The rustic slave 369 



subsidiary 1 industries. These questions the jurists discussed fully, but 

 we cannot follow them here, as their legal importance is chiefly in 

 connexion with property and can hardly have affected seriously the 

 position of tenants. But it is interesting to observe that the lawyers 

 were feeling the necessity of attempting some practical classification. 

 The distinction 2 between urbana and rustica mancipia was old enough as 

 a loose conversational or literary one. But, when rights of inheritance 

 or legacy of such valuable property were involved, it became important 

 to define (if possible) the essential characteristics of a ' rustic ' slave. 



That the condition of the rustic slave was improving, and generally 

 far better than it had been on the latifundia of Republican days, seems 

 indicated by the jurists' speaking of a slave as colonus or quasi colonus 

 without any suggestion of strangeness in the relation. We may 

 assume that only slaves of exceptional capacity and merit would be 

 placed in a position of economic (if not legal) equality with free tenants. 

 Still the growth of such a custom can hardly have been without some 

 effect on the condition of rustic slaves in general. It was not new in 

 the second century: it is referred to by a jurist 3 of the Augustan age. 

 The increasing difficulty of getting either good tenants or good slaves 

 no doubt induced landlords to entrust farms to men who could and 

 would work them profitably, whether freemen or slaves. And a slave 

 had in agriculture, as in trades and finance, a point in his favour: his 

 person and his goods 4 remained in his master's power. If by skilled 

 and honest management he relieved his master of trouble and worry,, 

 and contributed by regular payment of rent to assure his income, it- 

 was reasonable to look for gratitude expressed, on the usual Roman 

 lines, in his master's will. Manumission, perhaps accompanied by 

 bequest 5 of the very farm that he had worked so well, was a probable 

 reward. May we not guess that some of the best farming carried on 

 in Italy under the earlier Empire was achieved by trusted slaves, in 

 whom servile apathy was overcome by hope? Such a farmer-slave 

 would surely have under him 6 slave labourers, the property of his 

 master; and he would have the strongest possible motives for tact 

 and skill in their management, while his own capacity had been de- 

 veloped by practical experience. I can point to no arrangement in 

 Roman agriculture so calculated to make it efficient on a basis of 

 slavery as this. 



1 See above on Martial pp 307-10. 



2 xxxn 99, xxxin 7 passim, esp 25*. Buckland, Slavery p 6. 



3 Alfenus Varus in Dig XV 3 16. 



* Hence the frequent references to peculia. See xxxin 8 de peculio legato, where from 

 6P r , 8P r , it appears that his peculium might include land and houses. Cf de Coulanges 

 PP 55-6, 66-7, 135-6. 



5 xxxii 97 etc. e xxxin 7 ii s etc. 



H.A. 



