ABSTRACT
The primacy of land both as a measure of status and a form of investment was never doubted in the ancient world. The Roman dynasts of the late Republic were noted for their estates, and it was only natural that the emperors who followed should become the largest landowners amongst their contemporaries (Shatzman, 1975, 357–71 for Augustus). And whilst estates were only one of the sources of imperial wealth, joined for instance by quarries, mines, brickworks, salt-pans, flocks and herds (MacMullen, 1962, 277–82), they were certainly the most significant. The changing extent, nature and exploitation of these estates, which form the subject of this chapter, may therefore serve to illustrate important facets, both political and economic, of imperial power. The development, for example, from the rule of the Julio-Claudians, characterized by a tentative and personal exercise of imperial power, to the more codified and securely administered rule of the Flavians is nowhere more clearly seen than in the changing attitudes of the emperors towards their estates. What started as personal inheritance became imperial patrimony tied to office, and the reorganization of the imperial estates by the new dynasty typified this change in rule.
