234 Evidence of Horace 



prove the farm and enhance the value of the land, and that no man 

 in his senses would do this unless the land were his own : there was 

 therefore no need to discuss tenancy, ownership being manifestly 

 implied. The argument is fair, so far as it goes. But it does not justify 

 complete silence on what was probably at the moment a question of 

 no small importance in the eyes of landowners. 



Some passages of Horace may serve to shew that circumstances 

 might have justified or even invited some reference to this topic. In 

 the seventh epistle of the first book he tells the story of how Philippus 

 played a rather scurvy trick on a freedman in a small way of business 

 as an auctioneer. As a social superior, his patronage turned the poor 

 man's head. Taking him for an outing to his own Sabine country 

 place, he infected him with desire of a rustic life. He amused himself 

 by persuading him to buy a small farm, offering him about 60 as a 

 gift and a loan of as much more. The conversion of a regular town- 

 bred man into a thoroughgoing farmer was of course a pitiful failure. 

 Devotion and industry availed him nothing. The losses and disap- 

 pointments incidental to farming were too much for him. He seems 

 to have had no slave : he probably had not sufficient capital. He 

 ended by piteously entreating his patron to put him back into his own 

 trade. The story is placed about two generations before Horace wrote. 

 But it would be pointless if it were out of date in its setting, which it 

 surely is not ; it might have happened to a contemporary, nay to 

 Horace himself. It is addressed to his own patron Maecenas, the 

 generous donor of his own Sabine estate. Here we have a clear inti- 

 mation that to buy a little plot and try to get a living out of it by 

 your own labour was an enterprise in which success was no easy 

 matter. In the second satire of the second book we have the case of 

 Ofellus, one of the yeomen of the old school. He had been a working 

 farmer on his own land, but in the times of trouble his farm had been 

 confiscated and made over to a discharged soldier. But this veteran 

 wisely left him in occupation as cultivator on terms. Whether he 

 became a sort of farm-bailiff, working for the new owner's account at 

 a fixed salary, or whether he became a tenant, farming on his own 

 account and paying a rent, has been doubted. I am strongly of the 

 second opinion. For it was certainly to the owner's interest that the 

 land should be well-farmed, and that his own income (the endowment 

 of his later years) should be well-secured by giving the farmer every 

 motive for industry. These considerations do not suit well with the 

 former alternative, which also makes colonus hardly distinguishable 

 from vilicus. Again, the colonus is on the farm 1 cum pecore et gnatis. 



1 This reminds us of Varro's words, speaking (i 17 2) of free workers ...cum ipsicolunt, 

 ut plerique pauperculi cum sua progenie. 



