50 VARRO ON FARMING [bk. 



three classes, namely, (i) the class gifted with 

 speech, (2) that which has inarticulate voice, and 

 (3) that which is voiceless. To the first belong 

 slaves, to the second oxen, and to the third wagons. 



2 Now in all agriculture human beings are used — 

 either slaves, or freemen, or the two together. Free- 

 men are employed either where the farmer himself, 

 helped by his family, tills the soil, as is the case 

 with most peasant proprietors, or where freemen are 

 hired, as when the more important agricultural 

 operations, such as the vintage or the hay-cutting, 

 are conducted by gangs of hired labourers; and by 

 those whom our country men called obaeratt^debtorsY 

 — who still exist in great numbers in Asia, Egypt, 

 and Illyricum. About these as a class I have this 

 to say: It pays better in an unhealthy district to 

 use hired labourers than slaves, and in a healthy 

 district, too, for the more important work of the 

 farm, such as the getting in the vintage or the 



3 harvest. Of the qualifications of these labourers, 

 Cassius ^ writes as follows: You are to get labourers 



^ Obaeratus probably equals nexus ^ concerning whom Varro, 

 L. L., vii, 5, writes: "The freeman who gave his services as 

 a slave until he could pay the money he owed is called nexus, 

 also obaeratus (from the word aes).^' He was not a slave, but 

 could be imprisoned and kept at work by his creditor, from 

 whom the farmer might hire him. From the farmer's point 

 of view he would thus be a mercenarius or hired labourer. 

 Nexum was abolished by the Lex Poetilia, 326 B.C. 



^ Cassius. The Cassius Dionysius of Utica mentioned in 

 the first chapter of this book (i, 1,1), who translated Mago's 

 great treatise on agriculture. 



