A vilicus named Felix dedicated this altar to Mens Bona, the goddess of good thinking (Castello Malaspina)[1]

In ancient Rome, the vilicus (Greek: ἐπίτροπος, epitropos, or oikonomos[2]) was a manager, supervisor, or overseer. Ausonius in 4th-century Bordeaux writes that his "pretentious" vilicus preferred to be called by the Greek title epitropos.[3]

In the rural economy of early Rome, the vilicus was a bailiff or farm manager who directly oversaw agricultural labor[4] on the villa rustica. As the Roman economy diversified, the title might be specified as vilicus rusticus for the traditional agricultural role. The vilicus hortorum ("of the gardens"), a foreman over the crews that maintained private or imperial gardens or parks in and around the city of Rome, may be seen as a transitional figure showing how the role would have evolved in an urban setting. By the turn of the 1st to the 2nd century AD, the vilicus urbanus can be found in various supervisory capacities; for example, building superintendent or rent-collector for a landlord, similar to an insularius, an apartment manager.[5]

The vilicus managed slave labor and was most often a slave himself.[6] As a slave, the vilicus would not have the right to a legal marriage, but it was thought appropriate and beneficial for him to enter into an enduring heterosexual union (contubernia) and raise a family.[7]

The duties of the vilicus and those of his female counterpart (the vilica, only sometimes his wife) are described by Columella (Res rustica, I.8, XI.1, and XII.1), and by Cato (De Agri Cultura, cxlii–cxliii, focusing on the vilica; v on the vilicus). The vilica who supervised food preparation and textile production for the estate[8] held her position on her own merit and only infrequently was the woman who lived with the vilicus as his wife.[9]

The original duties of the vilicus were to follow the estate owner's instructions, and to govern the slaves with moderation, not to leave the villa except to go to market, to have no dealings with soothsayers, to take care of the cattle and the implements of husbandry, and to manage all the operations of the farm.

See also

Slavery in ancient Rome

References

  1. ^ MENTI BONAE SACRVM FELIX VILICVS POSVIT: "The vilicus Felix has put up this sacrum for Mens Bona"; sacrum is a general word for a religious act or dedication, here of an altar stone. The use of a single name is usually taken to indicate slave status, and the ability to pay for a stone monument shows the wage-earning power of a slave given administrative responsibilities.
  2. ^ Kyle Harper, Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275–425 (Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 123, n. 175.
  3. ^ Harper, Slavery in the Late Roman World, p. 123.
  4. ^ Harper, Slavery in the Late Roman World, p. 123.
  5. ^ Jesper Carlsen, "Vilici" and Roman Estate Managers until AD 284 (L'Erma di Bretschneider, 1995), pp. 33.
  6. ^ "Slavery in Rome," in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome (Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 323.
  7. ^ William V. Harris, "Towards a Study of the Slave Trade," Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 36 (1980), p. 120, citing Columella 1.8.4.
  8. ^ Ulrike Roth, "Thinking Tools: Agricultural Slavery between Evidence and Models," Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 92 (2007), pp. 3, 17, 36, citing Columella 12.1.5, 12.3.3, and 12.3.8 and Cato, De agricultura 143.3.
  9. ^ Roth, "Thinking Tools," p. 49, citing Cato, De agricultura 143.1.
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