3oo Dion Chrysostom's idyll 



One detail needs a brief special consideration. The landlord's agent 

 (actor) is often mentioned, and it is clear that the actor was generally 

 a slave. But there is reference to the possible case 1 of an actor living 

 (like his master) in town, not on the farms, and having a wife 2 and 

 daughter. This suggests a freedman, not a slave, and such cases may 

 have been fairly numerous. Another point for notice is the question of 

 vincti, alligati) compediti, in this period. Mommsen 3 treats the chaining 

 of field-slaves as being quite exceptional, in fact a punishment, in Italy 

 under the Empire. Surely it was always in some sense a punishment. 

 From what Columella 4 says of the normal employment of chained 

 labourers in vineyard-work I can not admit that the evidence justifies 

 Mommsen's assertion. That there was a growing reluctance to use 

 such barbarous methods, and that local usage varied in various parts 

 of the country, is certain. 



XL. DION CHRYSOSTOM. 



We have seen that there is no lack of evidence as to the lamentable 

 condition of Italian agriculture in a large part of the country. But 

 things were no better in certain Provinces, more particularly in Greece. 

 Plutarch deplores 8 the decay and depopulation of his native land, but 

 the most vivid and significant picture preserved to us is one conveyed 

 in a public address 6 by the famous lecturer Dion of Prusa, better 

 known as Dion 7 Chrysostom. It describes conditions in the once pros- 

 perous island of Euboea. The speaker professes to have been cast 

 ashore there in a storm, and to have been entertained with extra- 

 ordinary kindness by some honest rustics who were living an indus- 

 trious and harmless life in the upland parts, the rocky shore of which 

 was notorious as a scene of shipwrecks. There were two connected 

 households, squatters in the lonely waste, producing by their own exer- 

 tions everything they needed, and of course patterns of every amiable 

 virtue. The lecturer recounts the story of these interesting people as 

 told him by his host. How much of it is due to his own imagination, 

 or put together out of various stories, we cannot judge: but it is mani- 

 fest that what concerns us is to feel satisfied that the experiences de- 

 scribed were possible, and not grotesquely improbable, in their setting 

 of place and time. I venture to accept the story as a sketch of what 

 might very well have happened, whether it actually did so or not. 



1 Dig xxxni 7 20*. 



2 But that uxor was sometimes loosely used of a slave's contubernalis is true. Wallon 

 ii 207, cf Paulus Sent in 6 38, 40, Dig xxxni 7 i^- 38 . 



3 Mommsen op cit p 409. 4 Columella I 9 4. 



5 Plut de defectu oraculorum 8. 8 oratio vn, Euboicus seu venator. 



7 A contemporary of the younger Pliny, flourished about 100 AD. 



