Varieties of function 261 



on his arrival from Town, checking all items carefully. This done 

 regularly year after year, he will enjoy order and obedience on his es- 

 tate in his old age. 



Next comes a general statement of the proper classification of the 

 fif according to varieties 1 of function. For departmental fore- 

 men you should choose steady honest fellows, watchfulness and skill 

 being needed rather than brute strength. The hind or plowman must 

 be a big man with a big voice, that the oxen may obey him. And the 

 taller he is the better will he throw his weight on the plough-tail. The 

 mere unskilled labourer 2 only needs to be fit for continuous hard work. 

 For instance, in a vineyard you want a thickset type of labourer to 

 stand the digging etc, and if they are rogues it does not matter much, 

 as they work in a gang under an overseer (monitore*). By the by, a 

 scamp is generally more quick-witted than the average, and vineyard 

 work calls for intelligence: tjiis is why chained hands 4 are commonly 

 employed there. Of course, he adds, an honest man is more efficient 

 than a rogue, other things being equal : don't charge me with a prefe- 

 rence for criminals. Another piece of advice is to avoid 5 mixing up the 

 various tasks performed by the staff on the plan of making every 

 labourer do every kind of work. It does not pay in farming. Either 

 what is every one's business is felt to be nobody's duty in particular; 

 or the effort of the individual is credited to the whole of the gang. This 

 sets him shirking, and yet you cannot single out the offender; and 

 this sort of thing is constantly happening. Therefore keep plowmen 

 vineyard-hands and unskilled labourers apart. Then he passes to 

 numerical 6 divisions. Squads (classes) should be of not more than ten 

 men each, decuriae as the old name was, that the overseer may keep 

 his eye on all. By spreading such squads over different parts of a large 

 farm it is possible to compare results, to detect laziness, and to escape 



irritating unfairness of punishing the wrong men. 



The general impression left on a reader's mind by Columella's 

 principles of slave-management is one of strict control tempered by 

 judicious humanity. It pays not to be harsh and cruel. Whether we 

 can fairly credit him with disinterested sympathy on grounds of a 

 common human nature, such as Seneca was preaching, seems to me 

 very doubtful. That he regarded the slave as a sort of domesticated 

 animal, cannot so far as I know be gathered from direct statements, 

 but may be inferred by just implication from his use of the same lan- 

 guage in speaking of slaves and other live stockjCThus we find 7 the 



1 I 9 1-6. Cf xi i 8, 9. 3 mediastinus. 3 Cf Dig xxxm 7 8 pr. 



4 vineta plurimum per alligatos excoluntur. 



5 ne confundantur opera familiae, sic ut omnes omnia exequantur. 6 I 9 7, 8. 



7 VI 2 15 pecoris operarii (the very word also used = labourer), 3 3 iumentis iusta 

 operum reddentibus. 



