The economies of scale achieved on the estate of Appianus depended on the careful oversight of a centralized administration that could monitor on a regular basis the efforts of individual managers. Landowners who were not able to maintain such a level of supervision turned to alternative methods of managing their estates. One solution was to lease estates out to large-scale tenants, who took upon themselves the problem of organizing the labor needed to cultivate the land and market the crops. Sometimes the tenant was a slave of the landowner. Leasing to a slave-tenant, or a servus quasi colonus, provided the landowner with important advantages. The lease arrangement gave the servus quasi colonus an incentive to manage the property well, since he could keep a share of the profits and use this to purchase his freedom. At the same time, the landowner exercised greater control over a slave-tenant than would be possible with a tenant of free status (Scheidel 1994: 131-49).
Large-scale leasing suggests how farm tenancy could contribute to solving managerial problems. But large-scale tenants represented a small minority of farm tenants; the vast majority of farm tenants were engaged in the more basic task of working the land. One of the questions surrounding farm tenancy in the Roman Empire is whether the provision of labor was the chief contribution of farm tenancy (Rowlandson 1996: 213-36), or whether landowners also relied on their tenants to invest their own resources in the cultivation of the land. In the latter case, the relationship between landowners and tenants would have been a kind of ‘‘partnership.’’ The contribution of the landowner was to cover the substantial costs of pressing facilities and other equipment, while the tenant provided equipment, animals, and slaves. This at least is the allocation of resources envisioned in conventional Roman lease law (Frier 1979). This sort of arrangement made it possible for the tenant to cultivate crops such as vines, for which the expenses might be prohibitive if the tenant had to bear the costs alone. The landowner gained from this, since the tenant had an incentive to keep the farm in good working order by investing his own resources in its upkeep. Whether the relationship between landowner and tenant was more akin to partnership or to exploitation depended to a large degree on the bargaining power of the tenant.
To be sure, there was a great deal of stratification in the ranks of tenants in the Roman Empire, with tenants ranging from wealthy members of the elite who took over the task of managing large estates to small-scale tenants, with few resources of their own, who were in effect laborers. One of the key factors determining the economic independence of small farmers working as tenants was their access to draft animals: tenants who provided their own plow oxen were likely to exercise far greater bargaining power than their counterparts who depended on their landowners for the provision of draft animals and other important resources (Foxhall 1990). In addition, the lines between landowners and tenants might be blurred, with small-scale landowners supplementing their incomes by leasing in additional land. This pattern of combining land ownership with leasing can be traced in the rich documentation of Roman Egypt (Kehoe 1992: 140-65).
We can appreciate the contribution that farm tenants might make to the financial interests of upper-class landowners by considering again the situation of Pliny the Younger. Pliny relied upon his tenants to invest their resources in the production of the cash crops, including wine, on which his income depended. Pliny’s tenants occupied their farms under leases that were formulated in terms of conventional Roman private law. They paid cash rents (at least before he instituted sharecropping on his Tuscan estates: Ep. 9.37). Likewise, the leases of the tenants were shortterm, since Pliny discusses the need to renegotiate the leases on several occasions (Ep. 7.30.3; 9.37; 10.8.5). It is also likely that Pliny’s tenants contributed substantial resources of their own. When discussing the possible purchase of the estate adjacent to his own property at Tifernum Tiberinum, Pliny mentions the need to reequip the now impoverished tenants on that estate with slaves. Apparently, these tenants had previously provided their own slaves, but when they had fallen behind in their rent, the previous owner of the estate confiscated them, presumably with other property pledged as security:
But this fertility of the land is worn out by the feeble cultivators. For the previous owner too often sold their pledges, and while he reduced the tenants’ arrears of rent for the time being, he exhausted their resources for the long term, as a result of the loss of which their arrears have grown again. They (sc. the tenants) must be equipped with slaves, which will be all the more expensive a proposition because the slaves are honest (frugi); for I myself do not have chained slaves anywhere nor does anyone there. (Ep. 3.19.6-7)
The troubles that Pliny encountered notwithstanding, this form of tenancy seems well designed to serve the interests of upper-class landowners seeking stable incomes from their farms. Pliny’s tenants cultivated substantial farms, covered many of the costs of farming from their own resources, produced crops that could be sold on the market, and paid Pliny a regular, fixed rent out of the proceeds. Since they paid a rent in cash, they took upon themselves the task of marketing the crops and bore the risk for the size of the harvest and for the market price of the crops.
The long-term productivity of small-scale tenants was crucial to the Roman estate economy, as we can see in the land tenure system that the Roman government maintained on its imperial estates in North Africa. The evidence for how the North African imperial estates were cultivated comes from a series of inscriptions, dating to the second and early third centuries (Flach 1978; Kehoe 1988a; Kolendo 1991;
De Ligt 1998-9; M. De Vos 2001), from the fertile Medjerda (ancient Bagradas) valley in northern Tunisia. The interpretation of these complex inscriptions remains a matter of continuing scholarly debate, but it is possible to sketch in broad outline how the estates were cultivated. The state largely relied on small-scale farmers, or coloni, who held lands on the imperial estates under perpetual leaseholds based on a regulation called the lex Manciana. Although this point is not certain, the law was probably a lease regulation originally adopted on private land. Then, after the private estates on which it was used passed into imperial ownership, it became a general regulation defining land tenure on African imperial estates. The coloni were sharecroppers, generally paying one-third of their crops as rent. They could maintain their rights to their land as long as they continued to cultivate it, and they could pledge these rights as security in loans and pass them on to their heirs.
The Roman government sought to establish the coloni as permanent cultivators by giving them incentives to make the substantial long-term investment required by olive culture. These incentives first involved ad hoc efforts to extend the application of the lex Manciana. Under Hadrian, these efforts were superseded by a more general regulation, called the lex Hadriana de rudibus agris, or the ‘‘law of Hadrian concerning unused lands.’’ This law granted coloni bringing unused lands on imperial estates under cultivation perpetual lease rights and also offered them incentives to cultivate olives by exempting them from the obligation to pay rent for ten years. Imperial procurators announced the law of Hadrian with great fanfare as they implemented it on a particular group of estates:
Speech of the procurators of the emperor Caesar Hadrian Augustus: because our Caesar [in keeping with] his tireless care, because of which he is assiduously vigilant for the interests of humankind, orders all parts of the fields that are suited for both olives or vines as well as cereals to be brought under cultivation; therefore by the permission of his providence the authority accrues to everyone to occupy even those parts which are in the leased out centuries of the estate of Blandus and Udens and in those parts which have been joined to the Tuzritan estate from the Lamian and Domitian estate, and are not being worked by the lessees; to those who have occupied them that right of possession and enjoyment and bequest to one’s heir is given, which is included in the law of Hadrian concerning vacant lands and those which have not been cultivated for ten consecutive years...” (CIL VIII 25943, 26416)
This program, begun under Hadrian, continued at least until the reign of Septimius Severus, as the republication at that time of the incentives in the lex Hadriana indicates. Indeed, there are signs that the small-scale approach to fostering olive culture and more intensive agriculture had a lasting impact on the North African landscape. Thus in the Vandal period, the Albertini tablets, deeds of sale from a private estate at a location far inland from the Medjerda valley, indicate that land was cultivated on this estate under terms of tenure based on the lex Manciana (D. J. Mattingly 1989; Weael 2003). The process by which a program probably designed for imperial estates affected the land tenure systems on private estates in a much later period, however, remains unknown.
The efforts of the Roman government to exploit its estates did not come without conflict, however. To enforce the obligations of the coloni, the Roman administration appointed middlemen, or conductores (the lessees in the document quoted above).
These were large-scale lessees who leased from the Fiscus the right to collect the share rents from the coloni. In addition, the conductores cultivated certain lands not occupied by the coloni, and the coloni had to provide labor on this land, generally six days each year, as well as the use of their draft animals. There were apparently frequent conflicts between the coloni and the conductores over the former group’s obligations. Indeed, in a petition to the emperor Commodus (181 ce), coloni from an imperial estate called the saltus Burunitanus complained bitterly of the treatment that they were accorded by one conductor in particular, named Allius Maximus, who, according to the description of the coloni, had repeatedly bribed the imperial procurators to allow him to raise the share rent of the coloni and to exact additional labor services. The coloni offered a rather desperate description of their situation in their appeal to the emperor:
Please come to our aid, and since, as poor rustic people tolerating a livelihood gained from the work of our own hands, we are unfairly matched with a lessee most influential among your procurators because of his lavish gifts, to whom he is known through the changes of succession by the circumstances of his lease, take pity on us and deign to instruct by your rescript that we not furnish more than we are obliged to in accordance with the law of Hadrian and the letters of your procurators, that is two days of labor three times, so that by the benefit of your majesty we rustics, your servants and children of your estates, should no longer be disturbed by the lessees of fiscal farmland. (CIL VIII 10570, 14464)
The conflicts evident on imperial estates in Africa were not an isolated phenomenon; they seem to have arisen on imperial estates in other areas of the Roman Empire as representatives of the Roman government, perhaps reacting to fiscal pressure, sought to exact greater revenues from the farmers cultivating the land. Thus tenants on an imperial estate at a site called Aga Bey in Phrygia (Asia Minor) complained bitterly to the emperor (probably Philip the Arab, c.245 CE) about abuses that they were suffering at the hands of imperial tax officials called kolletiones. These tenants threatened to abandon the estate and take up residence on private land:
It is necessary for us who have been forsaken, not tolerating the outrages of the kolletiones and of our opponents for the reasons we have said, to abandon both our fathers’ hearths and our ancestors’ tombs and to migrate to private land to be saved - for those living the evil life spare people living there more than your own farmers - and become fugitives from the imperial estates, in which we were born and raised and where, abiding as farmers from the time of our ancestors, we maintain our obligations to the imperial treasury. (Hauken 1998: no. 3, lines 43-54)
The complaints by the imperial tenants have to be seen in perspective, however. The publication of the two inscriptions quoted here as well as of numerous others surely indicates that the imperial tenants achieved some success in asserting their claims. Thus on the African imperial estates, although the conductores were far wealthier than the coloni, the coloni were the farmers permanently resident on the estate and the ones on whom the production of the estate ultimately depended. Thus when actions by con-ductores, or, in Asia Minor, imperial tax officials, threatened the welfare of these farmers, the imperial government had little choice but to intervene on the side of its farmers.
The situation of the coloni on the North African imperial estates sheds light on one of the questions raised at the outset of this chapter, namely, whether the Roman agrarian economy was completely dominated by the interests of large landowners, or whether it also created opportunities for other farmers to prosper. Certainly the maintenance of an extensive system of imperial estates, with substantial tracts of fertile farmland essentially withdrawn from the private economy, provided favorable tenure rights to many small farmers and also offered them protection against powerful landowners. Did tenants on private land share in any of the benefits that their imperial counterparts enjoyed?
This is a difficult question to answer, but it does seem likely that private landowners had to be flexible with the terms of tenure for their tenants, since they were subject to the same constraints in managing their lands as the imperial government. We can appreciate some of the difficulties that landowners faced if we consider the question of risk. Agriculture in the Mediterranean world was subject to frequent droughts (Horden and Purcell 2000: 178-9), which would leave landowners and tenants with the difficult task of sorting out who would cover the costs of diminished harvests and lost income. The classical Italian farm lease imposed the bulk of the risk on the tenant, who, because he paid a fixed rent in kind, bore the risk not only for the harvest, but also for the market prices that his crops would obtain. Roman law did grant the tenant some relief for an unforeseeable disaster, or vis maior, such as an earthquake, flood, an infestation by locusts or birds, or an invading army. But Roman law offered the tenant no relief for the foreseeable risks from agriculture, termed vitia ex re (Frier 1989-90). The problem was that this regime created a somewhat artificial distinction between an unforeseeable disaster and a supposedly foreseeable risk, such as a drought, that would make it equally impossible for the tenant to fulfil his obligations.
It is likely that many landowners had to be just as flexible as Pliny was when dealing with his tenants. Continuing poor crops created problems for Pliny’s tenants, who were constantly behind on their rent. Even so, Pliny never contemplated dismissing
Them. Instead, he endeavored to modify their lease terms so that they could remain on his estate, cultivating the land productively. First, Pliny remitted their rent, and
Then, when this measure did not solve the problem, he replaced the traditional system of leasing with sharecropping. This was a measure that reduced the tenants’ risk, but at the same time imposed many additional costs on Pliny, including the increased oversight that sharecropping requires, and the costs associated with marketing the crops. Pliny adopted this measure precisely because he wanted to preserve what was most advantageous in his relationship with his tenants, namely, their continued productive cultivation of his land:
For in the prior lease period, their arrears grew, although after substantial remissions; as a result many no longer have any concern to reduce their debt, which they despair of being able to pay off in full. They even seize and consume the produce, no longer believing that their efforts at thrift are beneficial to themselves. One must therefore meet the growing problems and cure them. There is one means of curing them: if I should lease not for cash but for shares of the harvest and then appoint from my own people some collectors, as guardians of the produce. And indeed there is no more just type of return than what the land, the weather, and the year bring. But this demands great trust, sharp eyes, and numerous hands. Still, one must experiment and, as with a long-standing disease, try every change of remedy. (Ep. 9.37.2-3)
The Roman government was drawn into this issue because it frequently had to adjudicate tenants’ claims for remissions of rent. In dealing with this issue, the Roman government recognized that social concerns might force landowners to adopt the same policy as Pliny followed in dealing with his tenants and be more accommodating than would be required under a strict interpretation of Roman law. In this circumstance, the concern of the Roman legal authorities was not to privilege the interests of either landowners or tenants over those of the other group. Rather, it sought to sort out the rights and obligations created for both groups when landowners granted remissions of rent. The consistent principle that the Roman government followed in this effort was to make sure, if possible, that remissions of rent granted beyond the strict requirements of Roman lease law would not result in the termination of the contractual relationship between landowners and tenants (Kehoe 1997: 221-34). In addressing tenants’ requests for remissions of rent, the Roman government often dealt with lease arrangements that were based not on the conventions of traditional Roman private law, but on local customary arrangements. The Roman government consistently tried to respect local arrangements and recognize them as legally binding in terms of Roman law. This was the approach that the emperor Diocletian used in responding to a petition concerning a remission of rent:
Concerning leases the faith of the contract is especially to be observed, if nothing specific should be expressed against the custom of the region. But if some landowners have remitted rent payments in contravention of the terms of the contract and the custom of the region, this should not be able to prejudice the claims of other landowners. ( CJust. 4.65.19, 293 ce [Diocletian])
The Roman legal authorities displayed this same flexibility in adapting other areas of the law to the realities of the Roman economy, such as in their interpretation of the tenant’s security of tenure. In classical Roman law, tenants did not enjoy possession of the land held under lease, so that they could be evicted from the land every time it changed hands. But the example of Pliny suggests that Roman landowners found ways to be more flexible in assuring tenants greater security of tenure. As in its treatment of risk, the Roman government occasionally recognized as legally binding traditional tenure arrangements offering the tenant greater security of tenure (Kehoe 1997: 181-236). This approach to land tenure explains a rescript from the emperor Alexander Severus to a tenant who had lost his lease when the farm that he was cultivating was sold. In this rescript, the emperor recognized that landowners and tenants might make agreements that offered the tenant much greater security of tenure than that implicit in conventional Roman lease law:
It is not necessary for the purchaser to allow the tenant to whom the previous owner had leased to remain, unless he purchases under this condition. But if it should be proved that he had consented in some type of agreement that the tenant remain in the same lease, even if the agreement is not written, he is compelled in a judgment of good faith to comply with what has been agreed upon. (CJust. 4.65.9, 234 ce)
This survey of the evidence allows us to identify some of the basic relationships that defined the Roman agrarian economy. Even though the situation of the landowning elite was quite enviable, we must also recognize the limitations on their ability to make profits from agriculture. The revenues that the state and the landowning elite derived from agriculture helped to sustain the magnificent urban culture of the Roman Empire, but these revenues depended on extracting surplus production from numerous small-scale tenants. This system of agriculture tended to become fossilized, with landowners having little capacity or inclination to invest heavily in technology that might make agriculture more productive. Such growth in the economy as did occur was more likely to have been the result of population pressure rather than from the increasing productivity of labor. Under these conditions, landowners seeking stability sought to preserve what was most advantageous to them, which was securing the services of tenants. This effort to preserve stability came to its logical conclusion in the third and fourth centuries, when the Roman government, to maintain its tax revenues, assigned landowners increasing responsibilities in collecting taxes and, to make sure that these landowners could meet their fiscal obligations, bound certain types of tenants, or coloni, to the land that they were cultivating. Even if the bound colonate in the later empire resulted from the fiscal concerns of the Roman government rather than from economic policy, the origins of this development lie in the institution of farm tenancy as it was practiced in the early empire.
World History
