Varro presents one such rhetorical handling of these broad ideas, utilizing them in a limited and conscious way. However, their scope and implications extend far beyond the matters with which the Res Rustica concerns itself. In the notion of a single, natural scale of status for all living beings, there exists a potential mechanism for understanding and discussing the entire structure of society. Varro’s treatment of this concept is a rhetorical one in that it is tailored to serve a rhetorical goal – whether that goal was to create a simple technical manual, or to write covert political commentary. To what extent other writers make use of the concept, and how they do so, remain to be seen. For the rest of this work, I will explore the ways in which Roman authors employ the same assumptions in order to discuss both social classifications and society as a whole. For the rest of this chapter, I will consider, in particular, how Cicero and Sallust comment on the standing of free persons by utilizing the notion that “slave” is a natural social category. The ideas displayed in the Res Rustica are also present in those texts, and clearly subject to rhetorical manipulation.
The Ideological Assimilation of Free Wage-Earners to Slaves
Cicero and Sallust wrote texts which, unlike the Res Rustica, are overtly political. They do not disguise their meaning with talk of shepherds and herd animals, or concern themselves with slaves and herd animals much at all. Their interests are the Roman state and its citizen body, the citizens’ slavery or freedom, the citizens’ humanity or lack of it. As a result, slaves and herd animals usually appear only as objects of comparison, in order to describe the state and status of citizens, usually the plebs. How could Sallust and Cicero describe free Romans in terms of domestic animals, when domestic animals necessarily implied servility? Cicero asserts that “other nations can bear servitude, but liberty is proper to the Roman people”: aliae nationes servitutem pati possunt, populi Romani est propria libertas” (Phil. 6.19). According to him, it is the senate’s task to safeguard and augment the plebis libertas (Sest. 137). These are not the claims of a man who attached an innately servile temperament to the Roman people. The populus Romanus were not legally slaves, either, to be owned and exploited like Varro’s shepherds. Nonetheless, Varro’s man-herd animal comparisons may clarify those in Cicero and Sallust. When he divides men and herd animals into the categories instrumentum vocale and instrumentum semivocale, he includes under the first heading not just slaves, but also free men – specifically mercennarii and poor farmers. In that instance, the similarity between herd animal and free man lay in their productive function. The same might be true for comparisons between herd animal and plebs.
Before I turn to Sallust’s Historiae and Cicero’s De Re Publica, I will examine De Officiis 1.150-151, a passage that discusses which occupations are acceptable, and which not, for a Roman gentleman. The text makes it clear that some professions carried the stigma of servility, even when practiced by free persons; it can therefore help to explain why free persons are likened to slaves and herd animals, and what these comparisons have to do with nature. Scholars have always debated whether the passage has a Ciceronian or Panaetian origin, whether its intended audience was Greek or Roman, and whether it expresses Roman attitudes. 57 Regardless of its provenance, I hope to show that some of its ideas, at least, have parallels in other Roman texts, and reflect concepts which we have already seen in the Res Rustica. I will pay special attention to the hired wage-earner, the mercennarius, for several reasons. The text does not just imply a certain degree of servility, but actually equates mercennarii with slaves, although they were not legally assimilated to slaves.58 Here, if anywhere, we should be able to discover how a legally free man can also be, conceptually, a slave. Moreover, Varro lumped mercennarii together with slaves under instrumentum vocale, and the idea of wage-earning plays an important part in the Sallust passage which I will analyze next.
The De Officiis reveals that the perceived “slavery” of mercennarii depends on their productive role, just as, in Varro, the similarity between slave and herd animal depends on productive role. The roles of both mercennarii and of actual slaves resemble that of herd animals, the “natural” slaves, who are destined to work for the benefit of man. The ideological degradation of wage-earners therefore illustrates how naturalizing slavery could affect the social standing of free persons: regardless of legal reality, a condition of servitude was thought to exist whenever the natural criterion for slavery was met. Since the natural criterion for slavery consisted of performing a certain productive role, anyone who performed that role occupied the same social space as slaves and herd animals. Mercennarii are assimilated to slaves – and by extension to herd animals – because their labor produces profit for others, not for themselves.
Cicero’s comments on mercennarii can only be understood in the context of the passage in which they appear. De Officiis 1.150-151 talks about “trades and means of livelihood, which ones are to be considered becoming to a free man, which ones are vulgar”: de artificiis et quaestibus, qui liberales habendi, qui sordidi sint. This introduction immediately establishes the three major trends of the passage. The first: various professions are ranked according to the social esteem enjoyed by their practitioners. Although the text does not set up a strict hierarchy, with every occupation placed relative to the others, it does indicate levels or gradations in social status, as determined by occupation. Mercennarii, for example, are clearly very low on the social scale. Their wage itself is the reward of slavery: est enim in illis ipsa merces auctoramentum servitutis. Skilled professions – like medicine, architecture, and teaching – are honorable, but only for those “whose station they befit”: eae sunt iis, quorum ordini conveniunt, honestae. Cicero makes agriculture the most prestigious money-making enterprise, claiming that “nothing is more worthy of a free man”: nihil homine libero dignius. By implication, the landowner living off the proceeds of agriculture commands the most prestige among men.
The language with which Cicero describes social status points to the second significant trend in this passage: it connects social standing to personal liberty. The text is full of vocabulary that refers to freedom or its opposite state, servitude. The distinction which Cicero draws at the very beginning – livelihoods which are liberales or sordidi – expresses the contrast between reputable and disreputable professions in terms of what is suitable for a free man, and what is not. This phenomenon continues. The livelihood of wage-earners is illiberalis, and their wage is a reward of servitus. There is nothing ingenuum in a workshop. Those trades must not be approved, which are ministrae to sensual pleasures. Nothing is more worthy for a homo liber than agriculture. The fact that there are gradations of liberty, corresponding to gradations in social status, is consistent with the Roman conception of libertas. As P.A. Brunt notes, “there could be degrees of freedom or servitude”. 59 The divisions in Cicero’s passage, between different levels of status and freedom, do not necessarily match legal divisions. A mercennarius was technically not a slave, and was no less free than a butcher with his own shop, or a teacher, whom Cicero ranks above both wage-earner and butcher. Rather, the inequalities reflect the amount of respect accorded to each profession, and liberty and social standing are measures of that respect.60 The passage as whole demonstrates that free people could be ideologically, if not legally, degraded to the lowest social state, that of slaves.
The third important trend recalls Varro’s practice in the Res Rustica: the De Officiis passage gauges the status of an individual, and the degree of his freedom or servitude, by the role he plays in a productive, money-making process. Brunt has pointed out that the text specifically examines means of acquiring wealth, quaestus; Cicero’s topic is not professions per se, but professions as sources of enrichment.61 He specifies that he is about to talk de artificiis et quaestibus, and then goes on to repeat the word quaestus three times throughout the passage. Agriculture is characterized as the best of all things “from which something is gained”: ex quibus aliquid adquiritur. Thus Cicero treats even agriculture, like any other source of income, as a profit-making enterprise – which is precisely what Varro does in the Res Rustica. In the Res Rustica, the emphasis on profit meant that productive function determined the standing of man and animal alike, and that servitude was defined as an economic relation between master and slave, not a power relation. The De Officiis shows that the same method of reckoning applied in society at large, beyond the narrow confines of a farm. Cicero derives social standing from the way an individual makes money: that is, from the goods and services which an individual produces, in order to earn a living. Although other cultural assumptions play a part as well, the final criterion of status is a person’s productive function, and the usefulness of that function for the community. Once, Cicero even employs the word utilitas, when he explains why skilled professions like teaching are respectable.
Since the passage emphasizes money-making and production, we ought to consider the “servitude” of mercennarii in terms of the economic aspects of wage-earning. This is especially true because De Officiis 1.150-151 has shown close parallels to the Res Rustica, and in that context the critical feature of slavery is an economic one. The exact wording of Cicero’s comment about mercennarii also stresses money; he speaks of “means of livelihood” and “buying” and “wage”. Here is what he says:
Illiberales autem et sordidi quaestus mercennariorum omnium, quorum operae, non quorum artes emuntur; est enim in illis ipsa merces auctoramentum servitutis.
Unbecoming to a free man and vulgar are the means of livelihood of all hirelings whose services, not whose skill, are bought; for in their case the wage itself is a reward of servitude.
Scholars usually attribute the poor reputation of wage-earning to the hired man’s dependence on his employer.62 That no doubt played a part, but is not the whole explanation. “Dependence” takes finances into account to a certain extent: the wage-earner depended on his employer to provide money. However, the idea of dependence refers more to the power disparity which existed between employer and employee, because the employer dispensed the money. Cicero seems more concerned with buying and selling than with power. Another theory relies on his distinction between buying operae and buying artes; the two words in juxtaposition seem to refer to manual labor and skilled labor, respectively. The aversion to wage-earning therefore reflects the upper-class aversion to working with one’s hands. Again, that must be part of the explanation, but not the whole. Other sources reveal that mercennarii need not be unskilled, manual laborers, and that selling even skilled labor for a wage carried a social stigma. Cornelius Nepos notes that Greeks held secretaries, scribae, in higher esteem than Romans did, since Romans considered secretaries to be mercennarii (Eum. 1.5). Quintilian claims that it is appropriate for forensic orators to accept monetary gifts of gratitude from their clients, but they must never collect a wage, merces (12.7.8-12). Although he never uses the word mercennarii, the appearance of merces implies that orators should not reduce themselves to mere wageearners. He refers to such a practice as “selling one’s work”: vendere operam. In this instance, opera certainly does not refer to manual labor; moreover, Quintilian’s argument demonstrates that even one of the most skilled and respected professions, forensic oratory, could be degraded when it was performed for a wage. I will examine this passage in more detail later. Here it is enough to note that Quintilian views the wage itself as demeaning, regardless of the nature of the work.
G.E.M. de Ste. Croix might come closest to the truth. He sees Cicero’s operae and artes as a distinction between two different types of worker. The first is a general laborer, who hires himself out over a period of time for unskilled or partly skilled work. The other is what we might call a “contractor”: someone who undertakes a specific task, usually requiring skill and the possession of some kind of equipment. The former, who is a mercennarius in the strict sense, does not sell his skill for a one-time job; rather, he sells “the general disposition of his labour power”.63 This view of the matter takes into account the economic dynamics of wage-earning, and also recalls Varro’s formulation of servitude in the Res Rustica.
In the Res Rustica, the most important aspect of slavery, and the one that made human slaves comparable to herd animals, lay in who produced for whom. Both slaves and herd animals, although they did receive upkeep in return, were ultimately enriching their masters. The master took the fruits of their labor for himself. An employer stood in the same economic relation to his mercennarius as a master to his slave or herd animal. By paying a wage, the employer became entitled to what de Ste. Croix calls “the general disposition” of the wageearner’s “labour power”. To put it another way, the employer purchased the right to the wageearner’s use and produce. This is what Cicero means when he says that the operae of hirelings are “bought”. Presumably the value of the hired man’s produce equaled, and often exceeded, the payment he received. Why bother to hire him, if the employer did not secure a return from the work performed? Thus, receiving a wage bound the mercennarius, like a slave, to labor for the profit of another man. Thus, as Cicero notes, “the wage itself is a reward of servitude”.64
Another passage in the De Officiis supports this reading. At 1.41, Cicero again equates mercennarius with slave:
Est autem infima condicio et fortuna servorum, quibus non male praecipiunt qui ita iubent uti, ut mercennariis: operam exigendam, iusta praebenda.
The lowest condition and fortune is that of slaves. Those men advise well, who bid us to make use of slaves thus, as we do hired workers: work must be exacted, dues must be paid.
Cicero’s recommendation addresses both moral and practical concerns. It comes in the course of a discussion about justice. Justice, he contends, is owed even to the most humble, who happen to be slaves. The quote above provides a guideline for treating slaves with justice, without ceding the master’s right to their labor and produce. They must be forced to work, but they must be given their dues, iusta, in return. Other texts hint at what Cicero might have in mind when he says iusta. We have already seen what Varro proposes for the use and care of slaves. He suggests providing not only necessities, but even certain privileges and accommodations; however, these generous provisions aim at increasing the productivity of slaves. They are not a gesture of kindness on the master’s part, but a stick-and-carrot method of getting the most work out of a human chattel. The precepts in Res Rustica books 1 and 2 are supposed to maximize agricultural profit; Varro was fully aware that the monetary return from well-treated slaves exceeded what was spent on them. Cato the Elder similarly focuses on profit in his own handbook of agriculture. Despite his infamous assertion that old and sick slaves should be sold (2.7), even he maintains that the familia ought to be kept warm and well-fed (5.2). No doubt his reasons for this attitude match Varro’s. Cicero’s iusta, if Varro and Cato are any guide, definitely did not constitute full recompense for the value of a slave’s work. The fact that the work of a mercennarius was likened to a slave’s work, and his iusta to a slave’s iusta, is telling. The principle that “work must be exacted” recognizes the employer’s financial stake in the hireling’s productivity. The conflation of merces with a slave’s iusta shows that a wage was not thought to cover the full worth of a wage-earner’s produce.
Two passages in Seneca make the connection between mercennarius and slave even more explicit. The first demonstrates that the Romans could and did distinguish between purchasing a thing and purchasing its use and produce. De Beneficiis 7.5.1-6.3 is devoted to drawing that very distinction. Seneca states that sometimes “one man is the owner of a thing, another of its use”: alter rei dominus est, alter usus. To illustrate his point, he adduces several examples of rental arrangements. The landowner does not have a right to his tenant farmers’ crops. The house owner cannot enter his tenant’s rented apartment. The man who has rented a cart does not have to give the owner a ride. Finally, “you [the slave owner] will not take away your slave, my hireling”: nec servum tuum, mercennarium meum, abduces. Here, Seneca imagines a scenario in which he has hired out another man’s slave. The fact that this mercennarius is also a slave is immaterial. What matters is the difference between slave and hireling. The context makes it clear that the issue turns on right of possession versus right of use. When a master bought a slave, he bought both kinds of right over the slave. If he then rented the slave out, he ceded right of use to the renter. Seneca treats a merces as the purchase price, or rental fee, for right of use. A free mercennarius, then, was someone who sold the right to his use and produce; because another had this right over him, he was like a slave. He did not, however, sell his person; no one had possession of him. That was the primary contrast between slave and mercennarius. The language of the De Officiis reflects the distinction between right of possession and right of use, when Cicero says of hirelings that their services are bought. He does not say that they themselves are bought.
The Romans knew, of course, that they were making a profit from the use of their slaves and wage-earners. This becomes clear in the other Seneca passage, in which he discusses whether it is possible for a slave to perform a beneficium for his master (De Ben. 3.18.1-28.6). Seneca claims that he can; others apparently said otherwise. They reasoned, according to Seneca, that a service is only a beneficium, when bestowed by someone who does not have to bestow it. However, a slave is a person “whose condition has placed him in such a position, that nothing he offers imposes a charge on his superior”: quem condicio sua eo loco posuit, ut nihil eorum, quae praestat, imputet superiori. This argument is further refined. A slave, claims Seneca’s opponent, cannot bestow a beneficium for the following reason. “He is not able to become his master’s creditor, if he gives him money. Otherwise he places his master under obligation every day”: Quia non potest…creditor domini sui fieri, si pecuniam illi dederit. Alioqui cotidie dominum suum obligat. The imaginary speaker then lists several jobs which slaves normally undertake for their masters. He ends with the declaration that a slave has no power to refuse any of these things; since he has to give them in any event, they cannot constitute beneficia. This entire case rests on the master’s right to the use and produce of his slave. The slave must provide his labor, and the master is entitled to the fruits of his slave’s labor, owing nothing in return except upkeep. Because everything the slave has or produces belongs to the master anyway, the master cannot be the slave’s debtor, or the slave his master’s creditor. A beneficium need not be a cash gift; it could be a favor performed. However, the interlocutor decides to clarify his point in terms of money. This choice shows an awareness that the slave’s services have a certain monetary value which ultimately enriches the master. The relationship between master and slave could be construed as an essentially financial arrangement, in which the productive capacity of one side is exploited for the benefit of the other.
It is in response to this reasoning that Seneca presents his counter-attack. Despite the master’s rights over a slave, he believes it possible for a slave to go above and beyond the call of duty, thereby bestowing a beneficium on his master. Here he introduces and espouses a view which he attributes to a Stoic philosopher. “A slave, according to Chrysippus, is a perpetual wage-earner. Just as a wage-earner gives a benefit when he supplies more than he contracted for, so a slave”: Servus, ut placet Chrysippo, perpetuus mercennarius est. Quemadmodum ille beneficium dat, ubi plus praestat, quam in quod operas locavit, sic servus. I cited this quotation in the previous chapter as evidence that the Stoics viewed slavery as an economic role, though I did not discuss at the time how they defined that role. Given the context of this passage, there is only one way to understand the servile function as it is presented here: to produce profit for another. Like Varro and like Seneca’s imagined opponent, Chrysippus presumes that a slave is someone constrained to offer his full services and their value to his master, for a minimal amount of recompense in the form of his upkeep. The equation of slave to mercennarius only works if a mercennarius, too, provides services to his employer whose value exceeds his fee. With this argument, Seneca continues to cast the debate in financial terms. The comparison works to the slave’s advantage, and supports Seneca’s point, because it limits what the slave owes to his master. A hireling might provide his employer with more than he receives in return, but his obligation to the employer is still circumscribed by what he contracts to do, and the amount of wage he collects. If a slave is a kind of mercennarius, then his obligation is finite as well. He is therefore capable of surpassing the bounds of what he must give, and so providing a beneficium.
I have taken much of my evidence for mercennarii from philosophical works by Seneca and Cicero, both heavily indebted to Stoicism. Seneca cites the Stoic Chrysippus for the idea that a slave is a perpetuus mercennarius, and scholars have seen this concept as the basis of Cicero’s remarks in the De Officiis, whether he was influenced by Chrysippus directly or indirectly through Panaetius.65 We might ask whether the attitudes expressed by Cicero and Seneca had any currency beyond philosophical theory. Varro’s Res Rustica indicates that the Stoic definition of slavery, at least, appeared outside of strictly philosophical contexts. I have just shown that Stoic comments on wage-earning depend on the same assumption which underlies Varro’s treatment of slaves: servitude is an economic arrangement in which one person works for the gain of another. We should probably conclude from this circumstance that common notions influenced both Varro and the Stoics; it is unlikely that philosophical precepts exercised much influence over how the Romans perceived and managed their agricultural business enterprises. Likewise, a passage in Quintilian suggests that the views on wage-earning which I just discussed reflect widespread cultural prejudices.
Although Quintilian occasionally appeals to philosophy, the relevant section concerns practical, professional ethics (12.7.8-12). Here he attempts to establish guidelines for the payment of forensic orators, obviously believing that the form which this payment takes will impact an orator’s standing in society. Specifically, he addresses whether they should accept a fee. I referred to this passage earlier, as an instance in which a wage was felt to degrade skilled labor. It is now time to consider the exact nature of Quintilian’s objection to wage-earning. The text is full of vocabulary that recalls the De Officiis. He starts with the claim that it is “most honorable” (honestissimum) and “most worthy of a liberal education” (liberalibus disciplinis…dignissimum) to work for free. If anyone makes oratory a source of gain when he already has enough money, he lays himself open to the charge of vulgarity (sordes). The opposition between liberalis and sordidus dominates De Officiis 1.150-151, where it provides the standard by which Cicero assesses the various professions. Whatever is not liberalis is unworthy of a free man. In Quintilian, then, as in Cicero, the measure of a person’s liberty is somehow implicated in his means of making money. “Means of making money”, rather the profession itself, is the issue here, as it is in the De Officiis. When a man takes money for his oratory, Quintilian describes it as a quaestus, and an adquirendi ratio. Forensic oratory itself was, of course, a prestigious profession. As I pointed out before, the fact that even an orator could have this dilemma shows that a stigma attached to the merces itself.
The language of buying and selling predominates in this passage, as it does in the other texts which talk about mercennarii. Quintilian speaks of receiving a wage (merces), of selling work (vendere operam), of selling a service (venire beneficium), of having a price (pretium), of owing (debet). Ultimately, he concedes that an orator in need of funds may accept a client’s gift of gratitude; on no account, however, must he accept a wage. The distinction seems meaningless, since the orator takes money from his client either way. Quintilian’s reasoning becomes clear, however, if we recognize that a wage is the selling price for the right to a person’s use and produce. That also explains all the vocabulary of buying and selling. A forensic orator usually performed his job not for his own sake, but in the service of others. Quintilian himself notes that it is hard for an orator to make money in any way except from his oratory, since “all his time is given to the business of others”. If an orator were to charge a set fee, he would essentially sell his client the right to his service, whose worth exceeded the fee itself. The transaction therefore bound the orator to undertake labor that profited another more than himself, which would be an arrangement akin to servitude. Quintilian’s solution finds a way around this problem:
Nihil ergo adquirere volet orator ultra quam satis erit, ac ne pauper quidem tamquam mercedem accipiet, sed mutua benivolentia utetur, cum sciet se tanto plus praestitisse: non enim, quia venire hoc beneficium non oportet, oportet perire: denique ut gratus sit ad eum magis pertinent qui debet.
An orator will wish to make no more money than is enough, and not even a poor man will take it as a wage, but he will use mutual goodwill, when he knows that he has given so much more: for the service ought not go to waste, because it ought not to be sold: finally, that he be grateful pertains more to the man who owes.
By relying on mutua benivolentia, rather than exacting a fee, the orator ostensibly offers his labor for free. Because he does not sell the right to his work, he does not obligate himself to perform a task that is worth “so much more” than what he receives in return. Rather, he puts himself in the superior position of having obligated another. Since it is the client “who owes”, it behooves him to show his gratitude with a gift of cash. Quintilian’s advice allows the orator to collect his money, while avoiding the odium of selling his services and becoming a mercennarius.
If Quintilian is any indication, working for a wage was felt to be degrading even among skilled professionals. It impinged upon the personal liberty of the wage-earner, and so diminished both his standing as a free man, and the amount of respect he could command in society. For a mercennarius in the strict sense – a general laborer who hired out his unskilled work – the stigma of wage-earning counted against him, as well as those of poverty and manual labor. They all combined to reduce his status to that of a virtual slave. He was not legally a slave, nor was an orator any less free before the eyes of the law, if he decided to accept a wage. “Status” here corresponds to the prestige, or lack thereof, accorded to a person by society at large. The hireling’s ideological assimilation to a slave resembles the assimilation of slave to herd animal: in each case, the sources conflate the two categories, while still recognizing a difference between them.
The explanation for this phenomenon lies in the point of similarity that drives the comparisons. In the Res Rustica, De Officiis, and other texts I have examined, the general emphasis is on money-making and its source, the production of goods and services. More specifically, money and production dominate comments about slaves and mercennarii, and indeed prove to be the link between them. Because somebody else owns the right to their use and produce, wage-earners and slaves both labor for somebody else’s profit. They therefore have essentially the same role in the productive process, and play the same part in the acquisition of money: they work in order to provide themselves with a little, and someone else with more. In a cultural context that evaluated social standing in terms of utility, the status of mercennarius and that of servus were bound to overlap – to the detriment of the mercennarius. Wage-earning, a form of exploitation, was inevitably likened to slavery, the most perfect form of exploitation, which inflicted the deepest social disgrace.
In the background, serving as the perfect model of the perfect form of exploitation, was the herd animal: the pecus, basis of all pecunia, who was destined by nature to labor for and enrich man. The existence of this natural slave made slavery a natural criterion against which to judge any profession. Nature itself had established the servile function and allotted it to herd animals. Since a domestic animal was, by definition, an animal that served this natural purpose, any person who served the same purpose was a kind of domestic animal. Perhaps only legal slavery corresponded perfectly to that job description; nonetheless, an occupation was demeaning if it brought its practitioner closer to a servile state, and so closer to the level of a herd animal. This is reflected in the language Cicero uses to assess professions in the De Officiis. He approves or disapproves of each one according to how liberalis it is, “suitable for a free man”. People like mercennarii, who were almost fully assimilated to slaves, risked losing not just their status as free men, but their status as men altogether. When Cicero claims that agriculture is most worthy of a free man, he includes the word homo: nihil homine libero dignius. If the reader does not realize what is at stake, the insertion of homine might seem like a pleonasm. In fact, its use is very pointed. Because slaves were so closely identified with herd animals, the distinction between free and slave was also a distinction between human and herd animal. Thus, the more free a person was, the more human he was. The liber homo who was not truly free was both less liber and less a homo.
A passage in Petronius’ Satyricon illustrates how a threat to liberty could be construed as a threat to human identity. A mercennarius named Corax takes exception to the heavy labor he is required to do. He protests:
“Quid vos” inquit “iumentum me putatis esse aut lapidariam navem? Hominis operas locavi, non caballi. Nec minus liber sum quam vos, etiam si pauperem pater me reliquit.” (117.11-12)
Do you think that I am some draft animal or ship for carrying stones? I contracted the work of a human, not of a pack horse. I am no less free than you, even if my father did leave me a poor man.
The mercennarius seems to believe that the nature of his work is more fitting for a herd animal, and that this fact has led others to view him as a herd animal. His fear is consistent with the tendency I have now traced through the Res Rustica, De Officiis, and other texts: job, or productive function, determines the status of man and animal alike. Because they both subsist on the same scale of social worth, they can be assimilated to each other, or occupy the same social category, on the basis of shared function. Corax obviously connects herd animals with slavery, and their labor with servile labor, since he defiantly asserts that he is as free as anyone else. He also implies that he is only doing this job because he is poor, which indicates that he sees servile work as demeaning, just as Cicero does. In three short sentences, Corax’s complaint demonstrates how entangled were the concepts of “slave” and “herd animal”, on the one hand, and “free” and “human”, on the other. It shows, too, that mercennarii were associated with the wrong end of the spectrum. Corax’s wage-earning has put him in a position where he feels the need to defend his standing as both a liber and a homo.
The words have been put into this character’s mouth by a wealthy, senatorial author, and might communicate specifically upper-class prejudices. It is impossible to know for sure whether mercennarii themselves, and other people of low station, shared these low views on wage-earning. A passage from Sallust may be suggestive, however. It makes use of the same ideas, and its context indicates that it might reflect the concerns of a plebeian audience. If so, then the plebs in general, like Corax the mercennarius, felt acutely that their liberty was at stake, and their status as human beings along with it.
Fighting for Freedom and Humanity in Popular Oratory
Scholars generally recognize that there was a distinctly popular brand of oratory practiced in republican Rome, a set of tropes and ideas utilized by those who were speaking before the assembled people and professing to champion their interests. 66 Such oratory tended to rail against the supposed slavery of the plebs; accordingly, the preeminent slogan was “freedom”, libertas.67 If we assume that this rhetoric was meant to address the concerns and desires of the plebs, then we may deduce from the prevalence of servitus and libertas that they were concerned for their status as free men. I have argued at length now that the opposition between free and slave in Roman thought often resolved itself into the opposition between human and domestic animal, due to the perception that slaves and domestic animals have the same natural and social value. We might suspect, then, that the plebs, suffering anxiety over their freedom, worried about their standing as humans, as well. Certain texts indicate that this was indeed the case. There are four extant orations usually thought to exemplify the popular style of speaking.68 One of them is a speech delivered by a tribune named Macer, as reported by Sallust in a fragment of the Historiae (3.34). In addition to taking libertas as its leitmotiv, it contains a prominent comparison between the plebs and herd animals. The comparison establishes some of the major topics of the speech, which are all closely entwined throughout the text with the theme of plebeian liberty. This oration is therefore the ideal text with which to consider why free citizens are likened to slaves and animals, and how nature is implicated in the comparison.
I contend that the passage draws upon the same conception of slavery that prompted Varro to assimilate slaves to herd animals, and Cicero to assimilate wage-earners to slaves. By extension, the speech reveals that the plebs shared in, or at least were aware of, the ideology that reduced free wage-earners to virtual slaves, and thus very nearly to animals. In fact, these ideas play a major role in the whole tradition of popular oratory; after I discuss their use in Macer’s speech, I will trace their presence in other popular speeches.
Specifically, I will show that the primary point of comparison between plebs, on the one hand, and slaves and herd animals, on the other, is productive or economic role. Thus, as we have seen elsewhere, popular orations assume that the defining feature of slavery is determined not by law, but by nature. Despite their free legal status, the plebs perform the function naturally allotted to slave and herd animals, and so the plebs, too, are slaves and herd animals in a sense. In the other texts which I have examined, characterization as a slave or herd animal does not necessarily connote an innately servile temperament, and therefore does not presuppose the existence of teleologically differentiated human types; the designation describes a certain job and its attendant social status. Again, the same holds true for portrayals of the plebs in popular speeches, which make a point of contrasting the natural slavishness of herd animals with the plebs’ naturally free and human character. With this tactic, the speakers protest the plebs’ servitude. Although it may seem counterintuitive, popular rhetoric therefore combats plebeian slavery, but does so by employing the ideas which naturalize legal slavery.
The oration in which this trope figures most prominently was never actually delivered. Although a tribune named Macer did, apparently, deliver a speech to the people on the same subject, the version that survives is Sallust’s reconstruction. It is impossible to say how closely Sallust has followed Macer’s original speech; however, whether Macer really said something like this, or Sallust invented something appropriate to put into his mouth, the historical context guarantees that it reflects the kind of oratory intended to appeal to the plebs. C. Licinius Macer was tribune of the plebs in 73 B.C., and here he speaks to the assembled people, addressing them directly in the second-person plural. The matter at hand featured prominently in politics from 76 to 70 B.C.: the restoration of the legislative powers of the tribunate, which Sulla’s constitutional reforms had removed. The tribunes would regain the right to initiate legislation in 70 B.C., but in 73 Macer was one of those agitating for that very outcome. In his oration, he represents himself as the people’s defender in this fight and exhorts them to force the issue through collective action.
Because the tribunate was always regarded as a bastion of plebeian freedom,69 Macer could cast the curtailment of tribunician powers as a problem in which freedom itself was at stake. In keeping with popularis rhetoric, and the political circumstances, he does so. From the very outset (1-4), he establishes that Sulla has imposed slavery, servitium, on the plebs, a slavery currently maintained by the mastery, dominatio, of the nobles. Macer himself is encouraging the people to take the path which will lead to the recovery of their libertas. Although, in fighting alone for their rights, he has taken on a task impossible for one man, he has decided that defeat in the struggle for liberty is better for a brave man than not to have struggled at all. The language of slavery, mastery, and liberty continues throughout the oration. The idea of struggling for liberty, in particular, serves as a rallying point. It is significant that Macer immediately characterizes this struggle as something that befits a brave man, fortis vir. Since the contrast between free and slave was also a contrast between human and animal, the vir (male human) perhaps stands in opposition both to womanly weakness and to the slavishness of herd animals. What follows confirms that this is the case.
The next two sentences further explain the situation (5-6). Here, Macer describes the plebs’ noble masters and the nature of the slavery they have imposed. We might expect the speaker to say more about the tribunician power and political rights, since that is the issue under discussion. Instead, he talks about how a few prominent men have taken possession of imperial holdings. It is in this context that Macer compares plebs to herd animals:
Itaque omnes concessere iam in paucorum dominationem, qui per militare nomen aerarium, exercitus, regna, provincias occupavere et arcem habent ex spoliis vestris, cum interim more pecorum vos, multitudo, singulis habendos fruendosque praebetis, exuti omnibus quae maiores reliquere…70
Therefore all have now yielded to the mastery of a few, who, under pretence of war, have seized the treasury, the armies, the kingdoms, and the provinces, and hold a stronghold from your spoils; in the meantime you, in the manner of herd animals, offer yourselves, a multitude, to individuals for use and enjoyment, after having been stripped of everything which your ancestors left you…
According to this passage, the supposed servitude of the plebs, and their likeness to herd animals, consist of two elements: economic exploitation, and their willingness to be so exploited. Even though Macer does not explicitly mention herd animals again, these two concepts are both fundamental to the rest of the speech. The idea of the domestic animal – the perfect, natural slave – therefore shapes his portrayal of the plebs’ slavery and its opposite state, their freedom.
The fact that the matter involves money is signaled by several words: aerarium, spoliis, habendos, fruendos, pecorum. Per militare nomen and spoliis indicate that a particular kind of property is under scrutiny: that acquired through military action. The contents of the treasury, the armies, the kingdoms, and the provinces are all represented as spoils of war. Macer leaves no doubt about who is responsible for winning these possessions: plebeian soldiers. That is why he refers to the list of goods as “your spoils”, as spoils that properly belong to the people who fought for them. A few powerful men, however, have seized these goods. Thus the plebs can be said to offer themselves “for the use and enjoyment” of such men: the plebs’ military labor, voluntarily undertaken, is enriching these individuals rather than the plebs themselves. Here, as we have seen elsewhere, ideological servitude and mastery exist where there is a relationship of economic exploitation: one who works for the profit of another man is a slave, one who keeps the profit from another man’s work is a master. If they were really free men, as opposed to slaves and herd animals, the plebs would be enjoying the fruits of their own labor.
It might seem strange that a speech ostensibly about legislative rights should harp on the fate of military spoils. Macer, however, calls the tribunician power “a weapon prepared by your ancestors for liberty”, vis tribunicia, telum a maioribus libertati paratum (12). This is hardly a unique thought; as I have already pointed out, the tribunate was always associated with the freedom of the plebs. Since the office existed in order to secure the plebs’ liberty, any impingement on that liberty could be seen as the province of the tribunes. A skeptic might suspect that this offered a conveniently wide rhetorical umbrella for any politician seeking to win the favor of the plebs. In Sallust’s version of the speech, Macer never does offer concrete details about the supposed theft of plebeian property, nor a plan for dealing with the problem. Perhaps his talk of public money is an allusion to – and promise of – reforms that involved the redistribution of state property, like the grain dole and agrarian legislation; such reforms were usually initiated by the tribunes of the plebs, utilizing the very power which Sulla’s constitution had stripped from them. Thus the tribunes’ legislative powers could be seen as a mechanism by which state money, acquired in war, made its way back to the people who had fought for it; in this way, the tribunate secured for the plebs an economic return from their own labor, and by extension secured their liberty. By this roundabout logic, never explicitly stated, the tribunes’ lost legislative powers do have a connection to military spoils. Whatever his intentions, and however sincere he was, Macer clearly recognized the efficacy of this particular appeal, even when the disposal of government property was not strictly the matter at hand. He no doubt realized that the issue of political rights was always more abstract, and of less immediate interest, than the question, Where is my money?
Economic exploitation is one aspect that the plebs have in common with herd animals, who are also slaves. The other similarity is the plebs’ apparent acceptance of their exploitation, signaled by Macer’s accusatory use of the word praebetis. The plebs actually yield themselves up for servitude, willingly going off to fight when it will not enrich them, passively letting other men take the profits. The comparison turns on the belief that herd animals are slaves by nature. They always accept their lot with passivity and willingly labor for the benefit of human masters, because they have no alternative; they serve and obey in accordance with inescapable, natural impulses. This idea appears prominently elsewhere in Sallust. As I explained in the first chapter, it plays a part in the prologue of the Bellum Catilinae. There, herd animals are employed as a negative model, an extreme to avoid, precisely because they have no choice but to behave slavishly. In the same work, Sallust has Catiline urge his troops to die fighting like men, rather than be captured and “slaughtered like herd animals”: neu capti potius sicuti pecora trucidemini quam virorum more pugnantes (58.21). His remark assumes that domestic animals are characterized by a servility so extreme, they quietly acquiesce even in their own deaths. Macer suggests that the plebs are displaying just such acquiescence, which is the essential feature of the herd animal’s natural character.
All three Sallustian passages, however – prologue, military harangue, and contio – offer an alternative to this brutish slavishness. The prologue maintains that a human can, should, must strive to be better than the beasts. Catiline tells his troops to fight to the bloody end so that might they die like men. Macer, too, exhorts his listeners not to behave in the manner of herd animals. In each case, Sallust is drawing upon a conception of human nature which I discussed in chapter 1, and which definitely does not entail human teleology. When the speaker calls upon his audience to decide between an animal and a human mode of conduct, he presumes that people, unlike animals, have a capacity for choice or free will. However, this capacity enables humans to choose wrongly, and so deviate from correct human behavior. The passages all identify the correct standard of human behavior for the audience, by portraying one form of conduct as proper to herd animals, and another as proper to humans. Thus, in every instance, Sallust simultaneously makes use of both a normative and a descriptive understanding of “humanity”. In the normative sense, the audience will be less human if they pick the option which the speaker warns them against, because that course of action is inconsistent with the norm of human behavior. In the descriptive sense, the audience members are all fully human in that they possess the uniquely human power for choice. Therefore, they all have the ability to adhere to the human norm and become “truly” human, if only they will choose rightly by acting as the speaker recommends.
In keeping with the pattern outlined above, Macer’s speech does not posit that the plebs are naturally slavish or subhuman; in fact, it asserts the opposite. The oration draws its persuasive and emotive power from the tension between the servile role forced upon the plebs, and their naturally free and human character. Precisely because they are not slaves or animals by nature, they can choose not to submit to treatment which is unsuitable for human beings; they can choose to reclaim a truly human living situation by rising up and taking what is rightfully theirs. Therefore the reference to herd animals is in fact a clarion call to action. The plebs’ noble masters have imposed upon them a condition of economic servitude, a condition equivalent to that of slavish herd animals. They will continue to be treated like animals, and resemble them in character, if they do not correctly utilize their human faculty of choice and exercise their will to act. We see now why Macer claims that the struggle for liberty, even a losing one, befits a brave man, and why he later urges the plebs to remember and recreate the manly deeds, virilia illa, of their ancestors (15). The choice to resist, the will to freedom, the struggle itself is naturally appropriate to a man, utterly denied to a herd animal.
Although Macer only mentions herd animals once, the themes established in that one sentence continue throughout the speech. The negative example of the herd animal therefore remains very much in the foreground. Sections 14-16 dwell on the idea that the plebs are willingly submitting to their servitude, by supporting the designs of their self-appointed masters (like herd animals). Macer accuses his audience of having a weak spirit, animus ignavus, since they are not mindful of their liberty outside of the assembly. All the power is actually in their hands, he claims, because they can choose to carry out or not to carry out the very commands which are imposing their slavery. The plebs are putting such orders into effect by executing them, and are thus rushing to enact their own servitude (like herd animals). Since their slavery depends on their connivance, they could win their freedom simply by refusing to cooperate.
In sections 17-18, Macer further refines on his characterization of the plebs’ slavery, and on his plan for ending it. Here, too, he describes their slavery in terms of economic exploitation. He begins: iure gentium res repeto, “I demand restitution according to the law of nations”. This is the formula which was used by the fetialis to demand from a foreign state reparation for stolen goods or redress for an injury.71 The demand for the return of stolen goods, aimed as it is at the domineering nobles, again voices the idea that all state holdings really belong to the plebs. The nobles who are enjoying these goods can be said to have stolen them from their rightful owners. The only remedy for the situation is for the plebs to get their money back. How does Macer propose they accomplish this? He advises that they no longer offer up their blood: ne amplius sanguinem vestrum praebeatis censebo. The reference to blood signals that he has military spoils in mind when he speaks of stolen goods. Since he specifies that the plebs shed their blood of their own accord, this might also be an implicit comparison to herd animals, who even die willingly for their masters’ benefit. When he bids them to stop shedding their blood, Macer means that they should stop serving as soldiers. Let the nobles wage their wars alone, he urges, but “let danger and labor be absent for those who have no part of the profit”: absit periculum et labos, quibus nulla pars fructus est. This last phrase expresses the character of the plebs’ servitude explicitly and succinctly: they perform the labor of military service, but do not reap the profits. Macer’s “no pay, no work” slogan calls to mind a modern labor strike, and that is essentially what he advocates. The nobles cannot carry out a war without plebeian soldiers. Soldiers who refuse to fight will not be paid, but neither will the nobles grow rich off their hardship.