German customs 291 



a high rate of interest on their capital, they did not wish to lock up 

 any more of it in land. Most of them would already own enough real 

 estate for social purposes. From this episode we have some right to 

 infer that in the period of the early Empire it had already become clear 

 that very extensive landowning in Italy was an unwise policy for men 

 who wanted a large income. Yet the preferential position of Italy had 

 not ceased to be a fact; and even in the time of Trajan we have seen 

 an imperial ordinance bidding new senators from the Provinces to in- 

 vest J of their fortunes in Italian land. This might raise prices for the 

 moment, but it had nothing directly to do with promoting agriculture. 

 Practical farming seems to have been passing more and more into the 

 hands of humbler persons, often freedmen, who treated it as a serious 

 business. 



That the attention of Tacitus had been directed to the methods of 

 capitalists in Italy, and therewith to money-lending, land-holding, and 

 slavery, may be gathered from the remarks on these subjects in his 

 Germany. He writes, as Herodotus and others had done before him, 

 taking particular notice of customs differing from those prevalent in 

 his own surroundings. Thus he notes 1 the absence of money-lending 

 at interest. He describes the system of communal ownership of land 

 by village-units, and its periodic redistribution among the members of 

 the community. The wide stretches of open plains 2 enable the Germans 

 to put fresh fields under tillage year by year, leaving the rest in fallow 

 (no doubt as rough pasture). Intensive culture is unknown. To wring 

 the utmost out of the soil by the sweat of their brow is not their aim : 

 they have no orchards or gardens or fenced paddocks, but are content 

 to raise a crop of corn. All this is in marked contrast with Italian 

 conditions. Even to get rid of fallows was an ambition of agriculturists 

 in Italy, and a rotation-system 3 had been devised to this end. And, 

 whatever may have been the case in prehistoric times, full property in 

 land had long been established by the Roman Law, and there was in 

 the Italian land-system no trace of redistribution for short terms of 

 use. In treating of slavery, the first point made is its connexion 4 with 

 the inveterate German habit of gambling. Losers will end by staking 

 their own freedom on a last throw; if this also fails, they will submit 

 to be fettered and sold. To the Roman this seems a false notion of 

 honour. He adds that to take advantage of this sort of slave-winning 

 is not approved by German sentiment: hence the winner combines 9 

 scruples with profit by selling a slave of this class into foreign lands. 



1 Germ 16. 



2 See Schweitzer-Sidler's notes, and cf the remarks of Caesar BG IV r, vi 11 



3 See Pliny Nffxvm 259 and Conington's notes on Verg G I 71-83. Varro I 44 3. 



4 Germ 24. 



5 servos condidonis huius per commercia tradunt, Ttt se quoque pudore victoriae exsolvant. 



19-2 



