in dealing with tenants 321 



(and he knows that they seldom do), he will have to change his policy 1 , 

 for they are ruining the land by bad husbandry. For himself, he is 

 no farmer. When on a country estate, watching the progress of the 

 vintage, he potters about 2 in a rather purposeless manner, glad to 

 retire to his study where he can listen to his reader or dictate to his 

 secretary : if he can produce 3 a few lines, that is his crop. It would 

 seem that not all his farms were let to tenants. In one letter he speaks 

 of his town-slaves 4 being employed as overseers or gangers of the 

 rustic hands, and remarks that one of his occupations is to pay surprise 

 visits to these fellows. We can guess what a drag upon Italian agri- 

 culture the slavery-system really was : here is a man full of considerate 

 humanity, devoted to the wellbeing of his slaves, who cannot trust 

 one of them to see that others do their work. 



But that letting to tenants was his usual plan is evident from the 

 number of his references to the trouble they gave him. It was not 

 always clear whether to get rid of them or to keep them (and if the 

 latter, on what terms,) offered the less disastrous solution of an awk- 

 ward problem. In one letter 5 he gives the following excuse for his 

 inability to be present in Rome on the occasion of a friend's succeeding 

 to the consulship. ' You won't take it ill of me, particularly as I am 

 compelled 6 to see to the letting of some farms, a business that means 

 making an arrangement for several years, and will drive me to adopt 

 a fresh policy. For in the five years 7 just past the arrears have grown, 

 in spite of large abatements granted. Hence most (of the tenants) 

 take no further trouble to reduce their liabilities, having lost hope of 

 ever meeting them in full : they grab and use up everything that 

 grows, reckoning that henceforth it is not they 8 who would profit by 

 economy. So as the evils increase I must find remedies to meet them. 

 And the only possible plan is to let these farms 9 not at a cash rent 

 but on shares, and then to employ some of my staff as task-masters 

 to watch the crops. Besides, there is no fairer source of income than 

 the returns rendered by soil climate and season. True, this plan re- 

 quires mighty honesty, keen eyes, and a host of hands. Still I must 

 make the trial ; I must act as in a chronic malady, and use every 

 possible treatment to promote a change.' 



1 As de Coulanges remarks pp 17-8, Pliny does not propose to get rid of them, but to 

 keep them as partiary tenants. They would be in his debt. He uses the expression aeris 

 alieni IX 37 2. He would have to find instrumentum for them. 



2 IX 20 2. 3 IX 16. 4 IX 20 2 obrepere urbanis qui nunc ritsticis praesunt. 

 5 IX 37. 6 necessitas locandorum praediorum plures annos ordinatura. 



7 priore lustro. The lustrum or quinquennium was the common term of leases, and 

 recognized in law books. Cf Digest xn i 4 1 , xix 2 24, etc. 



8 ut qni iam putent se non sibi parcerc. 



9 si non nummo seJ partibus locem, ac deinde ex meis aliqtios operis exact ores custodes 

 fructibus ponam. His new tenants would be coloni partiarii. 



H.A. 21 



