312 Drawbacks to country places 



estate as tenants. This conjecture finds a reason for manumission, as 

 the freed man would be capable of a legal relation, which the slave was 

 not. The freedman's son would be ingenuus, and would represent, in 

 his economic bondage under cover of legal freedom, a natural stage in 

 the transition from the personal slave to the predial serf. 



That there were vernae on the small suburban properties, the rest- 

 retreats of Martial and many others, is not to be doubted. But they 

 can hardly have been very numerous. These little places were often 

 but poorly kept up. The owners were seldom wealthy men, able to 

 maintain many slaves. Economy and quiet were desired by men who 

 could not afford ostentation. The normal use of the epithet sordidus 1 

 (not peculiar to Martial) in speaking of such places, and indeed of small 

 farmsteads in general, is characteristic of them and of the undress life 

 led there. The house was sometimes in bad condition. To patch up a 

 leaky roof 2 a present of a load of tiles was welcome. A man buys a 

 place the house (casd) on which is horribly dark and old: the poet 

 remarks that it is close to the pleasure-garden (hortos) of a rich man. 

 This explains the purchase : the buyer will put up with bad lodging 

 for the prospect of good dinners at his neighbour's table. The difficulty 

 of finding a purchaser for an estate of bad sanitary record, and the 

 damage done to riparian farms by the Tiber floods, are instances 3 of 

 the ordinary troubles of the little landowners near Rome. A peculiar 

 nuisance, common in Italy, was the presence in some corner of a field 

 of the tomb 4 of some former owner or his family. A slice of the land, 

 so many feet in length and breadth, was often reserved 5 as not to pass 

 with the inheritance. What the heir never owned, that he could not 

 sell. So, when the property changed hands, the new owner had no 

 right to remove what to him might be nothing but a hindrance to 

 convenient tillage. Altars 6 taken over from a predecessor may also 

 have been troublesome at times, but their removal was probably less 

 difficult 



The picture of agricultural conditions to be drawn from Juvenal 

 agrees with that drawn from Martial. But, as said above, the point of 

 view is different in the satirist, whose business it is to denounce evils, 

 and who is liable to fall into rhetorical exaggeration. And to a native 

 of central Italy the tradition of a healthier state of things in earlier ages 

 was naturally a more important part of his background than it could 

 be to a man from Spain. Hence we find vivid scenes 7 drawn from 



1 I 55 hoc petit, esse sui nee magni ruris arator, sordidaque in parvis otia rebus amat. 

 And often. 



2 vn 36, xi 34. 3 i 85, x 85. Cf Pliny epist vin 17. 

 4 x 61, XI 48. The title de sepulchro violato, Dig XLVII 12, will illustrate this. 

 8 The form HNS (heredem non sequitur) is common in sepulchral inscriptions. 



x 92. 7 Juv xiv 161-71. 



