A local rising in Africa 341 



and their sons recruited Roman armies. Lastly, we have no right to 

 assume that small cultivating owners 1 were wholly extinct, though 

 there can hardly have been many of them. 



We have an account 2 of the rising in Africa (238 AD) which, so far 

 as it goes, gives us a little light on the agricultural situation there in 

 the middle of this period. The barbarian emperor Maximin was re- 

 presented in the Province by a procurator fisci whose oppressions pro- 

 voked a conspiracy against him. Some young men of good and wealthy 

 families drew together a number of persons who had suffered wrong. 

 They ordered their slaves 3 from the farms to assemble with clubs and 

 axes. In obedience 4 to their masters' orders they gathered in the town 

 before daybreak, and formed a great mob. For Africa is naturally a 

 populous 8 country; so the tillers of the soil were numerous. After 

 dawn the young leaders told the mass of the slaves to follow them as 

 being a section of the general throng : they were to conceal their 

 weapons for the present, but* valiantly to resist any attack on their 

 masters. The latter then met the procurator and assassinated him. 

 Hereupon his guards drew their swords meaning to avenge the murder, 

 but the countrymen in support of their masters 6 fell upon them with 

 their rustic weapons and easily routed them. After this the young 

 leaders, having gone too far to draw back, openly rebelled against 

 Maximin and proclaimed the proconsul Gordian Roman emperor. In 

 this passage we have before us young men of landlord families, ap- 

 parently holding large estates and working them with slave labour. 

 They are evidently on good terms with their slaves. Of tenant farmers 

 there is no mention: but there is a general reference to support given 

 by other persons, already wronged or afraid of suffering wrong. The 

 Latin biographer 7 , who drew from Herodian, speaks of the murder as 

 the work of 'the rustic common folk 8 and certain soldiers.' Now 

 Frontinus 9 , writing in the latter part of the first century AD, tells us that 

 in Africa on their great estates individuals had ' a considerable popu- 

 lation 10 of common folk.' The language can hardly refer to slaves: and 

 a reference to levying recruits 11 for the army plainly forbids such an 

 interpretation. But it does not imply that there were no slaves em- 

 ployed on those great estates ; the writer is not thinking of the free- 

 or-slave labour question. In regard to the writers who record this 



1 We shall find some reference to them later in the Codes. 



2 Herodian VII 4 3-6. 3 rote e/c r&v aypw 



4 ireurOtvTes /ceXeriown rots 5e<rir6rcus. 



5 0tf<ret ydp irokvoivdpwiros ovffa i\ Aifitii} 7roX\oi)s e^x 6 T OVS rrfv 



6 virep/j.axfyft'oi. TWV 8e(nroTwi>. 7 Capitolinus Maximin 13 4, 14 I. 



8 per rusticanam plebem deinde et quosdam milites interemptus est. 



9 Frontin gromat p 53. 10 non exiguum populum plebeium. 

 11 legere tironem ex vico. 



