Ancient Rome Part 5

This was clearly the case with Cornelia, the daughter of Scipio Africa.n.u.s, and wife of Tiberius Gracchus the elder. Left a widow when the eldest of her three children, named Tiberius after his father, was but a lad, she conducted their training herself. From her her sons and daughter learned to be simple and hardy in their habits, truthful and upright in their minds, and to care for things of the spirit rather than of the body, as she did herself. When her friends boasted to her of the rich furnis.h.i.+ng of their houses, of their robes of silk, their ornaments and jewels, Cornelia would turn to her children and say, 'These are my treasures.' She taught Tiberius and Caius and their sister that what mattered was not what a man had but what he was. They were rich. They bore an honoured name. But these things would not give honour unless they had the soul of honour in themselves. They must strive not for their own pleasure or comfort or even for their own personal glory, but to live a life of true service to their fellow citizens. And that meant that they must see things as they were, and not be contented with the names people gave them. They wanted to see Rome great and to help it to grow greater. She taught them that a city, like a man, was great only when it strove for right and justice. Mere wealth and power did not make it so.

These thoughts sank into the minds of the young Gracchi. As they grew up they cared for Greek learning, art, and literature, poetry, and all the things that make life beautiful, as Scipio Aemilia.n.u.s and Laelius did; but it troubled them, as it had not troubled Scipio, that these good things reached only the few, while the great body of the people had no share in them at all. To them, as once to Caius Flaminius, it seemed wrong as well as dangerous that Rome should be made up, as they saw that it was, of two sorts of people, ever more and more separated from each other; the few who had everything and the many who had nothing. They could not feel, as Coriola.n.u.s had done, as Fabius had done, as Cato did, and as Scipio Aemilia.n.u.s, it seemed to them, was doing more and more, that all good was to be found among the well-to-do and cultured few, and that what happened to the many did not matter. It seemed to them that it did matter if the many were poor, ignorant, stupid. It was not necessary that they should be so. They were ignorant and stupid because they were poor. If their lot were less hard they might be clever and good, or at any rate better than at present.

So it seemed to Tiberius Gracchus and later to his younger brother Caius, as they looked at what they saw in the light of what Cornelia had taught them. They could not find life beautiful while so many people were wretched, or feel that Rome was the city of their dreams, however rich and powerful it might be, however many lands across the seas owned its sway, so long as the ordinary men who served as soldiers in Rome's armies, the ordinary women who kept their homes and brought up their children, were miserable.

The great wars which brought glory to generals and wealth and pride to Rome actually made the poor more miserable, for many reasons, and for two in particular. One was the growing number of slaves in the city.

After every campaign thousands of prisoners were taken and these prisoners were not given back at the end of the war; they became the slaves of the conqueror. There were so many slaves in Rome after the wars with Sicily, Carthage, Spain, Greece, Asia Minor, that it was by no means easy for the ordinary Roman to get work. The other reason was the difficulty of getting land. Once, before the long wars, Italy had been a country of small farmers and peasants who lived on a little piece of land, sometimes rented and sometimes their own, and cultivated it. There were very few of these happy farmers now. The men had been called away to the wars; many never came back. What happened was this. While the man was away at the wars, his wife, with children to look after, and less strong than he, could seldom cultivate the land fully. Even if she managed to keep the children fed, she had no money or produce over with which to pay the rent. Then the landlord would turn her out and take the plot and add it to his own estate. This was happening all over Italy. If the owner were not turned out, the land went to rack and ruin from neglect. Thus many a soldier, when he did come back, found his home gone. Others, weary, worn, and perhaps disabled after long years of the hards.h.i.+ps of war, had neither the strength nor energy to set to the heavy work of digging and preparing land that had been neglected for years. At the same time the common lands, which were supposed to belong to the whole people, who might graze their cattle or cut wood on them, were taken in bit by bit by the big landlords in the war years. Thus men who wanted land could not get it. Big estates grew bigger, and they were run largely by slave-labour. The independent husbandman, who had been the backbone of the Roman army, was vanis.h.i.+ng. A few people began, in Scipio's day, to be worried about this question of the land, because they saw that if the peasants and farmers disappeared, the best soldiers would disappear also.

All this was well known; it had been going on for long. People talked, but nothing was done. Sometimes, however, there comes a man who has the power to see and be moved to action by a thing which most people, out of habit or laziness, take as a matter of course. Tiberius Gracchus was such a man. In his young manhood he was quiet, rather shy, and very silent; he thought a great deal and said little about it. Some people regarded him as slow. His was the slowness of a mind that takes a long time to be sure of a thing but, once sure, never lets go. When he did speak, men observed that his remarks were just and well considered and went to the heart of the matter. His devotion to duty was obvious; as a soldier he won the respect and love of his men by his unvarying fairness of temper and the fact that he never asked them to take a risk or bear a hards.h.i.+p that he did not share himself. And he acquired, too, a reputation for integrity which was, as Plutarch tells us, of infinite value.

_Tiberius Gracchus. The Value of a Reputation for Integrity_

After the Libyan expedition Gracchus was elected quaestor, and it was his lot to serve against the Numantines under the Consul Gaius Mancinus, who had some good qualities, but was the most unfortunate of Roman generals. Thus unexpected situations and reverses in the field brought more clearly into light, not only the ability and courage of Tiberius, but--what was more remarkable--his respect and regard for his superior, who was so crushed by disaster that he hardly knew whether he was in command or not. After some decisive defeats Mancinus left his camp and attempted to retire by night, but the Numantines, being aware of his movements, at once occupied the camp, fell upon his troops as they fled, made havoc of the rear, and drove the whole army on to difficult ground, from which it was impossible to escape.

Whereupon, in despair of forcing a way into safety, he sent envoys with proposals for a truce and conditions of peace. The enemy replied that they trusted no one except Tiberius and insisted that he should be sent to them. This att.i.tude was partly due to their high opinion of Tiberius, whose reputation was familiar to all, partly to the memory of his father, who after fighting against the Spanish tribes and subduing many of them settled terms of peace with the Numantines and persuaded the Roman people strictly to confirm and keep them. Thus it came about that Tiberius was sent; and after some give and take in negotiations he made a treaty, and beyond question saved twenty thousand Roman citizens, besides attendants and camp followers.

Plutarch, liii. 5.

As Tiberius travelled through Italy on his way to the wars in Spain he looked at the condition of the people of his own country, thought of the fortunes of his own soldiers, and was moved to indignation and distress by what he saw. On the banners carried into battle, above the public buildings, at the head of the laws and decrees issued by the Government, there stood the letters 'S.P.Q.R.'--the Senate and People of Rome. The senators, he knew, were rich and growing richer. The name of Rome was carried far and wide. But what of the people? As Tiberius himself said, 'The wild beasts of Italy have their lairs and hiding places, but those who fight and die for Italy wander homeless with their wives and children and have nothing that they can call their own except the air and sunlight.'

Tiberius saw and felt. But seeing and feeling were not enough. He determined to act. The land question, the homelessness and poverty of the people, and the army question were, as he saw it, really part of the same. He resolved to deal with them together.

When he came back from his second term of service in Spain (134) he got himself elected as one of the tribunes of the people. Almost at once he introduced his Land Bill. The idea of this Bill was simple. All over Italy the State of Rome owned great estates. But for years back the estates had either been let to or occupied by the big landowners or wealthy men of Rome. They were in possession. But the lands did not belong to them. There was no reason in law or justice why the Republic should not take back and use what was its own. These lands, cut up into small holdings, would provide a means of livelihood to hundreds of thousands of peasant proprietors. The miserable poverty of Rome could be swept away. A new race would grow up.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COSTUME. THE ROMAN TOGA, from a terra-cotta in the British Museum]

The Bill was a reasonable one. It was received with enthusiasm by the poorer cla.s.ses. Moderate men saw that it was a sincere effort to tackle a state of things they knew and deplored. It was necessary to do something for the poor, they knew; they were glad of any plan which promised to reduce the luxury and display of the rich. But the big landowners, whose estates were going to be divided, who were being called upon to give back what, after all, had never been their own, were furious. They were ready to go to any lengths to defeat the Bill. To them Tiberius was a dangerous man, a traitor to his own cla.s.s. Since they were in a minority they knew that if the matter came to a vote they would be defeated. Feeling grew more excited as the voting day drew near. Tiberius had become the darling of the people; but he had to go about armed for fear of an attack from the landlords' party. At last the latter hit on an ingenious device. The tribunes, the magistrates who represented the poor cla.s.ses, or plebeians as they were called, were ten in number, one to represent each of the original ten tribes. If one of them chose he could stop anything the others wanted to do by saying 'Veto'--I forbid. This power was intended to be used sparingly and only in times of grave danger. Originally, indeed, the tribune could only say Veto on religious grounds; because having inspected the omens he saw something which showed that the G.o.ds were unfavourable. The landlords, however, now persuaded Octavius, one of the colleagues of Tiberius, to say Veto to his Land Bill. Tiberius understood what had happened. He tried to persuade Octavius to give way. In vain. Then, as happens with men who appear very quiet and hard to move, his anger, which had been slowly mounting, burst out. He went down to the a.s.sembly of the people and made a powerful attack upon Octavius. How could a man be said to represent the people, he asked, to be a tribune of the people, who was doing his best to prevent a measure which the people desired and which was altogether for their good? There was a scene of great excitement.

Tiberius called upon Octavius to resign. Octavius refused. Then Tiberius called for the election of another tribune in Octavius's place. This was against all rule and order. Nevertheless it was done. Octavius was removed. A new tribune was elected in his stead. Amid great rejoicing the Land Bill was pa.s.sed.

The landlords were full of a deep bitterness against Tiberius and accused him of all kinds of things. They said that he wanted to upset the State and tear up the laws because he had pa.s.sed a Bill taking from them a portion of their lands which had never really belonged to them.

He, however, went quietly on with his work. A committee was set up, on which were both Tiberius and his brilliant young brother Caius, to divide the common land and give it out in lots to the citizens who needed and could work it. This was a long task. At the end of the year Gracchus ceased to be tribune. His work was not finished. The Senate had refused to give the Land Commission any money for their expenses and was putting every kind of difficulty in the way of their getting on with their task. Moreover, in view of the hatred of the landlords Gracchus himself, as a private person, was hardly safe. Therefore, when the election time came he asked to be chosen as tribune again.

A great many of the citizens who had come in from the country districts to vote for the Land Bill had gone back again; others had left Rome to prepare for or take up the new allotments. The charges made against Gracchus made timid people afraid; they were worried when it was said that a man could not legally be elected tribune for two years running.

They were still further alarmed by Gracchus's own speeches. Feeling ran very high on both sides, and it was plain that the election day would not go off without some disturbance.

Rioting, indeed, broke out in the Capitol almost before the sun rose and fighting with sticks and stones between those who wanted Tiberius elected and those who did not. As always happens, many joined in who neither knew nor cared what the trouble was all about. When Tiberius himself appeared he raised his hand to summon his friends to gather round him. This was reported to the Senate by a man who cried, 'Tiberius Gracchus has raised his hand to his head: he is asking the citizens to crown him.' On this Nasica, a senator who hated Gracchus, demanded that he should be put to death as a traitor. When the consul refused Nasica rushed out with a body of senators and, charging the people who stood round Tiberius, broke through and killed him almost at once (133). In the panic many others were slain and trampled underfoot. The body of Gracchus was cast into the Tiber. Many of his supporters were imprisoned. Others had all their property taken away.

The senators doubtless hoped that, Tiberius dead, his work would soon be forgotten. But the evils he had tried to remedy remained. And abroad serving in the army was his brother Caius, who did not forget. 'Whither can I go?' said Caius. 'What place is there for me in Rome? The Capitol reeks with my brother's blood. In my home my mother sits weeping and lamenting for her murdered son.' His was a nature very different from his brother's. Tiberius was quiet, gentle, kindly, naturally rather dreamy; a man who in happier times would have been content with the uneventful life of a gentleman. Caius was fiery and pa.s.sionate, filled with an energy that must have found some outlet for itself in whatever circ.u.mstances he had lived. He loved his brother and his death filled his heart with glowing anger and a fixed determination that his work and life should not be wasted. He would carry out Tiberius's ideals; and carry them farther than Tiberius had ever dreamed.

Caius Gracchus was nine years younger than Tiberius and a man of more remarkable character and more brilliant gifts than his brother. The sense of a great wrong made Tiberius burn with indignation, and in his indignation he took to politics; Caius had a natural genius for politics. His mind ranged forward into the future; whereas Tiberius worked blindly, in the dark, Caius knew where he wanted to go. And he understood men as his brother had never done. Without any of the shy aloofness that at times gave Tiberius the appearance of more strength than he really possessed, Caius made people like him without moving away by so much as an inch from the purpose he had in mind. That purpose was a change far more revolutionary than Tiberius had dreamed of.

Only twenty years of age at the time of his brother's murder, Caius spent the next ten years in public service. Like Aemilia.n.u.s he held it every man's duty to work for the Republic. But while Aemilia.n.u.s thought that for such work obedience, faithfulness, courage, temperance were all that were required of a man, Caius, who had these virtues in a high degree, had also an active questioning mind. It did not seem to him that the men who ruled the State were wise or just or generous enough to lay down, once for all, the lines on which it was to move for ever. The citizen had a duty to the Republic beyond that of loyal and obedient devotion. He must use not only his arm in its service but his mind also.

He must help it to grow; make Rome worthy of the greatness about which people talked so lightly and easily. The greatness had been won at a fearful price. Hundreds of thousands of Roman soldiers had laid down their lives to make it; hundreds of thousands more had given their best years to its service, asking no reward but that the Republic should stand safe. It could, Caius thought, only be safe, only be great in so far as it became more and more the city of free men in fact as well as name.

With such thoughts as these moving in his mind he turned in loathing from the life of the young Roman n.o.ble of his own age and cla.s.s. He had no use for personal luxury; wine and fine clothes and a gorgeous house in which to live a life of ease and idleness--these things were nothing to him. While serving abroad in Spain, Sardinia, and elsewhere, he shared the hards.h.i.+ps of his soldiers, and spent his own money in the effort to make their hard lot less severe. Such leisure as he had was occupied in reading. In this way he disciplined and fortified his mind.

Moreover, Caius had before him a fixed purpose, a clearly determined work in life. For that he was preparing. One of his weapons was to be the art of speech. He studied, therefore, particularly the works of the great Greek orators. He wanted to learn, and he did learn, how to use words to persuade men and impel them to action. He made himself one of the greatest orators Rome knew. His speeches are lost, but accounts of them remain, and they tell how Caius could set his hearers on fire, stir them to tears or anger.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ELABORATE LAMP to show the luxury of later times]

When, nine years after Tiberius's death, Caius Gracchus came back to Rome (124), he found that men were waiting eagerly for him. Tiberius had not been forgotten. The poor hoped, the rich feared that Caius had come as his avenger. When he stood for the tribunes.h.i.+p the party in the Senate that had thwarted and finally murdered Tiberius strained every nerve to prevent Caius's election. They did not wait to hear what his plans were. They knew that he belonged to the men of the new generation who wanted far-reaching changes, and they believed that any change must be at their expense. They at once began attacking Caius. They accused him of coming home before his time of service abroad was up. They even declared that he, the most scrupulously honest and disinterested of men, had made more money than he ought to have done from the various posts he had held. Caius turned on them. He had already served twelve years in the army. As for making money: 'I am the only man who went out with a full purse and returned with an empty one. Others took out casks of wine for themselves, and when they had emptied them brought the casks back filled with gold and silver.' He lived not in the rich quarter of Rome among the high-born and wealthy, but among the poor near the Forum. He was elected tribune by an overwhelming majority and at once set to work.

His main idea was a really great and original one; nothing less than the extension of Roman citizens.h.i.+p, in so far as voting rights went, to the people of Italy. The Italians were called to serve in Rome's armies. The best soldiers, indeed, had always come from outside the capital. The Italians paid heavier taxes; they ought to share in the benefits of Rome and have a voice in its government. Caius Gracchus indeed dreamed of making the Government of Rome a real democracy. It was a magnificent dream; but the people were not ready for it. In fact it was only after a bitter war that the Italians won from the Romans the right to vote.

Gracchus knew that his plan could not be carried through at once; but he had worked out a series of Bills which would, he believed, pave the way for it. Until they were through he said nothing of his great scheme.

_Caius Gracchus. The varied Activities of a popular Leader_

When the people had not only pa.s.sed this law, but actually commissioned Gracchus to appoint the judges from the Order of the Knights, he became invested with a kind of royal authority, and even the senators were ready to listen to his counsel. When he gave it, he always proposed something to their credit, as, for example, a most just and honourable decree about the corn which the proconsul Fabius had sent from Spain. He persuaded the Senate to sell the corn and return the money to the cities from which it came, and furthermore to censure Fabius for making his rule burdensome and unendurable to the inhabitants; and this brought him great reputation and popularity in the provinces. He proposed, too, to send out colonies and to make roads and to build granaries, personally managing and controlling all these undertakings, never failing in attention to a ma.s.s of details, but with extraordinary quickness and application working out each task as if it alone engaged his efforts, with the result that even those who hated and feared him were astounded at his universal thoroughness and efficiency. Most people on meeting him were surprised to see him surrounded by contractors, craftsmen, amba.s.sadors, commanders, soldiers, and scholars. Treating them all with an easy good nature, being at once kind and dignified, and suiting himself to the character of the individual, he proved that it was gross slander to call him dictatorial, or presumptuous, or violent. Thus his gift for popular leaders.h.i.+p was shown rather in personal a.s.sociation and conduct than in public speeches.

Plutarch, liv. 6.

He was a tremendous worker and all his plans were thought out to the smallest detail. They were not vague ideas on paper. He began on his land policy. If it were to have any chance of being carried he must, he saw, break the solid majority of the landowning cla.s.ses and their friends. The most important of these friends were the cla.s.s known as the Knights, or Equestrian Order. The Senate was composed of men selected from among those who had held one of the high offices of State. Senators might not take part in business, but they alone served as jurors to try the cases which concerned people who carried it on, and particularly those who carried on one important kind of business, that of tax-collecting in the provinces. This was largely in the hands of the knights. Their name went back to the days of the old const.i.tution when men of a certain wealth served in the cavalry, and were given votes as so serving. The so-called Equestrian Order had greatly grown in number.

They were the money-makers, financiers, capitalists of Rome. As against changes in the land system they might stand with the Senate, but when Caius Gracchus proposed that the juries which tried people for political offences should be drawn not from the Senate, but from the knights, he won their support against it. He then turned to win that of the people by a new Corn Law which arranged that the Government should buy corn wholesale and supply it to the Roman people at a fixed low price. From this he turned to other constructive measures. He revived his brother's Land Laws; started a great road-building scheme; and worked out a plan for the reorganization of the army. Over the detailed working out of all these big plans he watched himself with the eye of a practical man whom nothing escaped. For Caius, though his ideas were large and far-reaching, and his mind grasped problems that the ordinary Roman politician did not begin to see, was no dreamer. He was an organizer of consummate ability and possessed a remarkable knowledge of facts and of men. His house became a sort of great Government office, buzzing with hard work from morning until night.

In the following year he was re-elected and at once moved on to the next stage in his policy, a big scheme of land settlement and colonization, very much on the lines now worked by Canada and our other Colonies who a.s.sist intending settlers by giving them cheap pa.s.sages out and plots of land in new territories. This done, he launched his plan of granting Roman citizens.h.i.+p to the Italians.

Here, however, he came into collision with rich and poor at once. The ordinary Roman citizen was jealous of his rights and did not want to share them. Caius's popularity began to fall off at once. The idea of Italy a nation was one for which the Romans were not ready. They had been angry when Tiberius wanted to give farms to the Italians; Caius's plan of giving them votes and thereby a share in the games, cheap corn, and other joys of Roman life, made them far more angry. They despised the Italians and cared nothing for their grievances. Caius could not stir them to any sympathy.

The leaders of the Senatorial party realized at once what had happened, and determined to strike. An outbreak of disorder at a meeting at which Caius was speaking gave them their chance. The consul declared that the State was in danger and proclaimed a state of siege in the city. Then he went out with armed bands and in the streets Caius himself and a number of his supporters were cut down and slain (121).

Thus both Caius and Tiberius Gracchus perished. Cornelia their mother left Rome and went to live at Misenum. Of her sons she spoke as of two heroes who had given their lives for their country. Her pride in them remained untarnished, for they had died true to the things in which they believed. Indeed, many years had not pa.s.sed before statues to the brothers were set up in the public places in Rome and offerings brought there by the people who realized, too late, how greatly both Tiberius and Caius had served them. Had their work been carried through, Rome might have been spared the terrible disasters that came upon the city in the next half-century. As it was, the senators breathed with relief that Caius had followed his brother to a b.l.o.o.d.y grave; they did not see that those who opposed reform were preparing the way for revolution and civil war.

VI

Cato the Censor

At any time there are always some people who look back and say, 'Ah, things are not what they were. There are no such men nowadays as there used to be. The good old days are over. When I was young....' and so on.

Such men see in change nothing but evil. There is, to some minds, a danger in every change: but there may be greater danger in standing still.

The evils that men like the Gracchi saw in their own time made them desire to see the life of Rome move forward to other and better ways.

A new world had opened round them: new ideas, new forces were making themselves felt. Rome was no longer a small city, whose existence was closed in by its own walls; it was the centre of a great dominion, and touched the life of other peoples and nations at innumerable points. The ways of the old could not be those of the new Rome. They saw the difficulties and risks, but they saw too the promise of better things to be won.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TOMB OF A ROMAN FAMILY: to show simplicity of dress]

Very different was the outlook of a man like Marcus Porcius Cato. To him the ancient ways alone seemed right. He modelled his own life and actions so far as he could upon the heroes of the past, especially on those like Cincinnatus, who were noted for their simplicity and frugality. Cincinnatus, though he had held the highest offices in Rome, was found driving his own plough by those who came from Rome in an hour of peril to ask him to take over the highest power in the State. So Cato kept his dress, the furnis.h.i.+ngs of his house and table, and everything about him as plain as those he might have had in the days when every one was poor. In his own record of his life he reports that he never wore a garment that cost him more than a hundred drachmae; that even when praetor or consul he drank the same wine as his slaves; that a dinner never cost him from the market above thirty pence; and that he was thus frugal for the sake of his country, that he might be able to endure the harder service in war. He adds that having got, among some goods he was heir to, a piece of Babylonian tapestry, he sold it immediately; that the walls of his country houses were neither plastered nor white-washed; that he never gave more for a slave than fifteen hundred drachmae, as not requiring in his servants delicate shapes and fine faces but strength and ability to labour, that they might be fit to be employed in his stables, about his cattle or on such-like business; and that he thought proper to sell them again when they grew old, that he might have no useless persons to maintain. In a word he thought nothing cheap that was superfluous, that what a man has no need of is dear even at a penny; and that it is much better to have fields where the plough goes and cattle feed, than gardens and walks that require much watering and sweeping. This stern simplicity he carried throughout his life and in words of eloquence (he was one of the most powerful speakers in Rome) he tried to get others to imitate him.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLOUGHING: a terra-cotta group]

Cato's own character was of remarkable firmness. He did not ask other people to do what he would not do himself. He served in war again and again, and distinguished himself as a soldier, though his harshness made him detested by the peoples he conquered, for instance in Spain. But he wanted every one to think and live in his way, and judged with cruel severity those who thought or acted otherwise. The key to his character, both its strength and its weakness, is given by Plutarch when he remarks that 'Goodness moves in a larger sphere than justice.' Cato was just: but his justice was often harsh, cruel, and ungenerous. Thus he left his war-horse behind him when he left Spain, to save the public purse the charge of his freight, just as he sold his slaves when they became too old to work. In this we see carefulness and indifference to comfort and luxury turning to parsimony and meanness. As Cato grew older he became more and more fond of having money though not of spending it. He himself had prospered in life and, as he grew older, became extremely rich both from his farms and from lending money, at high interest, to s.h.i.+pping and other companies. For those who did not succeed he had a very severe judgement and small pity, as for those who gave way to any of the faults from which he was free. He judged instead of understanding them. His judgement was just but not sympathetic. His own account of the duties of a bailiff and his wife gives an excellent idea of the man.

_The Duties of a Bailiff and his Wife_

These will be your duties as bailiff. Maintain strict discipline; observe rest-days; do not lay hands on the property of another, but keep a careful watch over your own. It is your business to settle disputes in the household and to punish offences without excessive severity. The household ought to be well cared for, never suffering from cold or hunger, and should be sufficiently employed; in which case it will be easier to stop unruliness and dishonesty. If your conduct is good, your example will be followed; if you are wronged, your master will inflict the punishment. Reward merit, and thus encourage others to exert themselves. Do not waste time in taking walks; always be sober, and never go out to dinner. See that your master's orders are carried out, and do not suppose that you are wiser than he is. His friends should be your friends, and you should obey those whom you are bidden to obey. Do not sacrifice at the cross-ways and on the hearth of the homestead except at the great festival of the _Lares_. Do not make an advance without your master's knowledge, but exact all that is due to him. Never lend seed-corn, provisions, meal, grain, wine, or oil to any one. There should be two or three households to which you apply in times of need, and which you similarly help; but no more. Be punctual in settling accounts with your master. Special labour on the land, paid by the day, should not be employed beyond the term agreed. Buy nothing without your master's knowledge, nor, indeed, keep any transaction from him. Let no one sponge upon you; consult no soothsayer, augur, prophet, or Chaldaean. Do not stint the sowing; for the result will be a poor crop. Acquaint yourself thoroughly with all the work on the farm, and often do some yourself, as long as it does not overtire you. Thus you will understand the feelings of the workers and they, knowing this, will be more contented, while you will enjoy better health, have less taste for idle walks, and be more ready for sleep. Be first to get up in the morning, and last to go to bed at night, taking care that the house is locked up, that everyone is at rest in his proper place, and that the animals have got their fodder.