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Subsistence Farming in Italy during the Roman Period: A Preliminary Discussion of the Evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Joan M. Frayn
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Extract

Most modern studies of Roman agriculture have concentrated on the methods used for farming on a large-scale and on a commercial basis. This is not surprising since the classical writers on agriculture in Latin, Cato, Varro, and to a lesser extent Columella and Palladius, are mainly concerned with this aspect. And naturally so, since only the gentleman farmer could read them and profit by their advice. There is, as has been remarked by K. D. White, a serious lack of evidence about the life and work of the peasant farmer. This was, however, considered to be of great importance by the Romans themselves:

hanc olim veteres vitam coluere Sabini,

hanc Remus et frater, sic fortis Etruria crevit,

scilicet et rerum facta est pulcherrima Roma.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , April 1974 , pp. 11 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1974

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References

page 11 note 1 Roman Farming (London, 1970), 335.Google Scholar

page 11 note 2 Virg. Ge. ii. 532–4.Google Scholar

page 12 note 1 See Bradford, J., Ancient Landscapes (London, 1957).Google Scholar

page 12 note 2 White, K. D., Agricultural Implements of the Roman World (Cambridge, 1967).Google Scholar

page 12 note 3 It is interesting to note that the Italian derivatives of hortus in common use are connected with the growing of vegetables: ortaglia, kitchen garden, market garden; orto, kitchen garden, orchard; ortolano, market gardener. But those of a literary and scientific type have the wider meaning, e.g. orticultura, ortivo.

page 13 note 1 NH xix. 50—1.Google Scholar

page 13 note 2 See White, , Roman Farming, 49 and 246.Google Scholar

page 13 note 3 Virg. Eel. passim and Varro, ii. I. 21 et al.

page 14 note 1 For further examples, see Ovid, , Fasti iv. 810Google Scholar; Virg. Aen. vii. 817 and xi. 569.Google Scholar

page 15 note 1 White, , Roman Farming, 336.Google Scholar

page 16 note 1 Leg. Agr. iii. 4.Google Scholar

page 17 note 1 Pliny, , NH xix. 24.Google Scholar

page 17 note 2 Frederiksen, M. W., JRS lviii (1968), 225.Google Scholar

page 17 note 3 ‘Nettles do not make a good sauce’.

page 18 note 1 Cf. Pliny, NH xix. 162—3 and 172, with reference to Greece.Google Scholar

page 18 note 2 ‘Christ has never come here … Christ has not come, just as the Romans did not come, who guarded the great highways and did not penetrate the mountains and the forests.’