The great Provincial Domains 353 



agrees perfectly with the evidence of later legislation in the Theodosian 

 code. The normal course of events is, legislation to protect the poorer 

 classes of cultivators, then evasion of the law by the selfish rich, then 

 reenactment of evaded laws, generally with increased penalties. That 

 under the administrative system of the domains much the same pheno- 

 mena should occur, is only what we might expect. 



XLVIII. DISCUSSION OF THE ABOVE INSCRIPTIONS. 



In reviewing the state of things revealed to us by these inscriptions 

 we must carefully bear in mind that they relate solely to the Province 

 Africa. Conditions there were in many ways exceptional. When Rome 

 took over this territory after the destruction of Carthage in 146 BC, it 

 was probably a country divided for the most part into great estates 

 worked on the Carthaginian system by slave labour. Gradually the 

 land came more and more into the hands of Roman capitalists, to 

 whose opulence Horace refers. Pliny tells us that in Nero's time six 1 

 great landlords possessed half the entire area of the Province, when 

 that emperor found a pretext for putting them to death and confis- 

 cating their estates. Henceforth the ruling emperor was the predomi- 

 nating landlord 2 in a Province of immense importance, in particular as 

 a chief granary of Rome. We are not to suppose that any change in 

 the system of large units was ever contemplated. Punic traditions,. 

 i probably based on experience, favoured the system; though the Punic 

 language, still spoken, seems to have been chiefly confined to the sea- 

 board districts. What the change of lordship effected was not only to 

 the financial advantage of the imperial treasury: it also put an end to 

 the creation of what were a sort of little principalities that might some 

 day cause serious trouble. At this point we are tempted to wonder 

 whether the great landlords, before the sweeping measure of Nero, 

 had taken any steps towards introducing a new organization in the 

 management of their estates. Trajan's statute refers to a lex Manciana 

 and adopts a number of its regulations. These regulations clearly con- 

 template a system of head-tenants and sub-tenants, of whom the latter 

 seem to be actual working farmers living of the labour of their own 

 hands, as those who some 65 years later described themselves in ap- 

 pealing to Commodus. The former have stewards in charge of the 

 cultivation of the ' manor farms ' attached to the principal farmsteads, 

 and evidently employ gangs of slaves : but at special seasons have a 



1 It is tempting to identify these with the six mentioned in Nos (2) and (4) above. 



2 For the vast extent of imperial estates, particularly in Africa, see Hirschfeld, der 

 Grundbesitz der Romischen Kaiser, in his Kleine Schriften. 



H. A. 23 



