Life Is Feudal Forest Village Donkey Farm
Deandra Uleman
The great majority of the people ruled by Rome were engaged in agriculture. From the beginning of small, largely self-sufficient landowners, rural society became dominated by latifundium, large estates owned by the wealthy and utilizing mostly slave labor. The growth in the urban population, especially of the city of Rome, required the development of commercial markets and long-distance trade in agricultural products, especially grain, to supply the people in the cities with food.
The main texts of the Greco-Roman agricultural tradition are mostly from the Roman agronomists: Cato the Elder's De agri cultura, Columella's De re rustica, Marcus Terentius Varro and Palladius. Attributed to Mago the Carthaginian, the agricultural treatise Rusticatio, originally written in Punic and later translated into Greek and Latin, is now lost. Scholars speculate whether this text may have been an early source for agricultural traditions in the Near East and Classical world.[1]
Agriculture in ancient Rome was not only a necessity but was idealized as a way of life. Cicero considered farming the best of all Roman occupations. In his treatise On Duties, he declared that "of all the occupations by which gain is secured, none is better than agriculture, none more profitable, none more delightful, none more becoming to a free man." When one of his clients was derided in court for preferring a rural lifestyle, Cicero defended country life as "the teacher of economy, of industry, and of justice" (parsimonia, diligentia, iustitia).[2] Cato, Columella, Varro and Palladius wrote handbooks on farming practice.
In his treatise De agricultura ("On Farming", 2nd century BC), Cato wrote that the best farms contained a vineyard, followed by an irrigated garden, willow plantation, olive orchard, meadow, grain land, forest trees, vineyard trained on trees, and lastly acorn woodlands.[3] Though Rome relied on resources from its many provinces acquired through conquest and warfare, wealthy Romans developed the land in Italy to produce a variety of crops. "The people living in the city of Rome constituted a huge market for the purchase of food produced on Italian farms."[4]
Land ownership was a dominant factor in distinguishing the aristocracy from the common person, and the more land a Roman owned, the more important he would be in the city. Soldiers were often rewarded with land from the commander they served. Though farms depended on slave labor, free men and citizens were hired at farms to oversee the slaves and ensure that the farms ran smoothly.[4]
Staple crops in early Rome were millet, and emmer and spelt which are species of wheat. According to the Roman scholar Varro, common wheat and durum wheat were introduced to Italy as crops about 450 BC.[5][6] Durum (hard) wheat became the preferred grain of urban Romans, because it could be baked into leavened bread and was easier to grow in the Mediterranean region than common (soft) wheat.[7][8] Grains, especially baked into bread, were the staple of the Roman diet, providing 70 to 80 percent of the calories in an average diet.[9] Barley was also grown extensively, dominating grain production in Greece and on poorer soils where it was more productive than wheat. Wheat was the preferred grain, but barley was widely eaten and also important as animal feed.[10]
In De re rustica Columella wrote that emmer was more resistant to moisture than wheat. According to Columella four types of emmer were cultivated, including one variety that he calls Clusian (named for the town Clusium).[11] Cato wrote that if sowing grain in humid or dewy soils was unavoidable, they should be sown alongside turnips, panic grass, millet and rape.[12]
...it requires the least labor, costs least, and of all crops that are sown is most beneficial to the land. For it affords an excellent fertilizer for worn out vineyards and ploughlands; it flourishes even in exhausted soil; and it endures age when laid away in the granary. When softened by boiling it is good fodder for cattle during the winter; in the case of humans, too, it serves to warn off famine if years of crop failures come upon them.
The Romans grew olive trees in poor, rocky soils, and often in areas with sparse precipitation. The tree is sensitive to freezing temperatures and intolerant of the colder weather of northern Europe and high, cooler elevations. The olive was grown mostly near the Mediterranean Sea. The consumption of olive oil provided about 12 percent of the calories and about 80 percent of necessary fats in the diet of the average Roman.[16]
Viticulture was probably brought to southern Italy and Sicily by Greek colonists, but the Phoenicians of Carthage in northern Africa gave the Romans much of their knowledge of growing grapes and making wine. By 160 BC, the cultivation of grapes on large estates using slave labor was common in Italy and wine was becoming a universal drink in the Roman empire. To protect their wine industry, the Romans attempted to prohibit the cultivation of grapes outside Italy,[17] but by the 1st century AD, provinces such as Spain and Gaul (modern-day France) were exporting wine to Italy.[18]
Columella mentions turnips as important, high-yielding food crop, especially in Gaul where they were used as winter fodder for cattle.[19] As other "fodder crops" he lists Medic clover, vetch, barley, cytisus, oats, chickpea and fenugreek.[20] Of Medic clover, he says it improves the soil, fattens lean cattle and is a high-yielding fodder crop.[21]
Cato the Elder wrote that leaves from poplar, elm and oak leaves should be gathered in the Fall before they have dried completely and stored for use as fodder. Turnips, lupines and forage crops were to be sown after the rainy season.[22]
Columella describes how produce is stored and gives advice to prevent spoilage. Liquids produced for market like oil and wine were stored on the ground floor and grain was stored in lofts with hay and other fodder. He instructs that granaries be well ventilated, cool, with minimal humidity, to prolong freshness. He describes certain methods of construction to avoid buildings developing cracks that would give animals and weevils access to the grains.[24]
Columella describes land as being classified into three types of terrain which he calls champaign (sloping plains), hills with a gradual but gentle rise, and wooded, verdant mountain highlands. Of soil, he says there are six qualities: fat or lean, loose or compact, moist or dry. The permutations of these qualities producing many varieties of soils.[26] Columella quotes Vergil's comment that loose soil is "what we rival when we plough". Of the most preferred types of soil he says the best is fat and loose soil that is the least costly and most productive, then fat and dense which is productive though requiring more effort, and after these are the moist soils.[27]
In the 5th century BC, farms in Rome were small and family owned. The Greeks of this period, however, had started using crop rotation and had large estates. Rome's contact with Carthage, Greece, and the Hellenistic East in the 3rd and 2nd centuries improved Rome's agricultural methods. Roman agriculture reached its height in productivity and efficiency during the late Republic and early Empire.[28]
In the late Republican era, the number of latifundia increased. Wealthy Romans bought land from peasant farmers who could no longer make a living. Starting in 200 BC, the Punic Wars called peasant farmers away to fight for longer periods of time.[30] This is now disputed; some scholars now believe that large-scale agriculture did not dominate Italian agriculture until the 1st century BC.[31][32]
Cows provided milk while oxen and mules did the heavy work on the farm. Sheep and goats were cheese producers and were prized for their hides. Horses were not widely used in farming but were raised by the rich for racing or war. Sugar production centered on beekeeping, and some Romans raised snails as luxury food.[29]
The Romans had four systems of farm management: direct work by owner and his family; tenant farming or sharecropping in which the owner and a tenant divide up a farm's produce; forced labour by slaves owned by aristocrats and supervised by slave managers; and other arrangements in which a farm was leased to a tenant.[29]
Cato the Elder (also known as "Cato the Censor") was a politician and statesman in the mid- to late Roman Republic and described his view of a farm of 100 iugera in the De agri cultura. He claimed such a farm should have "a foreman, a foreman's wife, ten laborers, one ox driver, one donkey driver, one man in charge of the willow grove, one swineherd, in all sixteen persons; two oxen, two donkeys for wagon work, one donkey for the mill work." He also said that such a farm should have "three presses fully equipped, storage jars in which five vintages amounting to eight hundred cullei can be stored, twenty storage jars for wine-press refuse, twenty for grain, separate coverings for the jars, six fiber-covered half amphorae, four fiber-covered amphorae, two funnels, three basketwork strainers, [and] three strainers to dip up the flower, ten jars for [handling] the wine juice..."[3] It is important to note that Cato's description is not indicative of the majority of farms in the early 2nd century BC. De agri cultura is a political document designed to show off Cato's character as much as it is a practical guide.[33]
There was much commerce between the provinces of the empire, and all regions of the empire were largely economically interdependent. Some provinces specialized in the production of grains including wheat, emmer, spelt, barley, and millet; others in wine and others in olive oil, depending on the soil type. Columella writes in his De re rustica, "Soil that is heavy, chalky, and wet is not unsuited to the growing for winter wheat and spelt. Barley tolerates no place except one that is loose and dry."[34]
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