Rustic details 307 



Though Martial cannot be regarded as an authority on Italian 

 agriculture, it so happens that passages of his works are important and 

 instructive, particularly in connexion with matters of land-management 

 and farm-labour. He gives point to his epigrams by short and vivid 

 touches, above all by telling contrasts. Now this style of writing loses 

 most of its force if the details lack reality. He was therefore little 

 tempted to go beyond the truth in matters of ordinary non-bestial life, 

 such as agricultural conditions ; we may accept him as a good witness. 

 To begin with an all-important topic, let us see what we get from him 

 on the management of land, either for the landlord's account under a 

 slave vilicus, or by letting it to a free colonus. In explaining the gloomy 

 bearing of Selius, he remarks 1 that it is not due to recent losses: his 

 wife and his goods and his slaves are all safe, and he is not suffering 

 from any failures of a tenant or a steward. Here colonus as opposed to 

 vilicus must mean a free tenant, who might be behindhand with his 

 rent or with service due under his lease. The opposition occurs else- 

 where, as when he refers 2 to the produce sent in to a rich man in Rome 

 from his country estates by his steward or tenant. So too on the birth- 

 day of an eminent advocate all his clients and dependants send gifts; 

 among them 3 the hunter sends a hare, the fisherman some fish, and the 

 celonus a kid. The venator and piscator are very likely his slaves. In 

 protesting 4 against the plague of kissing as it strikes a man on return 

 to Rome, he says, 'all the neighbours kiss you, and the colonus too with 

 his hairy unsavoury mouth.' It seems to imply that the rustic tenant 

 would come to Town to pay his respects to his landlord. Barring the 

 kiss, the duty of welcoming the squire makes one think of times not 

 long gone by in England. In one passage 5 there is a touch suggestive 

 of almost medieval relations. How Linus has managed to get through 

 a large inherited fortune, is a mystery in need of an explanation. He 

 has not been a victim of the temptations of the great wicked city. No, 

 he has always lived in a country town, where economy was not only 

 possible but easy. Everything he needed was to be had cheap or gratis, 

 and there was nothing to lead him into extravagant ways. Now among 

 the instances of cheapness is the means of satisfying his sexual passions 

 when they become unruly. At such moments either the vilica or the 

 duri nupta coloni served his turn. The steward's consort would be his 

 slave, and there is no more to be said: but the tenant-farmer's wife, 

 presumably a free woman, is on a different footing. There is no sug- 

 gestion of hoodwinking the husband, for the situation is treated as 



1 II ii nihil colonus vilicusque decoxit. This may imply that the vilicus was a sen/us 

 quasi colontis liable to a rent and in arrears. See notes pp -299, 311. But I do not venture 

 to draw this inference. 



3 vn 3i- a x 87. Cf Juv iv 25-6, Digest xxxn 99, xxxm 7 \&-> 13 , etc. 



4 xn 59. 5 iv 66. 



202 



