Question of manumission 263 



house 1 , which the staff are allowed to use on holidays only : much 

 bathing is weakening. Whether on an average farm the chained or 

 unchained slaves are assumed to be the majority is not quite clear; 

 probably the unchained, to judge by the general tone of the precepts. 

 But that a lock-up is part of the normal establishment is clear enough. 

 And it is to be noted that in one passage 2 ergastula are mentioned in 

 ill-omened juxtaposition with citizens enslaved by their creditors. 

 Whether it is implied that unhappy debtors were still liable to be 

 locked up as slaves in creditors' dungeons as of old, is not easy to say. 

 Columella is capable of rhetorical flourishes now and then. It is safer 

 to suppose that he is referring to two forms of slave-labour; first, the 

 working off arrears of debt 3 by labour of a servile kind; second, the 

 wholesale slave-gang system suggested by the significant word erga- 

 stula. Or are we to read into it a reference to the kidnapping 4 of way- 

 farers which Augustus and Tiberius had striven to put down? Before 

 we leave the subject of the slave-staff it is well to note that no prospect 

 of freedom is held out, at least to the males. Fertility, as we have seen, 

 might lead to manumission of females. But we are not told what use 

 they were likely to make of their freedom, when they had got it. My 

 belief is that they stayed on the estate as tolerated humble dependants ; 

 for they would have no other home. Some were natives of the place, 

 and the imported ones would have lost all touch with their native 

 lands. Perhaps the care of poultry 6 is a specimen of the various minor 

 functions in which they could make themselves useful. At all events 

 they were free from fetters and the lash. And the men too may have 

 been occasionally manumitted on the same sort of terms. Silence does 

 not prove a negative. For instance, we hear of peculium, the slave's 

 quasi-property, only incidentally 6 as being derived frompecus. Yet we 

 are not entitled to say that slaves were not free to make savings under 

 the system of Columella. 



Though the vilicus appears in this treatise as the normal head of 

 the management, there are signs that this was not the last word in 

 estate-organization. That he is sometimes 7 referred to as being the 

 landlord's agent (actor), but usually not, rather suggests that he could 

 be, and often was, confined to a more restricted sphere of duty, namely 



1 I 6 19 rusticis balneis. 



2 I 3 12 [our land-grabbers scorn moderation and buy wp fines gentium so vast that they 

 cannot even ride round them] sed prociilcandos pecudibus et vastandos feris derelinquunt, aut 

 occupatos nexu civium et ergastulis tenent. Schneider explains nexu etc &s = cwidus ob aes 

 alienum nexis. Surely at this date it cannot be used in the strictly technical sense. See p 269. 



3 Like the obaerarii or obaerati of Varro I 17 2. See on that passage p 180. 



4 suppressio. See Index. 



8 vui 2 7 anus sedula may serve as custos vagantium. 6 v\ praef ' 4. 



7 I 8 5, 7 7, but in xii 3 6 for instance actores are not=zv/z. Schneider. 



