316 Regular labour versus Gymnastic 



denounce the luxury and extravagance of Roman society, though he 

 dare not assail living individuals. And in exposing the rottenness of 

 the civilization around him he attacks the very vices that had grown 

 to such portentous heights through the development of slavery. Idle- 

 ness bore its fruit, not only in the debauchery and gambling that 

 fostered unholy greed and crimes committed to procure the money 

 that was ever vanishing, but in the degradation of honest labour. 

 Pampered menials were arrogant, poor citizens servile. And vast tracts 

 of Italian land bore witness to the mournful fact that the land system, 

 so far from affording a sound basis for social and economic betterment, 

 was itself one of the worst elements of the situation. 



At this stage it is well to recall the relation between agriculture 

 and military service, the farmer-soldier ideal. The long-since existing 

 tendency for the soldier to become a professional, while the free farmer 

 class was decaying, had never obliterated the impression of this ideal 

 on Roman minds. The belief that gymnastic exercises on Greek models 

 were no effective substitute for regular manual labour in the open air 

 as guarantees of military 'fitness' is still strong in Juvenal. It shews 

 itself in his pictures of life in Rome, where such exercises were prac- 

 tised for the purpose of ' keeping fit ' and ' getting an appetite/ much 

 as they are now. Followed by baths and massage and luxurious ap- 

 pliances of every kind, this treatment enabled the jaded city-dweller 

 to minimize the enervating effects of idleness relieved by excitements 

 and debauchery. He significantly lays stress on the fact that these 

 habits were as common among women as among men. The usual al- 

 lowance must be made for a satirist's exaggeration ; but the general 

 truth of the picture is not to be doubted. The city life was no prepar- 

 ation for the camp with its rough appliances and ever-present need 

 for the readiness to endure cheerfully the hardships of the field. The 

 toughness of the farm-labourer was proverbial : the Latin word durus 

 is his conventional epithet. In other words, he was a model of healthy 

 hardness and vigour. Now to Juvenal, as to others, the best object of 

 desire 1 was mens sana in corpore sano y and he well knew that to secure 

 the second gave the best hope of securing the first. We might then 

 expect him to recommend field work as the surest way to get and 

 keep vigorous health. Yet I cannot find any indication of this precept 

 save the advice to a friend to get out of Rome and settle on a garden- 

 plot in the country. He says 'there live devoted 2 to your clod-pick; 

 be the vilicus of a well-tended garden.' I presume he means ' be your 

 own steward, and lend a hand in tillage as a steward would do.' But 

 an average vilicus would be more concerned to get work out of his 

 underlings than to exert himself, and Juvenal is not very explicit in 



1 X 356. 2 ill 223-9, bidentis amans. 



