Roman Story: On The Farm

I have things to say. I just don't feel like saying them right now. So here's a story beginning to read. If you want, finish it.

It is the second year of drought. I am not certain how much longer this can go on. My father's farms are not going to bring in much. The whole idea of farming is becoming a losing proposition.

Now I remember these are no longer my father's farms. They are my farms. My father lost his life for Rome. He lost it for our way of life. He lost it for his farms and the farms of every other patrician in Rome. His glorious funeral was last month. I am still not used to the idea of being the head of the family.

I look out over the dusty fields. A couple of slaves mend a fence. How will I justify keeping them if the farms do not produce? I notice they are not working all that hard. I will have to speak to Quintelus. He needs to get after them more. Spare the rod; spoil the slave.

I walk back to the family villa. My sister Julia is seated on our overlook. She has her paints out.

"So, will you send that one to the Emperor?" I startle her.

"Lucius!" She groans, "You need to stop sneaking up like that."

"I was just admiring your work." I protest.

"You are just trying to make me make a mistake." She knows me far too well.

Julia taps her brush end on her chin, "I saw you walk from the south fields. Do you think the crops will come in?"

"No." I stretch myself out on the grass. "The rains didn't come in time, so the grain will not head enough to harvest."

"That's not good," Julia frowns, "With mother making big sacrifices and sponsoring games in our father's name, we need the money."

I consider this, "We'll get by. No one will say that the Julian family has become middle class. Good crops or bad."

Julia is not convinced. She dabs at her painting. Putting down her brush, "You know mother doesn't really care about the honor of father's name but what the games and sacrifices look like. She only cares about who will talk about it and what they will say. Father's memory is just a convenient excuse for her to show off. If it is not bigger than everyone else's then she will think we've gone middle class. I seriously don't think she has any idea what our situation really is."

"You've been peeking at my books again." I shake a finger at my nosey sister. "Bad Julia. No man will want a nosey woman for a wife."

She turns to me. "The money is gone, isn't it?"

I carefully form my words, "We are not poor. The farms are our main source of income now. Father sold off our businesses to fund his part in the war. Prices have gone up on everything except grain since some of the eastern routes are too dangerous. To top it off, mother spends like it's twenty years ago and we had a position at court."

"Are you going to the City?" Julia asks. "Will you take his senate seat?"

"I'm afraid I must if we are to keep our influence."

Julia gives me a sad look, "I will miss you."

I shoot her a look. "What? You're not coming?"

"No." She turns back to her painting. She takes a couple of slow strokes at the picture. "I have decided to stay here where it is quiet." She smiles down at me, "I want to have time to paint."

"I know you are not interested in mother's parties and friends, but what about a husband?"

"I've been thinking about that," she says. "With our finances, a dowry would be too great an expense." Julia smiles, "And I'm just not interested in anything mother might find for me."

"Oh, you wouldn't want a fat, perfumed senator?" I tease. "Or how about one of those feminine senators' sons?"

"Like you?" My sister arches one eyebrow in a return tease.

I get up and stretch. The air is too dry. All wrong for this time of year. It smells of famine, disease and unrest. Looking over our property, I wonder if we will be visited by plague again.

One hundred years ago Rome was hit hard by the Antonine Plague. Our countryside was severely depopulated. Since then, we have had nothing but lawlessness, taxation and inflation. The troubles have driven the honest freemen from their tenancy on the farms to the city. The government encouraged it by creating a dole to prop up the slave merchants who bought influence from the senators. Slaves can make a fortune for a man, but bankrupt the government since slaves and the wealthy who own them pay no taxes.

I am forced to buy slaves to work my land since there are no freemen left to work for me. The taxes here in the countryside are just too high for them to stay with me. Cheaper to be an indigent on the dole. So I am force to use a work force that I have to whip into their work. I also have to house and feed them. Something I never had to do with the free tenants. Whoever did the math and said slaves are cheaper than freemen was an illiterate.

I muse. These are the things I would tackle in the Senate. Even as young as I am, I know that the Senate is not there to pass good laws. It exists to enrich those who sit on the benches. Senators can vote themselves lucrative "public works" and can gain favor from the populace by holding day after day of games.

I feel as Julia does. The Eternal City is a waste of time. If she is not happy with the lazy, effete men of Rome, then I am equally fed up with the idiotic, amoral women. They say that to find a virgin these days you must enter a nursery and steal the girl as she nurses from the breast.

Unfortunately, I have our family to look after, so off to Rome I must go. I must secure my position in the senate and my family's position in society. I might as well secure my share of the public revenue. Oh, and I guess I should look for a wife as well. The family will need another heir.