Slave labour 299 



and there is good reason to believe that they were a common source 

 of trouble. It has been well said 1 that landlords in Italy were often as 

 badly off as their tenants. The truth is that the whole agricultural 

 interest was going downhill. 



If the tenant-farmer was, as we see, becoming more and more the 

 central figure of Italian agriculture, we must next inquire how he stood 

 in relation to labour. It is a priori probable that a man will be more 

 ready to work with his own hands on a farm of his own than on one 

 hired: no man is more alive to the difference of meum and alienum 

 than the tiller of the soil. It is therefore not wonderful that we find 

 tenant-farmers employing slave labour. From the custom of having 

 slaves as well as other stock supplied by the landlord we may fairly 

 infer that tenants were, at least generally, not to be had on other 

 terms. Mommsen remarks 2 that actual handwork on the land was 

 more and more directed rather than performed by the small tenants. 

 Thus it came to be more ana more done by unfree persons. This re- 

 cognizes, no doubt rightly, that the system of great estates let in por- 

 tions to tenants was not favourable to a revival of free rustic labour, 

 but told effectively against it. He also points out 3 that under Roman 

 Law it was possible for a landlord and his slave to stand in the mutual 

 relation of lessor and lessee. Such a slave lessee is distinct from the 

 free tenant colonus. It appears that there were two forms of this rela- 

 tion. The slave might be farming on his own 4 account, paying a rent 

 and taking the farm-profits as his peculium. In this case he is in the 

 eye of the law quasi colonus. Or he might be farming on his master's 

 account; then he is vilicus. In both cases he is assumed to have under 

 him slave-labourers supplied 5 by the landlord, and it seems that the 

 name vilicus was sometimes loosely applied even in the former case. 

 In the latter case he cannot have been very different from the steward 

 of a large estate worked for owner's account. I can only conclude that 

 he was put in charge of a smaller farm-unit and left more to his own 

 devices. Probably this arrangement would be resorted to only when an 

 ordinary free tenant was not to be had; and satisfactory ones were 

 evidently not common in the time of the younger Pliny. 



So far as I can see, in this period landlords were gradually ceasing 

 to keep a direct control over the management of their own estates, but 

 the changes in progress did not tend to a rehabilitation of free labour. 



1 By H BlUmner in Miiller's Handbuch ed 3, IV ii 2 p 544. 



- Mommsen op cit p 416. See the chapter on evidence from the Digest. 



3 Mommsen op cit p 412. 



4 Digest xxxni 7 2O 1 nonf.de dominica sedmercede. ibid I2 3 qui qiiasi colonus in agro 

 erat. 



5 Dig xxxiii 7 2o 3 praedia ut instructa sunt cum dotibus et reliquis colonorum et vili- 

 corum et mancipiis et pecore omni legavit et peculiis et cum actore. Cf also XL 7 40*. 



