Head-tenants and sub-tenants 355 



to receive steady returns as large as possible, but above all things 

 steady had a common interest in preventing unlawful exactions, by 

 which a stable income was imperilled and the prosperity of the culti- 

 vator impaired. On the other hand the procurator and the condtictor 

 could only make illicit profits through combining to rob the emperor 

 by squeezing his coloni. How to accomplish this was no doubt a matter 

 of delicate calculation. How much oppression would the coloni stand 

 without resorting to the troublesome and risky process of an appeal ? 

 We only hear of one or two appeals made with success. Of those that 

 were made and rejected or foiled by various arts, and of those aban- 

 doned in despair at an early stage, we get no record. Yet that such 

 cases did occur, perhaps not seldom, we may be reasonably sure. 



It is well to remember that Columella, in whose treatise letting of 

 farms to tenants first appears, not as an occasional expedient but as 

 part of a reasoned scheme of estate-management, makes provision for 

 a procurator^ as well as a vilicus. One duty of the former is to keep an 

 eye on the latter. In the management of great estates an atmosphere 

 of mistrust is perhaps to some extent unavoidable. In an agricultural 

 system based on slave labour, this mistrust begins at the very bottom 

 of the structure and reaches to the very top, as is shewn by all ex- 

 perience ancient and modern. Industry in slaves, diligence and honesty 

 in agents and stewards, are not to be relied on when these subordinates 

 have no share in the profit derived from the practice of such virtues. 

 And mistrust of slaves and freedmen did not imply a simple trust in 

 free tenants. Columella only advises 2 letting to tenants in circumstances 

 that make it impracticable to cultivate profitably by a slave-staff under 

 a steward. The plan is a sort of last resort, and it can only work well 

 if the tenants stay on continuously. Therefore care should be taken to 

 make the position of the coloni permanently attractive. This advice is 

 primarily designed for Italy, but its principles are of general applica- 

 tion, and no doubt justified by experience. Their extension to lati- 

 fundia abroad, coupled with a falling-off in the supply of slaves, led 

 to similar results: great estates might still be in part worked by slave 

 labour under stewards, but letting parcels to small tenants became a 

 more and more vital feature of the system. But to deal directly from 

 a distance with a number of such peasant farmers would be a trouble- 

 some business. We need not wonder that it became customary to let 

 large blocks of land, even whole latifundia, to big lessees, speculative 

 men who undertook the subletting and rent-collecting of part of their 

 holdings, while they could work the central manor-farm by slave labour 

 on their own account, and generally exploit the situation for their own 

 profit. Thus, as once the latifundium had absorbed little properties, 



1 Colum I 6 7, 8. 2 Colum I 7. 



232 



