ABSTRACT
Most farmers in Italy were engaged in subsistence farming, with a variety of crops grown and animals herded at a local level. Excavations of colonies have revealed that the plots of land farmed were usually very small. Unless farmers owned more than one plot each – for which we would have to have proof that the numbers of plots exceeded the likely numbers of settlers – the farms could not by themselves have supported a family and farmers will also have had to make use of common pasture land. Other than the banks of the Nile in Egypt, Italy was the most densely
populated region of the Mediterranean. Throughout our period, there were crises of food supply (not always famines, although the prolonged shortages when Sextus Pompey was blockading Italy did produce real starvation). Naturally, the problem was most acute in Rome itself, with its more than one million residents, few of whom grew any food. There was enormous profit to be made from importing food to Italy, and especially Rome, but also huge risk. (A great deal of our knowledge of the ancient Mediterranean comes from the large number of wrecked ships that have been discovered.) All our literary sources agree that there was a decline in the late Republic
in the number of free peasants. There was a growth in the number of large estates (villas and latifundia), and it was not uncommon for one man to own many estates. In Cicero’s speech Pro Roscio Amerino of 80, we are told that Q. Roscius of Ameria had thirteen estates along the River Tiber, worth 6 million sesterces in total. In 49, the elder Ahenobarbus could promise plots of land between 4 and 10 hectares to several thousand of his soldiers from his own property, and use his tenants, freedmen and slave herdsmen as sailors for a whole fleet (Nicolet 1994: 618). Much of the property in the possession of the great Roman and Italian landowners was in the provinces. Booty from conquest and exploitation of the conquered created the for-
tunes that enabled men to buy these estates. On the other side of the
equation, peasants were recruited into the army, taking them away from the land, and often could not compete with the large landowners and were forced to sell. However, there was not a simple exchange of the labour of peasant landowners for that of slaves, although unquestionably the use of slave labour increased with the growth of the latifundia. There were also tenant farmers and sharecroppers (people running a plot of land as a joint business venture). There was growing urbanisation from the start of this period; by the time
of Augustus, perhaps 3 million out of the 7.5 million people in Italy lived in towns. There was tremendous growth in construction work. Houses were often badly constructed and cheap, but the small profit to be made from each house was balanced by the fact that there were always many opportunities to build new houses, partly because of the growth of cities and partly because houses so often fell or burned down. There was also a demand for luxury houses from increasingly rich senators or the new rich, and for large public buildings. Although the Roman silver denarius spread all over the Mediterranean,
there was a shortage of cash. A positive effect was that there was no great inflation during the first century BC, but the negative effects were huge. There were financial crises in which the circulation of money and the availability of credit threatened to break down completely, in 66-63 and 48-47; there were repeated crises in the public finances due to widespread or unsuccessful warfare (Nicolet 1994: 600). Debt was a universal problem. It caused trouble for the small landowners
in the country. In the cities it affected the poor, who could not afford the rents on their flats or their workshops, the small businessmen, and the great landowners who borrowed in order to buy luxury houses and goods. Sometimes the problems were suffered by the creditors, who could be far less wealthy than the debtors. In 85 and 66 a number of big lenders went bust; the same could have happened in 63. In the late 20s, one of the most important reforms of Augustus’ reign
took place, his reorganisation of the coinage. With few exceptions, all coins in the late Republic were silver. This had meant that only high-value goods were paid for in cash. Augustus established a coinage using four metals: gold, silver, brass (copper and zinc) and copper. For the first time in decades, small change was in circulation. The sestertius (symbol HS) had always been the basic accounting unit; now the brass sestertius coin, worth a quarter of a denarius, became the basic unit of currency. There was a range of coins fixed in value in relationship to each other, from the gold aureus worth 100 HS to the tiny copper quadrans worth one-sixteenth of a HS (for further details, see LACTOR 17: 12-15). The importance of this reform cannot be overstated. It allowed a true
money economy to operate throughout the Empire. By making the movement of wealth easy, it enabled merchants to get wealthier and provincials
to share in the benefits of being part of the Roman economy. It made it easier to supply the people of Rome with what they needed. It made it significantly easer to provision, pay and give pensions to the Roman army; it is probably not too much to say that without an effective system of coinage the Roman army, scattered over the frontiers of the Empire and in constant need of huge quantities of food, drink and weapons, could not have continued to function. Money does many things, some to the benefit of all people in society, but above all it is a mechanism by which the economically unproductive can exploit the economically productive.
