his needful qualities 259 



highest mental and moral character 1 compatible with a slave-tempera- 

 ment. For his rule should be sympathetic but firm : he should not be 

 too hard 2 upon the worse hands, while he encourages the better ones, 

 but aim at being feared for his strictness rather than loathed for harsh- 

 ness. The way to achieve this is to watch and prevent, not to overlook 

 and then punish. Even the most inveterate rogues are most effectively 

 controlled by insisting on performance 3 of their tasks, ensuring them 

 their due rights, and by the steward being always on the spot. Under 

 these conditions the various foremen 4 will take pains to carry out their 

 several duties, while the common hands, tired out, will be more inclined 

 to go to sleep than to get into mischief. Some good old usages tending 

 to promote content and good feeling are unhappily gone beyond recall, 

 for instance 5 the rule that a steward must not employ a fellow-slave's 

 services on any business save that of his master. But he must not suffer 

 them to stray off the estate unless he sends them on errands; and this 

 only if absolutely necessary. *He must not do any trading 6 on his own 

 account, or employ his master's cash in purchase of beasts etc. For 

 this distracts a steward's attention, and prevents the correct balancing 

 of his accounts at the audit, when he can only produce goods instead 

 of money. In general, the first 7 requisite is that he should be free from 

 conceit and eager to learn. For in farming mistakes can never be 

 redeemed: time lost is never regained: each thing must be done right, 

 once for all. 



The above is almost a verbal rendering of Columella's words. At 

 this point we may fairly pause to ask whether he seriously thought that 

 an ordinary landlord had much chance of securing such a paragon of 

 virtue as this pattern steward. That all these high bodily mental and 

 moral qualities combined in one individual could be bought in one lot 

 at an auction 8 must surely have been a chance so rare as to be hardly 

 worth considering as a means of agricultural development. I take it 

 that the importance of extreme care in selecting the right man, and in 

 keeping him to his duties, is insisted on as a protest against the culpable 

 carelessness of contemporary landlords, of which he has spoken severely 

 above. If, as I believe, in the great majority of cases a new steward 

 required much instruction as to the details of his duties and as to the 

 spirit in which he was both to rule the farm-staff and to serve his master, 



1 I 8 10 animi, quantum servile patitur ingenium, virtutibus instructus. 



2 I 8 10, XI i 25. 



3 I 8 ii operis exactio, ut iusta reddantur^ ut vilicus semper se repraesentet, xi i 

 25-6. 



4 magistri singulorum qfficiorum, xi i 27. 5 I 8 12, XI i 23. 



6 I 8 13, XI i 24. 7 I 8 13-4, XI i 27-30. 



8 In xi i 4 foil this notion is, with citation of Xenophon, repudiated, and the need of 

 training a steward emphasized. 



172 



