102 THE ROMAN EMPIRE
their existence at any signifi cant level. The argument might run as follows.
Exploitation by the state in the form of prolonged, mass recruitment into
the army, the disruption of civil wars and economic pressure from the rich,
had drastically undermined the position of the free peasantry of the middle
and late Republic. Italy under the Principate was no longer in turmoil, and
army recruiters, unless they were raising an entirely new legion, looked to
the provinces for legionaries and auxiliaries. Yet the decline of the peasant
proprietor continued inexorably. Aristocrats accumulated landholdings at
their expense and brought them increasingly into service as tenant- farmers.
Plausible though it sounds, this view reveals misunderstandings of the
make- up and way of life of the rural population and the nature of its
relationships with the large landowners. Owner- occupiers, tenant- farmers
and farm labourers working for a wage were three overlapping categories;
thus owner- occupiers were a major recruiting ground for tenants.^22 Certainly,
large landowners drew their tenants and seasonal labourers from a wider
group, including landowners of moderate means and urban residents
engaged in non- agricultural pursuits (Columella disapproved of the tenant
of urban base or origin, colonus urbanus, 1.7.3). Nevertheless they preferred
men with roots in the neighbourhood, (cf. Columella 1.7.4; Pliny, Ep. 6.30).
If poor peasants were in demand, it is also the case that they were tempted
or forced to seek ways of increasing their meagre incomes. This has the
consequence that an increase in the number of tenancies, if this was achieved
through the transformation of the conventional ‘slave estate’ into one or
several tenancies, might actually mean more employment for (a similar
number of) peasant proprietors.
But of course additional tenancies could be created in another way that
would have depleted the numbers of owner- occupiers, namely, by the simple
conversion of impoverished proprietors into tenant farmers working the same
or other land. This is certainly a possible scenario. Whether large landholders
customarily added to their landholdings in this way is another matter. Owners
of moderate- sized properties were also vulnerable, because of their exposure
to market fl uctuation and competition. Peasants, insofar as they produced for
subsistence, were not in competition with the wealthy producers.
There is the additional point that large landowners who used free men as
labourers and managers were actually sustaining the peasantry by offering
additional sources of income. This was calculation, not charity; we cannot
even be sure that the numerous landowners who participated in Trajan’s
alimentary scheme did so voluntarily and with humanitarian motives.^23
There were landowners in all periods who exploited peasants ruthlessly,
whether within or outside a patronage relationship. But a large- scale or
systematic expropriation of the peasantry would have increased the mobility
of this section of the rural population, and undermined the economic
position of the large landowner himself. Meanwhile the army with its policy
of distributing land to soldiers on discharge was available as a mechanism
for the regular replenishing of the stock of peasant proprietors.