Introduction
Runaway slaves are at the forefront of discussion in the manuals of modern estate- and slave-owners. A few lines from James Henry Hammond’s plantation manual, composed in the mid-1850s in the American South, illustrate this well:Footnote 1
The following is the order in which offences must be estimated and punished: 1) Running away, 2) Getting drunk or having spirits, 3) Stealing hogs, 4) Stealing, 5) Leaving the plantation without permission, 6) Absence from the house after horn blown at night, 7) Unclean house or person, 8) Neglect of tools, 9) Neglect of work.
The highest punishment must not exceed 100 lashes in a day not severely given and only in extreme cases.
Curiously, this detailed approach to servile discipline – and the pre-eminence taken up by servile flight within it – is not detectable in the works of the Roman agricultural writers Cato, Varro, and Columella.Footnote 2 This absence is all the more surprising, since these three writers’ treatises contain a myriad of practical information concerned with the running of rural villa estatesFootnote 3 where servile labour was a staple from the mid-Republican period onwards.Footnote 4
Allegedly the least and most systematic treatises among the three, Cato’s De Agricultura and Columella’s De Re Rustica Footnote 5 contain respectively no discussion (Cato) and an exploration of slave management which basically ignores punitive discipline (Columella).Footnote 6 Wedged between them, in terms of both chronology and size, is Varro’s De Re Rustica, which bears a series of distinctive features: structured as a set of three dialogues (with a philosophical and satirical flavour), it is also a text very much influenced by the juridical discourse.Footnote 7 As Nelsestuen notes, from the very start of Varro’s manual, ‘the staged process of dialectical exchange – including the seemingly pedantic squabbling, citation of previous agronomists, and emergent consensus – with a view to exploring the bounds of agri cultura smacks of the sort of conceptualizing characteristic of the late republican juristic tradition.’Footnote 8 This latter, legal aspect in particular would suggest a broader interest in questions regarding servile ‘crime and punishment’ on the estate, given the centrality of this theme to legal discussion in general.
However, at the junctures where one would expect the issue to be addressed, Varro is silent. He only deems a few topics worth mentioning when considering slave labour all round. Following some pronouncements on the preferable character and traits of the enslaved, including with regard to the enslaved overseer (the vilicus, Rust. 1.17.4),Footnote 9 Varro recommends the implementation of a system of rewards to enhance the labour force’s productivity (1.17.5–7). There follows advice concerning the necessary number of enslaved labourers according to the size of the estate and the nature of the crops the estate-owner desires to grow (1.18). Apart from a brief mention of the whip (recommended merely when words cannot achieve the same results, at 1.17.5),Footnote 10 only the tiniest glimpse of disciplinary issues is revealed in Varro’s treatise in a seeming aside regarding the ethnicity of the enslaved: the purchase of too many from the same region, he claims, might lead to ‘domestic quarrels’ (offensiones domesticae, 1.17.5).Footnote 11 Varro does not touch upon running away in this obvious context. At 1.16, as he praises the highest profitability of a farm where no time is wasted (being located in a neighbourhood where all kinds of services are at hand), he merely forbids leaving the estate, profusely reiterating however this provision in a handful of lines (1.16.5):
Itaque ideo Sasernae liber praecipit, nequis de fundo exeat praeter vilicum et promum et unum, quem vilicus legat; siquis contra exierit, ne impune abeat; si abierit, ut in vilicum animadvertatur. Quod potius ita praecipiendum fuit, nequis iniussu vilici exierit, neque vilicus iniussu domini longius, quam ut eodem die rediret, neque id crebrius, quam opus esset fundo .
And so Saserna’s book establishes that no person shall leave the estate except the overseer, the steward, and one whom the overseer may designate; if someone leaves, contravening this rule, he shall not go unpunished, and if he does, the overseer shall meet punishment. But this rule should have rather been stated thus: that no one shall leave the estate unless ordered by the overseer, nor the overseer unless ordered by the master, for more than a day and more frequently than it is necessary for the estate.Footnote 12
The richness of detail and the almost redundant character of the passage insinuate the possibility that the pressing issue of slave runaways (fugitivi) is at stake here, also considering that, in the mind of the jurists, there is a strong association between the countryside and the phenomenon of servile flight (fuga).Footnote 13
Mere possibilities aside, this article will show that slave flight is actually dealt with by Varro, albeit in the discussion of the behaviour not of humans, but of animals. Runaway slaves are far from being neglected in Varro’s manual: we have simply been looking for them in the wrong places. As will be seen, Varro approaches the topic in the third book of his De Re Rustica, in sections concerned with snails and bees, where he embeds the discourse on servile flight through the means of legal innuendoes. After exploring the noted innuendoes, the context for Varro’s dismissive approach and use of juridical echoes will be explored briefly in the Conclusion to this article: rather than difference, there emerges broad similarity between the literary preoccupations of ancient and modern estate- and slave-owners regarding servile discipline, and in particular flight, arising from their comparable roles.
1. Snails and bees at large
Hammond’s list of servile offences is opened by running away and contains two items (namely nos. 5 and 6) which could be considered variations of the same offence. The American enslavers’ fixation with their human chattel roaming independently emerges as crucial and there is an obvious set of reasons for it. Running away is a uniquely servile crime: it cannot, in principle, be committed by free people. Most importantly, then, by physically removing themselves from the proximity and control of their masters, runaways pose the biggest threat to the rights claimed by the slave-owner – both modern and ancient.
That servile flight was in fact a more serious concern for Roman estate- and slave-owners than what Varro’s above-cited prohibition on leaving the estate suggests can be deduced from his discussion of two rather different species: snails and bees. Thus, although fugitives lack a proper mention in the sections regarding slave management, and slaves rambling around are not explicitly singled out in the passage quoted above, the vocabulary of runway slaves (fugitivi) is oddly applied to some of the animals discussed in the section on pastio villatica.Footnote 14 This denomination indicates the husbandry to be practised in or around the villa (3.2.13) and is the sole topic of Book 3.Footnote 15 It entails the following categories: aviaries (ornithones, at 3.6–11),Footnote 16 animal-hutches (leporaria, at 3.12–16), and fishponds (piscinae, at 3.17). For present purposes it must be noted that the animals in the animal-hutches are divided into two sub-groups, the former including hares (3.12), boar and deer (3.13), and the latter comprising snails (3.14), dormice (3.15), and bees (3.16).
The pastio villatica is a topic for which, as Nelsestuen reminds us, ‘the technical precepts are keyed to the perspective of an owner (dominus) and not the actual fowler or servile caretaker’.Footnote 17 This tone does not differ from that of Book 2, but in the third dialogue there is a more marked emphasis on the estate-owner’s gain, i.e. the profit that can be generated through this activity (3.2.13–18),Footnote 18 combined with an associated insistence on the creation of proper infrastructure. For each category of animals, apposite accommodation is discussed. However, as noted by Spencer, when it comes to the second group of animals kept in the animal-hutches, to which snails and bees belong, the most apt natural landscapes are furnished with some mark-ups which ‘redefine the natural world in human terms’.Footnote 19
Importantly, this category of animals also needs to be kept enclosed, as specified repeatedly in the dialogue – in contrast with, for instance, the birds in the aviaries, for which care is taken toprevent the opposite problem of other animals penetrating the cages.Footnote 20 To underscore the point, while cura (care) is brought up for birds (3.9.2) and fish (3.16.32), for snails, bees, and dormice, Varro resorts to the term custodia (safeguard) to explain how to tend to them (3.12.2).Footnote 21
There are, thus, several thematic allusions to the prevention of flight, which prepare the ground for Varro to go one step further still: he in fact also applies the terminology of specifically servile delinquency to snails and bees, to which we must now turn.
2. Snails and the fugitivarius
In Rust. 3.14.1, to introduce the discussion on snails, Axius downplays the task, claiming that looking after them cannot be extremely demanding (neque magnum molimentum esse potest).Footnote 22 Appius dissents: the job is not as straightforward (simplex) as it is believed. To explain, he adds the following:
Nam et idoneus sub dio sumendus locus cochleariis, quem circum totum aqua claudas, ne, quas ibi posueris ad partum, non liberos earum, sed ipsas quaeras. Aqua, inquam, finiendae, ne fugitivarius sit parandus.
An apt place must be chosen for snails, under the open sky, which you would entirely enclose with water. If you do not do it, when you put the snails to breed, you would have to look not for the young snails, but for the old ones. They have to be shut in with water, so that a runaway-catcher is not needed.
In a few lines, the need of snails to be enclosed is addressed twice and their flight is recorded as likely if this preventive measure is not taken, making it necessary to allocate to someone the task of preventing this.Footnote 23 What is more, the ‘snail guardian’ is termed fugitivarius, a rare Latin word designating the person in charge of searching for enslaved individuals at large.Footnote 24
Only fragmentary evidence on this figure is available,Footnote 25 but the fact that the juridical evidence is more abundant than the literary evidence marks this term as technical. Barring Varro’s passage, the only other appearance of the fugitivarius (runaway-catcher) in a non-juridical context occurs at Flor. Epit. 2.7.7 In his discussion of the first so-called Sicilian slave war, Florus presents the rebellious slaves as pursuing praetorian generals who had abandoned the battlefield, in a curious (and disgraceful) reversal of role:Footnote 26
Itaque qui per fugitivarios abstrahi debuissent, praetorios duces profugos proelio ipsi sequebantur.
Thus, those who should have been run after by runaway-catchers, went themselves after praetorian generals who had fled from the battlefield.
In Florus’ description, the unruly slaves who escaped from their masters, instead of being chased by a fugitivarius, become themselves fugitivarii, pursuing the Roman deserters.
Here, Florus clearly intends the fugitivarius to be a runaway catcher, i.e. a slave catcher, similar to what happens in the juridical sources which, however, paint this figure in a more ambiguous way. In the three juridical provisions where the fugitivarius appears,Footnote 27 the possibility of him being hired by masters to recover their runaways is juxtaposed to that of fugitivarii also providing their services to slaves plotting their escapes.Footnote 28 Whichever side the fugitivarii might decide to take, their specific relationship with enslaved runaways is undeniable. This makes it extremely likely that Varro – also due to the witty nature of his writing – would have exploited this lexical choice as a means to hint at servile delinquency, while discussing (of all animals) snails.
A further comment, which closes the section on snails, corroborates this point. While describing the fattening of snails, Appius advises to enclose them in jars for this purpose (3.14.5):
Has quoque saginare solent ita, ut ollam cum foraminibus incrustent sapa et farri, ubi pascantur, quae foramina habeat, ut intrare aer possit; vivax enim haec natura .
Snails, too, are often fattened as follows: a jar for them to feed in, containing holes, is lined with must and spelt – it should contain holes in order to allow the air to enter, for the snail is naturally hardy.Footnote 29
The use of jars is neglected by Pliny (NH 9.174), but Appius elaborates on this matter, explaining also why they are furnished with apertures for air. Given that enim normally introduces the reason for a previous statement, most translations, like the one cited above, suggest that holes for air (foramina) are needed because the snails are long-lived or resistant. There is no immediate connection between fresh air and hardiness. However, the term vivax is not without ambivalence, as it can also mean ‘energetic’. Appius’ sentence, then, starts making more sense: since snails are hardy, but also fast and lively, the jars must have holes which allow air circulation and basic needs – hence small ones to prevent escape on the part of the snails.Footnote 30 This interpretation finds corroboration in a passage by Columella (Rust. 8.7.1–2), who, when discussing the fattening of hens, mentions narrow coops with holes termed as foramina on each side, for their head and tail respectively, so that they can eat and expel food once digested.Footnote 31 The acknowledgment of this nuance of vivax, then, expands the humorous idea of these quintessentially slow animals being prone to flight which started with the mention of the fugitivarius.
Varro’s bringing up of the fugitivarius did not go unnoticed. However, the slave-catcher’s presence has been interpreted as ‘a mild but thoroughly characteristic joke of Varro’ by Lloyd Storr-Best,Footnote 32 and by Flach as something added by Varro jokingly (‘scherzhaft’);Footnote 33 Cardauns, similarly, sees it as a marker of Varro’s wit and good humour (‘dicacitas und hilaritas’): to him, the author is simply projecting human feelings onto animals for comic effect.Footnote 34
Varro is probably trying to do more than snatch a laugh. At the very least, it is a bitter laugh which alerts readers to the risk of potential escape of the human chattel to which snails are equated.Footnote 35
That slaves and their potential flight are alluded to in Varro’s discussion of the pastio villatica will be clarified as we move our attention to another category of animals to which he applies the vocabulary of runaway slaves, namely bees.
3. When bees become fugitivae
The lengthy section 16 of De Re Rustica 3 is entirely devoted to bees. Their nature and keeping is expounded by Merula and Appius. It is the former who, dispensing advice on the delicate matter of transferring bees, asserts the following (3.16.21):
Si e bono loco transtuleris eo, ubi idonea pabulatio non sit, fugitivae fiunt.
If you move them from a good place to one where there is no sufficient pasturage, they become runaways.
It is more than understandable that these insects, in the absence of adequate food provisions, become tempted to fly away. Varro could have expressed this concept in many other ways, yet he decides to characterize the bees as fugitivae, which instantly creates an association with servile flight.Footnote 36
As in the case of snails, this pronouncement has not been ignored. However, Guiraud simply labels it as very interesting (‘fort intéressant’), adding that this exemplifies Varro’s rather imaginative way of presenting things.Footnote 37 On the other hand, Green, who stressed the pun liberos-fugitivarius in 3.14.1 – explaining that even snails, as wild animals, will try to gain back their natural freedom – states that the same applies to bees here.Footnote 38 As these examples suggest, the link between the word choice and the topic of servile delinquency is missing in the modern discussion and, therefore, needs now to be singled out and explained. Instead of having an exclusively metaphorical or philosophical connotation, I contend that this second veiled reference also allows Varro to insinuate the topic of runaways.
As the need of a fugitivarius for snails – the slow animals par excellence – would have made the reader smile, the parallel between bees and the enslaved fugitive, created by the use of the term fugitivae, would have initially had the same effect. First, these insects are industrious and soldier-like: Appius describes their primary concerns as food, dwelling, and labour (cibus, domus, and opus, 3.16.5), while at 3.16.9 he portrays them working and sleeping, in a continuous cycle, just like in an army (ut in exercitu). The emphasis on the army clearly differentiates the bees described by Appius (3.16.4–9) from the figure of the labouring yet sleepy slave, and even more so from that of the stereotypically lazy one.Footnote 39 When Merula takes the floor, however, at 3.16.10–38 (where one finds the lines on fugitivae bees), the tenor changes dramatically. His longer account is focused on the profit that can be made from bees and reveals them as dominated by self-interest and the idea of the survival of the fittest.Footnote 40 Their health should be preserved from illness (3.16.20) and the dangers of heat, cold, or rain (3.16.37), echoing part of the agricultural writers’ provisions on food, clothing allowances, and health care. Moreover, the bees can be manipulated and lured to new homes with the use of attractive substances (3.16.30), they fight and indulge in mead, almost getting drunk (3.16.35), so the beekeeper must supervise and intervene regularly.Footnote 41 Merula’s insects appear much less virtuous and more akin to idle and trouble-making slaves, but the identification between bees and servi is fully thrown into relief yet through the legal sources.
Notably, given the highly lucrative nature of bee-keeping, preoccupation with their ownership kept lawyers very busy, as Frier has shown.Footnote 42 The feature that disturbed them the most was the bees’ peculiar nature: despite being juridically recognized as wild they had a habit of going and coming back which made them in some way tamed. Pliny solved the issue by claiming that these insects have an intermediate nature (mediae inter utrumque naturae, HN 8.220).
Such an ambiguity, however, could not have been accepted by the jurists. To them, there was only one bipartition of juridical significance regarding animals: wild (ferae) and domesticated (mansuetae).Footnote 43 Thus, Gaius, after claiming that bees have a wild nature, and that they are one’s property only after they have been shut in one’s hive (Dig. 41.1.2), adds the following (Dig. 41.1.5.5):Footnote 44
[Gaius, Common Matters or Golden Things, Book 2] The wild nature of peacocks and doves is of no moment because it is their custom to fly away and to return; bees, whose wild nature is universally admitted, do the same…In the case of these animals which habitually go and return, the accepted rule is that they are held to be ours so long as they have the instinct of returning [revertendi animum]; but if they lose that instinct, they cease to be ours and are open to the first taker. They are deemed to have lost that instinct when they abandon the habit of returning.
An analogous ambiguous nature, in juridical writings, is the one pertaining to enslaved people, who are juridically seen as objects (res), despite possessing an undeniable human nature, also recognized by the law.Footnote 45 Borrowing Buckland’s words ‘what struck them [i.e. the jurists] was that a slave was a res, and for the classical lawyers, the only human res’.Footnote 46 This nurtured a debate on this troublesome property, which has agency and is ultimately unpredictable, mirroring its resistance to strict classification. It is also curious that the category of animals to which bees are ascribed belongs to the possessor as long as they show the intention to return, described as animus revertendi.
Among the many issues that Roman jurists debate regarding runaway slaves, the very definition of fugitive occupies several lines in the Digest.Footnote 47 In Dig. 21.1.1, concerning the Edict of the Aedile on selling, Ulpian specifies that it is illegal not to inform the prospective buyer about the previous fuga of an enslaved individual. This legal duty spurs the jurists to explain when a fugitivus can be described as such. The infamous label curiously leverages on the willingness, i.e. the inclination (affectus animi), of the enslaved when escaping (Dig. 21.1.17.3):Footnote 48
[Ulpian, Curule Aediles’ Edict, Book 1] 3. And we find in Vivian that a fugitive is to be so determined from his attitude of mind (ab affectu animi) and not merely from the fact of his flight…All this applies to those who, having fled, return to their master; but, says Vivian, if they do not return, then they are unquestionably fugitives (fugitivum videri ait).
The attitude of the enslaved, and not the mere act of running away, is thus considered distinctive. This point is elaborated also in Dig. 21.1.17.14, where, if the enslaved returns home, and is thus not shown as actually willing to escape, he is to be considered simply a wanderer (erro), not a runaway:Footnote 49
[Ulpian, Curule Aediles’ Edict, book 1]…if we wish to be accurate, we define a wanderer (erronem) as one who does not indeed run away but frequently indulges in aimless roaming and, after wasting time on trivialities, returns home at a late hour.
The insistence on this animus revertendi for bees cannot but remind us of the affectus animi as an indispensable feature for the proper definition of the enslaved human on the run.Footnote 50
In the light of Varro’s extraordinary learnedness, there is little doubt that coincidence is not a good explanatory tool here. Rather, Varro’s choice of vocabulary and treatment of matters regarding servi under a section on untamed animals, which shall be kept enclosed, clarifies that the possibility of servile flight is contemplated by him, even if he decides not to dwell explicitly on fuga and the means to handle it.
Conclusion
By now, it has become clear that Hammond’s obsession with servile flight is very much shared by his predecessor Varro. The question of why the latter takes such a counterintuitive approach needs to be asked, however briefly.
One may assume that Varro could have indeed tackled the matter of fugitivi openly (and possibly more efficiently), as Hammond did centuries later; but the reason he does not do so lies in the fact that, although the De Re Rustica has been long (and unjustly) dismissed as a purely prescriptive text, this treatise does not give an account of the Roman rural economy as it was, but rather as it should have been. Writing an idealistic manual, Varro applies at one level a rosy veneer to the reality of the Roman estate. On an estate which is thoughtfully managed according to his precepts, there is no need to discuss servile discipline openly: it is simply a problem that does, literally, not come to the fore.
And yet, servile fuga is such a pivotal worry that it creeps out also in the depiction of the idyllic estate, and the façade cracks in unexpected places, when dealing with the pastio villatica. Varro’s snails and bees are used to epitomize the fast-legged and idle human runaway – a contradiction in terms, seemingly innocently and jokingly brought up, but which exposes the realities of slave-owning that stood behind the seemingly unspoiled picture of Varro’s manual.
That Varro ends up dealing with servile runaways is only evident to those who can detect the relevant legal echoes: while for modern readers these are not so conspicuous at first sight, Varro’s peers (his original readership) would have easily picked up on the runaway allusions too – given that the related concerns were always lurking in the back of the Roman slave-owner’s mind (as the juridical discourse illustrates sufficiently). That being so, it does not surprise that between fugitive snails and bees, Varro inserts dormice in a fashion that also speaks to the issue of slave management. Notably, the rodents are no runaways though, because if well kept, they move in predetermined routes: they stick to the side channels made by the potters in the jars where they are fattened – getting the illusion of free movement while actually being trapped (3.15.2).Footnote 51 This, too, would have probably resonated with Varro’s contemporary readers and their thinking about slave management.
What Varro was after in writing in this manner may elude us forever.Footnote 52 However, we can be in no doubt that his choice of putting fugitivi and fugitivarii in the animal world, where they do not belong, is a demonstration that servile runaways were always a central tenet of the Roman estate-owner’s mind.
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