Marsh 1

The first three centuries AD brought about many changes in the Roman empire beginning

with the shift towards a monarchical empire. During this period of change Italian agriculture

changed away from previous subsistence farming towards the growing of cash crops leading to

the development of large estate farms. These estates grew more grapes and olives to produce

luxury goods such as wine and olive oil. As these large estates grew the owners were unable to

manage all of the land on their own and began renting out their land to tenant farmers who were

unable to own land themselves. This establishment of the tenant system is important to the Italian

economy going forward in the Roman Empire as this system becomes the core of the labor force.

The understanding of agriculture on the Italian peninsula during this time is limited as the

amount of written primary sources about this topic are small. Many historians use Cato’s,

Columella’s, and Varro’s manuals On Agriculture, and Naturalis Historia by Pliny the Elder as

they provide necessary descriptions on the running of farms in the Italian peninsula for the time

period. These works offer much information about agricultural practices used on estate farms.

These aspects are explored by many historians with the cultural impacts being among the earliest

studied.

One of the earliest approaches to understanding the importance of farming was cultural.

In 1979 Joan Frayn wrote the book Subsistence Farming in Roman Italy describing the life and

farms of the average farmers in the Italian Peninsula. She approaches this topic through a cultural

historical method. Her research describes the yearly cycle of growing that many small farm

owners followed, primarily the growing seasons or herd movement. Frayn uses a combination of

literary and archaeological evidence to support her claims. Archaeological evidence underpins

two chapters, chapters 3 and 8, including public calendars and the remains of farm buildings

from smaller farms. One calendar that Frayn brings to attention, found under the Basilica of
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Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, depicts the month of September as a month of fruit harvest for

the farmers in the region, supporting Frayn’s description of the yearly life cycle.1 Chapter 8

focuses on farm buildings, primarily describing on the simple design of the buildings on peasant

farms that consist of wooden structures built over a piece of ground dug down into the stone.2

Frayn’s successes demonstrating the cyclical nature of peasant life are overshadowed by the lack

of discussion about the practices on the farms and the lack of her discussion about the buildings

on farms uses in relation to subsistence farming.

The cultural background of Roman farming is discussed further in 1985 through Nicholas

Purcell’s “Wine and Wealth in Ancient Italy,” which analyzes of the importance of viticulture in

the Italian peninsula of the early Roman Empire. Purcell takes a cultural and an Annales

approach to this subject as describes how both economic and social norms affected agricultural

practices. After a Republican era during which elites looked down on farming for profit, Purcell

argues that in the imperial period the growth of viticulture affected cultural and social beliefs

significantly. Purcell describes the social context through the accounts of Cato in the Republican

period and Pliny the Elder in the early Imperial era as both give accounts of viticulture in context

of its respective contemporary social status. Through Cato’s writings, Purcell emphasizes how in

Republican Rome viticulture was discussed in private settings but never in public spaces, such as

the Senate. The politicizing of viticulture was vital to its increase in the Italian Peninsula,

according to Purcell, as it catalyzed the tenant farming system. This article is organized

chronologically as Purcell establishes the widespread adoption of viticulture before explaining its

economic impact outside of the agricultural circle in the Italian Peninsula. The growing strength

and popularity of viticulture, Purcell argues, reflects the political and cultural changes undergone

1
Joan Frayn Subsistence Farming in Roman Italy (Fontwell, Centaur press,1979) 50.
2
Frayn Subsistence 117.
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from Republican to Imperial Rome according to Purcell. In looking at this period of transition in

the longue durée Purcell successfully links the growth of viticulture to the changing cultural

views.

In Annalisa Marzano’s Roman Villas in Central Italy published in 2007, she discusses the

institution of the villa system in Roman Italy. She combines the use of literary sources and

archaeological evidence to show villas’ status. Marzano’s goal is to determine the central role

that the villa system had within the social history of Roman Italy between the first century BC

and the third century AD. Citing descriptions by Pliny the Younger and Columella, Marzano

distinguishes between coastal and rural villas, with the coastal villas being less labor centric than

the rural. This diffusion of function created different types of labor on the Italian peninsula, as

rural villas focused on farming did not require workers with the same skills as villas with

elaborate fishponds. The intense terraforming for rural villas to grow their crops and the massive

irrigation systems to support fishponds show the versatility of the Italian economy during the

early Imperial period. As one example of a coastal villa, Marzano discusses the villa of Torre

Astura, as it has a 15,000 m2 fishpond that was built partially on an artificial island: an

inscription near the Via Fallerese describes the creation of irrigation channels and pottery dams

on a nearby meadow.3 Marzano is successful in bringing together written sources as well as

archaeological evidence to illustrate her argument for cultural importance of the villas.

Approaching history while looking at institutions is another angle scholars have used to

study villas in early-imperial Italy. In 1981 Jeremy Rossiter used an institutional approach in his

article “Wine and Oil Processing at Roman Farms in Italy” where he discusses the importance of

crop processing on Roman farms. Rossiter defines the labor practices and technological

3
Annalisa Marzano Roman Villas in Central Italy: A Social and Ecoomic History (Brill, 2007) 48, 93.
 Marsh 4

advancements in Roman farmers’ methods for producing wine and olive oil. The archaeological

evidence from villas in Rome shows varying sizes, shapes, and styles of olive and grape presses.

On larger villas mechanical presses on concrete slabs allowed for large scale producers to

efficiently press their olives and grapes. Smaller villas and farms, meanwhile, included pressing

platforms with no mechanical presses and portable tubs for manual pressing done by the

workers.4 Rossiter uses that evidence in combination with Cato’s, Columella’s, and Pliny the

Elder’s, descriptions of laborers pressing olives and grapes into oil and wine. While the sources

disagree over minor details, they generally support the models that Rossiter infers from the

archaeological evidence. In addition to small- and large-scale farms, Rossiter discusses the

pressing of grapes and olives on medium scale farms where the permanent processing facilities

consist of rooms with cement tanks for pressing and attached methods for storage. This pressing

equipment differs from that of smaller farms, where no such cement structures are found and so

portable tubs must have been used instead.5 As the smaller portable tubs required the workers to

stomp the grapes and olives in smaller quantities, these tubs would have been more labor

intensive than the mechanical presses. These small-scale farms were therefore unable to produce

as much wine and oil as the larger estates with permanent pressing structures. Rossiter’s results

successfully help understand the connection between technological advancements and labor

requirements in agriculture of the early Roman Empire.

Geoffrey Kron’s 2017 article “The Diversification and Intensification of Italian

Agriculture: The Complementary Roles of the Small and Wealthy Farmer” uses a similar

institutional approach, as Rossiter, to agriculture in the Roman estate system. Kron looks to

define the roles of rich as compared to small farmers during the early Roman Empire. One of the

4
Jeremy Rossiter, “Wine and Oil Processing at Roman Farms in Italy,” Phoenix no. 35 (1981) 350-351.
5
Rossiter, “Wine and Oil Processing,” 348.
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main developments that Kron discusses is the emerging use of the tenant farming system, where

the rich farmers rented out small parts of their land to be worked by the small farmers instead of

relying on slave labor. Kron argues that the houses of the small farms in this system reflects the

successes of this system. Two examples of farmhouses are given one on Monte Forco which

exemplifies the type of structure tenants started with, and another on Villa Regina at Boscoreale

that illustrates some possibilities of development.6 Kron claims that due to the tenant farmers the

rich farms began practicing game farming of exotic animals, as they were able to direct more

resources away from crops.7 The shift to game farming ,as Kron argues, highlights the role of the

rich farmers as investors, who in turn established the normalization of eating meat that

eventually reached the small farmers. Kron succeeds in specifying the roles of rich and small

farmers of the time and what institutional changes occurred due to the differing roles.

Annalisa Marzano in the chapter “Agriculture in Imperial Italy” published in 2020,

analyzes the practices of agriculture from the Italian peninsula and how they had changed from

the Roman Republican era through the fourth century AD. Marzano uses an institutional

approach to this topic as she discusses the development of larger latifundia and the practice of

growing multiple crops in the same fields. Marzano argues against the thesis that Roman farms

produced crops solely based on their strength in the economy. Throughout the chapter she brings

up Opus Agriculturae by Palladius as well as Columella’s de Re Rustica as her textual primary

sources about how the estates were run. To discuss the yields and success of estates Marzano

uses the archaeological evidence found at the estate sites. Villa Regina at Boscoreale, outside

Pompeii, is an example where the remnants of vines, olive-tree roots, and almond-tree roots were

6
Geoffrey Kron, “The Diversification and Intensification of Italian Agriculture: The Complementary Roles of the
Small and Wealthy Farmer” in The Economic Integration of Roman Italy: Rural Communities in a Globalizing World
7
Kron, “Diversification,” 129.
The raising of animals such as peacocks, ostriches, and other exotic animals was the new area of game farming that
took place.
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found, illustrating Marzano’s point that the same farmers planted a multitude of crops. She

discusses these estates to clarify how researchers have estimated the yields of crops that Italy

could have been producing from this period. The organization of this chapter includes sections

discussing sources, crops and animal husbandry, and the ownership of land. Marzano’s

explanation of agriculture cultural and economic changes in Imperial Italy gives a base of

information on which further discussion can be made.

One further approach in understanding the effectiveness of agriculture in the Italian

Peninsula in the first three centuries AD is quantitative. This approach is used in the 1994 article

“Water Supply for Roman Farms in Latium and South Etruria” by Robert Thomas and Andrew

Wilson. Thomas and Wilson utilize both environmental and quantitative approaches to address

the hydration needs of Latin and Etrurian farms and what systems the farmers used to procure

their water. The article first discusses the mechanisms by which Romans retained water runoff

and drained excess water to prevent flooding of their fields. Among the main mechanisms,

Thomas and Wilson states that wells, runoff, and drainage were most important to agriculture as

aqueducts are difficult or illegal to access in many areas.8 As grain used drastically higher

amounts of water when compared to vineyards and olive orchards, the usage of water collected

from these methods varied by region and type of agriculture practiced. Thomas and Wilson also

assert that elite villas used the most water in all of the early Imperial Rome, as fish farms were

status symbols that required a lot of water and intricate irrigation systems. The study utilizes data

tables for each agricultural product that display land usage, storage required, and evaporation and

flow rates to estimate water usage.9 The tables are based on data about modern crops, excluding

crops that no longer exist, and rainfall totals in the region. While throughout the article Thomas

8
Robert Thomas and Andrew Wilson, “Water Supply for Roman Farms in Latium and South Etruria” Papers of the
British School at Rome (1994) 141 -147.
9
Thomas and Wilson, “Water Supply”159, 166.
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and Wilson address this discrepancy in time by estimating the accuracy of their calculations in

percentages, their use of modern climate data for an earlier ecological system still creates risk of

anachronism. Still, Thomas and Wilson succeed in their descriptions of mechanisms for water

usage and what water sources were used. Attempting to understand the amounts of water used in

the agricultural methods of Italian farms allows for quantitative studies to be done in other

aspects of agriculture in Roman Italy.

Helen Goodchild employs this type of quantitative study in her doctoral thesis

“Modelling Roman Agricultural Production in the Middle Tiber Valley, Central Italy” completed

in 2007. She sets out to calculate the crop yields in the middle Tiber Valley and in turn to

quantify possible supported populations. In modelling the crop yields she attempts to identify the

system of agriculture that would best supply urban centers. To calculate crop yield Goodchild

combines the geology of the region, literary evidence, and archaeological evidence from estate

ruins in Italy. Goodchild also discusses the diet of ancient Romans, stating that their diet

primarily relied on grain and products such as olive oil, wine, and fruit. Her estimates that the

average consumption of calories for ancient Romans was between 1625 and 2012 kcal per day

illustrate the necessary amount food required to be grown. The collection of her sources allows

her to model what realistic crop yields might have been as well as the potential contribution of

animal husbandry. In total she finds that in the Tiber River valley farms the growing of multiple

crops, supporting a higher population of around 41 people/km2.10 To help readers visualize the

subject, figures, tables, and maps are included throughout the thesis. Goodchild is mostly

successful in using her data to support her argument; yet as with Thomas and Wilson her reliance

on data from post Roman periods calls the results into question.11

10
Helen Goodchild, “Modelling Roman Agriculture Production in the Middle Tiber Valley, Central Italy,” (Ph.D.
Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2007) 390.
11
Goodchild, “Modelling,” 257.
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These scholars have pushed forward the understanding of the emphasis on commercial

farming in the first three centuries CE. The works point out the development of permanent

processing facilities and the increase in yields of grapes and olives. The approach to agriculture

has shifted away from culture focused research towards quantitative and institutional studies.

The more recent studies seek to answer questions on crop yields and the changes being made to

the agricultural institutions on the Italian peninsula. Institutional studies are more successful as

they are using archaeological and written records of agriculture to study the changes that came

about. Quantitative studies are moderately successful as they give an understanding of

possibilities of crop yields and water usage but rely on modern data to model their findings.

Many of the works done by historians about Roman Agriculture discuss the topic want to discuss

the general practices behind agriculture but do not discuss how people would have likely lived

their daily lives.

Goodchild mentions how the record of crop yields other than of cereals was not kept in any amount of certainty.
She discusses this with olives that she uses modern crop yields as they are the most available records of the output
of olive trees.
 Marsh 9

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Their Owners from 150 BC to AD 400. Harvard University Press, 1970.

This book discusses the cultural influences that went into the construction of the coastal
villas in the bay of Naples.

Foxhall, Lin. “The Dependent Tenant: Land Leasing and Labour in Italy and Greece.” Journal of
Roman Studies, 80 (1990).

This article addresses the practice of farm tenancy that began between 100 BC and 100
AD. Foxhall details the relationship between tenants and the landowners while describing
the efficiency of the two.

Frayn, Joan M. Subsistence Farming in Roman Italy Fontwell, Sussex: Centaur Press, 1979

This article discusses the original ideology of Roman farming from when the primary
goal was to grow crops that were vital to survival. Frayn focuses on the peasant farmers
and the methods they used on their small farms rather than the larger estate farms.

Goodchild, Helen. “Modelling Roman Agriculture Production in the Middle Tiber Valley,
Central Italy.” Ph.D. Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2007.
https://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/175/1/Goodchild07PhD.pdf

This thesis has the primary goal of producing a probable model of what the outputs of
Roman agriculture to discuss what population density of Ancient Rome in the Italian
peninsula might have been. Helen Goodchild also discusses what the size of estates and
smaller farms could have been based on the model of the study area.

Hollander, David B. Farmers and Agriculture in the Roman Economy. Abingdon, Oxon:
Routledge, 2019.

This book discusses the role that the farming social class in the economy of the Roman
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metal tools and medical expertise as well as their use of land.

Kehoe, Dennis P. Law and Rural Economy in the Roman Empire. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 2010.

This book covers the Roman laws that were enacted over the people outside of urban
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 Marsh 10

of this book describes the growing rights of rural citizens as well as the laws that allow
for private farms and the tenant farming system.

Kron, Geoffrey. “The Diversification and Intensification of Italian Agriculture: The

Complementary Roles of the Small and Wealthy Farmer” In The Economic Integration of
Roman Italy: Rural Communities in a Globalizing World edited by Timon de Haas and
Gijs Tol, 112-140. Leiden: Brill, 2017.

This chapter discusses the roles between rich and small farms and the ways their roles
changed agriculture in the Italian Peninsula during the early Roman Empire. Discusses
both crop production and game farming on Villas.

Marzano, Annalisa. Roman Villas in Central Italy: A Social and Economic History. Leiden;
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This book discusses the importance of Roman villas on the overall Roman Economy as
well as the myths surrounding slave estates. Marzano uses much archaeological evidence
to support her claims about the functions of Roman villas.

Marzano, Annalisa. “Agriculture in Imperial Italy.” In A Companion to Ancient Agriculture.

edited by David Hollander and Timothy Howe, 431-446. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley &
Sons, 2020.

This chapter discusses how agriculture was being implemented throughout the Italian
peninsula beginning at the end of the first century BCE. The chapter discusses the trends
towards the large latifundia, or estates, and what types of crops were produced on the
farms of this region.

Purcell, Nicholas. “Wine and Wealth in Ancient Italy.” The Journal of Roman Studies, 75
(1985). 1-19.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/300648

This article by Nicholas Purcell challenges the idea of the Italian farmer growing only
one type of crop due to economic feasibility. This article tackles the issue of agricultural
labor from the economic point of view and looks to explain what might have made
Roman agriculture more sustainable.
Rossiter, Jeremy J. “Wine and Oil Processing at Roman Farms in Italy.” Phoenix. 35 (1981),
345-361.

This article is written to help better understand the importance of the production process
of wine and oil on Italian Farms. The author looks to written accounts to better
understand the individual parts and technology in Ancient Roman production of wine and
oil.

Smith, John Thomas. Roman villas: a study in social structure. Routledge, 2012.
 Marsh 11

This book details the individual aspects of the villas in the Roman Empire and how they
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