Columella Systematizes Estate Management of Enslaved Labor

Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella, probably from Gades in Baetica, offered the first-century Empire a comprehensive playbook. De Re Rustica details how to select a vilicus, schedule work, and calibrate discipline. One line captures his tone: “do not restrain by blows rather than words, if you can achieve the same” (neque verberibus… quam verbis) [3]. Control, he says, works best when efficient.

His estates stretch from Baetica’s vineyards—amber wine in amphorae—to Latium’s presses and Campania’s groves. The sounds are practical: the creak of a screw press, the click of tally counters, the low murmur of a vilicus reading orders. Color the landscape green and gold at harvest; color the ergastulum’s door iron-black when supervision slips [3].

Columella anticipates risk. He instructs surprise checks on the ergastulum, managing both production and prevention. Incentives matter: allow limited family formation, grant peculium to anchor loyalty, and keep rations adequate. The goal is stability without waste. Violence is a tool, but an expensive one when words will do [3].

Three places tie the book to reality: Gades (modern Cádiz), where Columella’s roots in Baetican agriculture begin; Villa districts in Latium, where his Latin readership lived; and Rome, where the book circulated among elites whose estates spanned provinces. His counsel resonates after Sicily’s wars and Spartacus: fear exists, but profit requires more than terror.

His prescriptions align with market facts. Skilled workers—vinedressers, cellarers—command higher prices, sometimes 6,000–8,000 sesterces compared to roughly 2,000 for unskilled laborers [3,11]. Management must match investment: bind specialists by reward and oversight, not just chains. The vineyard’s order thus mirrors the legal order that Gaius describes and the financial order that prices people like assets [5,11].

Columella’s voice stands between the lash and the law. He neither abolishes cruelty nor worships it; he tunes it. Rome’s fields hum when the instrument is in tune.