370 Slaves on hire 



The services (operate) of a slave, due to his owner or to some one in 

 place of his owner, were a property capable of valuation, and therefore 

 could be let and hired at a price. That is, the person to whom they 

 were due could commute 1 them for a merces. This might, as in the 

 corresponding Greek case of airo^opd, be a paying business, if a slave 

 had been bought cheap and trained so as to earn good wages. It was 

 common enough in various trades: what concerns us is that the plan 

 was evidently in use in the rustic world also. Now this is notable. 

 We naturally ask, if the man's services were worth so much to the 

 hirer, why should they not have been worth as much (or even a little 

 more) to his own master? Why should it pay to let him rather than 

 to use him yourself? Of course the owner might have more slaves 

 than he needed at the moment : or the hirer might be led by tempo- 

 rary need of labour to offer a fancy price for the accommodation : or 

 two masters on neighbouring farms might engage in a reciprocity of 

 cross-hirings to suit their mutual convenience at certain seasons. Fur- 

 ther possibilities might be suggested, but are such occasional expla- 

 nations sufficient to account for the prevalence of this hiring-system? 

 I think not. Surely the principal influence, steadily operating in this 

 direction, was one that implied an admission of the economic failure 

 of slavery. If A's slave worked for B so well that it paid A to let him 

 do so and to receive a rent for his services, it follows that the slave had 

 some inducement to exert his powers more fully as B's hireling than 

 in the course of ordinary duty under his own master. Either the nature 

 and conditions of the work under B were pleasanter, or he received 

 something for himself over and above the stipulated sum claimed by 

 his master. In other words, as a mere slave he did not do his best; 

 as a hired man he felt some of the stimulus that a free man gets from 

 the prospect of his wage. So Slavery, already philanthropically ques- 

 tioned, was in this confession economically condemned. 



These points considered, we are not surprised to find mention of 

 slaves letting out their own 2 operae. This must imply the consent of 

 their masters, and it is perhaps not rash to see in such a situation a 

 sign of weakening in the effective authority of masters. A master 

 whose interest is bound up with the fullest development of his slave's 

 powers (as rentable property exposed to competition) will hardly act 

 the martinet without forecasting the possible damage to his own 

 pocket. A slave who knows that his master draws an income from 

 his efficiency is in a strong position for gradually extorting privileges 

 till he attains no small degree of independence. We may perhaps find 

 traces of such an advance in the arrangement by which a slave hires 



1 VI1 7 3 * n hominis usufructu operae sunt et ob operas mercedes (Gaius), xn 6 55. 

 a vn i 25, 26, Xix 2 6o 7 (Labeo, time of Augustus, cited by Javolenus). 



