The Economics of Roman and American Slavery

The Economics of Roman and American SlaveryAuthor(s): Cedric A. YeoSource: FinanzArchiv / Public Finance Analysis, New Series, Bd. 13, H. 3 (1951/52), pp. 445-485Published by: Mohr Siebeck GmbH & Co. KGStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40908759 .

Accessed: 13/06/2014 07:19

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Mohr Siebeck GmbH & Co. KG is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toFinanzArchiv / Public Finance Analysis.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.44.77.82 on Fri, 13 Jun 2014 07:19:06 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=siebeck

http://www.jstor.org/stable/40908759?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


The Economics of Roman and American Slavery*) by

Cedric A. Yeo

The economic conditions that prevailed throughout the Mediterranean world after it came under Roman domination were, as we have seen (Finanz- archiv 13. 321 ff.), favorable to the rise and development of commercialized agriculture in Italy. They encouraged the formation of wine and oil plantations almost everywhere in the pen insula , in Campania , Latium , Etrur ia , Umbria , Cis- alpine Gaul, and even in Lucania. But in no part of Italy did local conditions favor the extension of the plantation system more than in Campania. Nor- thern Italy, as a result of the colonization program of the Eoman state during the second centuryB.C. (see Finanzarchiv 13. 326ff .), remained essentially a region of small farmers and, consequently, a grain-producing area ; not until after the development of a market for wines in Illyria and in Herzegovina was the culture of the vine carried on extensively there. In Etruria, Latium, and in certain districts of southern Italy, it was pasturage that became the prevailing form of agricultural capitalism. But Campania was ideally suited for commercialized agriculture not only because of the unusual fertility of the soil, 60) whose mineral content made it adapted to viticulture, but of its proximity to many excellent ports (Polybius 3.91), which facilitated both the importation of essential supplies such as slaves and foodstuffs and the export of staples to all parts of the Mediterranean world61). It was for these reasons that Roman senators and the bourgeoisie of Rome, Puteoli, and other cities saw excellent opportunities for investing their money in Campanian plantations.

*) This article is a continuation of „The Development of the Roman Plan- tation", Finanzarchiv 13. 321 ff., where the first 59 notes may be found.

60) Cf. Cie. Leg. agr. 2.76, Strabo 5.4.3, 8; Pliny NH 18.110f., Martial 4.44; J. Beloch, Campanien2 (Breslau, 1890), 334, L. Clerici, op. cit. (note 5), 134-5; Last, CAH 9.4-5. Frank, ESAR 5.129 ff.; A. Sogliano, Pompei nel suo sviluppo storico (Roma, 1937), 11 ff.

61) Speck, op. cit. (note 3) 3.2.269; R. Scalais, op. cit. (note 21) 97. The argument of Öalvioli (II capitalismo antico 113) against capitalistic and scientific agriculture has no application to Campania, where all the conditions recommended by Cato (RR 1.3), Varro (RR 1.16.6), and Columella (RR 1.2.3; 1.3.3; 7.8.1; 7.3.22;)- nearness to large towns, to Varro the sea, to navigable rivers, good roads, and good markets (RR 1. 16. 1-6) - were present.

Finanzarchiv. N.F. 13. Heft 3 30



446 CedricA. Yeo

Our knowledge of the Roman plantation system is greatly enhanced by the catastrophe of 79 A. D., when Vesuvius blew up. For that eruption not alone blanked out the twin cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum but buried beneath a thick layer of ash villas, vineyards, and olive orchards in the im- mediate neighborhood and on the slopes of the mountain. We shall, therefore, in the following pages devote our attention exclusively to a study of the villas recently excavated around Pompeii, not because they were altogether typical of Campanian plantations but only because we know them best62).

Studies on these villae rusticae, of which over forty have been excavated from Portici in the northwest to the lower slopes of Monte San' Angelo in the south, show that the area devoted to vineyards varied from 35 to 200 acres, the average being approximately the same as that of Cato's model vineyard of 66 acres. Some of the villas date from the second century B. C, while others, certainly the most beautiful, belong to the Augustan period as shown by the second and third style of mural decoration. They have been classified by Rostovtzeff (Storia econ. 70 ff.) into three main economic types. The first was a combination of summer residence and ordinary farmstead having rooms fitted out for the agricultural exploitation of a large estate, which was owned by an absentee landlord, who usually lived in the city but came out to the villa from time to time only to see how things were going and possibly stayed there during the hot summer months. The second type was a real farmhouse, modest and clean, which was owned by a well-to-do farmer, who lived there all the time and personally supervised his property. The third was a large agricultural factory with big cellars and winepresses as well as quarters for slaves supervised by an overseer who lived in a small and un- decorated lodging. Most of the villas, with the obvious exception of that belonging to Agrippa Postumus (No. 31 in Rostovtzeff 's list, op. cit. 34), were owned by wealthy Pompeian citizens, whose income was derived from the sale of oil and wine, and, though moderate in size, seem to have been fairly productive63).

62) On the villae rusticae around Pompeii, see A. Pasqui, "La villa pompeiana della Pisanella presso Boscoreale," Monumenti Antichi 7 (1897) 397 ff.; F. Bar- nabei, La villa pompeiana di P. Fannio Sinistore (Roma, 1901); M. Della Corte, Not. d. scavi 18 (1921) 415 ff.; 19 (1922) 459 ff.; 20 (1923) 271 ff.; Frank, EHR 265 ff., 415; id. ESAR 5.135, 160, 172, esp. 263 ff.; M. Rostovtzeff, (Storia econ. 33 note 26) has listed the villas with bibliography and has classified them according to economic types (ibid. 70 note 21); J. Day, "Agriculture in the Life of Pompeii," YC1S 3 (1932) 167-208; A. Maiuri, La Villa dei Misteri (Roma, 1931); R. C. Carrington, "Studies in the Campanian 'Villae Rusticae'," JRS 21 (1931) 110-130; id. "Some Ancient Italian Country Houses," Antiquity 8 (1934) 261-278; id. Pompeii (Oxford, 1936) 80 ff. esp. 90 ff.; H. Sievers, Beiträge zur Wirtschafts- geschichte Pompejis (Diss. Hamburg, 1938) 9 ff.

63) The Pompeian villas were of moderate size, varying, according to Day (184) and Carrington (Antiquity 8.279; Pompeii 97), from 30 to 200 acres and averaged about 66 acres, the area of Cato's model vineyard. Frank, (ESAR 5.172. 264) is inclined to make considerably smaller estimates, assigning to the celebrated Boscoreale villa an area of 40 instead of 60 acres, as Day estimated. The largest of these villas was situated at Gregnano in the lower Sarno Valley (No. 34 of Rostovtzeff, No. VII of Della Corte, Not. d. scavi 20.275 f f.); the latter contained from 150 to 200 acres. These villas, however, were quite productive, cf. A. Mare- scalchi and G. Dalmasso, Storia della vite e del vino in Italia (Milan, 1932) 1.171.



The Economics of Roman and American Slavery 447

Out of a total of forty-three fully or partially excavated villas near Pom- peii and Stabiae, facilities were found in thirty-one for the making of wine or oil or both (Day, op. cit. 170). A typical example is the celebrated villa of Boscoreale two miles beyond Pompeii, whose facilities for storing wine are in such excellent state of preservation that the size of the vineyard and the amount of its production can be accurately estimated. The storage room (cella vinaria) contained eighty-four dolia with a capacity of about 275 gallons each, of which twelve were used for oil (3300 gallons)64) ; if all seventy- two of the re- mainder held the season's vintage, the vineyard must have produced each year 20,000 gallons, at least, a production indicating that this estate was approximately equal in area to Cato's model vineyard (A. Pasqui, op. cit. 486) 65). That the main activity of the villa was the culture of oil and wine is also inferred from the discovery of a large torcularium with its three strong winepresses, an olive crusher like that described by Cato (RR 22, 135.6), an olive press, numerous hoes, picks, and pruning-hooks. Some provision was made for producing grain ; the discovery of a threshing floor, a small gristmill, and an oven proves that at least enough wheat was grown for the people of the estate (Day 172-176; Frank, EHR 266; ESAR 5.265). The owner lived here at least some of the time, though absent when the eruption happened while his apartment was undergoing repairs (A. Pasqui, op. cit. 520 ff.). The entire arrangement of the villa with sleeping rooms on the second floor, and kitchen, bakery, and bath on the ground floor was typical of big farmhouses of the age (Frank, ESAR 5.265). This, however, although "built by skilled masons, frescoed by expert painters, and equipped with a three-room bathing establishment and an elaborate hot-water system" (Frank, ibid.), betrays not great affluence but rather the income of a careful and efficient landowner who made about $ 10,000 a year, as indicated by the moderate amount of his wine production. He probably sold his wine locally at Pompeii and other cities nearby and counted among his customers several owners of seaside pleasure villas and possibly many retired businessmen from Rome; but he was not, as Frank, (EHR 266) asserts, a great exporter nor part and parcel of the world's commerce.

The Villa Boscoreale, therefore, was exceptional neither in the size and productivity of its vineyard nor in the splendor of its decoration and appoint- ments. In fact, there is some doubt whether the famous silver plate and vases discovered in the wine cellar in 1895 and later presented to the Louvre actually belonged to the owner of this villa 66). It is probable that the villa of

64) Pasqui, op. cit. (note 62) 484, 486. 65) Columella (RR 3.3.10) declared that even the worst vineyards should,

if property tended, produce at least 220 gallons to the acre, cf. Frank, EHR 425: ESAR 5.172. 264.

66) F. Barnabei, op. cit. (note 62) 7 ff.; A. Héron de Villefosse, "Le trésor de Boscoreale," Mon Piot 5 (1899) 30 ff., 130 ff. Several villas were larger than the so-called Villa Boscoreale No. 13: (1) No. 38 of M. Livius Marcellus at Boscoreale, which was one of apparently vast dimensions and had two spacious ergastula, cf. Della Corte, Not. d. scavi (1929) 178-179; (2) No. 41 at Domiceila, cf. Not. d. scavi (1929) 199; (3) No. 27 of Asellius, No. Ill of Della Corte, Not. d. scavi 18 (1921) 426, very spacious and richlv decorated with paintings dealine with wine and

30*



448 CedricA. Yeo

P. Fannius Synistor (unless the owner was L. Herius Floras), certainly the Villa dei Misteri and, perhaps, several others, surpassed the Villa Boscoreale in their paintings and probably in the wealth derived from the culture of vines and olives. The enormous size of the presses in some of these villas and the large capacity of their cellars indicate a considerable volume of production. In the so-called Casa del Menandro (A. Maiuri, La Casa del Menandro [Roma, 1933] 109 ff.), at least twenty slaves were employed as compared with six- teen on Cato's model vineyard (RR 11) and probably at the Villa Bosco- reale67). But on the large estate of Agrippa Postumus (No. 31), which later became imperial property, there must have been, as Rosto vtzeff, (Storia econ. 114) asserts, "at least eighty slaves and perhaps many more," for whose punishment there was provided a slave prison (ergastulum) and a set of stocks capable of holding seven offenders at a time. The same estate was evidently managed by an actor or steward (CIL 4.6499; cf. 6995-6997), who in the hierarchy of estate management outranked the ordinary vilicus or overseer and whose powers were similar to those of a procurator, the representative of an owner of several estates (see Finanzarchiv 13. 330 and note 24). The magnitude of the area of some wine-producing estates may also be con- jectured from a study of the graffiti. At the Agrippa Postumus villa there were "in a great heap MXXIII vine props" (CIL 4.6887) andperhapsõOO more (6888) and at Villa No. 25, which belonged to another rich proprietor, 1300 stakes were recorded (CIL 4.6886), while in the middle of the courtyard of another villa (No. 33) were found the actual stakes "in conspicuous number" (Della Corte Not. d. scavi 20 [1923] 273). Such quantities of stakes, writes Gummerus (BE s. v. "Industrie und Handel" 1455), is a proof that these vineyards must have been of considerable size. It is, therefore, evident that these villas were not at the time of the eruption suffering from over-production nor need we assume that their prosperity was merely temporary and their interest in viticulture the result of a sudden enthusiasm inspired by Columella's recent book, as O. Seeck seems to suggest68). On the contrary, viticulture at this time seems to have been a very profitable industry. Pliny (NH 14.48) mentions some notable instances of success in vine-growing, that of the freedman, Acilius Sthenelus, and of the grammarian, Remmius Palaemon, both of whom owned vineyards at Mentana, about ten miles from Rome, and of Vetulenus Aegialus at Liter num in Campania. New varieties of vines were then being constantly introduced and new districts were coming into promin- ence as producers of good wine69). Another proof of the expansion of viti-

Bacchic subjects. This villa was managed by a procurator, Thallus; (4) No. 31 of Agrippa Postumus; and (5) No. 34 at Gregnano.

87) Cf. Day, op. cit. (note 62) 193. F. M. Snowden (op. cit. [note 16J 21» it.) has collected most of the material relating to the numbers of slaves employed on Pompeian estates. A careful study of the villa plans published by Della Corte (Not. d. scavi 1921-1923) and reproduced by Carrington (Antiquity 8.261-278) might yield important results.

68) O. Seeck, Die Geschichte des Untergangs der antiken Welt (Berlin, 1897) 1. 372: cf. R. Billiard, op. cit. (note 30) 102-111; S. Reinach, op. cit. (note 30) 362.

69) Columella (RR 3.2.27 f; 3.9.3) asserts that Amineans were the only vines known to Cato and Varro; cf. Cato RR 6.4; 7.1-2; Varro, RR 1.25; G. Curcio,




culture and the development of newer and better vintages may be seen in Columella's assertion that a vineyardist could greatly increase his earnings by selling mallet-shoots or quicksets (RR 3.3.13; cf. Frank, ESAR 5.150). But the most striking confirmation of this fact was the radical conversion of the Villa dei Misteri from an elegant suburban residence into a kind of "agricultural factory," a reconstruction still in progress at the time of the eruption. This villa had been damaged by the earthquake of 63; the wealthy and cultur- ed family who owned it up to that time had given it up and it came into the possession of a freedman, named L. Istacidius Zosimus, who, having a good head for business but not too much appreciation of art, proceeded to convert the large dining room north of the peristyle, which had been decorated with paintings of the Second Pompeian style, into a torcularium equipped with two large mechanical presses and to install a wine-cellar nearby 70) . Thus, the villa was in process of conversion into a large-scale agricultural factory, like that represented by No. 26 and by the large villa No. 34, having small and unadorned livingrooms, but designed with its large cellars and winepresses solely as the work-place and sleeping quarters of gangs of slaves laboring on the estate (Rosto vtzeff's third economic type, see above, p. 446).

Villa No. 34, situated at Gregnano in the lower Sarno valley and between Pompeii and Stabiae, was one of the largest of the villas yet excavated around Pompeii and, apart from the Villa Boscoreale, one of the most interesting. The land devoted to agriculture had an area of nearly 200 acres71). The villa contained sleeping space for at least thirty slaves and a prison equipped with a complete set of stocks capable of holding seven men at a time72). Though this villa had facilities for a considerable production of wine, as proved by the discovery of a spacious cella vinaria, a large torcularium, and many wooden beams for the making of vine props, it also contained a

La primitiva civiltà latina agricola (Firenze, 1929) 102. In the age of Nero, newer varieties such as the Bituric and Basilic were being introduced from abroad; cf. the long list of varieties mentioned by Columella (RR 3.2.7-29) and by Pliny (NH 14.20-39).

Pliny (NH 14.69) tells us that Campania, whether by accident or careful cultivation, had lately stirred attention by some new popular vintages - the Tre- bellian (four miles from Naples), the Cauline (near Capua), the Trebulan and Tri- foline; cf. Frank, ESAR 5.134, 146-147.

Columella's judgment (RR 3.10.6; 4.3.2 ff.) that the cause of poor returns from viticulture was bad farming is confirmed by Pliny's (NH 14.61) explanation of the failure of a Caecuban vineyard near the Bay of Amyclae; the cultivator was ignorant and careless and his vineyard fell into neglect.

70) On the Villa dei Misteri, see A. Maiuri, op. cit. (note 62) 23, 94, 100, 103 ff . ; id. Passeggiate Campane (Milan, 1938) 253; R. C. Carrington, Pompeii 84 ff. 71 ) On villa No. 34, see Della Corte, Not. d. scavi 20 (1923) 275-280; Carring- ton, JRS 21 (1931) 124-125; id. Pompeii 96; Day, op. cit. (note 62) 185.

72) Della Corte (op. cit. [note 71] 277) and Carrington (Pompeii 96) both assert that fourteen slaves could be foot-locked at a time, but Westermann (RE s. v. „Sklaverei" 1027) corrects this number to seven. The stocks found at the villa of Agrippa Postumus did not, as Westermann (ibid.) asserts, confine five; the number must have been seven or more, since the stocks are not completely preserved. It is interesting how similar the devices used around Pompeii for punishing slaves were to those employed in Cuba on sugar plantations, cf. F. Ortiz, Los negros esclavos (Habana, 1916) 257-258.



450 CedricA. Yeo

cow stable and on the same side of the building a cheese factory with a big bronze kettle in it suitable for handling quite a quantity of milk. A third branch of farming, the growing of wheat, also contributed to the productive activity of this estate. A large and well-equipped bakery containing a heavy gristmill, the biggest yet found in any villa, and a circular oven about eight feet in diameter were apparently used to make bread for a numerous staff of workmen and field hands - the unusual size of the milling and baking apparatus being necessary because of the exceptional size of this plantation. The grist mill, however, whether turned by hand or horsepower, was standard equipment on all Pompeian plantations and on Cato' s model estate (RR 136) 73); it is only to be expected that most of them produced enough grain in order to be self-sufficient, although one is surprised to find evidence of cereal production at only five of the forty-three villas (Nos. 5, 13, 14, 25? and 34) ; sometimes the excavator had to look for straws to find even that 74).

The comparative absence of evidence of grain production in a region once renowned during early Republican times as a granary for Rome is all the more surprising since wheat raising seems to have played an important part on all Roman plantations, big as well as small. On the estates described by Cominella (RR 1.2.4), we find provision for the growing of wheat, just as we do on those of Varro's time (Varro, RR 1.45, 48 ff., 53), though it seems to have been grown only for home consumption and for seed (RR 1.69.1 : ad cibatum and ad sationem) and not for sale. Much more general was the making of grain crops on Cato's farms, where facilities were provided for a production of 540 bushels of grain as well as for the grinding and baking of bread to feed the slaves (RR 2.5; 10.3-4; 11.4; 56; 136: pistrinum; cf. Gummerus 33) 75). Even though Cato considered wine and oil his main crops (RR 1.7 ; 2.5 ; 3.2 ; 148) whereas grain was a kind of sideline produced for home consumption and sold only when a surplus existed (RR 2.7 : frumentum quod supersit, vendat; 2.5; cf. M. Weber, Agrargesch. 223 ff.), it is nevertheless a fact that grain was still grown extensively in Cato's time and was not so generally

7S) Columella (RR 1.6.21) declares that 'a villa should have near it an oven and a gristmill, of such size as may be required by the number of hands that are to be employed'; cf. also Dig. 3 .7.12.5, which preserves the statement of Tre- batius (time of Augustus) that the baker formed part of the instrumentum or parmanent „stock" of the villa.

74) The evidence of grain production on Pompeian estates has been fully presented by Day (173) and Carrington ( JRS 21 [1931] 123 ff.

75) The same idea is implied by Columella's statement (RR 1.6.9) that store- rooms on the ground floor of the villa "may take care of liquid products for the market (vini aut olei venalium); while dry products such as grain, hay, leaves, chaff, and other fodder should be stored in lofts." Cato (RR 10.4; 11) lists 20 storage jars (dolia) for grain on both his wine and oil plantations. The jars contain 30 amphorae each or 27 bushels; the grain production would then be 540 bushels (wheat, barley, and spelt) on each estate, provided all jars are filled with each year's crop. Cf. E. Brehaut, Cato the Censor on Farming (New York, 1933) 23. Of this the slave force would require 200 bushels (Cato, RR 56) and an additional 135 bushels would be saved for seed. Some grain was also fed to livestock (Cato, RR 54, 60). Cf. M. Weber, Die römische Agrargeschichte (Stuttgart, 1891) 221.




abandoned as it was later; apparently there had not developed in the second century B. C. so strong a conflict of interests, which Cato attempted to reconcile in his treatise, between the ancient cereal-growing regime and the newer wine and oil economy as was later to develop shortly before and after the age of Augustus76).

The villa at Gregnano in the diversity of its products resembled many other large plantations both ancient and modern. In ancient times a considerable degree of diversification was attained especially on medium-sized farms situated near thriving cities, of which there were many in Campania along the Gulf of Naples. In this area market-gardening was extensively and profitably carried on. Frank (CAH 8.338) has pointed out that, when Cato (RR 1.7: secundo loco hortus inriguus) assigned second place to the profits to be realized from irrigated gardens especially in the neighborhood of cities (RR 8.2 ; cf. Varro, RR 1.16.3 : sub urbe hortos), it was not to gardens around Rome he was referring, since irrigation was not feasible there, but rather to the market gardens outside of the urban centers of Campania. But many suburban farms probably did not confine themselves to the growing of vegetables and flowers. Some were devoted to a very wide range of produce. Mar- tial (3.58) gives us a vivid description of one of these suburban farms outside of Baiae. The villa of Faustinus, he says, produced a great deal of wine and grapes besides grain, cattle, sheep, poultry, cheese, honey, and a lot of other stuff, which was sold to a rich clientele residing at the resorts nearby. The Baian villa reminds us of Horace's Sabine farm in the variety of its produce77). But the villa at Gregnano did not resemble any of these quite so closely as it did many plantations in the American South, especially the big Alabama cotton plantations of Samuel Townsend or James Asbury Tait. In addition to cotton, the former produced wheat, oats, and rye; the latter a great variety of produce: wheat, rye, corn, oats, potatoes, vegetables, sugar cane, sheep, cattle, and even fish. These plantations were almost entirely self-sufficient78).

The ideal of self-sufficiency was advocated by most Roman agricultural writers. Cato preached it when he urged planters to "sell much, buy little" (RR 2.7) and "buy not what you need but what you can't get along without; what you need is dear even at a farthing" (Sen. Epist. 94.27; Plut. Cato maior 4.6). "Buy only what you cannot produce on the plantation" (Pliny, NH 18.30, 40) expresses the ideal of self-sufficiency as it was understood by Cato, Varro (RR 1.22), and other agricultural writers. On Cato's estates, however, the ideal was realized only in a very imperfect manner and the same was true of those described by Varro and Columella, even though Cato wrote for owners of relatively small plantations varying in size, like those around

7«) E. Brehaut, op. cit. (note 75) p. XVI, XXIII; H. Wiskemann, Die antike Landwirtschaft (Leipzig, 1859) 50 ff.; Nissen, op. cit. (note 57) 1.444, 450; 2.92; G. Curcio, op. cit. (note 69) 95, 102; M. Weber, op. cit. (note 75); O. Seeck, op. cit. (note 68) 1.371 : A. Oliva, od. cit. (note 3) 77: Gummerus 18f .

77) Horace's farm is exhaustively discussed by Greaves (op. cit. [note 9] 1.107-116), cf. Rostovtzeff, Storia econ. 69-70.

78) J. B. Sellers, Slavery in Alabama (University, Ala., 1950) 91.



452 CedricA. Yeo

Pompeii, from sixty-five to one hundred and sixty acres79), while Varro wrote for somewhat larger planters and Columella for those owning from 335 to 1,000 acres (Gummerus 56, 78 ff.)80).Cato's estates produced everything needed, except pickled fish, to feed the hands and furnish fodder for the livestock (RR 58) and manufactured all the hampers, baskets, tools, and utensils that could be made out of wood and other materials available on the estate (Gum- merus 33 ff .). But in spite of his recommendation that sheep be kept at least on the olive estate (RR 10.1 ; 2.7; 150), he nevertheless advised (RR 135) that tunics, togas, blankets, and smocks be bought at Rome. More understandable is his advice to buy iron tools, scythes, spades, axes, mattocks, and chains at Cales and Minturnae; spades and tiles at Venafrum; carts and sledges at Suessa and in Lucania ; oil mills at Pompeii and Noia ; nails and bars at Rome ; pails, oil-urns and other copper vessels, pulley ropes and cordage at Capua and Noia. The necessity of buying all these articles shows clearly that there was very little industrial activity on Cato's estates; there was little on those descriped by Varro and Culumella. All three writers, therefore, stressed the desirability of acquiring an estate near a flourishing town, the sea, a navigable stream, or a good highway (Cato, RR 1.3; Gellius 10.26.8; Varro, RR 1.16.2; Col. RR 1.2.3; cf. Gummerus 22, 58, 59, 80), which would enable the owner to buy what he needed and sell what he produced. Though it was most desirable to keep the slaves busy during bad weather making vineprops, baskets, and the like (Varro, RR 1.22.1 ; cf. Gummerus 87), most planters preferred to buy the industrial articles they needed and hire doctors, fullers, potters, painters, and smiths when these were wanted rather than to own and keep, as permanent members of the staff, technically trained artisans because the latter cost too much to buy and involved too great a loss for all except the great planters to bear if one of them happened to die (Varro, RR 1 .16.4 ; cf. Gummerus 68 f f .). On the large estates, however, especially those far from industrial centers, smiths and other artisans were kept; otherwise, too much time was lost going to and from town to secure a necessary piece of equipment the lack of which might be holding up the work of the entire labor force (Col. RR 4, 30.1 ; 12.3.9 ; Varro, RR 1.16. 4-5 80*). There was, therefore, much variation from one estate to another. On some estates grain and sometimes wine were purchased even though both of these products could be made on the estate (Varro, RR 1.16.2). But Varro, who mentioned this practice, was probably referring not so much to the central Italian plantations, whose staple product was wine, as to the grain-growing estates of Cisalpine Gaul, where the Sasernae, whose books on

79) According to Weber (op. cit. [note 75] 238 ff., 243), the greatest expansion of the plantation occurred between the times of Cato and Varro. Cf. Salvioli, II capitalismo 50 ff.; N. A. Mashkin, Istoriia drevnego Rima (Mos*cow, 1947) 251. 80 ) The plantations Columella had in mind ranged from 500 up to 1500 jugera; cf. Gummerus 79; O. Seeck, op. cit. (note 68) 1.562.

80a) On the industrial self-sufficiency of villas in Roman Belgium, see F. Cu- mont, Comment la Belgique fut romanisée (Brussels, 1919) 43. Some large estates near Rome, however, engaged in brickmaking as a purely industrial activity. See H. Bloch, "The Roman Brick-stamps Not Published in Vol. XV, 1 of CIL," Har- vard Studies in Classical Philology 56/7 (1947) 112 ff. See bibliography in ESAR 5.207 ff .




agriculture lie used as sources for such statements, were important proprietors (Varro, RR 1.19.1 : ad iugera CC arvi; cf. Gummerus 50-51, 64, 83).

We may, therefore, conclude that the ideal of self-sufficiency was a principle whose application varied not so much from period to period as from location to location. At the one extreme we find the completely self-sufficient farm, at the other the plantation on which all the resources were devoted to production for sale. Between these extremes were to be found the great major- ity of Roman plantations and farms. The same seems to have been true also of American plantations before 1860, where the ideal of self-sufficiency was generally strong. On the cotton plantation of Hugh Davis near Marion, Ala- bama, the first objective was to "buy neither bread nor meat nor anything that can be made on the place" 81). Though rice was the staple crop on the Allston plantation near Georgetown, S. C, we find that in addition to 45,000 bushels of rice, there were grown 3,000 bushels of corn, 1500 bushels of tur- nips, 800 bushels of oats, and 970 bushels of peas, which not merely satisfied the needs of the plantation but were sometimes sold when a surplus existed82). The plantation of Joseph Rucker, lying along the Georgia side of the Savannah River, provides an example that illustrates most accurately the practice of self- sufficiency on the Roman latifundia. Stock of all kinds were raised; immense crops of corn and wheat were produced ; mills ground the grain into meal and flour; hides were tanned in the tanyard and from the leather skilled artisans made harness and shoes; cloth was woven by slave women; and blacksmiths, carpenters, and mechanics contributed also to the self-sufficiency of the estate 8S). In Brazil, plantations were generally even more self-sufficient. The fazenda not only produced all the meat, cereals, and wine needed both by the Big House and the slaves but furnished leather, wool, and cotton, which were manufactured on the estate into harness and clothing. The Brazilian plantation, in short, lacked nothing; it was almost a world of its own 84). In general, however, the American plantations tended to become less self-sufficient as they became more commercialized, often neglecting both manufacturing and the production of food crops, especially when staples were bringing high prices and when the plantations were within easy reach of transportation facilities85).

It is, therefore, not surprising that the villa at Gregnano and some of the other Pompeian villas should have striven for self-sufficiency, though the tendency does not seem to have been very strong. It is not improbable that

81) W. T. Jordan, Hugh Davis and his Alabama Plantation (University, Ala.' 1948) 30.

82) J. H. Easterby, The South Carolina Rice Plantation (Chicago, 1945) 36. 83) R. B. Flanders, Plantation Slavery in Georgia (Chapel Hill, 1933) 157 ff.,

212; U. B. Phillips, "Plantations with Slave Labor and Free," Agricultural Hi- story 12 (1938) 80. For comparable leather and hide exports from Roman latifundia, see A. Gansser-Burckhardt, Das Leder und seine Verarbeitung im röm. Lesrionslaerer íVindonissa. 1942Ì 99 ff.. 105 f.. 128.

84) Alcantara Machado, Vida e morte do bandeirante (São Paulo, 1929) 49-50 P. A. Martin, "Portugal in Brazil," Hispanic American Historical Review 17 (1937) 194; Vera Brown Holmes, A History of the Americas (New York, 1950) 205-207.

85) Gray, op. cit. (note 1) 1.451 ff.



454 CedrícA. Yeo

some of them, being close to excellent seaports, neglected food crops, as did Bassus, whom Martial berates (3.58.48), and depended on imported supplies.

I do not entirely agree with Frank (ESAR 5.175) that the Pompeian estates were typical of all Campanian wine and oil plantations, though most writers tend to make this assumption86). Nor can it be assumed that the estates described by Cato were regarded as models for plantations of a later time. For in Cato's day Greek wines were still imported into Italy (Rostovtzeff, Hellenistic World 1253) and Italian wines had not yet begun to be exported in large quantities until after the beginning of the first century B. C. Most of the wine produced in 150 B. C. must have been for local and for Roman consumption (Frank, ESAR 1.284). Even at that earlier date, Cato's treatise seems no longer to have satisfied the requirements of a highly developed plantation economy, since Roman landowners in the Senate insisted upon a trans- lation of Mago's work, which would present the experience of the more scientific and capitalistic type of agriculture prevailing in Carthage (see Finanz- archiv 13. 329ff .). It can also be shown that, although Varro did not have before his eyes any particular estate of definite size, when he wrote his treatise, he nevertheless intended his work for the use of large proprietors of whom he himself was one, being the owner, he tells us (RR 1.15; 3.3.8; 3.13.1), of an estate near Mt. Vesuvius and another atTusculum. That he had in mind large estates of at least 320 acres is indicated by his criticism of Cato for counting the overseer among the rest of the slaves, for if you cultivate less than 160 acres of olives you cannot get along with less than one overseer, or if you cultivate twice as large a place or more you will have to keep two or three overseers. It is only the laborers and teamsters that are to be added proportionately to large bodies of land (RR 1.18.3-4). Furthermore, in the passage (RR 1.17.3) where he gives instructions regarding the selection and management of slaves he cites as his authority Cassius Dionysius, epitomizer of Mago's work, which was intended for great latifondisti or plantation owners with hundreds of slaves laboring under the whip-lash. It would appear that Varro had before his eyes estates at least twice as large as Cato's olive plantation of 160 acres (Gummerus 56-57 87). Cominella presupposes even larger estates, as may be inferred from his remarks concerning the limitations of 500 jugera imposed by the Licinian Law (RR 1.3.11), from his division of the labor force into gangs of ten (RR 1.9.6, 1.9.7) 88), and finally from his description of the cella olearia and its ninety oil vats as compared with the fourteen which Cato prescribed for an estate of 160 acres (Col. RR 12.52.12; cf. Cato, RR 13.2: labra olearia XIIII; 10.4: labra XII). It is, therefore, quite probable that the estates posited as standard by Columella might have ranged from 500 to 1000 acres (Frank, ESAR 5.171)88*).

86) Rostovtzeff, (Storia econ. 71) also makes this assumption. 87j See notes 79 and 80. 88) We may also suppose Columella had large estates in mind when he men-

tioned slave drivers (RR 1.9.7), the ergastulum (RR 1.6.3; 1.8.16; 11.1.22), the ergastularii (RR 1.8.17), and the big kitchen (RR 1.6.3: magna et alta culina).

88a) Estates containing between 500 and 1000 acres are considered large by European standards only; they are not large as compared with some Brazilian estates, which in extreme cases may exceed the area of Portugal or even Great




Nor is there lacking evidence to show that some Campanian plantations were larger and more highly developed than either the Pompeian villas or the farms described in Cato 's treatise. This evidence is partly epigraphical and partly literary. Some of the great wine-producing and wine-exporting estates in Campania as well as elsewhere in Italy and in Spain had their own pottery- works for the manufacture of the amphorae, in which they transported their wine. These big estates were able, if the soil was suitable, to keep technically trained slaves busy all the year round making the various wine-containers and, no doubt, enjoyed a considerable economic advantage over smaller producers, who were compelled to buy, as did the owners of Cato's estates, their jars from pottery-works at Alba or at Rome (Cato, RR 135), or else, as on the estate of Apollonius in Egypt, to grant a concession to contractors who paid for their concession in kind by furnishing the estate the necessary jars 89). But only the larger producers were able to afford the necessary equipment and the highly specialized personnel. These large proprietors were not at all industrial- ists but planters whose figlinae manufactured amphorae in conjunction with the production of oil and wine90). The Sasernae (ca. 100 B. C.) on their estates in Cisalpine Gaul and L. Tarius Ruf us, the great Picenian wine-grower, whose name was stamped on amphorae handles found at Ateste (CIL 5.8112.78) and at Siscia (CIL 3.12010.30), were amongst that group who made pottery merely for their own use as containers of the wine produced on their estates and not for sale as a separate and additional source of income. On numerous amphorae found at Rome and Pompeii are written in the genitive form names of slaves, or more frequently of freedmen, whose job was to produce these jars on big wine-producing estates. Marks on the amphorae, says Grenier, consist of two elements sometimes found together, sometimes separate : the name of the proprietor of the estate, and the name of the artisan, preceded or not by mention of the shop EX OF(f icina) or Offi- cina) or FIG(linae) or F(iglinae) or F(undi). The name of the workman is indicated by a name proper to a slave such as Fortunatus or Hermes, often associated with that of the master: S(ervus) VIRG(inii). In this way it is possible to identify certain proprietors such as M. Her(ennius) Picent(inus), whose estate was located near the Via Aemilia in northern Italy and whose

Britain. See Carleton Beals, America South (Philadelphia and New York, 1938) 249. F. J. Normano, Economic Brazil (Chapel Hill 1935) 68f.; J. F. Weil, Ar- gentine Riddle (New York, 1944) 90 ff.

M) M. Rostovtzeff, A Large Estate in Egypt in the Third Century B.C. (Madison, 1922) 181.

M) The larger planters, who owned their own facilities for making jars and other pottery (figlinae), enjoyed an economic advantage over those unable to manufacture pottery on their estates. Cf. Gummerus 40,49, 70f., 96; A. Grenier, Manuel d'archéologie 2.625 ff.; M. Weber, op. cit. (note 19) 245; J. Toutain, op. cit. (note 2) 236; A. Oxé, Germania 8 (1924) 80-82; O. Bohn, Germania 9 (1925) 83-85; P. Remark, op. cit. (note 53) 7, 11; H. Bloch, op. cit (note 80 a) 1 ff.; id. "I bolli laterizi e la storia edilizia romana," Bull. com. arch. Roma 64 (1936) 141 ff.; 65 (1937) 83 ff.; 66 (1938) 61 ff. That Trebius Loisios, whose wine business we discussed in the earlier part of this study, owned potteries and manufactured his own amphorae was long ago shown by Dessau (Hermes 18 [1883 156).



456 CedricA. Yeo

stamps have been found in Africa (CIL 8.3.22637.50), in Italy (CIL 15.3466; 5.8812.44), and at Athens (CIL 3.7309.10). It is also possible that makers of garum similarly made their own pottery: g. f. scombr. Scauri ex officina Scaur (CIL 4.2.5694); g. f. scombri ex Scauri officina Agathopi (CIL 4.2.5690) 91) Although neither Cato nor Varro mention these facts, being interested in the more strictly agricultural aspects of their subject, the making of pottery for private use is nevertheless quite in line with their ideal of self-sufficiency (see above p. 451), and Varro alludes to the practice of rich owners of large estates of keeping at their villas smiths, weavers, and other technically trained workers (RK 1.16.4; cf. 1.2.22-23). In the Geoponica (2.49.2-3), however, Varro is cited as authority for the practice of employing bronze- workers, carpenters, and potters: âvaynaiorarov ôè xal xegajuéaç e%eív Tzdvrœv ëvexa neneia/uévcov on èv náor' xr' yf¡ ëanv evgeïv xeQajuixrjv yfjv.

Varro's meaning (RR 1.16.4) was clearly expressed also by Palladius (1.6.2), who prescribed the presence of smiths, carpenters, and makers of jars and casks as a necessity in order to prevent stoppages of farm work resulting from lack of equipment. Finally near the end of the Empire a text of the Di- gest (33.7.25) mentions a landowner, who having potteries on his estates, employed his potters as field hands for the greater part of the year. We may, therefore, conclude, on the basis of the epigraphical and literary material just cited, that large planters made their own jars and pots, and probably for that reason enjoyed considerable advantages over the owners of smaller villas and farms. But of the manufacture of pottery on the villas around Pompeii there is to my knowledge no evidence.91*) These villas, like the farms described by Cato, so far from being the largest, were not even of moderate size and were, as a rule, owned by a local petty though prosperous landown- ing class rather than by large proprietors to whom our literary sources make frequent allusion.

The same conclusion may be reached through a study of the wine trade of Pompeii itself. That trade was largely local and exports were not extensive though the discovery of numerous fragments of dolia vinaria and of amphorae near the ancient harbor of Pompeii may be considered evidence of some export trade from this section of Campania (Not. d. scavi [1928] 369-371 ; Frank, ESAR 5.259). Pompeian wine seems to have been shipped to Rome (CIL 15.4592) and Carthage (CIL 8.22640.31), and was known to Pliny, though he speaks of it as a poor keeper and conducive to bad hang- overs (NH 14.70). The evidence for importation into Pompeii is much more

91 ) A. Marescalchi and G. Dalmasso, op. cit. (note 63) 1.178. 9iaj «j>he Pompeian villas seem to have obtained at least part of their

supplies of amphorae and dolia from potteries belonging to the imperial family. In a villa near Scafati an amphora was found bearing on its bottom the following inscription: e(x) fig(li)n(i3) Caesa[ri]s, cf. Not. d. scavi 19(1922) 479-480. At the large villa at Domicella (no. 41) three enormous dolia were uncovered bearing the stamp of Julius Felix, otherwise known to us as the superintendent of a factory making lamps, basins, and tiles on one of the vast Campanian estates owned by the imperial family. Cf. Not. d. scavi (1929) 201-2.




conspicuous92). We learn from amphorae marks that Pompeii imported Coan, Cnidian, Spanish, Cretan and Sicilian, as well as ten good Italian brands, among which are included several choice Campanian wines, namely: Falernian (CIL 4.2566, 6896), Gauran (4.2.5511), Surrentine (4.2555, 4.2.5514, 5521, 5522, 5525, 5560-5562), Cuman (4.2.5553), Capuan (4.2833; 4.2.5555), and Trifo- line (4.2.5518, 5570). The list of imports is so long in comparison with that of exports that if we had no other than inscription al evidence we would be led to the erroneous conclusion that Pompeii was an importer of wine instead of being the center of one of the richest wine-growing regions in the world. We may, however, infer, at least, that the owners of the over-publicized Pompeian villas were not great planters, or latifondisti, engaged in world- wide commerce.

The above remarks on Pompeian planting and commerce do not apply to Campania as a whole. As a matter of fact, the wines of Campania enjoyed world-wide renown and were exported far and wide from Germany to India (see Finanzarchiv 13. 334 ff.) Falernian, for example, was exported to all countries (cf. Galen 14.77):

elç anaaav yàq a%eòóv ye rrjv olxov/uévrjv and among the thirty names of Italian wines read on amphorae none occurs more often than Falernian. It was in Nero's day considered a breach of eti- quette to serve any other wine than Falernian, though by that time other Italian wines were equally popular (Frank, EHR 412). Since the wines of Falernum, of Surrentum, of Cales, and Mt. Massicus were exported not only to Rome and to many Italian cities of which Pompeii was one, but also to France, Switzerland, and elsewhere, one would be justified in assuming even without other evidence that viticulture was conducted in Campania on a very large scale93). But other evidence is not lacking, evidence which, though mostly poetic and sometimes rhetorical in style, cannot be ignored. Horace (Epod. 4.13) speaks of a thousand- jugera estate in the renowned Falernian region, such as Faustus, son of L. Cornelius Sulla, might have owned (Pliny, NH 14.62). The wines Faustus exported to Rome acquired the distinctive name of Faustian (Pliny, ibid.). In another poem (Carm. 1.31.7 ff.), Horace contrasts his own modest farm on the Sabine hills (which was not in fact a small farm) with a huge ranch in Calabria and with a big Campanian estate at Cales in the valley of the Liris not far from Minturnae, whence came one of the world's choicest wines (Juv. 1.69; Athenaeus 1.48, p. 27). The large estate to which Tibullus (1.9.33) refers lay in the same region. This famous wine country seems to have fallen quite early into the hands of latifondisti such as T. Vettius, who owned, according to Diodorus (36.2), four hundred slaves. In the hills of Sorrento, whose wines ranked with Alban and Falernian among the finest in Italy (Col. 3.2.10; Pliny, NH 24.22, 38, 64; 23.35-36)

92) On the importation of foreign and Italian wines at Pompeii, see P. Re- mark, op. cit. (note 53) 17, 19, 22; Day, op. cit. (note 62) 194; Frank, ESAR 5. 258; H. Sievers, op. cit. (note 62) 71. 93 ) On the wine-growing districts of Campania and references to them by -ancient authors, see P. Remark, op. cit. (note 37) 57 ff.; 94.



458 CedricA. Yeo

stretched two other celebrated estates; one was owned by Fabius, whose stamps have turned up at Pompeii (Surr [entinum] Fabian [urn] : CIL 4.552 1- 2, 5525, 5562) and in Switzerland (0. Bohn, op. cit. [note 16], 205; Grenier, Manuel d'archéologie 2.620), another by Clodius, whose wine was shipped to Rome (H. Schaal, op. cit. [note 16], 173). Juvenal (9.55 ff.) mentions other regions of Campania which produced three famous wines, namely, the Trifo- line, regarded by Pliny as one of Italy's best (NH 14.69; cf. Martial 13.114), the Gauran, rivalling Massic in excellence (Pliny, NH 14.64), and the Cuman (Athenaeus 1.26 f f.). Apparently a single owner possessed an estate in each of these districts, holding a particularly large one in "unpeopled Gaums" (Gaurus inanis)94). Martial speaks frequently of magnificent holdings in the neighborhood of Rome that brought their owners enormous incomes (3.31.1 ; 4.37.4), of hundreds of ploughs turning the soil in the rich wine country of Tibur and Praeneste and of large estates occupying almost all of the famous winelands of Setia (4.64.31; 10.74.11), whose wine was the favorite of Augustus (Pliny, NH 14.61; 23.36) and equalled Falernian or Alban in excellence ( Juv. 5.35 ; 10.27 : lato Setinum ardebit in auro) 95). It is interesting to note the development of the large estate in the territory of Casinum, the site of Cato's vineyard. Over this entire district, according to Cicero (Leg. agr. 3.14), Valgus 'had extended his rich and fertile estates by proscribing his neighbors until he finally created, through the occupation of numerous farms, a unique domain before our eyes with all the aspect and form of a region.' We may infer from the passage just quoted that the process of expansion of the large estate, not only in the broad ranch lands of the South but also in the wine- and oil-growing regions of Campania and Latium was still going on right to the very end of the Republic. In fact, the latifundium continued to grow during the early centuries of the Empire. Curiously enough in some of the districts mentioned above, the land had been distributed from time to time to revive the ancient peasantry. The distributions had the opposite effect, at least in some cases, and speeded instead the growth of the latifundium96). The territory of Falernum, assigned ca. 339 B. C. in lots of three jugera (Livy 8.11), fell after a time into the hands of a few rich men (Salvioli 47). Praeneste was settled with Sulla's veterans ; twenty years later it had lost all its colonists (Cic. Leg. agr. 2.78). Nor did the military colonies of Caesar and Augustus (Monum. Ancyr. 3.22) succeed in restoring small proprietorship in Central Italy. The Campanian lands distributed among Caesar's veterans were

94 ) His extensive lando wnership kept this fertile region unpopulated. »6) Greaves, op. cit. (note 9) 134 ff. ••) On the growth of the latifundium, see A. Schulten, op. cit. (note 24) 12 ff .;

Salvioli, II capitalismo 44-58, 110 ff.; id. op. cit. (note 35) 183; Speck, op. cit. (note 3) 3.2.99 ff.; Greaves, op. cit. (note 9) 1.134 ff.; R. Scalais, "La production agricole dans l'Etat romain," Musée Belge 29 (1925) 149; Toutain, op. cit. (note 2) 230 ff.; Heitland, Agricola 154 ff.; 164-174, 203, 248; E. Dramard, "Etude sur les latifundia," Séances et travaux de l'académie des sciences morales et politiques 143 (1895) 554 ff.; F. Fried, op. cit. (note 2) 78 ff.; 84; Weber, op. cit. (note 75) 112; E. Ciccotti, II tramonto della schiavitù nel mondo antico2 (Udine, 1940) 285; E. Kornemann, RE s. v. "Bauernstand" Suppl. 4.104; cf. also "Do- mänen" 238 ff.; Frank, ESAR 5.169.




shortly afterwards deserted and were incorporated into vast estates, a result which Cicero anticipated in his speeches on the Agrarian Law of 63. For the veterans on the one hand had no desire to eke out a scanty living by manual labor but, as Sallust (Cat. 37.6) expressed it, "tempted by public and private largesses, preferred idleness in the city to unwelcome toil in the fields" (cf. Tac. Ann. 14.27). On the other hand, large landowners could not resist the temptation of rounding off their estates by buying up more land as the opportunity arose. They bought up farms cheaply from peasants unable to pay their taxes or debts or sometimes simply took them over by sheer force (Juv. 14.145 ff.; Col. RR 1.3.6, 12; Appian, B.C. 1.7; Sen. Epist. 90.39; Mart. 10.79; Hor. Carm. 2.18.22 ff.; Sail. Jug. 41; Quint. Declam. 13.2).

It must not be supposed, however, that these latifundia-sovereignties were concentrated in single solid blocks. They were as a rule built up, especially in the Claudian and Neronian period, by the acquisition of one estate after another, often in various parts of Italy and even in the provinces. In this way the proprietors undoubtedly hoped to distribute the risk of crop failure, which might occur in one region but not in another. Varro, for example, owned several plantations, one near Vesuvius (RR 1.15) and another at Tusculum (RR 3.3.8; 3.13.1), besides large ranches in Apulia and Reate (RR 2 pr. 6). Many such properties were owned by Atticus Pomponius and Maecenas. A century later, Columella owned plantations at Carseoli, Ardea, and Alba, all in Latium, and a fourth at Caere in Etruria (RR 3.9.2). Towards the end of the first century A. D., we find literary mention of two proprietors, one of whom owned estates near Rome at Tibur and Tusculum as well as in Umbria and Etruria (Mart. 7.31.9; 12.31.8); the other, Ursus, of whom Statius speaks (Silv. 2.6.60 ff.), owned estates atLocri inBruttium, at Pollentia, by the banks of the Tiber and of Lucanian Acir, as well as in Crete and Cyrene97). Seneca's well-known estates provide still another excellent example of the same general phenomenon (Rostovtzeff, Stor. econ. 115, 338). Another excellent illustration of extensive landproprietorship typical of the late Republic we owe to Cicero's defence of Sextus Roscius, who owned at the time of his murder during the Sullan regime thirteen separate properties (Cic. pro Roscio Amerino 18-20). The urge to acquire or establish new plantations arose not alone from the desire to invest cumulative profits and accrued capital but from the necessity of providing for the natural increase of the slaves, which perhaps ranged from three to seven per cent, especially during the early Imperial period, when slave breeding seems to have been deliberately stimulated. We know that once the wars of conquest had ceased and piracy on the Mediterranean had been eliminated after the battle of Actium (H. A. Omerod, Piracy 254 ff.) the procurement of slave labor in Italy depended no longer on importation but on the breeding of slaves. According to Varro (RR 1.17.5; 2.1.26; 2.10.6; cf. Cic. Fam. 8. 15.2; Nepos, Att. 13.4) slave breeding was widely practised on farms and on ranches even before the close of the Republic. During the Imperial period slave women

97 ) On the acquisition of landholdings in various regions, see Cic. Leg. agr. 3.14; Dessau, op. cit. (note 40) 2.418; E. Magaldi, op. cit. (note 4) 63-64; Frank, ESAR 5.172; cf. esp. Greaves, op. cit. (note 9) 1.154.



460 CedricA. Yeo

were encouraged through exemption from work and the promise of manumission to have as many children as possible (Col. RR 1.8.19). On Trimalchio's estate at Cumae were born on a single day thirty boy and forty girl slaves, a typical satiric exaggeration, no doubt, but one that was based on actual fact (Petronius 53), as is Appian's statement (BC 1.7; cf. Frank, E SAR 1.234 fn.), which may reflect a practice current in his own time rather than in the age of Tiberius Gracchus. Finally, it may be mentioned that the Corpus Juris has over seventy references to partus ancillarum or partuum partus, which occur in both the Institutes and the Digest08). There are even grounds for the belief that Campania, suffering from Gallic competition in industry and agriculture, was actually, like Virginia before the War Between the States, breeding and rearing slaves for export to the provinces. For slaves (mancipia) are included in the list of Campanian items that made up cargo for Trimalchio's ships: wine, pork, beans, and perfumes, all of which are known to have been exported"). The expansion of Gallic industry and the establishment of branch factories in Gaul for the manufacture of Arretine ware must have necessitated the transference of technically trained slaves from Italy100); the demand for skilled labor, which only Italy could con- veniently supply, must have been equally imperative for the development of scientific agriculture in both Gaul and Spain (Pliny, NH 37.201-203). There can, therefore, be little doubt that new properties were acquired or established by large slaveholders in Italy, before Gallic and Spanish competition in staple agriculture became excessive. That competition, however, did not affect Italian agriculture until the close of the first century A. D.

Another factor which accounts for the formation of new plantations in Italy besides the desirability of providing for the natural increment of the slaves was the realization that there was an upper limit to the size of plantation units for the most profitable operation. That limit would be exceeded if the slave force had become too numerous for efficient supervision and for the available maintenance facilities, if too much time were lost in going to and from work, if the grapes or olives had to be hauled too far, or if there were too large a yield of ripening fruit for the crushing and pressing equipment to

*8) E. J. Jonkers, Economische en sociale toestanden in het romeinsche rijk blij ken de uit het Corpus Iuris (Wageningen, 1933) 113; Westermann, "Sklaverei" 970, 979, 997 ff.; Rostovtzeff, Storia econ. 113; José A. Saco, Historia de la esclavitud desde los tiempos más remotos hasta nuestros dias (Havana, 1936) 1.268, 368.

") Petronius 76. The export of wine has been fully discussed above. On the export of beans from Campania, see A. Grenier, Manuel d'archéologie 2.621-622; Dessau, ILS 3851, 6672, 7494; Pliny, NH 18.117.

loo) if ç<n# Ateius established a branch factory in Gaul for manufacturing Arretine ware, as Oxé contends ("Die ältesten Terra-sigillata-Fabriken in Montans am Tarn," Arch. Anz. 29 [1914] 61-75), he would naturally transfer some of his highly skilled slaves. Cf. A. Grenier, ESAR 3.590; C. Jullian, op. cit. (note 30) 5.31 Iff.; F. Oswald and T. D. Pryce, An Introduction to the Study of Terra- Sigillata (London 1920) 4; F. Déchelette, Les vases céramiques ornés de la Gaule romaine (Paris, 1904) 1.91; H. Comfort, RE s. v. "Terra Sigillata" Suppl. 7.1349. However, A. Grenier, ("Sur la 'coutume ouvrière' des potiers gallo- romains," Festschrift für August Oxé [Darmstadt, 1938] 84 ff.) holds that the Gallic potteries were manned by free labor.




handle before it spoilt. It was probably to forestall this last possibility that Columella (RR 3.21.9-10) recommended the planting of several varieties of vines, which, ripening at different times, would not exceed the capacity of the processing equipment nor demand the hiring of additional labor. When a plantation unit became too unwieldy for profitable operation, the planter would establish another. For this reason some wine producers owned, as did Columella and probably Postumus Agrippa, whose Pompeian villa was discussed above, a series of units located in various regions suitable for viticulture.

If there was an upper limit to the size of the individual units composing the total landed property of a great slave owner, there was also a lower limit determined by the cost of supervision. For the capitalist who owned several scattered estates was actually an absentee landowner and was consequently dependent for the most part upon the intelligence, loyalty, business ability, initiative, and knowledge of agriculture of his overseers and steward. Though it might be argued that the cost of supervising a plantation was not so great for the Roman slave owner as for a planter in South Carolina or Mississippi, since the former used slaves for the purpose while the latter had to paya salary ranging from four hundred to a thousand dollars, nevertheless it was as difficult and in the long run as expensive to acquire efficient and competent supervisors in ancient Italy as in the Southern states. It was as important for the successful management of a plantation that an absentee owner acquire a good overseer as for a manufacturer to engage a good superintendent of an industrial plant. The overseer was not simply a master over the slaves but a business manager of the plantation as well. A reliable, sober, industrious man with the requisite initiative and authority was rarely found, as Washington and Jefferson well knew (Gray 1.502). We become equally conscious of the difficulty the Romans must have had when we read in the treatises of Cato (RR 5) and Varro (RRl. 17.4) that the overseer of slaves must be honest, firm, concerned with the welfare of the hands, a good disciplinarian, loyal and obedient to his master, a good bookkeeper and purchasing agent, a skilled farmer, able to read and write, and endowed with the power to lead and control men. So frequently did the Romans complain of the difficulty of getting hold of such a pa- ragon of excellence (Col.RR 11.1.4) that their complaints influenced one modern writer to conclude that the cost of supervising slaves partly explains the failure of Rome to develop capitalistic methods of production (Sigwart, RE s. v. „Kapitalismus"; cf. Barrow 232) 101). The difficulty and cost of supervi-

101 ) On the difficulty of obtaining suitable overseers, see, in addition to references cited in the text, R.H. Barrow, op. cit. (note 15) 232; Col.RR 1.8.16-19; 11.1.22. Cicero in Re pub. 5.5 asserted that the overseer should possess general experience supplemented by an intimate knowledge of conditions in the neighborhood; in Plane. 62, he stressed the moral qualities of alertness, honesty, and diligence. Cf. Wallon, op. cit. (note 15) 2.214 ff.; Heitland, Agrícola 181, 186, 196, 258 ff.; J. A. Saco, op. cit. (note 98) 2.352 ff. Overseers, however, generally drove the slaves to the limit, because, if they failed to get the most out of the slaves, they themselves could always be demoted to the slave status (Frag. iur. Rom. Vatic, in Huschke, Jurisprud. antejust. 774; F. Seebohn, English Village Community4 [London, 1905] 265). The rules drawn up by

Finanzarchiv. N.F. 13 Heft 3 31



462 C e d r i c A. Y e o

sion, therefore, dictated the fullest utilization of an overseer's services. On a well organized plantation producing staples with slave labor it was almost as easy to manage fifty or sixty slaves as five. Thus slavery tends towards the concentration of labor and demands for reasons of economy the formation of large units of production.

The desirability of economizing expense of supervision by employing under a single management as many slaves as consistent with efficient over- sight and control was not the only factor that favored large-scale organization. The processing of certain staple crops like rice, sugar, wine, and oil required so great a capital investment in buildings, mechanical equipment, and skilled personnel that only large estates were capable of utilizing this capital outlay to the fullest and most profitable extent. On some Louisiana plantations the sugar house and machinery represented an investment of $ 40,000 (Gray 1.542); this could not profitably be utilized unless there was a correspondingly large investment in land and slaves, because the equipment needed to process 600,000 pounds would involve only a slightly larger outlay than for 300,000 pounds. In the West Indies, wrote Bryan Edwards102), sugar planting was a venture to engage in deeply; there was no medium and seldom a retreat. The annual contingencies of small or moderate plantations were nearly as great as of those three times the area. Economically a small estate was a comparatively losing concern. Rice planting must also be done on a large scale, since a mill cost initially at least $ 15,000 and $ 2500 more was required annually for repairs and miller's wages103). A small farmer, who attempted to grow rice without a mill of his own, was almost as handicapped as a small sugar grower dependent on the use of a mill belonging to a large planter in the neighborhood, for by the time the mill was available for his use, the crops could have spoiled or the prices slumped104). The same principle applied to an ancient Italian farmer who attempted to produce wine or oil without the capital needed for the purchase of the relatively expensive equipment indispensable for the processing of those staples (Dig. 19.2.19.2 ; cf. Gummerus 47-48). Even for a very modest estate of 160 acres Cato (RR 1.4; 3.2; 10 cf. Gum-

Mago, the Sasernae, and Varro (RR 1.16.5; 1.36) for the use and guidance of Roman overseers were almost as elaborate as those written by Washington (Gray 1.502) and other southern planters. Cf. W. T. Jordan, op. cit. (note 81) 29; id. „System of Farming at Beaver Bend, Alabama, 1862," Journal of Southern History 7 (1941) 77ff.; De Bow's Review (43 vols., New Orleans, 1846-1880) 21.617-620.

102) Bryan Edwards, The History, Civil and Commercial, of British Colonies in the West Indies (London, 1793) 2.248; Noel Deerr, The History of Sugar (Lon- don, 1950) 2.332 ff. In 1780, writes Deerr, the number of plantations in Jamaica was 1,061, falling in 1832 to 653. In the former year the output was 44,386 tons and in the latter 71,584. The influence of capacity on cost of production was as important then as now.

103) J. H. Easterby, op. cit. (note 82) 19, 48, 75. The Allston plantation at Georgetown collected in tolls from small neighboring planters more than a third of the value of its own crop sales and almost a quarter of its total receipts.

104) V. Alton Moody, "Slavery on Louisiana Sugar Plantations," Louisiana Historical Quarterly 7 (1924) 243, 285; E. C. Kirkland, op. cit. (note 1) 181; Gray, op. cit. (note 1) 1.479, 542; W. B. Hesseltine, The South in American History (New York, 1943) 275.




merus 18) and Varro (RR 1.22.3) prescribed five complete oil-pressing machines in addition to special tools, sheds, barns, storage rooms, bins, vats, and jars. Vineyards required a permanent capital investment in land, shoots (at the rate of 2000 HS per jugerum, see Col. RR 3.3.8), presses, vats, jars, and skilled slaves (8000 HS each, cf. Col. ibid.). The economic advantage enjoyed by large wine and oil producers able to manufacture on their estates the pottery and pressing machines they required for the processing and marketing of these products was obviously great. Because of the great capital investment in equipment, says Frank, (EHR 427), vineyards were seldom cut; they tended rather to expand; and as they expanded, they tended to crowd out the farmer, who, lacking the capital to process wine and oil staples, was compelled to specialize in cereals, an alternative that was particularly dis- appointing in regions like Latium and Campania because of the competition of seaborne grain from Sicily, Egypt and Africa.

So long as political and economic conditions favored the commercialized production and marketing of staples, as they did in ancient Italy from the second century B. C. till the end of the first century A. D. and during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries of modern times, and so long as the soil and climate favored their production on a large scale, as they did in Campania and a few other regions of ancient Italy, in Cuba, Brazil, and in the Southern American states, the slave-owning capitalist had an irresistible power to drive out the small farmer and even owners of medium-sized estates. The process repeated itself in various regions and at various times. In Brazil the plantation showed from the beginning a strong tendency to grow at the expense of small independent farmers 104a). The same tendency was evident in the United States. Olmsted in his travels through the Southern states observed that the richest parts of the Mississippi Valley were year by year being taken over from the industrious settlers, who had established comfortable home- steads there, by the rich planters, who afterwards came bringing with them hordes of slaves from the East 105). The slave-worked plantation finally established itself in Georgia in spite of everything the government of that state could do to keep the small farmer going. C. C. Clay complained of the same phenomenon in Alabama. Traveling through Madison County, he noted that many once prosperous farm homes were deserted and falling in ruins. Fields were left to grow up with fox tail and broom sedge; moss was growing on the walls of villages that used to be thrifty. All of his inquiries on the subject received the same answer: "One master controls the whole domain"106). The small American farmers were forced to sell their homes and move on to the frontier or take up land in the pine barrens. The ancient Italian farmers, whose

104a) Vera Brown Holmes, A History of the Americas (New York, 1950) 205; P. A. Martin, op. cit. (note 84) 189.

105) F. L. Olmsted, A Journey in the Back Country (New York, 1860) 329; id. A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States in the years 1853-1854 (New York and London, 1904) 665 ff.; Broadus Mitchell, Frederick Law Olmsted, a Critic of the Old South (Baltimore, 1924) 142 ff.; E. L. Bogart and D. L. Kemmerer, Economic History of the American People2 (New York, London, and Toronto, 1943) 447.

106) J. B. Sellers, op. cit. (note 78) 180 ff . 31*



464: CedricA. Yeo

plight was a common theme in Koman literature (see Finanzarchiv, 13. 323, 326), flocked into the city of Rome or else migrated to the provinces 107). The realities of this process cannot be explained away, as Salvioli (II capitalismo antico 49 ff.) attempts to do, as hyperbole or rhetorical exaggeration - a judgment inconsistent with his own statement that the growth of the latifundium must be ascribed to slavery (58). Toutain (232, see note 2), however, more clearly realized that the appearance of the large estate and the employment of slave labor, being both parallel and contemporary, had a mutual influence upon each other, although he might have categorically stated that they coincided not by accident but by economic necessity.

In the production of staples, the slave-owning capitalist had a competitive advantage over other agricultural producers by virtue of his possession of capital and of his ownership of slaves.

As a possessor of capital or the power to obtain credit on favorable terms, the planter was able to acquire the land and plant equipment requisite for maximum operating efficiency. He was also able to build up a labor force, which was beyond the means of the small producer. Unlike the man who needed a sum sufficient to pay the wages of hired labor during the time they were working for him, the slave owner required the capital necessary to feed, clothe, and house the hands during the corresponding period as well as a sum sufficient to buy the fee-simple of his entire labor force. The capital of the former, says Cairnes, represented merely the hire of the current performance ; that of the latter, the future potentialities of the productive instrument. The one represented the interest, the other the principal and interest of the labor employed 108). The producer of certain staples required abundant capital resources for still another reason. He must be able to wait sometimes for years before he could even begin to profit from his investment. A sugar plantation, where canes are replanted every third year, takes three years to reach full production ; a vineyard bears a fair crop in the third and fourth year but is not in full production till the fifth (L. Bailey, Standard Cyclopedia of Horti- culture 5 [1915] 13*78 f f .) ; while an olive orchard requires from nine to twenty years before producing a full crop. For this reason only a large planter was able to engage in the production of such staples; for the same reason the production of these staples tended towards the establishment of a monopoly more readily than in the case of other crops.

Some of the advantages which a big planter enjoyed arose from influential political and financial connections. Besides being able to acquire the best land, labor, tools, processing equipment, and overseers, and to ship his products, perhaps all at once, for the highest prices and at the lowest rates of

107) On the emigration of Italian peasants to North Africa and other provinces, see Rosto vtzeff, Studien 318-319; 339; id. Storia econ. 372; Dessau, op. cit. (note 40) 2.2.475; W. E. Heitland, "A Great Agricultural Emigration from Italy," JRS 8 (1918) 34 ff.; R. Clausing, The Roman Cotonate (New York, 1925) 219 ff.; T. R. S. Broughton, The Romanization of Africa Proconsularis (Baltimore, 1929) 78 ff.; N. Iorga, La place des Roumains dans l'histoire universelle (Bucarest, 1935) 23 ff .

108) J. E. Cairnes, The Slave Power2 (London and Cambridge, 1863) 73.



The Economics oí Roman and American Slavery 465

transportation, he was in a position to learn through his influential friends in the empire's capital the state of the markets in Spain, Gaul, Egypt, and Asia and the price of slaves in Delos or Side. He was also probably familiar with the numerous manuals on agriculture written in Hellenistic and Roman times, all of which with the exception of those by Cato, Varro, andColumella are unknown to us109). It may safely be said that never in the history of agriculture, except in our own age, was there available such a quantity of material on scientific farming as in Roman Italy and in the American South before the War Between the States.

As the owner of slaves the advantages of the capitalist were equally im- pressive. Once he had acquired his slave force, his labor problem was solved. Though slave labor on some estates may have been slow, clumsy, and inefficient; though it may have been, as Cairnes (44) maintained, given reluctantly and lacking in skill and versatility; though it may have been also somewhat inelastic and less easily channeled than free labor to the type of employment promising the greatest economic returns to the employer, it was, at least, stable, steady, and always on hand. There were no stoppages, or strikes, no turn-over, or drift to other jobs as free labor is apt to do when it is most needed. Slaves could not, like tenants, be drafted for military service (Appian, BC 1.7,10), except in times of extreme national peril (Livy 22.57.11 ; 26.35) 110). In short, given the conditions of economic evolution in the Roman world, the employment of slaves, says Ciccotti (II tramonto della schiavitù 262), became ever more indispensable, as inevitable as its extension. But slavery was also more advantageous, even where it was possible to choose between slave and hired labor. The latter was used only as a last resort (Cato, RR 5-4 ; Varro, RR 1.17.3), for instance, when the grain harvest rush was on, when a vineyard ripened all at once (Col. RR 3.21.10: cogitque plures operas quanto- cumque pretio conducere), or when there was some hard and nasty work to do, such as ditching, spading up a vineyard (Col. RR 3.13.12 ; Dig. 43.24.15.1), removing stones from a field (Col. RR 2.2.12), or cultivating land infested with malaria (Varro, RR 1.17.3). As in the Southern states, slaves were not

108) Cf. note 20. On Greek manuals on agriculture, see Varro, RR 1.1. 7-11 ; E. Oder in F. Susemihl, Gesch. gr. Lit. in d. Alexanderzeit (1891) 1.832 f.; R. Johann- sen, "Ptolemy Philadelphia and Scientific Agriculture," CPh 18 (1923) 156 ff.; Rosto vtzeff, Hellenistic World 1182 ff.; on Roman agricultural writers, see R. Rei- zenstein, op. cit. (note 21); Heichelheim, Wirtschaf tsgesch. 1108 note 49.

The interest in scientific agriculture was equally keen in the American South See the list of journals in Gray, op. cit. (note 1) 2.1008-9; cf. 1.445-448; 2.940; cf. also R. H. Taylor, Slaveholding in North Carolina: An Economic View (Chapel Hill, 1926) 43, 102; J. C. Bonner, "Genesis of Agricultural Reform in the Cotton Belt," Journal of Southern History 9 (1943) 475 ff.; R. R. Rüssel, "The General Effects of Slavery upon Southern Progress," Journal of Southern History 4 (1938) 36 ff.; Clement Eaton, A History of the Old South (New York, 1949) 239. It might be of interest to mention a few of these journals: The Southern Cultivator, Soil of the South, The Southern Planter, The Arator, The Southern Agriculturist, The Carolina Planter. De Bow's Review (op. cit. [note 101]) also contained numerous articles on scientific agriculture.

110) Heitland, Agricola 144, 152 ff.; E. Ciccotti, op. cit. (note 96) 235; Wester- mann, RE s. v. "Sklaverei" 971, 1014; id. "Industrial Slavery in Roman Italy," Journal of Economic History 2 (1942) 150, 152 ff.



466 CedricA. Yeo

worked to death by the average latifondista; they were considered too valuable to expose to dangerous work. Though prices paid for such work might be high, it was considered cheaper in Mississippi to employ itinerant gangs of Irish laborers. Traveling by steamboat on the Alabama River, Olmsted observed cotton bales being shot from a high bluff down into the vessel's hold. A Negro stood at the top of the chute, an Irishman at the foot. On inquiring the reason for this he was given the following explanation by the captain : "The niggers are worth too much to be risked here ; if the Paddies are knocked overboard, or get their backs broke, nobody loses anything" m).

Of all the advantages which slave labor confers upon its owner the most obvious undoubtedly was, writes Cairnes (47), its capacity for organization. It could be concentrated, combined, or directed by the owner towards a single economic purpose. Through slaves he could multiply his energies by as many times as the number of slaves he possessed. In this respect, as is inevitable, the labor of ordinary farmers in a laissez-faire economy is singularly lacking. Each man works independently, not concerned with what the next man is doing. There is no directing control under whose guidance the entire labor force yields obedience or under whose management it is directed towards some desired result. Under careful supervision and skilful management slave labor when organized for the market production of staples is as superior to unorganized labor employed in small units for the same purpose as mass production is more efficient than a multitude of small scattered shops manufacturing the same commodity.

On most large Roman estates an elaborate system of organization was worked out. According to Cominella (RR 1.9.7), the slaves were worked in squads or gangs of ten (decuriae) directed by a driver called a decurión. The gang system was favored in ancient Italy rather than the task system (ibid. : Quas decurias appellaverunt antiqui et maxime probaverunt) because it facilitated supervision and enlivened the work through competition (Col. RR 1.9.8). Columella's statement indicates that, on the large plantations he has in mind, the more enlightened slave owners, unlike the Elder Cato (RR 2.7; 56; Plut. Cato Maj. 21), tried to improve the morale of their slaves, realizing that sullen cattle stung by the lash would do poor work (Cod. Theod. 9.12.1.2). Even in Varro's day the more intelligent slaves were encouraged to take a personal interest in the affairs of the plantation (RR 1.17.6-7) 112). To the owner each slave represented an investment of several hundred dollars. Even the harshest taskmaster knew from experience the value of providing the slaves with good food and of making them willing to cooperate ; and the slave, realizing how dependent he was on the master for food, for clothing, and for care in sickness and old age (Varro, RR1. 17.7), doubtlessly responded.

Nor need we assume with Cairnes, Ciccotti, Wallon, Heitland, and Bar- row that they were lacking in skill, lazy and shiftless, or wasteful and inefficient. Resting upon the arbitrary assumption first formulated by Adam

111 ) Olmsted, Seaboard Slave States 90 ff.; 550 f f.; U. B. Phillips, American Negro Slavery (New York and London, 1940) 301 ff.; Flanders, op. cit. (note 83) 167.

112) Westermann, "Sklaverei" 979.




Smith and Turgot113), that slaves work grudgingly and half-heartedly, while free labor is moved by self -interest, Cairness pronounced the following dictum about slave labor: "It is given reluctantly, it is unskilful, it is wanting in versatility." The last two points in this criticism, admitsGray (1.463), probably did apply to most American Negro slaves as judged by the standards of a highly diversified industrial life ; but these qualities, he says, are not neces- sarily a severe handicap for an extractive economy. It cannot be proved that the slaves of the Graeco-Roman world were per se lazy and maladroit. As a matter of fact, many Greek and Oriental slaves on Roman latifundia, particularly Syrians, were expert in vine-dressing, market-gardening, and the breeding of livestock (see Finanzarchiv 13.323 and note 16). The number of these Eastern slaves working in Campanian vineyards was very large (Rostovtzef f , Storia econ. 19,114). The industrial slaves often exhibited the most ex- quisite craftsmanship in the making, for example, of Arretine ware 114) ; the cause of the decline of that industry was not lack of skill in the slave artisans but rather the competition of Gallic pottery, which, having the advantage of shorter distances for transportation, began in the time of Tiberius to under- sell Italian ware in Gaul and the Rhineland. Likewise Indian imitations of Arretine apparently halted ca. 50 A. D. a very active commerce in terra sigillata between Italy and India (see Finanzarchiv 13. 340).

Except for skilled personnel, such as vintners, mechanics, and, of course, overseers, slavery in agriculture did not depend for its success upon individual skill, versatility, or self-interest. Discipline, organization, and management were sufficient, as American experience has shown, to make even the most ignorant and lazy of slaves do what was necessary in agriculture115). But slaves could be utilized most effectively only in the production of certain crops, in which the principles of organization and combination could be employed in the highest degree.116) Of the important American staples sugar and rice best lent themselves to large-scale organization, the vital factor being the cost of the milling apparatus, which made the growing of these crops on a mass production basis economically imperative. Sugar and rice, consequently, were made exclusively on slave-manned plantations117). Of the

113) A. R. J. Turgot, Reflections on the Formation and Distribution of Wealth (London, 1793) 21 ; Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations6 (Canaan, ed., London, 1904) 1.364.

114) Westermann, "Sklaverei" 1062 ff.; id. "Industrial Slavery" (above, note 110) 153 ff. On the use of slaves in Gallic industry, cf. Grenier, ESAR 3.630; 590; C. Jullian, op. cit. (note 30) 5.312.

115) On the efficiency of Negro slaves in agriculture, see Gray op. cit. (note 1) 1. 462-464, 467 ff. Some plantations in Mississippi had very satisfactory forces, which performed amazing amounts of work, cf. Clement Eaton, op. cit. (note 109) 229. They were also successfully employed in industry, cf. Gray 1.470; R. R. Rüssel, "Economic History of Negro Slavery," Agricultural History 11 (1937) 316. In Brazil they showed considerable skill in both agriculture and industry, cf. P. A. Martin, ou. cit. (note 84 Ì 194.

116) Cairnes, op. cit. (note 108) 47 ff.; Bogart andKemmerer, op. cit. (note 105) 461 ; Gray 1.463, 469; L. C. Gray, "Economic Efficiency and Competitive Ad- vantages of Slavery under the Plantation System," Agricultural History 4 (1930) 35 ff.

117) Rüssel, op. cit. (note 109) 45; id op. cit. (note 115) 313-318.



468 CedricA. Yeo

other important American staples, cotton and tobacco, although requiring a minimum of machinery, were produced on large plantations because in their cultivation a maximum amount of labor could be concentrated in a small area, where it could be effectively supervised118). But both these crops could be and in the early days generally were grown on farms of any size, some with slaves, others with none. Though some Virginia tobacco plantations were extremely large, that crop was usually grown in Cuba on the smaller farms, whereas the cultivation of sugar assumed capitalistic and latifundiary pro- portions119). The Roman staples, wine and oil, both of which were tried out in South Carolina and Georgia in the colonial period 120), were typical plantation crops not solely because they required expensive apparatus to process them but because their cultivation likewise required a concentration of labor in an relatively small area. Like the American staples, their cultivation and production favored the employment of organized slave labor for the following reasons: (1) they were all-year crops, furnishing a maximum continuity of employment, thus preventing slave owners from suffering loss through idleness of labor, a loss borne by the worker himself under the wage system; (2) their processes of cultivation were simple and capable of being standardized and reduced to a routine, which the most stupid hands could learn; (3) they permitted on a small amount of land a massing of labor in easily controlled units, thus simplifying and reducing the cost of supervision m) ; (4) the demand for extra labor at the harvest or picking season could be satisfied by employing women and children or by hiring gangs of itinerant laborers (Cato, RR 4; 5.4; 145.1; Varro, RR 1.16.3; 1.17.3; 1.53; for the inscription of the harvester of Maktar, who bossed a gang of harvesters for eleven years in Numida, see CIL 8.11824).

Being all-year crops, olives and vines were admirably adapted to the slave labor regime. They required, like sugar, unremitting labor, frequent ploughings, and constant hoe and spade work spring, summer, and fall so as to conserve moisture in the soil and plants during the entire period of growth. Olive trees began their life in nursery beds, where they were irrigated night and morning and carefully tended from two to five years, until they could establish a good root system, whereupon they were transplanted to ground already prepared (Pliny, NH 17.16; Cato, RR 43; Col. RR 5.10). Until the trees began to bear, they had to be pruned each spring or fall, grafted, manur- ed, and cultivated. Besides the attention of a skilled vintner, vineyards requir-

118) Cairnes, op. cit. (note 108) 43 ff.; 50 ff. Gray 1.458ff., 463, 479; E. C. Kirkland, op. cit. (note 1) 177; C. W. Wright, Economic History of the United States (New York and London, 1941) 374. 119 j See F. Ortiz, Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar (Habana, 1940) 66 ff., esp.73ff.; Phillips, op.cit. (note 111) 162; R. H. Taylor, op. cit. (109) 33; Gray 1.451; C.S. Sydnor, The Development of Southern Sectionalism 1819 - 1848 (Louisiana State Press, 1948) 7. Likewise in Brazil sugar-raising favored a system of latifundiary monoculture and called for an enormous number of slaves. See G.Freyre, The Masters and the Slaves (New York, 1946) p. XXII f.

120) Gray 1.23, 52-53, 188-189; F. B. Simkins, The South Old and New (New York, 1947) 34; W. F. Craven, The Southern Colonies in the Seven- teenth Centurv ÍLousiana State Universitv. Press. 1949) 44. 141. 316. 336.

121) Cf. note 118.




ed much ploughing, digging around, the breaking up of clods, loosening of the soil and banking it up repeatedly against the stocks (Verg. G 2.398-400), all of it back-breaking work, which gangs of husky, broad-shouldered slaves were best able to do under the eye of an overseer (Cato, RR 56; Col. RR 1.9.4, 8) 122). Thus the culture of olives and vines fulfilled the requirements of plantation crops in every respect, including a division of labor (Col RR 1.9.7). A large labor force was necessary for each unit of production, which contained at least one hundred acres, probably more.

Grain culture, on the other hand, was most unsuited as a staple crop to the slave system of labor. Whether the Roman agronomists were fully conscious of the economic reasons for this, may be doubted ; they were at least aware of the fact. Columella (RR 1.7.6) declares that slaves will play havoc with a grain farm through their carelessness and thievery: "to such a crop a tenant farmer can do no great harm, as he can to plantations of vines and trees, while slaves do it tremendous damage". In even stronger terms, Pliny (NH 18.7; cf. 18.3) said in effect that there is nothing worse than for grain fields to be cultivated by slaves. It is probably from such statements as these that some modern writers derive the notion that slavery was generally unskilful and unprofitable. Weber and Salvioli, however, conclude with some appearance of logic that it was disastrous to entrust the culture of grain to slaves, on the ground that, since ancient implements and techniques of cultivation were crude, it required more care and self-interest than could be expected from slaves123). This explanation is inadequate. A Carolina mountaineer once gave Olmsted (A Journey in the Back Country 260) a much better one, namely that in the counties of the upper Piémont, a region of small farms producing mainly wheat, livestock, and corn, "laborers are not hired by the year, as they are needed only at harvest time." That simple statement sug- gests, as do Cairnes (51) and Ciccotti (174, 253, 266), that wheat raising, because of the shortness of its growing season as well as the long period of idleness between planting and harvest, does not provide continuous and uninter- rupted employment and demands much intensive labor only during the harvest rush, when it is necessary to hire additional help124). In some parts of southern Italy, where grain is still raised without the use of machinery, forty or forty-four days alone, says Ciccotti (174), are sufficient to do everything to a hectare of land from preparing the soil to the harvesting of the crop. For this reason alone, slave labor in the culture of grain is uneconomic. There is a still more important one. In wheat growing, extensive methods of cultivation must be employed, it being possible for a single slave to cultivate twenty or thirty acres of wheat land as compared with two of tobacco and

122) On the culture of olives and vines, see E. C. Semple, "Ancient Mediter- ranean Agriculture," Agricultural History 2 (1928) 81-98; id. Geography of the Mediterranean Region (New York, 1931) 400; C. Daubeny, Lectures on Roman Husbandry (Oxford, 1857) 73.

123) M. Weber, op. cit. (note 19) 296-7; Silvioli, II capitalismo 101 ff.; Ciccotti, op. cit. (note 5) 268; cf. also, A. Olivia, op. cit. (note 3) 161.

m) See G. Acerbo, L'agricoltura italica ad tempo d'Augusto (Istituto di Studi Romani, No. 8 [Roma, 1938]) 18. See the inscription of the harvester of Maktar, who bossed a gang of itinerant harvesters in Numidia, CIL 8.11824.



470 CedricA. Yeo

three of cotton 125). If, then, the nature of the work demands, says Cairnes (44), that the workmen be scattered over a wide area, the number of overseers and therefore the ultimate cost of labor will be correspondingly increased, since the cost of slave labor varies directly with its dispersion and inversely with its concentration. Therefore, theoretically slave labor could never have been economically or profitably employed in the production of cereals even though the cultivation of these crops involved much more ploughing, hoeing, and weeding in Koman and medieval Italy than in modern times 125*).

From a practical standpoint, it may be shown that wherever grain was cultivated on a large scale, there slave labor was almost invariably absent. Though it was possible to raise as a side-line immense crops of wheat and oats as far south as Alabama, in order to make a cotton plantation self-sufficient (see above, p. 453), wheat was never cultivated as a staple in the Lower South, not because the climate was unsuitable for its culture126) but because wheat raising was unsuited to the slave system of labor. When eastern Vir- ginia turned from the growing of tobacco to that of wheat, the numerous slaves formerly required for the intensive culture of tobacco were no longer needed for the relatively extensive culture of wheat. "Thus", says Gray (2.911), "in the late years of the eighteenth century and the early decades of the ninetenth, instead of being a source of profit large holdings of slaves were an intolerable burden On Washington's plantation only a third of the four hundred Negroes were working in the fields"127). It has long been established by economic historians that the absence of slavery in the grain- raising Northern states rested on an economic and not on a moral or religious basis. Slavery was tried out on wheat farms in Missouri but was soon abandoned, as it was in Kentucky and parts of Virginia128). The same phenomenon occurred in the ancient world. In Carthaginian Africa, slaves were employed in enormous masses on the wine and oil plantations surrounding the city of Carthage, as we may deduce from Justin (21.4.6; cf. Polybius 15.18.1) 129). But when Africa passed into Roman hands and became one of Rome's most important granaries, the tenant system replaced slavery as the dominant form of agricultural labor. The bulk of African grain seems to have been produced by the free nativists, the numerous immigrants arriving from Italy, and the tenants, who paid their rent on both the imperial estates and on those

126 ) Bogart and Kemmerer, op. cit. (note 105) 454; J. K. Ingram, A History of Slavery and Serfdom (London, 1895) 283.

125a) A good discussion of Roman agricultural techniques may be found in Clapham and Power, Cambridge Economic History 1.118 ff.

126) John Peters of Lauderdale County, Alabama, grew, besides cotton, over 1,000 bushels of wheat, 500 bushels of rye, and 11,000 bushels of oats. Cf. J. B. Sellers, op. cit (note 78) 29.

127) See also U. B. Phillips, Life and Labor in the Old South (Boston, 1930) 138.

128) On the absence of slavery in the Northern and Border states, see P. W. Bid well and J. I. Falconer, History of Agriculture in the Northern United States 1620-1860 (New York, 1941) 118; Cairness, op. cit. (note 108) 52; G. Acerbo, op. cit. (note 124) 18; C. W.Wright, op. cit. (note 118) 375; M. R. Davie, Negroes in American Society (New York, Toronto, and London, 1949) 22-23.

129) See above notes 18 and 23. Cf. Rostovtzeff, Storia econ. 366.




belonging to private landlords with one-third of the grain they produced in addition to six days of labor (CIL 8.25902) 130). Although slaves were still to be found in Koman Africa (Petronius 117.8 ; Apuleius, Apol. 93) 131), it is generally supposed that they were employed for the most part in the large olive-raising districts of southern Tunisia, which were too dry for the cultivation of grain132) . In Sicily, another great cereal-producing country, slavery was found in practice to be less suited for cultivating grain land than for the tending of cattle and sheep133). The most striking instance of the incompatibility of slavery with wheat production was Egypt, perhaps the greatest granary of the Medi- terranean world. In that country the use of slave labor was limited to temples and to some industries and private homes in Alexandria. Slaves were scarcely ever employed in agriculture except possibly on some gift-estates like that of Apollonius134). We are, therefore, not surprised to learn that in Italy towards the close of the first century A. D. slavery was being gradually superseded by the tenant-farmer system, because at this time plantation agriculture, meeting stiff competition from the provinces, was on its way out and the cultivation of grain was beginning to assume greater importance (Ro- stovtzeff, Storia econ. 116).

To conclude that the decline of slavery and of scientific agriculture in Italy arose from the inefficiency and unprofitableness of slavery as such would be agrave mistake. For just as the plantation system rose and developed in the Republican period through the economic unification of the Medi- terranean world and the expansion of commerce, so it is logical to assume that as soon as the time arrived when Italy through the emancipation and competition of the provinces was no longer able to export staples, the raison

180) See above, note 107; cf. AlsoHaywood, "Roma Africa," ESAR 4.28¿ 45; esp. 89 ff.; N. A. Mashkin, op. cit. (note 79) 461; E. Kornemann, RE s. v. "Do- mänen" Suppl. 4.249; Rostovtzeff, Studien 318, 339; Storia econ. 380; J. Tou- tain, op. cit. (note 2) 276 f . 131 ) On agricultural sia very in Roman Africa, see Gsell's article in Mélanges Glotz (cited above, note 18) 405; Broughton, op. cit. (note 107) 29; Haywood, ESAR 4.71 ff.

132 ) On the cultivation of olives in Africa during the first and second centuries A. D., see Rostovtzeff, Storia econ. 238; Frank, EHR 449-451 ; id. A JPh 47 (1926) 69 ff.; Broughton, op. cit. (note 107) 4-6: Havwood. ESAR 4.45 ff.

133) R. Scalais, "La restauration de l'agriculture sicilienne par les Ro- mains," Musée Belge 27 (1923) 252; Scramuzza, ESAR 3.316-317.

134 ) On slavery in Pharaonic, Ptolemaic, and Roman Egypt, see G. Dyk- mans, Histoire économique et sociale de l'ancienne Egypte (Paris, 1936) 2.21; S. Waszynski, Die Bodenpacht (Leipzig and Berlin, 1905) 58; U. Wilcken, Grie- chische Ostraka aus Ägypten und Nubien (Berlin, 1899), 1.1.702 ff.; L. Mitteis and U. Wilcken, Grundzüge und Chrestomathie der Papyruskunde (Leipzig, 1912) 1.1.20, 27, 260; M. Modica, La civiltà dell' Egitto greco-romano (Roma, 1924) 2, 40, 147-151; Westermann, "Sklaverei" esp. 1014; id. "Egyptian Agricultural Labor under Ptolemy Philadelphus, " Agricultural History 1 (1927) 41; id. Upon Slavery in Ptolemaic Egypt (New York, 1929); E. Ciccotti, op. cit. (note 96) 224; A. C. Johnson, Roman Egypt", ESAR 2 (1936) 277-278, Claire Préaux, L'économie royale des Lagides (Bruzelles, 1939) 303 ff.; Cl. Préaux, Les Grecs en Egypte d'aprè3 les archives de Zenon (Brussels, 1947) 58 ff. On the slaves employed on the estate of Apollonius, see Rostovtzeff, op. cit. (note 89) 20, 88, 177; id. Hellenistic World 1.321.



472 CedricA. Yeo

d'être of both the plantation and slavery would be removed135). The loss of foreign markets has nothing whatsoever to do with the question of the efficiency and profitableness of slavery as a system of labor apart from the fact that an economy based on the employment of slaves seems to have been dependent on export trade, since neither the slaves nor their owners were able to consume the products they produced, the former having no buying power, the latter not being sufficiently numerous.

Under favorable price conditions, however, slavery from the owner's standpoint was exceedingly profitable, even if it may have had a pernicious influence upon the well-being of Roman society ultimately, a question which is beyond the scope of this study to discuss. For in Roman Italy, slave labor efficiently organized could produce a volume of saleable agricultural com- modities greater than the cost of its maintenance; the surplus over and above this subsistence minimum the owner had legally appropriated by virtue of his ownership of the slave's services. It was this appropriable surplus that gave slave labor its ability to displace free labor, whether hired or working independently on small-sized farms; to the owner it gave the power, if necessary, to produce at levels only slightly above the cost of maintaining the slaves. If the costs of transportation had not been so heavy, there is no reason to think that the planter in Italy would not have been able to outbid Gallic and Spanish competition, though possibly other factors may have accounted for the ultimate failure of the plantation system in ancient Italy.

Any discussion of the profitableness of slavery involves the problem of defining profit. There are several divergent views. The early English school of classical economists recognized in the term "profit" three distinct elements (1) interest on invested capital, (2) earnings of management, and (3) remuner- ative for risk. The French school represented by J.B. Say and Courcelle- Seneuil insisted on separating profit from interest and treated profit as the wages of management136). During the nineteenth century American economists used the term "pure profit" to designate the income of a business after deduction of wages, rent, interest at competitive rates, and all human and property services rendered to the enterprise. Later, it became the fashion to consider "pure profit" as a kind of reward for high-grade ability or the wages of personality operating in a changing or dynamic society. Most modern economists, however, have concluded that "pure profits" may exist tempo- rarily and for a limited number of concerns in a changing or dynamic society under imperfect competition but in the long run tend to disappear (1) in a dynamic society operating under perfect competition and (2) in a long-run static equilibrium or in a relatively static society such as that to which be-

186) On the decline of slavery in the Roman Empire, cf. E. Meyer, op. cit. (note 3) 1.210; Westermann, "Sklaverei" 1061 ff.; J. A. Saco. op. cit. (note 98) 2.179 ff.

136) J. B. Say, A Treatise on Political Economy (C. R. Prinsep, trans. 2 vols., Boston, 1821). My sincere thanks are due to Professor Milton S. Heath of the Dept. of Economics, University of North Carolina for reading and criticizing this part of the manuscript. As an economist and Southern economic historian, he was able to give me valuable help.




longed both the Roman and American plantation systems. Therefore, the term "pure profits" should be excluded from a discussion of the profitableness of slavery137).

Most of the modern economic historians, who assert that slavery was unprofitable to the owner, seem to confuse "pure profit" with the ordinary conception of profit as held by businessmen, farmers, the Income Tax Divi- sion of the United States Treasury, and most members of the National Asso- ciation of Cost Accountants, who oppose the inclusion of interest on investment as an operating cost138). The business world is accustomed to consider interest and dividends as a return on invested capital. To treat interest as an operating cost would give rise to misleading financial statements. Farmers and businessmen consider net income as profit and do not attempt to break it down into its elements, rent, interest, wages of management, and remune- ration for risk. The only advantage in making such a break-down is that it provides a company separated into a number of more or less distinct units (factories, sales agencies, or chain stores) a yardstick for measuring the productive efficiency of the various units, the interest charge acting as a check on the effects of capital in large and small scale business.

Ignoring the fact that the so-called interest on investment is actually the surplus over cost of maintenance appropriable from the ownership of slaves and that plantations ean be profitably operated even when "pure profits" are negative, historians have been at a loss to reconcile their own low estimates of profit with the overwhelming increase of plantation values even in the older sections of the South 139). The Hopeton Plantation on the Altamaha

137 ) On the nature and theory of pure profit, see J. E.Moffat, Economics3 (New York, 1946) 620 ff., esp. 644-645; Whittaker, (below, note 142) 608 ff; A. Marshall, Principles of Economics8 (London, 1936) 609 ff.; Frank H. Knight, Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences s.v. "Profit" 12.480 ff.; A.E.Burns, Neal, and Watson, Modern Economics (New York, 1948) 461 ff.; E. E. Hoyt, The In- come of Society (New York, 1950) 285. The term 'static' used in the text to describe Southern and Roman society is a very relative term. Both these societies were agricultural and there was not much opportunity to invest in big industries.

138) On the theory of interest in relation to profits held by cost accountants, see Roy B. Kester, Advanced Accounting3 (New York, 1933) 515 ff.; id. Principles of Accounting4 (New York, 1939) 381 ff.; W. B. Lawrence (Cost Accounting2 [New York, 1940] 415,424) states (424) that the inclusion of interest in cost is not justified even for comparative purposes or for the prediction of future conditions; see also W. A. Paton, Advanced Accounting (New York, 1950) 472; S. Gilman, Accounting Concepts of Profit (New York, 1939), 92 - 95. See also the penetrating observations of Prof. Irving Fisher (The Theory of Interest [New York, 19301 33-4).

139) The question of the profitableness of Southern plantation slavery has been much discussed. U. B. Phillips (American Negro Slavery 391-2; id "The Econo- mic Cost of Slaveholding," Political Science Quarterly 20 [1905] 257-275) considerable interest as a cost of operation like rent, insurance, or wages, and concluded that slavery was unprofitable except in the case of a few cotton and sugar plantations situated in a specially fertile area and managed with exceptional ability. R. B. Flanders, (op. cit. [note 83] 221) wrote that the cash expenditures on Col. Williams plantation, of Society Hill, S. C, totalled $ 17,879.48, including interest at 7 % and that the "profit over and above the interest and expenses were $ 4,403.68, or about 2*7% on an investment of $ 161.000. C. S. Sydnor (Slavery in




in Georgia was established in 1812 practically without capital; by 1827 it was clear from debt and together with its one hundred slaves was valued at $ 381,425, having for fifteen years supported a large family in comparative luxury and respectability. The estate, which Samuel Townsend purchased in Alabama for $ 965 in 1819, increased in value so rapidly that at the death of the owner some twenty years later it was valued at $ 200,000 140). Even the plantation of Louis Manigault on the Savannah Kiver neither deteriorated nor lost money in spite of much absenteeism, poor management, and three cholera epidemics 141). Thus in the Seaboard states, where profits were smaller than in Mississippi or Louisiana, slavery was far from being an unprofitable institution and the economic motives for its continuance were never so strong as in the years just before the War Between the States142). But the best kept and most detailed account books fail to tell the whole story. No economist can estimate those intangible benefits which made plantation life desirable even where "pure profits" were negative143). The privileges and opportunities, the social prestige and political power, which planters enjoyed in ancient Italy and in the American South, are things which can never be represented on a balance sheet.

About the profits realized from agriculture in Roman Italy we know very little. From Cato's own figures we may infer that olive-growing in the second

Mississippi [New York and London, 1933] 196-197) argued that a Mississippi plantation, hypothetically employing fifty slaves and involving a total investment of $ 40,000, would yield $ 880 "pure profit" or 2.2%. Hence slavery was an unprofitable institution ! He evidently regarded profit as wages of management after the deduction of interest on investment as a cost; then he assumed that there was a relation between the prof it percentage and the planter's investment. Actually there was no such relation, for the deduction or charge for "interest on investment" can with equal accuracy be called "profit on investment." See the brilliant article of T. P. Govan, "Was Plantation Slavery Profitable ?" Journal of Southern History 8 (1942) 513-535.

The same procedure is followed by Frank; cf., for example, CAH 8.342, where he shows that the net profit on Cato's olive plantation was only £ 57 after deduction of £ 223 interest on investment of £ 3720 at the rate of 6%; cf. also ESAR 1.170.

140) Cf. J. B. Sellers, op. cit. (note 78) 28-29. Another Alabama planter started as a lawyer in Marion and after fifteen years of planting acquired an estate worth more than $ 150,000, cf. W. T. Jordan, "System of Farming at Beaver Bend, Alabama, 1862," Journal of Southern History 7 (1941) 77. A sugar plantation belonging to, an absentee owner in Mississippi, worth $211,500, in 1837, had by 1850 increased in value to $ 370,000, and to almost $ 500,000, in 1860; cf. J.C. Sitterson, "The William J. Minor Plantations: A Study in Ante- bellum Absentee Ownership," Journal of Southern History 9 (1943) 73 and C. S. Sydnor, op. cit. (note 139) 194.

141) U.B.Phillips, Life and Labor in the Old South (Boston, 1930) 255 ff.; American Negro Slavery 254 ff .

142) Gray 1.476. The factors which brought slavery to an end were not economic. The slave owners of the Confederate states fought for its retention. It was profitable also in South Africa. The slaveholders of the Cape of Good Hope, though compensated, were incensed when slavery was abolished throughout the British Empire; cf.E.Whittaker, A History of Economic Ideas (NëwYork, 1943)567.

143) Robert Allston (Essay on Sea Coast Crops [Charleston, 1854] 37) wrote that "The profits of a rice plantation of good size and location are about 8% per annum, independent of the privileges and perquisites of the plantation residence.




century B. C. neither yielded great wealth nor entailed heavy losses. Frank (ES AR 1.171), after deducting interest at 6% and depreciation at 2%, calculated the annual profit at 6%, which he considered a satisfactory income "at a profession that was highly respectable"144). Our information about the profitableness of viticulture is more abundant, but far from satisfactory. It is well known that Cato (RR 1.7) gave preference to vineyards if they were favorably located and produced good wine plentifully. By a good yield he probably meant eight cullei per jugerum or about 1500 gallons per acre annually (RR 11.1), which at the prices prevailing around 150 B. C. for the best domestic wines should have brought in an income of 16,000 HS per jugerum or nearly $ 1200 per acre (Pliny, NH 14.56; cf. Frank, ESAR 1.284). Varro (RR 1.7.9; 1.8.1), however, whether doubtful about the yield, which, in spite of Columella's supporting testimony (RR 3.3.3), is nearly three times as much, says Frank, as good vineyards produce today (Frank, ESAR 1.163), or du- bious about the profitableness of vineyards in view of the slump that probably occurred around 67 B. C, the dramatic date of his first book, apparently entertained reservations towards Cato' s claims. Apart from Pliny's assertion that viticulture was more profitable than trade on the Red Sea or Indian Ocean (NH 14.52) 145), our only other source of information on the subject is Columella (RR 3.3.8), who attempts to estimate the profits of a plot of seven jugera (4.34 acres) planted in vines. A total capital of 32,480 HS is invested, of which 7000 HS represent the value of the land, 14,000 the value of the vines, 8000 HS the cost of a skilled vine-dresser, 3480 HS the amount of the funded interest on these sums for the first two years, which elapse before the

144) See also CAH 8.342. Another estimate of the profits of Cato's olive orchard was made by E.Cavaignac (Population et Capital [Strasbourg, 1923] 97 ff.). He calculates that 240 jugera should produce at least 70,000 lbs. of oil, which, if sold at 25 HS per 50 lbs. (Cato, RR 22.3), would yield a gross revenue of 35,000 HS or 8000 "deniers". From this he deducts 500 deniers a year for feeding 13 slaves (4 modii wheat per month in winter, 4 y2 in summer = 40 or 50 hectoliters, cf. Cato 56) and another 500 for general expenses. The net revenue, then, is 7000 deniers or about $ 1500 which, at 7%, would be the yield of an estate worth 100,000 deniers, i. e. more than 20,000 gold dollars. This calculation is not far removed from Frank's who starts with a total investment of 460,000 HS = $ 23,000.

This return is not unsatisfactory for 150 B. C, although Cato placed olive orchards fourth in order of crop preference. Cf. Brehaut, op. cit. (note 75) 23, 78; Cavaignac 98; Frank, ESAR 1.162 ff.; Rostovtzeff, Storia econ. 76. Olive orchards, however, undoubtedly paid much better after 53 B. C, when oil began to be exported from Italy in larger quantities (Pliny, NH 15.2). The main export markets were Gaul and Liguria (Cie. Rep. 3.16; jStrabo 4.6.2), the Danube region (Strabo 5.1.8); and southern Spain (Luc. Navig. 23). The oil produced in Campania near Venafrum brought the highest price (Pliny, NH 15.8): principatum in hoc quoque bono obtinuit Italia e toto orbe maxime agro Venafro; Varro, cf. RR 1.2.7; Hor. Carm. 2.6.16; Sat. 2.4.69; Strabo 5.3.10). Although no figures are available for ancient Italy, some idea of the profit ratio between oil and wheat may be obtained from the fact that some olive orchards in modern Italy produce almost four times as much revenue per hectare as an equal area of the best wheat land, cf. Nissen, Ital. Landeskunde 1.454.

145) Pliny (NH 14.49-50) mentions a vineyard that was purchased in 50 A. D. by the grammarian Remmius Palaemon for 600,000 HS, when it was badly run down; eight years later, it produced an annual income of 400,000 HS and was sold in 60 A. D. to Soneca for a sum four times the original price.




vineyard begins to produce. He then argues that even the poorest crop of one culleus (138 gallons) per jugerum, sold at the lowest wholesale price of 300 HS per culleus, would more than cover the interest on 32,480 HS at 6% ; and the sale of shoots from the seven jugera should bring in an additional income of 21,000 HS. But since one jugerum in some sections of Italy commonly produced from ten to fifteen cullei (Cato, Origines quoted by Varro, KR 1.2.7; cf. Col. RR 3.3.2; Pliny, NH 14.52), Cominella commented brusquely that a vineyard yielding less than three cullei ought to be dug up. Accepting three cullei as a normal yield and deducting interest on the investment at 6%, Frank (ESAR 5.150) calculates a net profit of 4,351 HS or a little less than 13.4% without counting in the revenue from selling shoots. Therefore, viticulture was an exceedingly profitable investment146).

Cominella has often been criticized for his neglect to take into account certain capital expenses such as the cost of the winepress and other necessary equipment or of the slaves needed to help the vine-dresser ; he ignored some operating expenses such as the overhead costs of the villa, the cost of manure, and the maintenance of the vine-dresser; finally, he has disregarded the amortization of the price of the vine-dresser147). This criticism, so far as it goes,

146) profits from vineyards during the first century A. D. were probably 3 or 4 times as great as from the cultivation of cereals. It was in viticulture where the greatest technical advances occurred and where the greatest use was made of the scientific knowledge developed by the Greeks. The vines of Seneca and of Columella (RR 3.3.2) produced a revenue of about 200 HS per jugerum (about $ 15.00 per acre). In the time of Columella, meadows or pasturage gave a maximum return of 100 HS per jugerum ($ 7.50 per acre), while cereal land scarcely brought 48 HS to the jugerum ($ 3.83 per acre). Cf. A. Oliva, La politica granaria di Roma antica (Piacenza, 1930) 262. In Lydia and in some other parts of Asia Minor the extension of vineyards prevented the growing of cereals because vines gave about 5 times the profits of wheat grown on the same area of ground. Cf. A. Jardé, Les céréales dans l'antiquité grecque (Paris, 1925) 187. A similar ratio probably held good for the Vesuvian and Falerni an districts of Campania and for the Alban slopes of Latium. Billiard (op. cit. [note 30] 139), however, argued that viticulture was suffering from a crisis of overproduction from the time of Nero till the end of the century. The price ratio between wheat and wine had reversed itself, he says, from 1 :2.72 in Cato's time to 1 :0.72 in the reign of Domitian. It is perfectly true that wheat prices climbed steadily during the first and second centuries A. D., especially in the East, as shown by the well-known Egyptian grain prices. See Johnson, ESAR 2.310 ff . and my article "Transportation in Imperial Italy," TAPhA 77 (1946) 242 f. But Billiard's argument was based solely on the statement found in the Revelation (6.5-6) of Saint John the Divine. St. John refers here to the extremely high grain prices prevailing during a famine in Asia Minor not to conditions in Italy. Though a slump in wine prices did occur during the reign of Domitian, there are no grounds for asserting that Italy was suffering from an overproduction of wine in the reigns of Nero and the early Fla- vians. Frank, (EHR 424) has shown that the Italian winegrower in Nero's day had a better market than during the Republic (Pliny, NH 14.59-72). Nowhere does Pliny speak of a slump in price because of overproduction. On the contrary, he insisted on the fact that a good vineyard could bring as much profit to the planter as trade on the Red Sea or Indian Ocean to the merchant (NH 14.52). Cf. S. Rei- nach, "Mévente des vins," Rev. arch. 39 (1901) 363.

147) The first to raise the issue of amortization was Weber, op. cit. (note 75) 226 note 20, followed by Salvioli, II capitalismo 114; cf. Frank, ESAR 5.150-151 ; id. EHR 425.




is correct. Columella was a poor accountant, as Mickwitz has shown148). But his critics have not taken him to task on the right grounds. The chief error in Columella's methods of accounting lay not so much in his neglect of those operating expenses as in his attempt to calculate profits on less than five acres of land. To attempt a calculation of profits on a small section of a large estate is an abstraction and, if possible at all, could only result in a false and misleading estimate. For the profitable operation of a plantation using slave labor requiring supervision depends, as we saw above (p. 462), on large- scale organization.

Equally unrealistic is the criticism of Columella's failure to include among the operating expenses the cost of amortization of the vine-dresser. For on the larger estates the breeding, rearing, and training of slaves was, as pointed out above (p. 459), a general practice in Roman Italy during the early Imperial period. Had Columella drawn up an expense account as complete as that of Zenon 148"), he would automatically have included among current operating expenses the cost of feeding, clothing, and housing all the slaves, young as well as old, women and children as well as the adult field hands. Actually, however, the cost of amortization was concealed in and lumped together with the current operating expenses of the plantation. This problem of amortization is peculiarly interesting because it is tied up with the question of the relative competitive advantage of slave labor and free labor ; from time to time confusion arises from the tendency to assume that a replacement fund calculated at a certain rate on the capital value of the slave was a cost which the employer of free labor did not have to bear. This assumption, however, reflects an incorrect economic analysis. For if capitali- zation is accurately effected, the current incomes realized through the labor of slaves are really equivalent to amortization as well as interest. In short, the so-called interest on investment and the amortization fund are actually covered by the surplus over cost of maintenance appropriable to the owner from his ownership of slaves.

If the slave-worked plantation was a profitable institution, why have modern writers been able to gather from ancient sources sufficient material to support the thesis that slavery and staple agriculture was unprofitable and uneconomic 149) ? At times the returns from agriculture did seem to lag behind the costs of living. Senators owning vast properties were often short of funds and obliged to borrow to meet current expenditures150). They sank deeply into debt (Cic. Cat. 2.18; Mil. 36: egentium civium) and, while eager to extricate themselves by revolution, were too proud to sell their land or slaves. Their plight, however, does not justify a

* 'blanket" condemnation of slavery or

148) G. Mickwitz, "Economic Rationalism in Graeco-Roman Agriculture," English Historical Review 52 (1937) 585 ff.

148a) Cf. E. Grier, Accounting in the Zenon Papvri (New York, 1934). 149) See, for example, A. Aymard, op. cit. (note 30) 257 ff . Heitland, Agri-

cola 154 ff. On the evils of Roman slavery as interpreted from the tradi- tionally conservative point of view, see exhaustive collection of ancient source material bv Saco. od. cit. (note 98) 2.42 ff.

16°) G. De Sanctis, Storia dei Romani4 (Turin, 1923) 552; R. Scalais, op.cit. (note 21) 96, Heitland, Agricola 154 ff.

Finanzarchiv. N.F. 13. Heft 3 32



478 CedricA. Yeo

large-scale agriculture without first attempting an economic analysis of the basic causes of the agricultural crisis before and during Cicero's consulship.

Many Koman landowners, especially those who acquired their properties during the Sullan regime, did not have steady habits or frugal instincts. They lived in the grand manner whether they made or lost money. They built huge villas and filled them with domestic slaves (Cic. Cat. 2.20) ; they bought luxuries, they traveled; they borrowed heavily. Then, becoming more and more deeply involved, they were willing in their desperation to try anything to save themselves, even if they must raise a Sulla from the dead (Sail. Cat. 37.5; Cic. ibid.).

The difficulties of some landlords were not caused solely by their in- temperance or unthriftiness. The plantation system or commercialized agriculture was by its very nature conducive to speculation. The expectation of selling staples in distant markets produces a strong temptation to borrow money and to buy more land and slaves in order to make a bumper crop to sell at top prices. But the chances of a bumper crop and a crop failure are almost equal. In addition, wine production, like sugar planting, was subject to fluctuating prices as well as to the vicissitudes of the weather, so that it was difficult to determine which calamity was the least to be desired, a bumper crop at low prices (Pliny, Epist. 4.6 : abundantia sed par vilitas) or a crop failure at high prices. Though slavery did not create this urge to speculate, it made speculation possible on a much larger scale.

For had slaves not been used in enormous masses in Italian agriculture, large staple-producing plantations might never have been formed; the same amount of land which in fact belonged to a single owner would have provided a score of capable farmers with small or medium-sized holdings. The latter would have carried on diversified farming, combining wheat raising with the production of oil and wine, though in smaller quantities than were actually produced on plantations. The buying power of those farmers, though smaller individually than that of the capitalist, would have been in the aggregate immeasurably greater than his with all his slaves living on a subsistence level. Farmers could have profitably disposed of their produce at local markets and would have been less dependent than commercial agriculture on the fluctuating prices of export trade. The speculative character of commercial agriculture was due in part to the employment of slave labor.

To slavery can be attributed also the tendency to specialize in a single crop, the routine and simplicity of which favored economy of supervision. Planters, consequently, clung tenaciously to single staple crops even when prices were too low to grow them profitably, because the habits, training, and organization of slave labor, the experience of the overseer, and special plantation equipment were uniquely adapted to the production of those crops. Once slaves have been taught to perform efficiently a certain set of operations, it is difficult to change over quickly to the cultivation of a different crop requiring different techniques. This inelastic characteristic of slave labor combined with the immobility of organization rendered plantation economy incapable of responding quickly to sudden shifts in market prices and from time to time planters were driven into debt and bankruptcy.




That time may have arrived in the age of Cicero, which provides critics of the plantation system with most of their ammunition. The causes of the temporary slump in wine prices, if one did occur, may be traced to the confus- ed social and political conditions then prevailing in all parts of the Mediter- ranean world. The East had been disturbed by the unrest and revolts of the native population and by the recent conflict with Mithridates. On the sea the pirates had rendered travel dangerous and commerce almost impossible (Cic. Leg. Man. 32-33 ; App. Mith. 93 ; Florus 3.6 [1.41] ; Dio 36.22). Italy herself had passed through a series of civil wars, proscriptions, and slave revolts and was still suffering from social troubles shortly to culminate in the Catilina- rian conspiracy (Sail. Cat. 37.4-9). For several years before Cicero's consulship Rome had been suffering from an acute financial crisis 151). The burden of debt became ever heavier, for many insupportable. More than one young prodigal (Cic. Leg. agr. 2.48 : luxuriosus nepos) in high society was obliged to liquidate part of his property. If the upper classes were receiving smaller incomes than formerly, it is reasonable to assume that their consumption of wine would be drastically curtailed. The decline in the Roman wine consumption combined with a dislocation of foreign trade seems to explain the temporary crisis in commercial agriculture before the consulship of Cicero. Such crises have overtaken plantation economy elsewhere than in ancient Italy. The age of Cicero, therefore, does not provide sufficient evidence for a general condemnation either of Roman slavery or the plantation system.

Nor should we ascribe to slavery and its alleged inefficiency or scarcity the gradual decline and disappearance of the commercial plantation during the closing years of the first century A. D. That decline seems to have been underway in the age of Nero, when large proprietors, notwithstanding the advice of Columella, preferred to rent their lands to tenants, who practised general farming and the growing of cereals rather than the production of exportable staples 152). The development of the tenant-farmer system has been attributed by some writers to the scarcity and inferiority of slave labor, by others to the indolence of the landowners themselves. Neither explanation seems correct. Slaves were still employed extensively in domestic service, industry, commerce, and agriculture (Rostovtzeff, Storia econ. 113), and even if it was then more difficult to import as many foreign slaves as in the past, that deficiency could have easily been made up through slave breeding, then a very general practice (see above, p. 459). As for their effectiveness as field hands, it is scarcely credible that home-born slaves could have been

15M A. Pieraniol. (od. cit. note 30) 449 ff. : id. Histoire de Rome (Paris. 1946) 170. 152 j The letting of land to tenants, unusual in Varro's time, became so common

in the age of Nero that Columella devoted an entire chapter to it (RR 1.7; cf. also 1.9.9; Pliny, Ep. 9.37.1-4; Sen. Epist. 114.26; de benef. 6.4.4; 7.5.2-3; Dig. 18. 1.79; 19.2.11.4; 19.2.13.8; 19.2.30.4; 19.2.60.5; 20.6.14; 34.3.16; 40.7.14.1). On the tenant farmer, see H. Bolkstein, De colonatu Romano ejusque origine (Amsterdam, 1906)96-110; Heitland, Agricola 252 ff. ; G.Carl, Die Agrarlehre Columellas in soziologischer Betrachtung. (Diss. Heidelberg, 1925) Iff.; R. Clau- sing, op. cit. (note 107) 260; Rostovtzeff, Storia econ. 238 ff.; C. von Schilling, "Studien aus der röm. Agrargeschichte, " Abhandlungen des Herder-Instituts zu Riga 2.1 (1926) 32 f.

32*



480 CedricA. Yeo

less efficient than those imported when the plantation system was in full swing. The true explanation of the decay of commercial agriculture must, therefore, be sought elsewhere. For the decline of the plantation was not an isolated phenomenon; it was accompanied by the general decline of the vital forces once operative in Italy. It was preceded by an industrial crisis.

For more than a century after the death of Julius Caesar, the industries of Italy had monopolized the markets of western and northern Europe. By the time of Claudius they had begun to lose that monopoly before the rapid industrialization of the provinces, of which Gaul was by far the most dangerous rival (Rostovtzeff, Storia econ. 204). In competition with Italy, Gaul had several important assets - abundant resources in metals, clays, and reserves of virgin forest; a central geographical position and an excellent system of road and river communication, which facilitated the transport of industrial products in all directions and at the lowest possible cost. These advantages were of crucial importance in the development of Gallic competition to the Italian metal, glass, and pottery industries. The Gallic metal factories were established first at Lyons then around 80 A. D. further north, in Belgium and the Rhineland, especially at Gressenich near Aachen153). The development of this competition gradually diminished Italian exportation of metal wares and finally brought it to an abrupt halt. In the glass industry the same thing happened. Till the middle of the first century A. D., Italian glass made by skilled Campanians on Syrian methods enjoyed an exclusive monopoly throughout Gaul and Germany; this monopoly was broken when glass works were established at Lyons, at Boulonnais, at Trêves, and at Cologne154). But Italy suffered the strongest competition in the sale of terra sigillata. Under Augustus Italian sigillata had been exported all over the Roman world from the Midlands of Britain to Seleucia-on-the-Tigris. Even then, however, certain centrifugal forces were working towards the decen- tralization of this industry. The techniques of producing the famous wares of Arretium and Puteoli were introduced in the East and branch factories were established in southern Gaul first at Montans and around the year 20 A. D. at La Graufesenque. The potteries of Southern Gaul, at Montans, La Graufe- senque, and Banassac, before being in their turn superseded later in the century by others established nearer the frontiers, at Lezoux and at Rhein- zabern, had made substantial inroads upon Italian trade in the markets of northern Europe, the region of the Danube, and much of the Mediterranean littoral from Spain to Syria (Rev. arch. 1935, 269 ff.)155). The most striking

163) By the 2nd cent. A. D. Gallic wares had begun to displace Italian products throughout western and northern Europe, cf. G. Ekholm, "Gallisk- skandinaviska Förbindseler under äldre Kejsartid," Fornvännen 30 (1935) 193- 205. Cf. A. W. Byvanck, op. cit. (note 56) 2.528 ff., 544; J. Breuer, La Belgique romaine (Bruzelles, 1946) 93 ff.; C. Jullian, op. cit. (note 30) 5.300ff.; H. Gum- merus, RE 9 s. v. "Industrie und Handel" 1473 ff.; Grenier, ES AR 3.588 f.

154) A. Kisa, Das Glas im Altertum (Leipzig, 1908) 12ff.; Cf. Breuer, op. cit. (note 153) 95 ff.; Grenier, ESAR 3.623 ff.; Jullian, op. cit. (note 30) 290 ff.; G. Behrens, „Römische Gläser aus den Rheinlanden," Forschungen und Fort- schritte 10 (1934) 93 ff.; H. Gummerus, op. cit. (note 153) 1478 ff.

lß5) Grenier, ESAR 3.540 ff.; H. Comfort, ESAR 5.192 ff.; id. RE Suppl.




illustration of the decline of the terra sigillata industry in Italy was the con- signment of Gallic wares, which reached Pompeii via Eome remaining un- opened at the time of the eruption 156). As a consequence of the rapid decline of industrial activity in Italy, particularly in Campania, the buying power of many formerly rich consumers of wine and oil must have been drastically curtailed.

But the commercial plantation was hit by another disaster besides the loss of its local market. It lost also the foreign market. The predominance which Italy had enjoyed in the production and sale of staples for almost two centuries eventually disappeared when the western provinces began towards the end of the first century A. D. to produce their own oil and wine. Gaul, Spain, Africa, and Dalmatia were producing by the time of Pliny (NH 15.8) a wine and an oil, which rivalled the best that was produced in Italy. These products conquered the local markets, and what is more, were imported into Italy 157). An acute crisis developed in plantation agriculture just as it had in industry. To remedy this situation, the Emperor Domitian forbade the planting of vines in the provinces (see Finanzarchiv 13.334). This decree was never applied to the East and only half heartedly to the West. It was impossible to combat an inevitable economic tendency by means of legislative or administrative decrees.

The cause of the decline of commercial agriculture in Italy was, therefore, obviously not the inefficiency and unprofitableness of slave labor. As a matter of fact, Italy had by the end of the first century A. D. lost her monopoly of the slave traffic. For just as the extension of the plantation to Ala- bama, Mississippi, and Texas increased the price of slaves in Virginia and South Carolina before 1860, so would the development of commercial agriculture in the western provinces of the Roman Empire also logically tend to raise the price of slave labor in Italy. A similar effect resulted from the policy of the Imperial government, which, influenced undoubtedly more by reasons of economic expediency than by Stoic philosophy or humanitarian considera- tions, was beginning to adopt a more liberal attitude toward the slave population and to encourage their manumission (Rostovtzeff, Storia econ. 412). Thus more and more was Italy turning away from the slave-worked plantation towards the tenant-farmer system or the colonate and to a peasant economy based on the production of cereals.

The thesis that the economic stagnation of Italy resulted primarily from provincial competition rather than from the supposed defects of slavery as

7.1319 ff. s. v. "Terra Sigillata"; Breuer, op. cit. (note 153) 97 ff. Byvanck, op. cit. (note 56) 2.542 ff.; Jullian, op. cit. (note 30) 5.264; Rostovtzeff, Storia econ. 206-207; H. Dragendorff, Gnomon 10 (1934)360; A. Oxé, "La Graufesengue," Bonner Jahrbücher 140/141 (1936) 325-394.

1M) D. Atkinson, "A Hoard of Samian Ware from Pompeii," JRS 4 (1914) 27-64. Some Gallic wares were also found at Naples and Rome, cf. J. Déchelette, Les vases céramiques ornés de la Gaule romaine (Paris, 1904) 1.94-100, 108-110; H. Gummerus, RE s. v. "Industrie und Handel" 1475.

167) Rostovtzeff, Storia econ. 232, 235 ff.; id. "Les classes rurales et les classes citadines dans le haut empire romain," Mélanges d'histoire offerts à Henri Pirenne (Bruxelles, 1926) 426 ff.



482 CedricA. Yeo

a system of labor may be supported by contrasting the economic decay of Campania with the prosperity of the Po Valley. Though wine and oil had been produced in North Italy for local consumption ever since the days of Roman colonization, the plantation system did not make its appearance there till after the conquest and occupation of Dalmatia, Noricum, and Pannonia. Through the port of Aquileia, says Strabo (5.1.8; 4.6.10; 7.5.2), North Italy shipped huge casks (id. 5.1.12) of wine and oil, receiving in exchange cattle, hides, and slaves158). The slaves, thereby obtained, were set to work on some of the large wine plantations such as those belonging to Pliny the Younger (Epist. 3.19.7; 9.20; 8.16) and to Calvia Crispinilla of Nero's time (Tac. Hist. 1.73; CIL 3.12010.2 ; cf. Eostovtzeff , Storia econ. 193). Plantations of the Cam- panian type, however, were probably never very numerous, and North Italy no doubt remained as in the past essentially a land of independent farmers engaged in general farming and the growing of cereals. The same kind of crops were persumably grown on those estates that were let to tenants. Though limited in number, the wine plantations of the North flourished longer than elsewhere in Italy even as late as the third century (Herodian 8.2.3; 8.4.5). For they enjoyed both an excellent local market in the large and numerous cities situated north and south of the Po and a lucrative export trade with the Danube region, where Gallic wines were unable to compete with Italy on favorable terms. Thus, unlike the other wine-growing districts of Italy, the North continued to prosper and only rarely did a price slump occur through overproduction such as that which overtook Ravenna, when the Danubian market was disturbed by military operations (Martial 3.56, 57 ; cf. Rostovt- zeff, Storia econ. 113).

In sharp contrast with the North, Campania, having lost her export market to Gallic and Spanish wine and oil as well as a considerable part of the local trade because of the paralysis of her industries, was towards the end of the first century rapidly sinking into stagnation and decay. This decline was marked by the eclipse of the great port of Puteoli, once the heir of Delos and the rival of Alexandria. The decline of Puteoli came about not because of the development of Ostia as Rome's chief port but rather because Campa- nia ceased to provide, as she had in the past, those valuable return cargoes which justified the use of Puteoli as the center of Rome's import trade even though the ships unloaded at a point 150 miles away from Rome 169). Another sign of Campanian decadence was the failure to revive viticulture in the striken area around Pompeii and Stabiae, which had previously been famed for its agricultural productivity. It has been shown rather conclusively that vineyards could have been planted in this area within a comparatively short

168) A. Calderini, Aquileia romana (Milan, 1930) 297 ff.; G. Brusin, Aquileia Udine, 1929) 38; H. Nissen, op. cit. (note 57) 1.453; G. E. F. Chilver, Cisalpine Gaul (Oxford, 1941) 136 ff.; C. Patsch, „Die Herzegovina einst und jetzt," Histo- rische Wanderungen im Karst und an der Adria (Wien, 1922) 1.120-122, 137 ff.

1M) Frank, EHR 305 ff., 411 ff.; id. ESAR 5.237 C. Dubois, op. cit. (note 48) 83 ff.; Rostovtzeff, Storia econ. 190 ff. See also my art. "Land and Sea Transpor- tation in Imperial Italy," Transactions of the American Philological Association 77 (1946) 239 f.




time after the eruption occurred160). The fact that this was never done in spite of the government's attempt to restore that region (Dio Cass. 66.24.2-3) indicates that by the beginning of the second century the crops for which this region was best fitted to produce were no longer in general demand at home or abroad.

The evidence presented above shows that the plantation system, a type of agricultural organization inherited from Carthage, became established in Italy after the Koman conquests had created conditions favorable to the profitable operation of the slave-worked plantation specializing in the wholesale production of exportable staples. This form of agrarian economy, displacing the older regime of the small freeholder, flourished in Central Italy, particularly Campania, from the fall of Carthage till the age of the Antonines. We owe our knowledge of it largely to Cato's description of a wine and an oil plantation in 150 B. C. and to the excavation of forty-three villas around Pompeii. These, unfortunately, are not entirely representative of the larger commercial plantations, which engaged in world trade and, like the Brazilian fazenda, practised self-sufficiency with respect to food, clothing, baskets, metal ware, and pottery. Large as were some plantations, size was limited by requirements of operating efficiency. New plantations were established elsewhere when that limit was reached or when the slave population had increased beyond the facilities available for maintenance and supervision. Besides, some planters desired to own estates in various localities in order to distribute the risk of crop failure.

In both ancient and modern times the plantation has been associated with slavery. Although the dynamics of slavery have not yet been fully clari- fied even by writers on Southern economic history, I am convinced that, in spite of wide regional and chronological differences, Koman and American slavery were essentially similar and followed the same general principles These principles may be stated as follows :

1) Slavery seems everywhere to have encouraged monoculture or the cultivation of a single - preferably an all-year - crop, which could provide continuity of employment, thereby eliminating periods of idleness that meant loss to the owner. The crop cultivated by organized slave labor should involve the simplest and most standardized processes of cultivation and permit on minimum area maximum concentration of labor in order to reduce costs of supervision. In all these respects oil, wine, sugar, and rice are ideal plantation crops. Grain, on the other hand, having a relatively short growing season and not con- veniently cultivated by use of the gang system, can best be made by independent farmers or by tenants. This theory is in practice borne out by the absence of slavery in wheat-raising countries such as Ptole- maic Egypt, by its decline concomitant with increased wheat production in Koman Africa and in the states of Virginia and Missouri, and by the evidence of grain production in only five villas near Pompeii. It may

160) See Ernestine B. Day, "Recovery of Vegetation in the Ash Erupted by Vesuvius in 79," CW 39 (1136) 100-110.



4:84 CedricA. Yeo

reasonably be inferred that, when the plantation system was operating in high gear, Campania was unable to grow sufficient cereals for her coastal cities, which, like Rome, seem to have imported supplies from abroad.

2) Slavery must be organized on a large scale. It tends to promote concentration of ownership of labor and land. Since supervisors were both difficult and expensive to acquire, the big plantations could operate more economically than the smaller ones because of their ability to organize a vast number of slaves under a single management. Likewise, the heavy cost of equipment essential to the processing of rice, sugar, wine, and oil required much land and many slaves in order to distribute fixed capital costs. For this reason, the big planter enjoyed an enormous advantage over small and middle-sized producers. The former had other advantages incidental to large organization: superior financial credit, superior marketing and purchasing facilities, and the benefit of influential connections.

3) Slavery, when organized in accordance with the conditions just mentioned, possessed competitive advantages over rival systems of labor. It was stable, always available, and under absolute control. Unlike tenants, slaves were not drafted for military service, unlike serfs they could be shifted to the place of greatest opportunity, and unlike wage labor, they could not strike or move from one employer to another. More important still, slave labor was capable of being organized, concentrated, combined, and directed towards some desired economic result. But it owed most of its ability "to supplant free labor to the legal power inherent in ownership of appropriating any physical or value surplus earned by the slave above the lowest requisites of subsistence. This enabled the planter to produce at price levels only slightly above the cost of maintaining the slave.

4) It has been the fashion since Adam Smith to condemn slavery for its inefficiency and unprofitableness. From the owner's standpoint, at least, this view is not in line with facts. Negro slaves were inefficient only when judged by the highly technical standards of modern industry. But high-grade industrial skills were not called for in an extractive economy. Nevertheless Roman slaves showed considerable skill and industriousness when employed in making crops proper to a slave economy. It was in raising grain where they showed themselves inefficient, wasteful, and hard to supervise. As to the unprofitableness of slavery, that charge, based on the concept of "pure profit," which is inapplicable to the economics of slavery, is denied by the general increase in plantation values and the numerous fortunes made throughout the ante-bellum South and by Columella's estimate of more than 13% net profit from a vineyard yielding the abnormally small crop of three cullei per jugerum (621 gallons per acre).

Although some support for the condemnation of slavery on economic grounds may be obtained from classical sources, much of the ancient criticism, when not rooted in Stoic or Christian idealism, represents a false anal-




y sis of the slumps or temporary crises such as the one occurring before Cicero's consulship. But to condemn slavery for the cycle of "boom and bust" in either Roman or American agriculture is like blaming the depression of 1929 on the wage system. Equally irrelevant is it to ascribe to slavery responsi- bility for the decline of the plantation in Italy, which in fact lost most of its export trade and even part of its home market to Gallic and Spanish competition. Except in the Po Valley, whose export trade with the Danube region was still brisk, scientific agriculture in most parts of Italy was floundering in difficulties which Domitian and Trajan strove in vain to correct. Hardest hit was the province of Campania where, for more than two centuries, the plantation had flourished. Never again during the Roman Empire did that region recover its former prosperity. The once busy port of Puteoli fell into ruin. For centuries Pompeii lay buried and to the rich and fertile territory beyond its^ gates the plantation never returned.



Documents

The Economics of Roman and American Slavery