Chapter 6 — The Establishment Of The Plantation

CHAPTER VI

The Establishment of the Plantation

In 264 B.C. Rome came to the parting of the ways and, with characteristic enterprise, chose the way that led into deep forests without signposts. For the first time she acquired non-Italian territory by contesting the possession of Sicily with Carthage. The real significance of the step rests in the fact that she found and adopted in Sicily an Oriental theory of sovereignty[1] which, in time, completely changed her political ideals and, permeating her code, survived in still recognizable forms into modern times to justify those crude types of imperialism that have lately brought the world into one vast battlefield. In the past Rome had built up a federation of autonomous states that had surrendered their political hegemony without the payment of tribute. In Sicily, she found that the overlord, Carthage, claimed to be owner of the soil, and that the holders were tenants who paid rent to, and held possession at the goodwill of, the sovereign power, which exercised dominium in solo provinciali. This profitable theory, which permitted the conqueror to exact heavy tribute, Carthage and the Syracusan tyrant Hiero had learned from the kings of Egypt and Syria, who had inherited it from Alexander, as he in his day had adopted it, together with his theory of divine rights, from the Persian régime. By virtue of it, the Carthaginians had imposed in Sicily tithes on grain and fifths on various other products of the soil, while the lands of which they had taken complete possession they rented out to the highest bidder or cultivated as state domain. Thus a large part of Sicily had been treated as public land to be exploited to the advantage of the conqueror.

[1] Rostowzew, Studien zur Gesch. des Rom. Kolonates, 229–49, explains brilliantly the intricacies of the Oriental method as applied in Sicily. I have attempted to sketch the political aspects of Rome’s conquest of Sicily in Roman Imperialism, pp. [OCR unclear: tS] ff.

How far thoughts of transferring this profitable possession to themselves counted with the Romans in inducing them to enter the dangerous hazards of a war with Carthage, we can hardly decide. Polybius states that when the Senate hesitated to act, the chauvinists urged the popular assembly to consider the material advantages that would follow, and perhaps it was the tribute they had in mind. The Senate, it must be added, however, acted with reluctance and for two years sent such small forces to the front that there was apparently on its part no immediate intention of conquering a new province: to the senators, it seemed enough if Messana were protected so that the straits might be kept out of Carthaginian control.

Those who looked for material advantages from a war were never more deluded. A constant struggle of twenty-four years ensued, in which Rome drained her resources to the last drop. Every available man was used on land or sea through interminable campaigns, until her fields went to waste and debts outstripped the returns of scanty crops. To keep up a fair quota for her army, Rome at the end of the war admitted into citizenship all the Sabine and Picentine people, running the imaginary walls of her city-state across Italy to the Adriatic.

Rome won in the end and took over Carthaginian Sicily with most of the lucrative dispositions of the former owner, but she did not for the present evict any of the landholders or send any colony to the island. The reasons are patent. The drain upon her population had been so severe that it would have been no easy matter to find volunteers for a colony so far distant. Nor could the state have made use of a military colony of the usual type. Nothing but a legion of professional soldiers would serve the purpose, since here the conquered were to be kept in subjection as tributaries whether or not they wished it.

The annual tribute that Rome collected amounted to about one million bushels of wheat, which was brought to Rome and sold on the market for the account of the treasury. Since this amount was probably enough to supply at least half the needs of the city, it would be interesting to know what the farmers of the vicinity thought of this competition of the state with their market. Unfortunately, our meager sources have left no apposite comment. It is impossible to believe that, if the landowners had seriously objected, the urban tribes, being only four, could have outvoted the rural tribes in favor of cheap grain. Since the exaction of tribute in kind continued, and so far as we know no effort was made to divert the produce to other markets, we may conclude that much grain was actually needed. If so, conditions in Latium had already shifted toward the position they held in Cato’s day, when grain culture had given way largely to pasturage, wine, and olive growing. The process, insofar as it was not complete, must of course have been accelerated by the deluge of Sicilian wheat. From that time, one province after another was exploited to feed the growing population of the city, and central Italy could never again win the position of a cereal-producing region.

In 232 Flaminius, a bold precursor of the Gracchi, reasserted the doctrine, adopted after the fall of Veii, that public lands should be employed for purposes of social and economic amelioration rather than rented, as the Senate desired, to endow the governmental treasury. The land in question was the Ager Gallicus, which Rome took from the Senones when, in 285, they attempted to repeat the memorable raid of a century earlier. At that time the land had been left undivided for want of takers and had probably been leased in large lots to grazers. As the city grew, however, senators, who were in general the class that could carry such investments, had naturally found the leases profitable. But their arguments against Flaminius were not wholly based upon personal considerations. As experienced administrators, they saw, of course, the advantages to the state of having a steady and reliable source of income for the treasury in addition to the real-estate tax, and they could question with sincerity the wisdom of a doctrine whose implications would inevitably phrase themselves in the theory that the state owed all its citizens a means of livelihood. How severe the demands for new distributions may have been, we cannot conjecture, but it is quite possible that in the years of casting up accounts after the long Punic War, many peasants lost their properties through mortgages incurred while they had been in foreign service. At any rate, the contest was a bitter one before Flaminius finally secured a majority vote in the tribal assembly for his proposal.

Polybius,[2] writing later when the city was drifting toward the Gracchan maelstrom, and adopting the interpretation of the law as he found it in the aristocratic writer Fabius, cynically remarks that this was the beginning of Rome’s downfall; and he adds, in what seems to be an echo of senatorial invective, that it was the cause of the Gallic wars of the Po valley that followed. Later writers generally adopted this verdict, for the effective historians of the Republic who have put the stamp of their own bias upon republican history were nearly all members of the aristocracy. And this is the reason why the whole career of this original, though overimpetuous, leader[3] is everywhere stained with whimsical accusations. An important immediate result of this law was that Rome again turned her surplus energies to land development, although the opening of a rich province outside Italy should have attracted attention to the profits of commerce and industry.[4]

[2] Polybius, II, 21, 7; the sentence probably belongs to a late revision of his work by the author. See also Cicero, Cato Maj. II, and Brut. 57. The tract is sometimes called Ager Gallicus et Picenus because the Picentines seem to have possessed it before the Gallic invasion. On the law of Flaminius, see Cardinali, Studi Graccani, and Münzer, art. Flaminius in Pauly-Wissowa.

[3] It was Flaminius who built the Via Flaminia, which served both as a military road toward Gaul and as a highway of the colonists to Rome. The man’s interest in industrial questions is revealed in his support of the lex Metilia de fullonibus, regulating the fullers’ guilds (Pliny, XXXV, 197), and in his approval of the Claudian law, which prevented senators from engaging actively in foreign commerce. The second great playground of Rome, the Circus Flaminius, built by him, attests his interest in the urban populace.

[4] Since Claudius and Flaminius saw fit to prevent senators from engaging in maritime commerce, we may infer that some at least were entering this field at the time.

The Second Punic War, which was fought on Italian soil, wrought terrible havoc upon the chief industry of the people and thereby accelerated the processes that we have already noticed. For more than twelve years the battle lines swept back and forth over the villages and fields of central and southern Italy. Cities surrendered to the seemingly stronger contestant for self-protection, only to be sacked in vengeance when captured by the other. Whichever contestant retreated, grainfields were burned for military reasons, vineyards and orchards cut, and the cattle driven off. The inhabitants who escaped scattered to the four winds, many abandoning Italy permanently for Greece. Many of the famous cities of Magna Graecia came out of the war with a few hundred famine-ridden weaklings huddling together along the ruins of the city walls.[5]

[5] The vigorous part played in the Second Punic War by Marseilles suggests the inference that economic causes were far more important in bringing on the conflict than Livy supposed. Marseilles had had many trading posts on the coast of Spain, whither her merchants had attracted the products of the whole peninsula. Obviously, when Hamilcar and Hannibal marched northward from New Carthage, cross-cutting all the old trade routes, Marseilles found that Spanish products began to flow southward toward the Punic ports rather than eastward. And since Carthage, whenever possible, monopolized the commerce of her possessions, the success of Carthage in Spain would obviously result in the complete exclusion of Marseilles. It is therefore very likely that it was Marseilles that first tried to check the Carthaginians and, failing this, did her utmost to excite the Roman Senate to activity in her favor by exaggerating the reports of Punic designs against Rome. The Ebro treaty and the Saguntine alliance may well be the results of Massiliot diplomacy. Cf. Frank, Roman Imperialism, 121 ff.

After the war came problems of reconstruction that were, of course, far beyond the resources of the enfeebled and debt-burdened state. The few men who could be induced to consider colonies were gathered together and sent to frontiers demanding immediate protection. Thus Cremona and Placentia were repopulated as a bulwark against the Gauls, and a few hundred citizens were found for each of several ruined harbors of the southern coast, now exposed to raids and invasions.[6] Even for these southern points, the requisite three hundred citizens could not always be supplied, so that Thurii and Vibo were settled as Latin colonies, and non-Romans were also included in some of the others.

[6] The maritime colonies, planted apparently in view of a possible invasion by Antiochus in conjunction with Hannibal, were Sipontum, Croton, Tempsa, Buxentum, Salernum, Puteoli, Liternum, Volturnum, Thurii, and Vibo. Citizens of Fregellae are known to have shared in the colonization.

Vast areas of devastated lands at less vital points could obviously not be cared for at present. These the state took possession of, partly because they were without claimants, partly, in accordance with the new theory of sovereignty recently adopted in Sicily, because they were forfeited in title to the conqueror. What was to be done with these vast areas, aggregating a total of perhaps two million acres,[7] at least half of which was arable? Obviously, the state pursued what seemed to be a reasonable policy in offering it in large leaseholds to Romans who had the capital requisite to make use of it. By this method, at least, there was some hope of redeeming the land, for with the scarcity of settlers and the lack of capital available for buying it outright, the only other alternative would have been continued desolation and consequent lawlessness and brigandage.

Under the law, public lands could be thus leased in blocks of five hundred jugera per holder, or a thousand jugera for citizens having two children. Intensive cultivation, to be sure, was out of the question in such blocks, for labor was scarce and, with the means of transportation then available, grain could not profitably find good markets. But the land could at least be turned into ranches, since cattle raising might be conducted with the aid of a few slaves and the product brought to market with little difficulty. Even on these terms much land found no renters, and the censor’s bureau seems, pardonably if not wisely, to have permitted enterprising renters to exceed their allotments of the legal five hundred jugera if they so desired, and in many cases also to have connived when such renters let their cattle graze on less desirable lands lying unleased in the vicinity.

Thus large tracts of public lands, which for the time being were not otherwise of any service, came in time to be enclosed in the original holdings without good and legal title. It was a procedure that has found many parallels in the land-record offices of our own Western states. Here, as there, the practice was not only excused but even encouraged by public opinion, since those nearby saw nothing but advantage accruing from what is popularly called the “development of natural resources.” Later, after the population had grown and prospective settlers were clamoring for new allotments, a reaction set in demanding the “conservation of natural resources,” and some of the officials were thrown into prison for permitting what public opinion had heartily approved.

[7] Beloch, Bevölkerung der Griech. Röm. Welt.

Needless to say, when Rome recovered from the dire effects of the war, when the population began once more to increase and fill up the interstices—though this required more than one generation—it was found that the state’s hasty liberality had been imprudent in its failure to impose due restrictions. Ranches had spread over lands fit for agriculture; slaves imported from the East were thriving where citizen-soldiers should be growing up for service in time of need;[8] territory that might have been available for colonization by Rome’s overflow of children was found occupied; and capitalistic farming, which even under normal conditions outstrips small-lot culture, had been entrenched by an act of the state. After such leaseholders had established a further equity on unreclaimed possessions through many investments and improvements, a demand on the part of the tribal assembly for a return to the theory of Flaminius might well precipitate a very dangerous revolution. The germs of the Gracchan sedition were inherent in the inadequate reconstruction policy adopted after the Punic War.

[8] Appian, Bell. Civ. I, 7, states that the squatters preferred slave to free labor both because slaves could not be levied for the wars and because there was profit in their offspring.

A brief account of the agricultural methods in use upon a moderate-sized plantation may serve not only to describe Rome’s chief industry but to illustrate an ordinary Roman’s methods of dealing with practical problems. We are fairly well informed about agricultural practices by the instructive, if garbled, treatise written by Cato in the second century B.C., the somewhat longer work written by Varro a century later, and the full and charming treatise of Columella, composed in the first century A.D. Valuable data are also found in Vergil’s Georgics and in Pliny’s encyclopedia. Since the orthodox system was already in vogue in Cato’s day, and the later works reveal merely an extension of the system, with a few changes adapted to new needs, we may, if some caution is used, supplement Cato’s account by use of the two later authors.

In speaking of the plantation system in Italy, we do not mean to imply an approach to the capitalistic methods found in the “bonanza” wheat farming of our Western states, where success has depended upon the extensive use of labor-saving machinery capable of being employed upon level areas of rockless loam. Italian agriculture, even when specializing in cereals, called for obvious reasons for the methods of intensive farming. In the centuries before Cato’s day, the need for fertilizing had been recognized in central Italy, and manure was not to be secured in unlimited quantities or applied without much labor.

Second, central Italy has little land suited to the use of machinery. When the landed proprietors of Latium today employ large gangs of laboring men, women, and children to spade, hoe, and cradle the grain by hand, it is not wholly due to lack of intelligence and capital. The wooden plow, the exact counterpart of the one described by Vergil, is still used in various parts of the Campagna, where there is need of a modest implement that is willing to dodge stones and slip harmlessly along the surface if the soil is thin. Such plows cannot turn the soil; hence cross-plowing, handwork with the mattock, and reharrowing are necessary. All this means that in the several processes of soil preparation an abundance of laborers was required, and since they were at hand, they were also used for the harvest and the threshing, where machinery might have been invented to do the work more quickly. In a word, the methods employed on the grain plantations were quite the same as those of the small plot; the difference between the two lay largely in the consequences to society, in that latifundia substituted a herd of slaves for citizen farmers.

The typical villa was a large, rambling structure containing granaries, wine presses, and vats in one part, the working quarters of the slaves in another, and a second story comfortably fitted out to receive the master when he had time enough from affairs of state to take his brief vacations in the country. The management of the estate, which probably consisted of a compact farm of from 200 to 300 acres, was entrusted to a reliable slave “vilicus” and his wife. If ordinary farming was attempted, a troop of forty or fifty slaves was not too large. The farmer usually specialized in one crop, the purpose being to produce a handsome clear profit for the owner’s account from a large bulk of one product, besides devoting a portion of the ground to various side products that would keep the slaves alive and meet the simpler needs of the villa.

A typical wheat plantation would engage a large band of slaves. In the autumn there would be plowing[9] and cross-plowing, a slow process, for oxen walk very leisurely and insist upon resting frequently; but the ancients thought, as did Walter of Henley, that the ox was preferable to the horse, being “mannes meat” when dead, while the horse was carrion. Indeed, cattle raising produced milk and cheese and beef, besides draft animals for the plow, and if the beast plodded slowly, slaves’ time was, after all, not expensive.

A second or even a third plowing was necessary with the poor instrument used, and if the soil was a meadow just broken, the turf had to be crushed with a mattock wielded by hand. Then the land was contoured,[10] as it still is today, with gullies about twelve feet apart in order to keep the roots out of standing water during the long rainy season of winter, which threatened to rot the grain. All this required slow hand labor. In the spring, when the rains ceased and the scorching Italian sun began to bake the ground, bands of slaves came out to weed and to hack[11] the ground between the plants so as to break up the capillarity near the surface and prevent the subsoil moisture needed for the roots during the dry month before harvest from evaporating. At harvest, as is often done today, the tops were cradled and hauled to the granary first, and then the rest of the stalk at a second cutting. The straw served as thatch for the slaves’ huts, as litter for the cattle—with an arrière-pensée on the compost heap—and also, to some extent, as fodder. Finally, the threshing was done by means of flail and winnow. The slaves had to live and might as well be kept busy.

[9] Plowing: Columella, II, 4, 3; Fairfax Harrison, “The Crooked Plow,” Class. Jour. XI, 323.

[10] Contours: Varro, R. R. I, 29 (quo pluvia aqua delabatur); Col. II, 4, 8; 8, 3.

[11] The hoeing was done two or three times: Cato, R. R. 37, 5; Pliny, XVIII, 184; Col. II, 11, 2. The Italians continue the practice, but I have never seen it done in America in the case of wheat.

The labor of fertilizing[12] the field could, of course, not be neglected. So important was this item that the keeping of cattle was largely justified on the score of the manure; one head provided for half an acre of ground. In the Republic no chemical fertilizers were known, but in the Empire the use of chalk and lime was introduced from Gaul.

[12] Fertilizing. See art. Düngung in Pauly-Wissowa. The Greeks and Romans were skillful in the use of nitrogen-fixing legumes and clovers: Cato, 37, 2; Columella, II, 15; XI, 2, 44; Pliny, XVIII, 134; Varro, I, 23, 3. Alfalfa came to be thoroughly appreciated in the early Empire: Columella, II, X, 25.

To provide the running expenses of the villa, to keep the slaves occupied between regular tasks, and to make use of waste products, some subsidiary crops might be cultivated. A row of willows[13] in the marsh supplied twigs from which slaves wove baskets during rainy weather; a grove of elm and poplars furnished wood for the kitchen fire, for the villa’s pottery where wine and wheat jars were made—volcanic alluvium makes fair redware—and for the lime kiln, and provided leaves for the cattle. The slaves had, of course, a garden plot for cabbages, turnips, and other cheap vegetables. Pigs might be kept if oaks were near; they grew rather thin on mere kitchen leavings, weeds, and roots, and to bring a good price they needed a modicum of acorns. Sheep cropped the rough land and the olive orchard and produced work at the loom for the slave women who were too old for heavier work. If the master was enterprising, he might raise fowl also. Varro[14] knew a farmer who sold homegrown poultry and fish for $25,000 a year, and another who raised thrushes by the thousand, which brought him fifty cents apiece. Peahens were worth several dollars each and brought good profits. In general, however, the landlord insisted upon the use of his land for the particular purpose to which it was adapted. A self-sufficing “home economy” did not satisfy the capitalist, who looked upon his farm not as a home but as a source of income. If it suited his ledger best, he was even willing to send the slaves’ food and clothing[15] out from the city to his farm.

[13] Cato, I, 7, gives his preferences of products on the farm in the following order: (1) vineam—if the quality is good; (2) hortus—if one can irrigate; (3) salictum—apparently for basketry in fruit-bearing countries; (4) oletum; (5) pratum—apparently for fodder; (6) grain; (7) timber for firewood; (8) arbustum—probably a combination of orchard and garden; (9) oak forest for timber and swine raising. Pliny, however (18, 29), quotes Cato as advocating cattle raising above all. Since the work of Cato that we have refers especially to agriculture near Campania, the passage quoted by Pliny may have occurred in some lost volume that had reference to farming in Latium or the Sabine hills.

[14] Varro, R. R. III, 2, 14–17.

[15] Cato, 135. Many of the things that slaves could make at the villa, such as rakes, mattocks, wine jars, baskets (Varro, I, 22), and even slaves’ clothing, Cato apparently bought in the city.

Wheat raising could, of course, not be continued for several successive years without exhausting the soil; hence, when it was the staple product, rotation of crops relieved the strain. The portion used for wheat one year would be sown with rye, barley, or oats the next,[16] and every third or fourth year beans, peas, alfalfa, or some other leguminous crop that brought nitrogen back to the soil was substituted. Sometimes green crops of this kind were plowed under to enrich the soil, or instead the ground might be allowed to stand fallow for a year as rough pasture—seeding was too expensive—and the sheep turned in to graze.

[16] Pliny, H. N. XVIII, 187; Columella, II, 9, 4, and II, 12, 7–9.

It must not be supposed that any large portion of the western Italian slopes continued cereal culture regularly into the first century. Obviously, even with cheap slave labor, when provincial dues came into Rome in the form of seaborne grain, expenses often threatened to overbalance receipts. When in Augustus’ day Dionysius came to Rome, he says he found the whole country a garden; but he was a Greek accustomed to a land of limestone rocks. What Dionysius probably saw was an unusual number of vineyards and orchards of olives, figs, apples, peaches, plums, cherries, and almonds, many of which, as in Campania today, admitted some cereals and vegetables between the rows.

These combination orchards and gardens are possible in the bright sunlight of Italy, where lighter crops actually benefit from shade. The elms,[17] poplars, or fig trees were set out in rows about forty feet apart, and on these the vines were trained. The fig trees justified themselves in their fruit as well as in propping the vine. Poplars and elms were liked because they did not shade too heavily, and their leaves were pruned for fodder. Thus, by planting grain and vegetables between the rows of elm-propped vines, the farmer found that the smaller plants thrived better; he enjoyed the advantages of a diversified crop; he did not have to wait for a return on his capital until the vines were full-grown, nor suffer a complete annual loss when hail ruined his crop of grapes.

[17] See art. Arbustum in Pauly-Wissowa; Varro, I, 7, 2; Pliny, XVII, 202; Columella, II, 9; V, 6, 11.

Often sheep raising was combined with olive production, since sheep could pasture on the grass that grew between the trees, but it proved possible also to raise cereals in the olive groves. Where land was rich and irrigation was feasible, as in Campania,[18] a constant succession of grains, legumes, and vegetables—three crops per year—could be produced between the rows of vines. There, however, Vesuvius had fertilized the soil with a beneficent rain of rich volcanic detritus, and the streams of the Apennines supplied an abundance of water to the very level plain; but Latium and Tuscany were not similarly blessed. On the whole, the Roman farmer seems to have been very skillful in the use of manures and nitrogen-producing legumes, and in the proper rotation of his crops; he also proved through the centuries versatile enough in shifting the emphasis between cereal culture, grazing, and fruit raising to permit his tired land periods of recovery. Although, as we shall see later, Italian agriculture ultimately failed to meet the demands of Rome, it is very doubtful whether it was the native farmer who deserves the blame for the failure.

[18] Strabo, IV, 3.

CHAPTER VI

The Establishment of the Plantation

In 264 B.C., Rome came to a crossroads and, with characteristic enterprise, chose the path that led into deep forests without signposts. For the first time, Rome acquired territory outside Italy when it contested Sicily with Carthage. The real significance of this step lies in the fact that Rome encountered and adopted in Sicily an Oriental theory of sovereignty.[1] In time, this theory completely changed Rome’s political ideals and permeated its legal code. It survived in still-recognizable forms into modern times, providing justification for the crude forms of imperialism that have recently turned the whole world into one vast battlefield.

Previously, Rome had built a federation of autonomous states that surrendered their political supremacy without paying tribute. In Sicily, Rome found that the overlord, Carthage, claimed ownership of the soil. Those who held the land were tenants who paid rent and retained possession only at the pleasure of the sovereign power, which exercised dominium in solo provinciali. This profitable theory allowed the conqueror to exact heavy tribute. Carthage and the Syracusan tyrant Hiero had learned it from the kings of Egypt and Syria, who had inherited it from Alexander, just as Alexander in his time had adopted it, together with his theory of divine rights, from the Persian regime. By virtue of this theory, the Carthaginians had imposed tithes on grain in Sicily and fifths on various other products of the soil. Lands of which they had taken complete possession were rented to the highest bidder or cultivated as state-owned domains. Thus, a large part of Sicily had been treated as public land and exploited for the conqueror’s benefit.

[1] Rostowzew, Studien zur Gesch. des Rom. Kolonates, 229–49, brilliantly explains the intricacies of the Oriental method as applied in Sicily. I have attempted to outline the political aspects of Rome’s conquest of Sicily in Roman Imperialism, pp. [OCR unclear: tS] ff.

We can hardly determine how much the prospect of transferring this profitable possession to themselves influenced the Romans to face the dangerous hazards of war with Carthage. Polybius states that when the Senate hesitated to act, the chauvinists urged the popular assembly to consider the material advantages that would follow. Perhaps tribute was what they had in mind. It must be added, however, that the Senate acted reluctantly and, for two years, sent such small forces to the front that it apparently had no immediate intention of conquering a new province. To the senators, it seemed sufficient to protect Messana so that the straits would not come under Carthaginian control.

Those who expected material advantages from the war were never more mistaken. A continuous struggle lasting twenty-four years followed, during which Rome drained its resources to the last drop. Every available man served on land or sea through interminable campaigns, until Rome’s fields went to waste and debts exceeded the returns from scanty crops. To maintain a reasonable quota for its army, Rome admitted all the Sabine and Picentine peoples to citizenship at the end of the war, extending the imaginary walls of its city-state across Italy to the Adriatic.

Rome ultimately won and took possession of Carthaginian Sicily, retaining most of the former owner’s profitable arrangements. For the present, however, Rome neither evicted any landholders nor sent a colony to the island. The reasons are clear. The drain on Rome’s population had been so severe that it would not have been easy to find volunteers for a colony so far away. Nor could the state have used a military colony of the usual kind. Nothing short of a legion of professional soldiers would have served the purpose, since the conquered population had to be kept subject as tributaries whether they wished it or not.

The annual tribute collected by Rome amounted to about one million bushels of wheat. This wheat was brought to Rome and sold in the market on behalf of the treasury. Since this quantity was probably enough to supply at least half the city’s needs, it would be interesting to know what nearby farmers thought about the state competing in their market. Unfortunately, our meager sources have left no relevant comment. It is impossible to believe that, if the landowners had seriously objected, the four urban tribes could have outvoted the rural tribes in favor of cheap grain. Because the exaction of tribute in kind continued, and because, as far as we know, no effort was made to divert the produce to other markets, we may conclude that Rome actually needed a great deal of grain. If so, conditions in Latium had already shifted toward the situation found in Cato’s day, when grain cultivation had largely given way to pasturage and to wine and olive production. To the extent that this process was not already complete, the flood of Sicilian wheat must, of course, have accelerated it. From that time onward, one province after another was exploited to feed the city’s growing population, and central Italy could never again regain its position as a cereal-producing region.

In 232 B.C., Flaminius, a bold forerunner of the Gracchi, reasserted the doctrine adopted after the fall of Veii: public lands should be used for social and economic improvement rather than rented, as the Senate desired, to provide revenue for the government treasury. The land in question was the Ager Gallicus, which Rome had taken from the Senones after they attempted in 285 B.C. to repeat their memorable raid of a century earlier. At that time, the land had been left undivided because there were no takers, and it had probably been leased in large parcels to graziers. As the city grew, however, senators—who were generally the class able to make such investments—naturally found the leases profitable.

Their arguments against Flaminius were not based entirely on personal considerations. As experienced administrators, they naturally saw the advantage to the state of having a steady and reliable source of treasury income in addition to the real-estate tax. They could also sincerely question the wisdom of a doctrine whose implications would inevitably be expressed in the theory that the state owed every citizen a means of livelihood. We cannot estimate how strong the demands for new distributions had become. It is quite possible, however, that during the years of reckoning after the long Punic War, many peasants lost their properties through mortgages incurred while they were serving abroad. In any event, the struggle was bitter before Flaminius finally secured a majority vote for his proposal in the tribal assembly.

Polybius,[2] writing later, when the city was drifting toward the Gracchan maelstrom, adopted the interpretation of the law that he found in the aristocratic writer Fabius. He cynically remarked that this was the beginning of Rome’s downfall. He also added—apparently echoing senatorial invective—that it caused the Gallic wars in the Po Valley that followed. Later writers generally accepted this judgment, because the influential historians of the Republic who imposed their own biases on republican history were nearly all members of the aristocracy. This is why the entire career of this original, though excessively impetuous, leader[3] is everywhere stained by fanciful accusations.

[2] Polybius, II, 21, 7; the sentence probably belongs to a late revision of his work by the author. See also Cicero, Cato Maj. II, and Brut. 57. The tract is sometimes called Ager Gallicus et Picenus because the Picentines seem to have possessed it before the Gallic invasion. On the law of Flaminius, see Cardinali, Studi Graccani, and Münzer, art. “Flaminius,” in Pauly-Wissowa.

[3] It was Flaminius who built the Via Flaminia, which served both as a military road toward Gaul and as a highway connecting the colonists with Rome. His interest in industrial questions is revealed by his support for the lex Metilia de fullonibus, which regulated the fullers’ guilds (Pliny, XXXV, 197), and by his approval of the Claudian law, which prevented senators from actively engaging in foreign commerce. Rome’s second great public recreation ground, the Circus Flaminius, which he built, demonstrates his interest in the urban population.

An important immediate result of this law was that Rome once again directed its surplus energies toward developing land, although the opening of a rich province outside Italy should have drawn attention to the profits available from commerce and industry.[4]

[4] Since Claudius and Flaminius thought it appropriate to prevent senators from engaging in maritime commerce, we may infer that at least some senators were entering this field at the time.

The Second Punic War, fought on Italian soil, devastated the people’s principal industry and thereby accelerated the processes already described. For more than twelve years, the battle lines swept back and forth across the villages and fields of central and southern Italy. Cities surrendered to whichever contestant appeared stronger in order to protect themselves, only to be sacked in revenge when the other side captured them. Whenever either contestant retreated, grain fields were burned for military reasons, vineyards and orchards were cut down, and cattle were driven away. The inhabitants who escaped scattered in every direction, and many permanently abandoned Italy for Greece. Many of the famous cities of Magna Graecia emerged from the war with only a few hundred famine-stricken survivors huddled together beside the ruins of the city walls.[5]

[5] The vigorous role played by Marseilles in the Second Punic War suggests that economic causes were far more important in producing the conflict than Livy supposed. Marseilles had many trading posts on the coast of Spain, to which its merchants had attracted products from throughout the peninsula. Obviously, when Hamilcar and Hannibal marched northward from New Carthage, cutting across all the old trade routes, Marseilles found that Spanish products began to flow southward toward the Punic ports rather than eastward. Because Carthage monopolized the commerce of its possessions whenever possible, Carthaginian success in Spain would obviously have resulted in the complete exclusion of Marseilles. It is therefore very likely that Marseilles first tried to stop the Carthaginians and, after failing to do so, made every effort to spur the Roman Senate into acting on its behalf by exaggerating reports of Punic designs against Rome. The Ebro treaty and the Saguntine alliance may well have resulted from Massiliot diplomacy. Cf. Frank, Roman Imperialism, 121 ff.

After the war came problems of reconstruction that were, of course, far beyond the resources of the weakened and debt-burdened state. The few men who could be persuaded to consider joining colonies were gathered together and sent to frontier areas that required immediate protection. Thus, Cremona and Placentia were repopulated as a defense against the Gauls. A few hundred citizens were also found for each of several ruined harbors on the southern coast, which were now exposed to raids and invasions.[6] Even at these southern locations, the required three hundred citizens could not always be supplied. Consequently, Thurii and Vibo were settled as Latin colonies, and non-Romans were also included in some of the other colonies.

[6] The maritime colonies, apparently planted in view of a possible invasion by Antiochus in cooperation with Hannibal, were Sipontum, Croton, Tempsa, Buxentum, Salernum, Puteoli, Liternum, Volturnum, Thurii, and Vibo. Citizens of Fregellae are known to have participated in the colonization.

Vast areas of devastated land in less strategically important locations obviously could not be dealt with at that time. The state took possession of these lands, partly because they had no claimants and partly because, under the new theory of sovereignty recently adopted in Sicily, title to them had been forfeited to the conqueror. What was to be done with these vast areas, totaling perhaps two million acres,[7] at least half of which was arable?

The state evidently followed what seemed to be a reasonable policy by offering the land in large leaseholds to Romans who possessed enough capital to use it. This method offered at least some hope of restoring the land. Because settlers were scarce and little capital was available for outright purchases, the only alternative would have been continued desolation, with the resulting lawlessness and brigandage. Under the law, public land could be leased in blocks of five hundred jugera to each holder, or one thousand jugera to citizens who had two children.

Intensive cultivation was, to be sure, impossible on parcels of this size. Labor was scarce, and with the available means of transportation, grain could not be profitably brought to good markets. The land could at least be turned into ranches, however, because cattle could be raised with the help of a few slaves and the product could be brought to market with little difficulty. Even on these terms, much land found no renters. The censor’s bureau seems—pardonably, if not wisely—to have allowed enterprising renters to exceed the legal allotment of five hundred jugera if they wished. In many cases, the bureau also seems to have looked the other way when these renters allowed their cattle to graze on less desirable, unleased land nearby.

Thus, large tracts of public land that were not otherwise useful at the time gradually came to be enclosed within the original holdings, though without good legal title. This procedure has had many parallels in the land-record offices of our own Western states. There, as in Rome, the practice was not only excused but even encouraged by public opinion, because people living nearby saw only the benefits produced by what is popularly called the “development of natural resources.” Later, after the population had grown and prospective settlers were demanding new allotments, a reaction set in that called for the “conservation of natural resources.” Some officials were then imprisoned for allowing what public opinion had once warmly approved.

[7] Beloch, Bevölkerung der Griech.-Röm. Welt.

Needless to say, once Rome recovered from the war’s terrible effects, the population began to increase again and fill the open spaces, though this took more than one generation. It was then discovered that the state’s hasty generosity had been imprudent because it had failed to impose proper restrictions. Ranches had expanded over land suitable for agriculture. Slaves imported from the East were thriving where citizen-soldiers ought to have been growing up for service in times of need.[8] Territory that might have been available for colonization by Rome’s surplus children was already occupied. Moreover, capitalist farming—which outstrips cultivation in small plots even under normal conditions—had been entrenched by an act of the state.

After such leaseholders had acquired an additional equitable claim to unreclaimed possessions through many investments and improvements, a demand by the tribal assembly for a return to the doctrine of Flaminius could easily provoke a very dangerous revolution. The seeds of the Gracchan rebellion were inherent in the inadequate reconstruction policy adopted after the Punic War.

[8] Appian, Bell. Civ. I, 7, states that the squatters preferred slave labor to free labor both because slaves could not be drafted for war and because there was profit in their children.

A brief account of the agricultural methods used on a moderately sized plantation may not only describe Rome’s principal industry but also illustrate how an ordinary Roman approached practical problems. We are fairly well informed about agricultural practices through the instructive, though garbled, treatise written by Cato in the second century B.C.; the somewhat longer work written by Varro a century later; and the full and charming treatise composed by Columella in the first century A.D. Valuable information is also found in Vergil’s Georgics and in Pliny’s encyclopedia. Because the orthodox system was already in use in Cato’s day, while the later works merely reveal an expansion of that system, with a few changes adapted to new needs, we may cautiously supplement Cato’s account with material from the two later authors.

In speaking of the plantation system in Italy, we do not mean that it approached the capitalist methods found in the “bonanza” wheat farming of our Western states, where success has depended on the extensive use of labor-saving machinery that could be employed on level areas of stone-free loam. Even when Italian agriculture specialized in cereals, it followed, for obvious reasons, the methods of small-scale farming.

By the generation before Cato’s time, central Italy already needed fertilization, and manure could neither be obtained in unlimited quantities nor applied without considerable labor. Second, central Italy has little land suited to machinery. When the landed proprietors of Latium today employ large groups of working men, women, and children to dig, hoe, and cradle grain by hand, this is not entirely due to a lack of intelligence or capital. The wooden plow—an exact counterpart of the one described by Vergil—is still used in various parts of the Campagna, where a modest implement is needed that can avoid stones and slide harmlessly over the surface when the soil is thin.

Such plows cannot turn over the soil. Cross-plowing, hand labor with the mattock, and repeated harrowing are therefore necessary. This means that every stage of soil preparation required an abundance of laborers. Since these laborers were available, they were also used for harvesting and threshing, even though machinery might have been invented to do the work more quickly. In short, the methods used on grain plantations were nearly the same as those used on small plots. The difference between the two lay mainly in their consequences for society, because the latifundia replaced citizen farmers with groups of slaves.

The typical villa was a large, rambling structure. One part contained granaries, wine presses, and vats; another contained the slaves’ working quarters. A second story was comfortably furnished to receive the owner whenever his affairs of state allowed him enough time for a brief country vacation. The management of the estate, which probably consisted of a compact farm of between 200 and 300 acres, was entrusted to a reliable slave vilicus and his wife.

If ordinary farming was undertaken, a group of forty or fifty slaves was not too large. The farmer usually specialized in a single crop. His purpose was to produce a substantial net profit for the owner’s account from a large quantity of one product, while devoting part of the land to various subsidiary products that would keep the slaves alive and meet the villa’s simpler needs.

A typical wheat plantation employed a large group of slaves. In autumn, there was plowing and cross-plowing,[9] a slow process because oxen walk very leisurely and insist on frequent rest. But the ancient farmer agreed with Walter of Henley that the ox was preferable to the horse, being “mannes meat when dead while the horse was carrion.” Cattle raising, in fact, produced milk, cheese, and beef, as well as draft animals for the plow. If the animal moved slowly, slave labor was not, after all, expensive.

A second or even a third plowing was necessary with the poor implement then in use. If the soil was newly broken meadowland, the turf had to be crushed by hand with a mattock. The land was then contoured,[10] as it still is today, with gullies about twelve feet apart. These gullies prevented the roots from standing in water during the long winter rainy season, which threatened to rot the grain. All this required slow manual labor.

In spring, when the rains stopped and the scorching Italian sun began to bake the ground, groups of slaves came out to weed and hoe[11] the soil between the plants. This broke the capillary action near the surface and prevented the subsoil moisture needed by the roots during the dry month before harvest from evaporating. At harvest, as is often done today, the tops were first cut with cradles and hauled to the granary. The rest of the stalk was gathered in a second cutting. The straw served as thatch for the slaves’ huts, as bedding for the cattle—with an arrière-pensée concerning the compost heap—and, to some extent, as fodder. Finally, the grain was threshed with flail and winnowing basket. The slaves had to live and might as well be kept busy.

[9] Plowing: Columella, II, 4, 3; Fairfax Harrison, “The Crooked Plow,” Class. Jour. XI, 323.

[10] Contours: Varro, R. R. I, 29 (quo pluvia aqua delabatur); Col. II, 4, 8; 8, 3.

[11] The hoeing was done two or three times: Cato, R. R. 37, 5; Pliny, XVIII, 184; Col. II, 11, 2. The Italians continue the practice, but I have never seen it done in America in the case of wheat.

The labor of fertilizing[12] the field could not, of course, be neglected. This requirement was so important that keeping cattle was largely justified by the manure they produced. One animal provided enough manure for half an acre of land. No chemical fertilizers were known during the Republic, but during the Empire the use of chalk and lime was introduced from Gaul.

[12] Fertilizing: See art. “Düngung” in Pauly-Wissowa. The Greeks and Romans were skillful in the use of nitrogen-fixing legumes and clovers: Cato, 37, 2; Columella, II, 15; XI, 2, 44; Pliny, XVIII, 134; Varro, I, 23, 3. Alfalfa came to be thoroughly appreciated in the early Empire: Columella, II, 10, 25.

To cover the villa’s operating expenses, keep the slaves occupied between regular tasks, and make use of waste products, the owner might cultivate some subsidiary crops. A row of willows[13] in the marsh supplied twigs from which slaves wove baskets during rainy weather. A grove of elm and poplar trees supplied wood for the kitchen fire; for the villa’s pottery, where wine and wheat jars were made, since volcanic alluvium makes satisfactory redware; and for the lime kiln. The trees also provided leaves for the cattle.

The slaves naturally had a garden plot for cabbages, turnips, and other inexpensive vegetables. Pigs could be kept if oak trees were nearby. They grew rather thin on kitchen scraps, weeds, and roots alone, and needed a modest quantity of acorns if they were to bring a good price. Sheep grazed on rough ground and among the olive trees. They also supplied wool for the looms, giving work to slave women who were too old for heavier labor.

If the owner was enterprising, he might also raise poultry. Varro[14] knew one farmer who sold $25,000 worth of home-raised poultry and fish each year, and another who raised thrushes by the thousand and sold them for fifty cents apiece. Peahens were worth several dollars each and produced good profits.

In general, however, the landlord insisted that his land be used for the particular purpose to which it was best suited. A self-sufficient “home economy” did not satisfy the capitalist, who regarded his farm not as a home but as a source of income. If his accounts showed that it was more profitable, he was even willing to send the slaves’ food and clothing[15] from the city to his farm.

[13] Cato, I, 7, gives his preferences for farm products in the following order: (1) vineyard, if the quality is good; (2) hortus, if irrigation is possible; (3) salictum—apparently for basketry in fruit-growing regions; (4) oletum; (5) pratum, apparently for fodder; (6) grain; (7) timber for firewood; (8) arbustum—probably a combination of orchard and garden; and (9) oak forest for timber and swine raising. Pliny, however (18, 29), quotes Cato as advocating cattle raising above all. Since the work of Cato that survives refers especially to agriculture near Campania, the passage quoted by Pliny may have appeared in a lost volume dealing with farming in Latium or the Sabine hills.

[14] Varro, R. R. III, 2, 14–17.

[15] Cato, 135. Cato apparently bought in the city many things that slaves could have made at the villa, such as rakes, mattocks, wine jars, baskets (Varro, I, 22), and even slaves’ clothing.

Wheat could not, of course, be grown for several successive years without exhausting the soil. Therefore, when wheat was the staple product, crop rotation reduced the strain. The portion used for wheat in one year would be sown with rye, barley, or oats the next.[16] Every third or fourth year, beans, peas, alfalfa, or another leguminous crop that restored nitrogen to the soil was substituted. Sometimes green crops of this kind were plowed under to enrich the soil. Alternatively, the ground might be left fallow for a year as rough pasture—seeding was too expensive—and sheep would be turned out to graze.

[16] Pliny, H. N. XVIII, 187; Columella, II, 9, 4, and II, 12, 7–9.

It must not be assumed that any large part of Italy’s western slopes continued to be regularly used for cereal cultivation into the first century. Even with cheap slave labor, expenses often threatened to exceed receipts once provincial dues began arriving in Rome as grain carried by sea.

When Dionysius came to Rome in the time of Augustus, he said that he found the whole countryside transformed into a garden. He was, however, a Greek accustomed to a land of limestone rocks. What Dionysius probably saw was an unusually large number of vineyards and orchards containing olives, figs, apples, peaches, plums, cherries, and almonds. As in Campania today, many of these orchards allowed cereals and vegetables to be grown between the rows.

These combined orchards and gardens are possible in Italy’s bright sunlight, where smaller crops actually benefit from shade. Elms,[17] poplars, or fig trees were planted in rows about forty feet apart, and vines were trained on them. Fig trees justified their presence by producing fruit as well as supporting the vines. Poplars and elms were favored because they did not cast too much shade, and their leaves could be pruned for fodder.

By planting grain and vegetables between rows of vines supported by elms, the farmer found that the smaller plants grew better. He also gained the advantages of diversified crops. He did not have to wait until the vines were fully grown before receiving a return on his investment, nor did he suffer a complete annual loss when hail destroyed his grape crop.

[17] See art. “Arbustum” in Pauly-Wissowa; Varro, I, 7, 2; Pliny, XVII, 202; Columella, II, 9; V, 6, 11.

Sheep raising was often combined with olive production because sheep could graze on the grass between the trees. It also proved possible, however, to raise cereals in olive groves. Where the land was fertile and irrigation possible, as in Campania,[18] a constant succession of grains, legumes, and vegetables—three crops a year—could be produced between the rows of vines.

There, however, Vesuvius had fertilized the soil with a beneficial rain of rich volcanic debris, while the streams of the Apennines supplied abundant water to the very level plain. Latium and Tuscany were not similarly favored. On the whole, the Roman farmer appears to have been highly skilled in using manures and nitrogen-producing legumes and in rotating crops properly. Over the centuries, he also proved versatile enough to shift the emphasis among cereal cultivation, grazing, and fruit production, thus allowing his exhausted land periods of recovery.

Although Italian agriculture ultimately failed to meet Rome’s needs, as we shall see later, it is very doubtful that the native farmer deserves the blame for that failure.

[18] Strabo, IV, 3.