The History of Rome. Book III
Page 61
30. III. VII. Latins.
(<< back)
31. Thus, as is well known, Ennius of Rudiae received burgess-rights from one of the triumvirs, Q. Fulvius Nobilior, on occasion of the founding of the burgess-colonies of Potentia and Pisaurum (Cic. Brut. 20, 79); whereupon, according to the well-known custom, he adopted the -praenomen- of the latter. The non-burgesses who were sent to share in the foundation of a burgess-colony, did not, at least in tin's epoch, thereby acquire de jure Roman citizenship, although they frequently usurped it (Liv. xxxiv. 42); but the magistrates charged with the founding of a colony were empowered, by a clause in the decree of the people relative to each case, to confer burgess-rights on a limited number of persons (Cic. pro Balb. 21, 48).
(<< back)
32. III. VII. Administration of Spain.
(<< back)
33. III. IX. Expedition against the Celts in Asia Minor.
(<< back)
34. III. X. Their Lax and Unsuccessful Management of the War f.
(<< back)
35. II. I. Term of Office.
(<< back)
36. III. VII. Administration of Spain.
(<< back)
37. III. XI. Italian Subjects, Roman Franchise More Difficult of Acquisition.
(<< back)
38. III. XI. Roman Franchise More Difficult of Acquisition.
(<< back)
39. In Cato's treatise on husbandry, which, as is well known, primarily relates to an estate in the district of Venafrum, the judicial discussion of such processes as might arise is referred to Rome only as respects one definite case; namely, that in which the landlord leases the winter pasture to the owner of a flock of sheep, and thus has to deal with a lessee who, as a rule, is not domiciled in the district (c. 149). It may be inferred from this, that in ordinary cases, where the contract was with a person domiciled in the district, such processes as might spring out of it were even in Cato's time decided not at Rome, but before the local judges.
(<< back)
40. II. VII. The Full Roman Franchise.
(<< back)
41. II. VII. Subject Communities.
(<< back)
42. III. VIII. Declaration of War by Rome.
(<< back)
43. II. III. The Burgess-Body.
(<< back)
44. III. XI. Patricio-Plebian Nobility.
(<< back)
45. The laying out of the circus is attested. Respecting the origin of the plebeian games there is no ancient tradition (for what is said by the Pseudo-Asconius, p. 143, Orell. is not such); but seeing that they were celebrated in the Flaminian circus (Val. Max. i, 7, 4), and first certainly occur in 538, four years after it was built (Liv. xxiii. 30), what we have stated above is sufficiently proved.
(<< back)
46. II. II. Political Value of the Tribunate.
(<< back)
47. III. IX. Landing of the Romans.
(<< back)
48. III. IX. Death of Scipio. The first certain instance of such a surname is that of Manius Valerius Maximus, consul in 491, who, as conqueror of Messana, assumed the name Messalla (ii. 170): that the consul of 419 was, in a similar manner, called Calenus, is an error. The presence of Maximus as a surname in the Valerian (i. 348) and Fabian (i. 397) clans is not quite analogous.
(<< back)
49. III. XI. Patricio-Plebian Nobility.
(<< back)
50. II. III. New Opposition.
(<< back)
51. III. III. The Celts Conquered by Rome.
(<< back)
52. III. VI. In Italy.
(<< back)
53. III. III. The Celts Conquered by Rome.
(<< back)
54. III. VII. Liguria.
(<< back)
55. III. VII. Measures Adopted to Check the Immigration of the Transalpine Gauls.
(<< back)
56. III. VII. Liguria.
(<< back)
57. III. XI. The Nobility in Possession of the Equestrian Centuries.
(<< back)
58. III. V. Attitude of the Romans, III. VI. Conflicts in the South of Italy.
(<< back)
59. II. III. The Burgess-Body.
(<< back)
60. As to the original rates of the Roman census it is difficult to lay down anything definite. Afterwards, as is well known, 100,000 asses was regarded as the minimum census of the first class; to which the census of the other four classes stood in the (at least approximate) ratio of 3/4, 1/2, 1/4, 1/9. But these rates are understood already by Polybius, as by all later authors, to refer to the light as (1/10th of the denarius), and apparently this view must be adhered to, although in reference to the Voconian law the same sums are reckoned as heavy asses (1/4 of the denarius: Geschichte des Rom. Munzwesens, p. 302). But Appius Claudius, who first in 442 expressed the census-rates in money instead of the possession of land (II. III. The Burgess-Body), cannot in this have made use of the light as, which only emerged in 485 (II. VIII. Silver Standard of Value). Either therefore he expressed the same amounts in heavy asses, and these were at the reduction of the coinage converted into light; or he proposed the later figures, and these remained the same notwithstanding the reduction or the coinage, which in this case would have involved a lowering of the class-rates by more than the half. Grave doubts may be raised in opposition to either hypothesis; but the former appears the more credible, for so exorbitant an advance in democratic development is not probable either for the end of the fifth century or as an incidental consequence of a mere administrative measure, and besides it would scarce have disappeared wholly from tradition. 100,000 light asses, or 40,000 sesterces, may, moreover, be reasonably regarded as the equivalent of the original Roman full hide of perhaps 20 jugera (I. VI. Time and Occasion of the Reform); so that, according to this view, the rates of the census as a whole have changed merely in expression, and not in value.
(<< back)
61. III. V. Fabius and Minucius.
(<< back)
62. II. I. The Dictator.
(<< back)
63. III. XI. Election of Officers in the Comitia.
(<< back)
64. III. V. Flaminius, New Warlike Preparations in Rome.
(<< back)
65. III. V. Fabius and Minucius.
(<< back)
66. III. XI. Squandering of the Spoil.
(<< back)
67. III. VI. Publius Scipio.
(<< back)
68. III. VI. The African Expedition of Scipio.
(<< back)
69. III. X. Humiliation of Rhodes.
(<< back)
70. II. II. Agrarian Law of Spurius Cassius.
(<< back)
CHAPTER XII
The Management of Land and of Capital
1. In order to gain a correct picture of ancient Italy, it is necessary for us to bear in mind the great changes which have been produced there by modern cultivation. Of the cerealia, rye was not cultivated in antiquity; and the Romans of the empire were astonished to rind that oats, with which they were well acquainted as a weed, was used by the Germans for making porridge. Rice was first cultivated in Italy at the end of the fifteenth, and maize at the beginning of the seventeenth, century. Potatoes and tomatoes were brought from America; artichokes seem to be nothing but a cultivated variety of the cardoon which was known to the Romans, yet the peculiar character superinduced by cultivation appears of more recent origin. The almond, again, or "Greek nut", the peach, or "Persian nut", and also the "soft nut" (nux mollusca), although originally foreign to Italy, are met with there at least 150 years before Christ. The date-palm, introduced into Italy from Greece as into Greece from the East, and forming a living attestation of the primitive commercial-religious intercourse between the west and the east, was already cultivated in Italy 300 years before Christ (Liv. x. 47; Pallad. v. 5, 2; xi. 12, i) not for its fruit (Plin. H. N. xiii. 4, 26), but, just as in the present day, as a handsome plant, and for the sake of the le
aves which were used at public festivals. The cherry, or fruit of Cerasus on the Black Sea, was later in being introduced, and only began to be planted in Italy in the time of Cicero, although the wild cherry is indigenous there; still later, perhaps, came the apricot, or "Armenian plum". The citron-tree was not cultivated in Italy till the later ages of the empire; the orange was only introduced by the Moors in the twelfth or thirteenth, and the aloe (Agave Americana) from America only in the sixteenth, century. Cotton was first cultivated in Europe by the Arabs. The buffalo also and the silkworm belong only to modern, not to ancient Italy.
It is obvious that the products which Italy had not originally are for the most part those very products which seem to us truly "Italian"; and if modern Germany, as compared with the Germany visited by Caesar, may be called a southern land, Italy has since in no less degree acquired a "more southern" aspect.
(<< back)
2. II. III. Licinio-Sextian Laws.
(<< back)
3. According to Cato, de R. R, 137 (comp. 16), in the case of a lease with division of the produce the gross produce of the estate, after deduction of the fodder necessary for the oxen that drew the plough, was divided between lessor and lessee (colonus partiarius) in the proportions agreed upon between them. That the shares were ordinarily equal may be conjectured from the analogy of the French bail a cheptel and the similar Italian system of half-and-half leases, as well as from the absence of all trace of any other scheme of partition. It is erroneous to refer to the case of the politor, who got the fifth of the grain or, if the division took place before thrashing, from the sixth to the ninth sheaf (Cato, 136, comp. 5); he was not a lessee sharing the produce, but a labourer assumed in the harvest season, who received his daily wages according to that contract of partnership (III. XII. Spirit of the System).
(<< back)
4. The lease lirst assumed real importance when the Roman capitalists began to acquire transmarine possessions on a great scale; then indeed they knew how to value it, when a temporary lease was continued through several generations (Colum. i. 7, 3).
(<< back)
5. That the space between the vines was occupied not by grain, but only at the most by such fodder plants as easily grew in the shade, is evident from Cato (33, comp. 137), and accordingly Columella (iii. 3) calculates on no other accessory gain in the case of a vineyard except the produce of the young shoots sold. On the other hand, the orchard (arbustum) was sown like any corn field (Colum. ii. 9, 6). It was only where the vine was trained on living trees that corn was cultivated in the intervals between them.
(<< back)
6. Mago, or his translator (in Varro, R. R., i. 17, 3), advises that slaves should not be bred, but should be purchased not under 22 years of age; and Cato must have had a similar course in view, as the personal staff of his model farm clearly shows, although he does not exactly say so. Cato (2) expressly counsels the sale of old and diseased slaves. The slave-breeding described by Columella (I. I. Italian History), under which female slaves who had three sons were exempted from labour, and the mothers of four sons were even manumitted, was doubtless an independent speculation rather than a part of the regular management of the estate - similar to the trade pursued by Cato himself of purchasing slaves to be trained and sold again (Plutarch, Cat. Mai. 21). The characteristic taxation mentioned in this same passage probably has reference to the body of servants properly so called (familia urbana).
(<< back)
7. In this restricted sense the chaining of slaves, and even of the sons of the family (Dionys. ii. 26), was very old; and accordingly chained field-labourers are mentioned by Cato as exceptions, to whom, as they could not themselves grind, bread had to be supplied instead of grain (56). Even in the times of the empire the chaining of slaves uniformly presents itself as a punishment inflicted definitively by the master, provisionally by the steward (Colum. i. 8; Gai. i. 13; Ulp. i. ii). If, notwithstanding, the tillage of the fields by means of chained slaves appeared in subsequent times as a distinct system, and the labourers' prison (ergastulum) - an underground cellar with window-aperatures numerous but narrow and not to be reached from the ground by the hand (Colum. i. 6) - became a necessary part of the farm-buildings, this state of matters was occasioned by the fact that the position of the rural serfs was harder than that of other slaves and therefore those slaves were chiefly taken for it, who had, or seemed to have, committed some offence. That cruel masters, moreover, applied the chains without any occasion to do so, we do not mean to deny, and it is clearly indicated by the circumstance that the law-books do not decree the penalties applicable to slave transgressors against those in chains, but prescribe the punishment of the half-chained. It was precisely the same with branding; it was meant to be, strictly, a punishment; but the whole flock was probably marked (Diodor. xxxv. 5; Bernays, Phokytides, p. xxxi.).
(<< back)
8. Cato does not expressly say this as to the vintage, but Varro does so (I. II. Relation of the Latins to the Umbro-Samnites), and it is implied in the nature of the case. It would have been economically an error to fix the number of the slaves on a property by the standard of the labours of harvest; and least of all, had such been the case, would the grapes have been sold on the tree, which yet was frequently done (Cato, 147).
(<< back)
9. Columella (ii. 12, 9) reckons to the year on an average 45 rainy days and holidays; with which accords the statement of Tertullian (De Idolol. 14), that the number of the heathen festival days did not come up to the fifty days of the Christian festal season from Easter to Whitsunday. To these fell to be added the time of rest in the middle of winter after the completion of the autumnal bowing, which Columella estimates at thirty days. Within this time, doubtless, the moveable "festival of seed-sowing" (feriae sementivae; comp. i. 210 and Ovid. Fast, i. 661) uniformly occurred. This month of rest must not be confounded with the holidays for holding courts in the season of the harvest (Plin. Ep. viii. 21, 2, et al.) and vintage.
(<< back)
10. III. I. The Carthaginian Dominion in Africa.
(<< back)
11. The medium price of grain in the capital may be assumed at least for the seventh and eighth centuries of Rome at one denarius for the Roman modius, or 2 shillings 8 pence per bushel of wheat, for which there is now paid (according to the average of the prices in the provinces of Brandenburg and Pomerania from 1816 to 1841) about 3 shillings 5 pence. Whether this not very considerable difference between the Roman and the modern prices depends on a rise in the value of corn or on a fall in the value of silver, can hardly be decided. It is very doubtful, perhaps, whether in the Rome of this and of later times the prices of corn really fluctuated more than is the case in modern times. If we compare prices like those quoted above, of 4 pence and 5 pence for the bushel and a half, with those of the worst times of war-dearth and famine - such as in the second Punic war when the same quantity rose to 9 shillings 7 pence (1 medimnus = 15 drachmae; Polyb. ix. 44), in the civil war to 19 shillings 2 pence (1 modius = 5 denarii; Cic. Verr. iii. 92, 214), in the great dearth under Augustus, even to 21 shillings 3 pence (5 modii =27 1/2 denarii; Euseb. Chron. p. Chr. 7, Scal.) - the difference is indeed immense; but such extreme cases are but little instructive, and might in either direction be found recurring under the like conditions at the present day.
(<< back)
12. II. VIII. Farming of Estates.
(<< back)
13. Accordingly Cato calls the two estates, which he describes, summarily "olive-plantation" (olivetum) and "vineyard" (vinea), although not wine and oil merely, but grain also and other products were cultivated there. If indeed the 800 culei, for which the possessor of the vineyard is directed to provide himself with casks (11), formed the maximum of a year's vintage, the whole of the 100 jugera must have been planted with vines, because a produce of 8 culei per jugerum was almost unprecedented (Colum. iii. 3); but Varro (i. 22) understood, and evidently with reason, the statement to apply to the case of the possessor of a vin
eyard who found it necessary to make the new vintage before he had sold the old.