ABSTRACT
WE have already seen that agriculture was considered in the early centuries of Rome as the occupation par excellence—if not the sole occupation—besides warfare, of the free citizen. All wealth was derived from the soil. The influence or lack of influence of a family depended on the number of acres or of cattle which it possessed. It has been noted that the adjective locuples, meaning opulent, is a contraction of the two words loci plenus which mean literally “full of estates”. Pliny the Elder recorded that Roman surnames were borrowed from words of agricultural origin; thus Piso, Lentulus, Cicero, and others. It was cattle which served at first as money, and fines were expressed in terms of sheep and oxen.
