§145. The Familia Rustica.--Under this name are comprised the slaves that were employed upon the vast estates that long before the end of the Republic had supplanted the small farms of the earlier day. The very name points at this change, for it implies that the estate was no longer the only home of the master. He had become a landlord, living in the capital and visiting his lands only occasionally for pleasure or for business. The estates may, therefore, be divided into two classes: country seats for pleasure and farms or ranches for profit. The former were selected with great care, the purchaser having regard to their proximity to the city or other resorts of fashion, their healthfulness, and the natural beauty of their scenery. They were maintained upon the most extravagant scale. There were villas and pleasure grounds, parks, game preserves, fish ponds and artificial lakes, everything that ministered to open air luxury. Great numbers of slaves were required to keep these places in order, and many of them were slaves of the highest class: landscape gardeners, experts in the culture of fruits and flowers, experts even in the breeding and keeping of the birds, game, and fish, of which the Romans were inordinately fond. These had under them assistants and laborers of every sort, and all were subject to the authority of a superintendent or steward (_vilicus_), who had been put in charge of the estate by the master.
§146. Farm Slaves.--But the name _familia rustica_ is more characteristically used of the drudges upon the farms, because the slaves employed upon the country seats were more directly in the personal service of the master and can hardly be said to have been kept for profit. The raising of grain for the market had long ceased to be profitable, but various industries had taken its place upon the farms. Wine and oil had become the most important products of the soil, and vineyards and olive orchards were found wherever climate and other conditions were favorable. Cattle and swine were raised in countless numbers, the former more for draft purposes and the products of the dairy than for beef. Sheep were kept for the wool, and woolen garments were worn by the rich and poor alike. Cheese was made in large quantities, all the larger because butter was unknown. The keeping of bees was an important industry, because honey served, so far as it could, the purposes for which sugar is used in modern times. Besides these things that we are even now accustomed to associate with farming, there were others that are now looked upon as distinct and separate businesses. Of these the most important, perhaps, as it was undoubtedly the most laborious, was the quarrying of stone; another was the cutting of timber and working it up into rough lumber, and finally the preparing of sand for the use of the builder. This last was of much greater importance relatively then than now, on account of the extensive use of concrete at Rome.