Eighty sheep one herdsman, for 50 horses, 2 persons.2
The price of slaves.
One can get some idea of the price of slaves in the Roman Empire from the fact that from 357 to 209 [BC] (148 years) the amount one had to pay to buy one’s freedom was 4,000 pounds of gold.
Cato (234–149 [BC]) said that he never paid more than [the equivalent of] 1,179 marks and that every slave under 20 years [of age] who cost more than 1,754 he regarded as a luxury item. Incidentally, prices reached such a low level that the slaves from among the spoils of war taken by Lucullus in Pontus (74–69 [BC])3 were sold for [the equivalent of] 3.14 marks.
They came mostly from the provinces: a better threshing tool (the tribulum) came from Africa.
From Gaul [came] a better way of grafting grapevines and a better way of mowing hay, as well as a new form of ploughshare with wheels. Also in Gaul, grain was harvested by a kind of machine pulled by draft animals and steered by a person, twice as fast as in Italy.
Pliny said that one could do worse than to turn over the cultivation of the fields to slaves from prison, because their work would at least be profitable, as was everything undertaken by desperadoes.
In Greece, the craftworks industry.
In Rome, large landholdings [predominated]. The free peasants were subject to military service, [but] slaves had no military obligations. (Hand in hand with that, agriculture was driven out by the raising of livestock {with corn (being imported) from Sicily, etc.}).4
The slave uprisings of the second and first centuries [BC].
The Gracchi,5 second century (133–121 [BC]).
Rule by “kings,” according to legend (753–570 [BC]).6
The “Republic” (570 on).7
(1) The period up to the Punic wars, third century [BC].8
(2) The period up to the time of the Caesars, second and first centuries [BC].9
(3) The imperial period (from 31 BC on).10
Predominance of small and medium-sized land ownership and of peasant farming even on large landed estates (tenant farming).
Slavery on a small scale, slaves as family members engaged in agriculture.
Throughout the sixth and fifth centuries [BC], the struggle of the plebeians with the patricians.
(1) The plebeians were drafted into military service in the second half of the sixth century [BC] (the Servian legislation11). (Protected relatives [Schutzverwandte] performed no military service).
(2) The struggle was carried further for political rights (the consulate, the tribunate), participation [by plebeians] in the Senate, and [the issue of the] Ager publicas.12
494 [BC], procession to the sacred mountain.13 The struggle against debt slavery and for the distribution of the Ager publicus. A concession: tribunes of the people (distribution of grain from state reserves occurred as early as the beginning of the fifth century [BC]).
486 [BC] First proposal of an “agrarian law” (land distribution). Struggles without results.
455 [BC] Distribution of building sites to plebeians.
450 [BC] Laws of the Twelve Tablets14 (easing of debtor’s law, on the Solonian model).
366 [BC] The winning of a consulate for the plebeians. Alleviation of the conditions of debtors. No one could own more than 500 morgen15 of community land.
Toward the end of the fourth century [BC] the plebeians win political equality. [Ever] since then, the conflict between rich and poor.
326 [BC] Abolition of debt slavery. Land distribution.
Slavery in the first period. Familia rustica16—agricultural slaves are under one manager [Oekonomen]; [there are] also slaves who direct the whole work operation. Slaves were bought at the age of plus or minus twenty and when they became old or sick were sold.
The villa rustica17 [included] stables for livestock, a granary, and a dwelling house for the villicus and the slaves.
Often a special country house was built for the lords.
All slaves periodically received the means of subsistence in fixed amounts.
Clothing and shoes were bought at the market. Each month a certain amount of wheat [was distributed to the slaves]. (Rye and oats were not yet known18—and the same with rice until the fifteenth century and corn [maize] until the seventeenth.) They all had to grind the wheat themselves, [and they also received] salt, olives, salted fish, wine, and oil.
The villica cooked for everyone, and mealtimes were held in common.
Slaves who had tried to escape or were being punished were sent to work in chains (but in earlier times, the sons of the family were treated the same way) and locked up in an underground dungeon at night.
For the harvesting work free contract laborers were also brought in—for the [reaping of the] sixth to the ninth sheaf.19
Harvesting of olives and grapes was usually contracted out to free entrepreneurs who supplied their own slaves.
The slaves were well fed, and on holidays were freed from work duties. But slaves were treated exactly like cattle.
“A watchdog should not get friendly with his fellow slaves.” “A slave should either be working or eating.” “So many slaves, so many enemies.”
Peasant agriculture differed from that of the nobility only in its scope. The farming operation was the same, only with fewer or no slaves.
II—The coming of large-scale plantation agriculture (with wheat cultivation)
Large-scale influx of slaves ([from] wars: the Punic wars with Carthage, the Macedonian wars (the first being 215–205 [BC], the second, 200–197, the third, 171–169), wars with Greece, Spain, Numidia, the Cimbrii and Teutones, the Mithridatic war with the kingdom of Pontus in 68–64 [BC] for Asia Minor, wars with the Germans and Celts, the Gallic wars of 59–51, and with Egypt, the Alexandrian war of 30 [BC]).
According to the records of Livy (59–17 BC), the number of prisoners of war who were made slaves in the year 210 [BC] was 10,000; in the year 208, it was 4,000; in 202, 1,200; in 200, 35,000; in 197, 5,000; in 190, 1,400; and in the year 167, 150,000! Later it was even more.
(1) The tenant farming system was driven out [of existence], the peasant farmers being swallowed up by military service. From the time of Marius on (+/–110 BC) even the poorer proletarians served in the army.
(2) As early as 367 BC the proletariat tried to make it obligatory by law that landowners had to employ freemen in agriculture in numbers corresponding to the number of slaves.
Capitalistic large landed property swallowed up the domain lands (mark community) and the peasant farms.
(3) (Tax) indebtedness of the peasant farms. Usurers and proletarians.
(4) Lowering of the price of grain in Italy because of the import of overseas grain. The grain trade run by the state.
In all of Italy the peasant farms driven out by large landed property, agriculture driven out by the raising of livestock, and free workers replaced by slaves.
Every kind of work became slave labor. Educated slaves. Slaves as stewards, educators, physicians, artists. Along with slave labor there were luxury slaves. The slave trade, the hunting down of slaves in all Mediterranean lands and the Near East.
The treatment [of slaves] in the second period [became] worse and worse: in agriculture [there was the use of] branding, leg irons, whips, nightly confinement in dungeons. Urban luxury slaves had it better.
Number [of slaves]: In the first century BC (the high point) there were ca. 1.5 million slaves in Italy (and 3 million freemen); in Sicily, 400,000 slaves (and ca. 400,000 freemen). According to [Edward] Gibbon, under Claudius (41–54 AD) the number of slaves and of freemen was the same. According to [William] Blair,20 on the other hand, there were 7 million freemen and 20.8 million slaves in Rome [i.e., in the Roman empire].
(Second Period) State-run grain trade, massive import of overseas grain by the state, partly as tribute, partly at very low prices, from the provinces (Africa, Sicily, Spain). Grain from Sardinia, Africa, Egypt, Spain, Gaul, Boetia, and even, at the last, from Britain ([see the] Putzger [atlas, page] 9). The grain was used for the maintenance of the army and the civil service. From the time of the second Macedonian war (200–197 [BC]) the feeding of the army was permanently based on overseas grain. In addition, [there was] the government’s price policy. Purchase of grain from other lands at cheap price and its sale in …
Finally the government left it up to [tax farmers] … [to collect] the very large grain tribute at very low pr[ices], and they could [then] sell it in Rome at giveaway prices.
In addition, transport to Rome from Sicily and Sardinia was cheaper than from Etruria and northern Italy.
Finally, all the subjugated provinces were forbidden to export grain to anywhere else but Italy, which also forced prices down.
Consequently: 1) The ruin of peasant farming; 2) With large landholdings [predominating] a transition [was made] to latifundia with slaves [as the workforce]. Grain production was reduced to the amount needed for the workers’ own use, and in its place [came] pastureland [for livestock] and olive plantations and vineyards.
Likewise, [state] domain lands were converted by the nobility and the rich into latifundia.
The money economy develops strongly. As early as the second century BC there were already numerous bankers.
The state encouraged this because it leased out all its revenue and other major operations (the building of temples, aqueducts, military roads) to private entrepreneurs.
Craft production was developed only to provide tools and meet simple needs. Otherwise products were imported: linen from Egypt, royal purple from Miletus21 and Tyre (Phoenicia and Palestine).22
Slaves were employed in all fields: commerce, banking, bookkeeping, as customs officials, architects, actors, musicians, and in mining. Their situation was better than on the plantations.
The general buying up of peasant farms and their conversion into plantations. Where 100–150 peasant families had formerly lived there now stood one latifundium worked by 50 slaves, most of whom were unmarried.
A decline in the second century [BC]: There were not enough men capable of bearing arms.23 Meat and milk disappeared from the diets of the people.
In 185 [BC] in Apulia, 7,000 slaves were killed (in a bacchanalia [of repression])24
In 199 [BC], in Etruria, a battle of armies25
In 198 [BC], [a slave revolt] in Latium.26
Slave hunting, in Asia Minor, mainly by pirates from Crete and Sicily (along the southern coast of Asia Minor). At the slave market in Delos, the number of slaves sold daily was often 10,000.27
(1) 135–132 [BC], the first slave war in Sicily, with 70,000 armed slaves; 20,000 were crucified.28
In 130 [BC] in Italy 4,800 slaves were executed.
(2) 103–99 [BC], the second slave war in Sicily, lasting two years.29
In 73 [BC], Spartacus in lower Italy.30
In Delos, in Attica, and in ???31 the slaves had to be held down by armed force.
The proletariat and the Gracchi.
Tiberius Gracchus [becomes] tribune in 134 BC.
Agrarian law: State domains taken back from the nobles and divided into peasant plots up to 30 morgens in size with a moderate tax. Tiberius is killed with 300 of his supporters. But the law goes into effect.
Gaius Gracchus introduces the distribution of grain [to the proletariat in Rome] and takes leased state domains as the basis for founding peasant colonies, [which is] also done overseas (in Carthage).
Revolt of the nobility, revolution, Gaius is murdered while fleeing.
The whole reform [movement] is shattered.
The end: The third agrarian law, according to which all community land taken into private possession is transformed into the tax-free private property of those making use of it up to that point.
Third Period: Decline of the Latifundia Economy
(1) Exhaustion of the process of importing slaves, transition to the breeding of slaves, conservation of slaves [becomes] necessary, killing of slaves is forbidden.32
(2) Lack of profitability because of the bad [i.e., unproductive] work of slaves, transition to the leasing out of parcels of land to tenant farmers [becomes] necessary.
(3) End of grain imports, return to grain cultivation [in Italy becomes] necessary.
Result: Transition to a kind of serfdom and at the same time back to free tenant farming (transition from a system of military draft to a mercenary army from the time of Augustus—31 BC to 14 BC).
The colonatum.33
Economic progress [because] of slavery: the large-scale enterprise
(1) A) In Greece, separation of crafts.
B) In Rome, large-scale cultivation of crops.
(2) Division of labor. Formation of the intelligentsia, the state, etc.
Economic plan under slavery.