The good tenant. Slave labour 255 



probably about 100 BC, laid his finger on this possible source of trouble, 

 is significant. It is evidence that there were tenant-farmers in his time, 

 and bad ones among them : but not that they were then numerous, 

 or that their general character was such as to make landlords let their 

 estates in preference to managing them through their own stewards 

 for their own account. And this agrees with Columella's own opinion 

 some 150 years later. If you are to let farms to tenants, local men 

 who are familiar with local conditions are to be preferred, but he gives 

 no hint that such tenants could readily be found. His words seem 

 rather to imply that they were rare. 



One point is .hardly open to misunderstanding. In Columella's 

 system the typical tenant-farmer, the colonus to be desired by a wise 

 landlord, is a humble person, to whom small perquisites are things of 

 some importance. He is not a restless or ambitious being, ever on the 

 watch for a chance of putting his landlord in the wrong or a pretext 

 for going to law. Such as we see him in the references of Seneca, and 

 later in those of the younger Pliny and Martial, such he appears in 

 Columella. For the landlord it is an important object to keep him 

 when he has got him and to have his son ready as successor in the 

 tenancy. From other sources we know 1 that the value of long undis- 

 turbed tenancies are generally recognized. But we have little or 

 nothing to shew whether the tenant-farmers of this age usually worked 

 with their own hands or not. That they employed slave labour is not 

 only a priori probable, but practically certain. We have evidence that 

 at a somewhat later date it was customary 2 for the landlord to provide 

 land farmstead (villa] and equipment (instrumentum), and we know that 

 under this last head slaves could be and were concluded. It is evident 

 that the arrangement belongs to the decisive development of the 

 tenancy system as a regular alternative to that of farming by a steward 

 for landlord's own account. The desirable country-bred tenant would 

 not be a man 3 of substantial capital, and things had to be made easy 

 for him. It is not clear that a tenant bringing his own staff of slaves 

 would have been welcomed as lessee: from the instance of the town- 

 bred colonus just referred to it seems likely that he would not. 



While Columella prescribes letting to tenants as the best way of 

 solving the difficulties in dealing with outlying farms, he does not say 

 that this plan should not be adopted in the case of farms near the main 

 estate or 'Home Farm.' I think this silence is intentional. It is hard 



1 Wall on, Esclavage n 99, 100, refers to the long leasing of municipal estates, held in 

 virtual perpetuity so long as the rent was paid. He cites Gaius in 145. So too estates of 

 temples, and later of \htfiscus. 



2 Wallon n 120, cf Digest xxxm 7 19, an opinion of Paulus. It seems to be a sort of 

 mttayer system. See index. 



8 But such as the imbecilli cultores of Plin epist in 19 6. 



