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The Dependent Tenant: Land Leasing and Labour in Italy and Greece

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

Lin Foxhall
Affiliation:
University College, London

Extract

‘Farm’ sites of various kinds have been a striking feature of survey archaeology in most areas of Greece and Italy in recent years, and a number of such sites dating to the Roman period have been located. In many parts of Greece there seem to be particularly large numbers of later Roman sites, with fewer which can be firmly dated to the earlier imperial period, while in a few areas the Imperial Roman period is one of dense occupation. In Italy, too, there seems to be considerable regional variation in peak periods of rural settlement, so that in some areas numbers of small sites are greatest for the Republican period (second to first centuries B.C.), while in other areas there are many small sites of the first century a.d. or even later. The tendency of archaeologists working in both Greece and Italy, especially in the early years of the survey boom in the late 1970s and early 1980s, was to categorize these smaller sites as peasant farms (generally assuming peasant free-holders), while larger, more opulent sites were classed as ‘villas’. This encouraged both archaeologists and historians to jump to the conclusion that the development of large estates attested in the literary record from the later second century B.C. onward had not effected the complete demise of small-scale, free subsistence farmers.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Lin Foxhall 1990. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 For example, the following surveys all found a comparative dearth of later hellenistic and earlier Roman Imperial sites, and most noted a substantial recovery of site numbers in the later Roman period. This general pattern is, of course, subject to regional variation. Southern Argolid: Andel, T. H. van and Runnels, C., Beyond the Acropolis (1987), 110–17, 162–3Google Scholar; eidem, ‘The Evolution of Settlement in the Southern Argolid, Greece: An Economic Explanation’, Hesperia 56 (1987), 309, 318–19Google Scholar. Boeotia: Bintliff, J. and Snodgrass, A., ‘The Cambridge/Bradford Boeotian Expedition: The First Four Years’, Journal of Field Archaeology 12 (1985), 123–61Google Scholar; eidem, ‘Mediterranean Survey and the City’, Antiquity 62, no. 234 (March 1988), 5771CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Kea: J. F. Cherry, J. L. Davis and E. Mantzourani, The Archaeological Landscape of Northern Keos (forthcoming); eidem, National Geographic Society. Research Reports 21 (1984), 109–16. Megalopolis: J. A. Lloyd, E. J. Owens and J. Roy, ‘The Megalopolis Survey in Arcadia’, in Keller, D. R. and Rupp, D. W., Archaeological Survey in the Mediterranean Area (1983), 267–9Google Scholar; AR 30 (1983–4), 26–7. Lakonia: AR 30 (1983–4). 27–8; AR 32 (1985–6), 30, and personal communication from W. Cavanagh. Methana: AR 31 (1984–5), 21–2; AR 32 (1985–6), 28; AR 33 (1986–7), 19–20. Nemea Valley: J. Cherry et al., AJA 89 (1985). 327; AJA 90 (1986), 204–5; AJA 91 (1987), 327. In contrast, Renfrew, C. and Wagstaff, J. M. (eds), An Island Polity. The Archaeology of Exploitation in Melos (1982), 13, 51–2, 145–6Google Scholar, found the island of Melos most densely occupied in the Roman period, though most sites seem to have had commercial or mining functions. Also ‘Roman’ and ‘Late Roman’ sites were considered together, 3, 13.

2 Well summarized by J. R. Patterson, ‘Crisis: What Crisis? Rural Change and Urban Development in Imperial Apennine Italy’, PBSR 55 (1987), 134–46.

3 For example, Dyson, S., ‘Settlement Patterns in the Ager Cosanus’, Journal of Field Archaeology 5 (1978), 251–68Google Scholar; G. Barker, J. Lloyd and D. Webley, ‘A Classical Landscape in Molise’, PBSR 46 (1978), 35–51; Lloyd, J. and Barker, G., ‘Rural Settlement in Roman Molise: Problems of Archaeological Survey’, in Barker, G. and Hodges, R. (eds), Archaeology and Italian Society (1981)Google Scholar; Van Andel and Runnels, op. cit. (n. 1).

4 It might be noted that this tendency had been more pronounced among scholars working in Italy than among those working in other parts of the Mediterranean, and can be observed even as recently as Patterson, op. cit. (n. 2), 139–40 (on the Ager Capenas and the Ager Cosanus); Dyson, op. cit. (n. 3), 263; Rathbone, D. W., ‘The Development of Agriculture in the Ager Cosanus during the Roman Republic: Problems of Evidence and Interpretation’, JRS 71 (1981), 1423Google Scholar, who mentions tenant labour (14), but concentrates on the comparative cost and efficiency of slave versus free peasant labour; Brunt, P., ‘The Army and the Land in the Roman Revolution’, JRS 52 (1962), 6986Google Scholar, revised in idem, The Fall of the Roman Republic and Related Essays (1988), 240–80, especially 246–50. See also the references cited in nn. 1 and 3.

5 A good start to tackling this problem was made by Garnsey, P. D. A., ‘Non-slave labour in the Roman world’, in Garnsey, P. D. A. (ed.), Non-slave Labour in the Greco-Roman World (1980), ch. 6Google Scholar. For a comparable situation of such overlap in Greece see S. Hodkinson, ‘Spartiates and Helots: Landlords and Tenants in Lakonia and Messenia’, Hector Catling Festschrift (forthcoming).

6 Rathbone, op. cit. (n. 4); Spurr, M. S., Arable Cultivation in Roman Italy (1986), 133–44Google Scholar; Patterson, op. cit. (n. 2); Giardina, A. and Schiavone, A., L'Italia: Insediamenti e Forme Economiche (1981)Google Scholar, to mention but a few more recent examples.

7 Carandini, A., Schiavi in Italia (1988)Google Scholar; idem, L'anatomia della scimmia (1979), 128 ff.; Giardina, A. and Schiavone, A., L'Italia: Insediamenti e Forme Economiche (1981)Google Scholar, in particular the articles by Corbier, M., ‘Proprietà e gestione della terra: grande proprieta fondiaria ed economia contadina’, 427–44Google Scholar, and Colognesi, L. Capogrossi, ‘Proprieta agraria e lavoro subordinato nei giuristi e negli agronomi latini tra repubblica e principato’, 445–54Google Scholar.

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9 Frier, B. W., ‘Law, Technology and Social Change: the Equipping of Italian Farm Tenancies’, ZRG 96 (1979), 204–28Google Scholar.

10 Neeve, P. W. de, Colonus: Private Farm Tenancy in Roman Italy during the Republic and Early Principate (1984)Google Scholar.

11 Whittaker, C. R., ‘Circe's Pigs: from Slavery to Serfdom in the Later Roman Empire’, Slavery and Abolition 8.1 (1987), 88122CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Brunt, op. cit (n. 4).

13 Heitland, W. E., Agricola: A Study of Agriculture and Rustic Life in the Graeco-Roman World from the Point of View of Labour (1921), 252 ff.Google Scholar; White, K. D., Roman Farming (1970), 366–7Google Scholar.

14 De Neeve, op. cit (n. 10), 45 f., 54, 73, 75 ff.

15 Brunt, op. cit. (n. 4); Garnsey, P. D. A. and Woolf, G., ‘Patronage of the Rural Poor in the Roman World’, in Wallace-Hadrill, A. (ed.), Patronage in Ancient Society (1989), 160Google Scholar; de Neeve, op. cit. (n. 10), 45; Whittaker, op. cit. (n. 11), 91–4; Garnsey, op. cit. (n. 5), 38. On regional variation see Patterson, op. cit. (n. 2).

16 The ‘economic rationality’ (or not) of ancient economic behaviour has been a central debate in the study of the ancient economy since at least Polanyi (e.g. Polanyi, K., Primitive, Archaic and Modern Economies (ed. Dalton, G., 1968Google Scholar). The theme was catapulted into prominence by Finley's, The Ancient Economy (1973, 2nd ed. 1985Google Scholar) and the reactions to it (for example, Croix, G. E. M. de Ste, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (1981)Google Scholar; A. Carandini, op. cit. (n. 7); Duncan-Jones, R., The Economy of the Roman Empire: Quantitative Studies (2nd ed., 1982))Google Scholar.

17 Finley, op. cit (n. 8), 110.

18 ibid., 117–18.

19 De Neeve, op. cit, (n. 10), 177.

20 ibid., 179 ff.

21 Corbier, op. cit. (n. 7), 439: ‘Senza dubbio il proprietario e il suo affituario non si trovano, di fronte ai rischi dell'agricoltura, nella stessa situazione. Il dominus che accumula, in caso di gestione diretta, la rendita fondiaria e il profitto dell'azienda, può permettersi di perdere denaro per alcuni anni, di guadagnare meno, di calcolare il suo reddito su un periodo phù lungo di un semplice lustrum. Egli è anche incoraggiato, come abbiamo visto (Plinio, 9, 37, 3) dal sistema dei valori sociali e morali dominanti. La situazione dell'affittuario è più netta: alle spese di gestione si aggiungono i canoni, fissi o proporzionali al raccolto, che egli deve al proprietario; un deficit ripetuto si traduce in catastrofe. La sua gestione mantiene sempre un carattere speculativo, legato alle oscillazione dei raccolti e dei prezzi’ (her emphasis).

22 Kula, W., An Economic Theory of the Feudal System. Towards a Model of the Polish Economy 1500–1800 (trans. Garner, L., 1976)Google Scholar, from the Italian translation, Teoria economica del sistema feudale. Proposta di un modello (1972)Google Scholar, of the original Polish edition, Teoria ekonomiczna ustroju fuedalnego (1962). Carandini's best known presentation of this argument is his defence of Columella's vineyard calculations (and thus large Roman slave-run estates in general) as economically rational and maximally profitable, ‘Columella's Vineyards and the Rationality of the Roman Economy’, Opus 2 (1983), 177203Google Scholar. In fact, the scholars who have applied Kula's model to the ancient Roman economy have insisted on a greater separation of the two sectors of the ‘ideal type’ than Kula himself does when he actually applies the model to his own data (though Kula does differentiate the sectors sharply when he lays out the parameters of the model). On this point Corbier, op. cit. (n. 7), 427–8, 442–4 is especially relevant. Paradoxically, Kula's model itself (20–7, 40–1) is based on economic analyses of the 1950s which would now be considered by many to be explicitly western and colonialist in outlook, especially Lewis, W. A., Theory of Economic Growth (1955)Google Scholar. For more fruitful approaches to Third World economics which avoid the classbound, paternalistic ethnocentrism of the 1950s see the now classic book by Boserup, E., Conditions of Agricultural Growth (1965)Google Scholar, and especially Richards, P., The Indigenous Agricultural Revolution (1985)Google Scholar.

23 M. Mazza, ‘Terra e lavoratori nella Sicilia tardo-repubblicana’, in Giardina and Schiavone, op. cit. (n. 7), 19–51.

24 Pitt-Rivers, J., The People of the Sierra (2nd ed., 1971), 36–8, 43–5Google Scholar. See also Martinez-Alier, J., Labourers and Landowners in Southern Spain (1971)Google Scholar; idem ‘Sharecropping: some illustrations’, Journal of Peasant Studies 10 (1983), 94–105.

25 Taussig, M., ‘Peasant Economics and the Development of Capitalist Agriculture in the Cauca Valley, Colombia’, in Harriss, J. (ed.), Rural Development. Theories of Peasant Economy and Agrarian Change (1982), 181Google Scholar.

26 Cooper, A., ‘Sharecroppers and Landlords in Bengal’, Journal of Peasant Studies 10 (1983), 245Google Scholar: ‘I would stress that neglecting these [non-economic structures] in any treatment of sharecropping renders an analysis inadequate. Non-economic mechanisms made possible and acceptable the surplus appropriation by the landlords and explains how sharecroppers succumbed to their own oppression. Concentrating on sharecropping merely as a formal rental contract between two neutral parties is a rather sterile approach. The sharecropper- landlord relationship existed in a complex political structure which tended to empower the landlord vis-à-vis the sharecropper. Social and religious hierarchies inclined to parallel economic structures, sanctioning the landlord's authority and validating their sharecropper's dependency’.

27 According to the Digest, agricultural tenancies were assumed to be automatically renewed as long as the tenant remained on the land and neither party terminated the lease (19. 2. 13. 11, 19. 2. 14). See also, Finley, op. cit. (n. 8), 106, 109, 114–15; de Neeve, op. cit. (n. 10), 10.

28 Cooper, op. cit. (n. 26), 235–6.

29 The debate in relation to the modern world is vast, but comes down basically to the ‘Marshallian’ versus the ‘non-Marshallian’ views of the efficiency of tenancy. Probably the bulk of the modern studies take a ‘non-Marshallian’ view: that other things being equal, tenants or sharecroppers when monitored and/or intimidated by landlords are more productive than wage labourers or even owner-occupiers in some cases. For the terms of this debate see, Cheung, S. N. S., The Theory of Share Tenancy (1968)Google Scholar; Reid, J. D., ‘Sharecropping and Agricultural Uncertainty’, Economic Development and Cultural Change 24 (1976), 549–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, The Theory of Share Tenancy Revisited–Again’, Journal of Political Economy 85 (1977), 403–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Maria-Caballero, J., ‘Sharecropping as an Efficient System: Further Answers to an Old Puzzle’, Journal of Peasant Studies 10 (1983), 107–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shaban, Radwan Ali, ‘Testing between Competing Models of Sharecropping’, Journal of Political Economy 95 (1987), 893920CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 The efficiency of slave labour is at the heart of the arguments over Columella's vineyard (3. 3), Duncan-Jones, op. cit. (n. 16), 39–59; Carandini, , Opus 2 (1983), 186201Google Scholar. See also Rathbone, op. cit. (n. 4); Spurr, op. cit. (n. 6), ch. 8; Patterson, on Pliny's letters, op. cit. (n. 2), 118–23; Brunt, op. cit. (n. 4), 246–53.

31 Finley, op. cit. (n. 8), 115.

32 De Neeve, op. cit. (n. io), 159–67.

33 For example, Cooper, op. cit. (n. 26), 227–8; Harriss, op. cit. (n. 25), 215–16; K. Bharadwaj, ‘Production Conditions in Indian Agriculture’, in Harriss, op. cit. (n. 25), 269–88, Finkler, K., ‘Agrarian Reform and Economic Development: When is a Landlord a Client and a Sharecropper His Patron?’, in Barlett, P. F. (Ed.), Agricultural Decision Making. Anthropological Contributions to Rural Development (1980), 265–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Herring, R. J., ‘Chayanovian Versus Neoclassical Perspectives on Land Tenure and Productivity Interactions’, in Durrenberger, E. P. (ed.), Chayanov, Peasants and Economic Anthropology (1984), 133–50Google Scholar. Cf. Kehoe, D., ‘Allocation of Risks and Investment on the Estates of Pliny the Younger’, Chiron 18 (1988), 34Google Scholar. See also the references cited in n. 29.

34 Bharadwaj, op. cit. (n. 33), 272.

35 Cooper, op. cit. (n. 26), 237–8

36 Spurr, op. cit. (n. 6), 139; Rathbone, op. cit. (n. 4), 19, 22; Garnsey, op. cit. (n. 5), 36.

37 Horace, Ep. 1. 14. 1–3; cf. Finley, op. cit. (n. 8), 106.

38 cf. Spurr, op. cit. (n. 6), 133–4.

39 Pitt-Rivers, op. cit. (n. 24), 39–40; Martinez-Alier, op. cit. (n. 24); Gilmore, D., ‘Patronage and Class Conflict in Southern Spain’, Man 12 (1977), 446–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Blok, A., The Mafia of a Sicilian Village, 1860–1960 (1974), 4257Google Scholar. For a similar group documented in the Lebanon see Gilsenan, M., ‘Against Patron-Client Relations’, in Gellner, E. and Waterbury, J., Patrons and Clients in Mediterranean Societies (1977), 167–83Google Scholar.

41 Pliny, Ep. 6, 3.

42 Columella (RR 1. 8) is in agreement with Cato, adding that a bailiff should not entertain his own guests, employ farm slaves for his own business nor hang about in the town or the market. Varro (RR 1. 17. 5–6) is more idealistic and stresses the patronal relationship between bailiff and owner, and the special privileges which the bailiff should be allowed. Significantly both Cato (RR 5. 3; 143. 1) and Columella (RR 1. 8. 5) stress that the bailiff (and his wife) should not perform religious rites without express permission: the implications of expropriation of patronal privilege are clear.

43 For a good case study of patronage and tenancy in combination see Pitt-Rivers, op. cit (n. 24), 141 ff. See also n. 26.

44 Sallust, Cat. 59. 3; Caesar, BC 1. 34. 56; Appian, Iberike 6. 14 [84]. See also Finley, op. cit. (n. 8), 115; Brunt, op. cit. (n. 12), 246–7; de Neeve, op. cit (n. 10), Appendix 1; Garnsey and Woolf, op. cit. (n. 15), 158–61.

45 Frier, op. cit. (n. 9), 216.

46 Purcell, N., ‘Wine and Wealth in Ancient Italy’, JRS 75 (1985), 11Google Scholar.

47 Patterson, op. cit. (n. 2), 124–33.

48 e.g. Columella, RR 1. 7. 2.

49 e.g. de Neeve, op. cit. (n. 10); Wickham, C., ‘Marx, Sherlock Holmes and Late Roman Commerce’, JRS 78 (1988), 183–03Google Scholar; C. R. Whittaker, op. cit. (n. 11); Garnsey, op. cit. (n. 5), 37–9.

50 Chayanov, A. V., ‘Peasant Farm Organization’ (1925), trans. Smith, R. E. F. in Thorner, D., Kerblay, B. and Smith, R. E. F. (Eds), A. V. Chayanov on the Theory of Peasant Economy (1986), 68Google Scholar.

51 Osborne, R., ‘Social and Economic Implications of the Leasing of Land and Property in Classical and Hellenistic Greece’, Chiron 18 (1988), 318–23Google Scholar.

52 See Garnsey, op. cit. (n. 5), 37.

53 Keppie, L., Colonisation and Veteran Settlement in Italy, 47–14 B.C. (1983), 102Google Scholar.

54 Brunt, op. cit. (n. 4), 271–2; Keppie, op. cit. (n. 53), 92.

55 e.g. Cato, RR 144. 3; Varro, RR 17. 2. See Garnsey, op. cit. (n. 5), 41–2.

56 In Cooper's Bengali study (see n. 26), this was one of the most important ways in which landlords took advantage of a tenancy relationship to exploit tenants. The evidence of the agricultural writers, largely Cato, RR 143 and Columella, RR 12, on the duties of the vilica, is not easy to interpret. Relatively few slave women seem to have resided on large slave-staffed farms. Columella rewarded slave women for bearing several sons (RR 1. 8. 19). Cato mentions buying clothing for slaves (RR 135) and selling wool (RR 2. 7, 150. 2), implying his vtlica did little textile work. However, Columella's vilica wove for a select few of the slaves, and was instructed to advise others on weaving as well as to take advice from more experienced weavers herself (RR 12. 3. 6, 8). Whether her assistants were slave residents or free hired help is impossible to determine. But many of the tasks of the vilica, particularly those involving the large-scale storing of food, ‘spring cleaning’ of storage areas and equipment, major festive occasions (Columella, RR 12. 1. 4), and preparations for the vintage (e.g. flail and basket making, Columella, RR 12. 18), look as though they would need additional female assistance, perhaps more than the farm had on hand. Certainly vilicae are instructed not to entertain local women, or spend too much time socializing with them (Cato, RR 143. 1; Columella, RR 12. 1. 5).

57 Though I do not agree with de Neeve, that almost all tenant farmers were practising ‘extensive’ cereal cultivation.

58 See Appendix (p. 114).

59 Note here Garnsey's observation (op. cit. (n. 5), 39) that tenants were normally locals.

60 Spain: Pitt-Rivers, op. cit. (n. 24), 40–1, 141 ff.; Martinez-Alier, op. cit. (n. 24). Sri Lanka: Herring, op. cit. (n. 33). India: Bharadwaj, op. cit. (n. 33); Cooper, op. cit. (n. 26), 232. Mexico: Finkler, op. cit. (n. 33); J. Gledhill, Casi Nada: Capitalism, the State and the Campesinos of Guaracha (forthcoming).

61 e.g. Taussig, op. cit. (n. 25); Forbes, H. A., Strategies and Soils: Technology, Production and Environment in the Peninsula of Methana, Greece (1982), 365–6, 168–75Google Scholar.

62 Bharadwaj, op. cit. (n. 33).

63 Finkler, op. cit. (n. 33), 265–88; Gledhill, op. cit. (n. 60).

64 M Finkler, op. cit. (n. 33), 273. The simultaneous ‘renting in’ and ‘renting out’ of land is not unusual. For a south-east Asian case see, Scott, J. C., Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (1985), 70Google Scholar.

65 Finkler, op. cit. (n. 33), 274. The importance of a wide range of factors of production and concomitantly complex tenancy agreements is found in other case studies as well, e.g. Cooper, op. cit. (n. 26), 231–4; Pitt-Rivers, op. cit. (n. 24), 43–4.

66 Purcell, op. cit. (n. 46), 11.

67 Jashemski, W., The Gardens of Pompeii (1979)Google Scholar, chs. 10–13; cf also The Gardens of Pompeii (forthcoming). Cf. Garnsey, P. D. A., ‘Where Did Italian Peasants Live?’, PCPhSoc 25 (1979), 10Google Scholar.

68 Jones, A. H. M., ‘Census records of the later Roman Empire’, ch. 10 in The Roman Economy (1974), 231, 233 ff.Google Scholar These inscriptions record a mixture of whole farms and small isolated plots, many of which were occupied by tenants.

69 Brunt, op. cit (n. 4), 271; Keppie, op. cit. (n. 53). 95–6.

70 See, most recently, Halstead, P., ‘Traditional and ancient rural economy in Mediterranean Europe: plus ça change?’, JHS 107 (1987), 7787CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 Garnsey, op. cit. (n. 67), 1–25.

72 Though Garnsey does not himself believe these were ‘agrotowns’, op. cit. (n. 67), 6, 9, 16–17.

73 cf. Patterson, op. cit. (n. 2), 146; Garnsey, op. cit. (n. 67), 2.

74 Messenia: MacDonald, W. A. and Rapp, G. R., The Minnesota Messenia Expedition (1972), 146Google Scholar, though Roman and Late Roman sites may not be differentiated. For other areas see n. 1.

75 S. Alcock, ‘Survey at Phlius, 1986’ (unpublished manuscript), 9; AJA 90 (1986), 327.

76 J. Cherry et al., AJA 89 (1985), 326; Cherry, J. and Davis, J., ‘The Ptolemaic Base at Koressos on Keos’, in Reger, G. and Foxhall, L. (Eds), The Ptolemies in the AegeanGoogle Scholar (forthcoming) and op. cit. (n. 1), Kea.

77 Bintliff, J. and Snodgrass, A., Antiquity 62 (1988), 5771CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Journal of Field Archaeology 12 (1985), 145Google Scholar.

78 Frier, op. cit. (n. 9), 204.

79 Crook, J- A., Law and Life of Rome (1967), 158Google Scholar: White, K. D., Farm Equipment of the Roman World (1975)Google Scholar, s.v. instrumentum fundi; Frier, op. cit. (n. 9).

80 For the main references see Finley, op. cit. (n. 8), (forthcoming). 105–6, 108, 114.

81 C. B. Mee, H. A. Forbes, D. Gill and L. Foxhall, ‘Rural Settlement Change in the Methana Peninsula, Greece’, in G. Barker (ed.), Roman Agrarian Structure (forthcoming).

82 e.g. Digest 19. 2. 19. 2 is attributed to Ulpian, a lawyer active in the third century A.D.

83 Frier, op. cit. (n. 9), 209.

84 G. D. B. Jones, ‘Capena and the Ager Capenas, pt. 2’, PBSR 31 (1963), 100–58.

85 ibid., 50.

86 ibid., 155–7.

87 ibid., 157.

88 See also Mattingly, D. J., ‘The Olive Boom. Oil Surpluses, Wealth and Power in Roman Tripolitania’, Libyan Studies 19 (1988), 29CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for the same phenomenon (similarly explained) in Roman North Africa. See Hingley, R., Rural Settlement in Roman Britain (1989), 82–3, 105–8Google Scholar, for comparable analyses in Roman Britain

89 Finley, op. cit. (n. 8), 114.

90 ibid., 115.

91 ibid., 115–17.

92 For a particularly good example, see Cooper, op. cit. (n. 26), 229–31.

93 For a modern Mediterranean example see Gilmore, D., People of the Plain (1980), 40Google Scholar.

94 cf. Garnsey and Woolf, op. cit. (n. 15), 157–8.

95 Scott, J. C., The Moral Economy of the Peasant (1976), 37, 41, 45–9Google Scholar; cf. Scott, op. cit (n. 64). See also the references cited in n. 29.

96 Cooper, op. cit (n. 26), 243. Cf. Garnsey and Woolf, op. cit. (n. 15), 157.

97 de Neeve, P. W., ‘Remissio mercedisZRG 100 (1983), 296339Google Scholar.

98 ibid., 297, 308–18.

99 See Kehoe, op. cit. (n. 33), 15–42.

100 Digest 19. 2. 25. 6; 19. 2. 15. 2. Discussed by Robinson, O., ‘Casus in the Digest’, Acta Juridica (1977), 337; de Neeve, op. cit. (n. 97)Google Scholar.

102 Cato, RR 56; Foxhall, L. and Forbes, H. A., ‘Sitometreia: The Role of Grain as a Staple Food in Classical Antiquity’, Chiron 12 (1982), 63Google Scholar.

103 Sowing rates: Columella, RR 2. 9. 1, 4 modii/iugerum in good land, 5 modii/iugerum in not so good land, as high as 8 modii/iugerum recommended for good land. Land planted in arbusta needs 20 per cent more seed (2. 9. 5).

104 Columella, RR 3. 3. 4. This is probably much too low given the relatively high inputs of capital and labour on Cato's farms, but serves to make the point that storage capacity is inadequate if large quantities of cereals were grown. Obviously, if higher yields are postulated, the storage capacity is even more inadequate! The best recent discussion of Roman Italian cereal yields is Spurr, op. cit. (n. 6), 82–8.

105 Even if larger storage vessels are assumed (see Spurr, op. cit. (n. 104), 81–2), storage facilities are inadequate if the farm aimed to grow grain for subsistence. 20 dolia of 40-amphora capacity gives a total storage capacity of c. 20,800 1=16,058 kg wheat. Subsistence needs of 4110 kg = 26 per cent of total storage capacity. Hypothetical production for 1 year of 12,720 kg (and this is a low estimate) would practically fill all available storage capacity for grain leaving only 21 per cent of storage free. At this rate Cato could have expected to over-shoot his storage space regularly.