colonus. Slaves as booty 325 



lowed would ensure that the land would not be allowed to drop out of 

 cultivation. An interesting glimpse of municipal patriotism, active and 

 passive. The only other detail I have to note is that he regularly uses 

 the term colonus as 'tenant-farmer/ I have not found a single instance 

 of the older sense ' tiller of the soil.' We cannot argue from Pliny to 

 his contemporaries without some reserve, for he was undoubtedly an 

 exceptional man. But, so far as his evidence goes, it bears out the 

 view that great landlords were giving up the system of slave steward- 

 ships for free tenancies. Owners there still were who kept their 

 estates in hand, farming themselves or by deputy for their own ac- 

 count. But that some of these were men of a humbler class, freedmen 

 to wit, we have seen reason to believe from references in the elder 

 Pliny. Perhaps they were many, and some may even have worked 

 with their own hands. Be this as it may, slave labour 1 was still the 

 staple appliance of agriculture, and whenever there were slaves for sale 

 there were always buyers. 



XLIV. SUETONIUS AND OTHERS. 



Suetonius, whose Lives of the first twelve emperors contain much 

 interesting and important matter, stands in relation to the present 

 inquiry on the same footing as most of the regular historians. He 

 flourished in the times of Trajan and Hadrian, and therefore what 

 remains of his writings is not contemporary evidence. But he was a 

 student and a careful compiler from numerous works now lost. The 

 number of passages in which he refers to matters directly or indirectly 

 bearing on rustic life and labour is not large, and most of them have 

 been cited in other chapters, where they find a place in connexion 

 with the context. He can be dealt with very briefly here. 



The close connexion between wars and the supply of slaves is 

 marked in the doings of Julius 2 Caesar. Gaulish and British captives 

 were (as Caesar himself records) no small part of the booty won in his 

 northern campaigns. He rewarded his men after a victory with a 

 prisoner apiece: these would soon be sold to the dealers who followed 

 the army, and most of them would find their way to the Roman slave- 

 market. To gratify friendly princes or provincial communities, he 

 sent them large bodies of slaves as presents. So his victims served 

 instead of cash to win adherents for their new master. And these 

 natives of the North would certainly be used for heavy rough work, 

 mostly as farm-hands. When Augustus, loth to enlarge the empire, 



1 As we have seen above, the tenant coloni employed slave labour. Whether they worked 

 with their own hands, or confined themselves to direction, probably varied in various cases. 



2 Sueton falitts 26, 28. 



