 273 to be ' the peasant who happens to drive the ass to market,' 

 and not an asinarius doing his regular duty, I cannot say. On III 402, 

 a very similar passage, he takes the pastor to be probably the farm- 

 slave, not the owner, adding ' though it is not always easy to see for 

 what class of men Virgil is writing/ A remark which shews that my 

 present inquiry is not uncalled for. To return, there is nothing to 

 shew whether the ass-driver is a freeman or a slave. Nor is the status 

 of me 's 'sores'* clear. In I 3167 the farmer brings the mower on to the 

 yellow fields ; that is, he orders his hands to put in the sickle. What 

 is their relation to him we do not hear. So too in II 410 postremus 

 metito is a precept addressed to the farmer as farmer, not as potential 

 labourer. On the other hand the messores in the second and third 

 eclogues seem to be slaves, for there is reference to domini in both 

 poems. 



Thefessor is in literature the personification of mere heavy manual 

 labour. In default of evidence to the contrary, we must suppose him 

 to be normally 3 a slave. Thus the fossor of Horace odes III 18 is pro- 

 bably one of the famuli operum soluti of the preceding ode. But the 

 brawny digger of Georgics II 264, who aids nature's work by stirring 

 and loosening the caked earth, is left on a neutral footing. Nothing is 

 said. The reader must judge whether this silence is the result of pure 

 inadvertency. That pastores very often means slave-herdsmen, is well 



1 Mr T R Glover, Virgil p 14, reminds us that the poet's father is said to have done 

 some business in timber at one time. 



2 When Cicero de orat in 46 credits messores with a rustic brogue he can hardly be 

 thinking of foreign slaves. 



3 As in Lucan vn 402 vinctofossore. 



152 



