Spurr M.S. Arable Cultivation in Roman Italy: c.200 B.C.-c.A.D.100

Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies, 1986. — 188 p. — (Journal of Roman Studies Monographs 3).'Grain was to antiquity what oil is to the world of today.' The juxtaposition startles and thus serves its purpose, even though under scrutiny it ceases to .satisfy on several counts. Yet a review of major works will show that the importance of grain in the history of the Roman world has rarely been underestimated. All the more surprising then that the cultivation of cereals in Roman Italy has never been properly examined.
Instead, generalized discussions of the subject have been allowed to stand, which reveal scant knowledge of agriculture and only superficial acquaintance with the Roman agricultural treatises or any other useful evidence. Vague in themselves, these arguments become dangerous when they propose full-scale reconstructions of the rural economy. While they might differ in the prominence given to the various aspects of the process, all deduce a decline in cereal cultivation after the Hannibalic War. This is not acceptable, as the following chapters will demonstrate. Since my views diverge so widely from that conclusion, and from- every contributing factor to it, it will suffice here to summarize the better known traditional arguments, so that later refutation, often implicit rather than explicit, will be more easily recognizable when it occurs.
After the Hannibalic War wealth and slaves poured into Italy as a result of imperial expansion. Increased investment in Italian land was supposedly characterized by the growth of agricultural villas, which specialized in olives and vines, or by sheep ranches. Both concerns were staffed by slaves and both were profitoriented. Grain, it is asserted, neither profitable, nor suited to slave labour, was relegated to poor soils and allocated minimum attention. If there was any progress in agricultural 'technology', it was confined to olive and vine cultivation.