Free Peasants at Rome during the Middle of Second Century B. C. : From M. Porcius Cato's De Agri Cultura

Abstract

In recent years, academic circles have been swayed for the most part by the new theory an advocating drastic changes in home's economic structure during the middle of the second century B.C.. This theory, though accepting the influence of slave labour, does not overestimate the importance of cheap labour influx from abroad, but puts its emphasis on the continuation of the subsistence peasant class and its role in agricultural labour. In this article, the author examines by means of analyzing M. Porcius Cato's De Agri Cultura whether this new theory is genuine, while looking into the ambiguous situation in the rural districts at the time. In chapter 1, a research history of 'opelarius' is presented, since small and middle peasants were called 'operarii' in Cato's work. Controversies over them focus on six points : (1)the meaning of 'operarius', (2)Varro's testimony, (3)the equipment need to run an olive and a wine farmstead, (4)Cat., Agr. 4, (5)legal materials (Dig. 33.7.18.5 ; 50.16.203), and (6)Plautus' case. In chapter 2, a general outline of rural society in Campagna as a model of De Agri Cultra is offered on the basis of archaeological materials and later literature. The following chapters, then demonstrate the model in accordance with the six points described in chapter 1. Point 1 has to be understood from context ; therefore the other points are more important. Point 2 has a precondition that familia is a slave. That familia means slave is undisputed. Analyzing Cato's work, however, his familia does include free labour. The existence of eight free labourers on his wine farmstead is, in fact, verified by making a thorough investigation of point 3, that operarius on the farm was a slave. Adding these two facts mentioned above, vicini (=neighbours) engage in the villa's works as operarii. It is, hence, clear that such vicini, as free peasants living in the neighbourhood, may have been affected by dominus, and they may have stood socially in a peculiar position owing to their continuous employment on the villa. Consequently, a vivid image concerning operarius appears through points 5 and 6. Operarii in De Agri Cultura indicate small-and middle-scale peasants, Cato as an owner of a villa needed many of these operarii in the form of labourers residing in the neighbourhood. As examined in the wine farmstead in particular, some of these people worked always with dominus' slaves, and belonged to his familia. This shows how a specialized social strata in a rural district originally arose, and how the social conditions of such free peasants on the wine farmstead can be considered as an original form of the dependent free peasant of later ages. In conclusion, the author accepts the new theory on the point that the many free peasants did exist, but further adds to it that they were tending towards dependency upon villa owners.