Agriculture in ancient Rome
Attributed to Mago the Carthaginian, the agricultural treatise Rusticatio, originally written in Punic and later translated into Greek and Latin, is now lost.
When one of his clients was derided in court for preferring a rural lifestyle, Cicero defended country life as "the teacher of economy, of industry, and of justice" (parsimonia, diligentia, iustitia).
[3] Though Rome relied on resources from its many provinces acquired through conquest and warfare, wealthy Romans developed the land in Italy to produce a variety of crops.
"The people living in the city of Rome constituted a huge market for the purchase of food produced on Italian farms.
[11] Cato wrote that if sowing grain in humid or dewy soils was unavoidable, they should be sown alongside turnips, panic grass, millet and rape.
[12] Despite listing panicum and millet among the legumes Columella says they should be considered grain crops "for in many countries the peasants subsist on food made from them".
For it affords an excellent fertilizer for worn out vineyards and ploughlands; it flourishes even in exhausted soil; and it endures age when laid away in the granary.
When softened by boiling it is good fodder for cattle during the winter; in the case of humans, too, it serves to warn off famine if years of crop failures come upon them.The Romans grew olive trees in poor, rocky soils, and often in areas with sparse precipitation.
The tree is sensitive to freezing temperatures and intolerant of the colder weather of northern Europe and high, cooler elevations.
[16] Viticulture was probably brought to southern Italy and Sicily by Greek colonists, but the Phoenicians of Carthage in northern Africa gave the Romans much of their knowledge of growing grapes and making wine.
By 160 BC, the cultivation of grapes on large estates using slave labor was common in Italy and wine was becoming a universal drink in the Roman empire.
[22] The Romans also grew artichoke, mustard, coriander, rocket, chives, leeks, celery, basil, parsnip, mint, rue, thyme "from overseas," beets, poppy, dill, asparagus, radish, cucumber, gourd, fennel, capers, onions, saffron, parsley, marjoram, cabbage, lettuce, cumin, garlic, figs, "Armenian apricots," plums, mulberries, peaches, and hemp.
He describes certain methods of construction to avoid buildings developing cracks that would give animals and weevils access to the grains.
[25] Columella describes land as being classified into three types of terrain which he calls champaign (sloping plains), hills with a gradual but gentle rise, and wooded, verdant mountain highlands.
Some provinces specialized in the production of grains including wheat, emmer, spelt, barley, and millet; others in wine and others in olive oil, depending on the soil type.
Columella writes in his De re rustica, "Soil that is heavy, chalky, and wet is not unsuited to the growing for winter wheat and spelt.
"[34] Pliny the Elder wrote extensively about agriculture in his Naturalis Historia from books XII to XIX, including chapter XVIII, The Natural History of Grain.
[35] Greek geographer Strabo considered the Po Valley (northern Italy) to be the most important economically because "all cereals do well, but the yield from millet is exceptional, because the soil is so well watered."
"[29] In the grain-growing area of north Africa, centered on the ancient city of Carthage, a family of six people needed to cultivate 12 iugera/ 3 hectares of land to meet minimum food requirements (without animals).
It is clear that large scale surplus production was undertaken in some provinces, such as to supply the cities, especially Rome, with grain, a process known as the Cura Annonae.
Egypt, northern Africa, and Sicily were the principal sources of grain to feed the population of Rome, estimated at one million people at its peak.
"[page needed] Average wheat yields per year in the 3rd decade of the century, sowing 135 kg/ha of seed, were around 1,200 kg/ha in Italy and Sicily, 1,710 kg/ha in Egypt, 269 kg/ha in Cyrenaica, Tunisia at 400 kg/ha, and Algeria at 540 kg/ha, Greece at 620 kg/ha.
An agricultural unit was known as a latus fundus mentioned by Varro as a great estate,[40] which can be interpreted as a latifundia or at 500 iugera or around 125 hectares because this is the land limit imposed by Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus as tribune in 133 BC.
[45] Erdkamp estimated that the amount needed would be at least 150,000 tonnes, calculating that each resident of the city consumed 200 kilograms (440 lb) of grain per year.
In the Historia Augusta, it is stated Severus left 27 million modii in storage - considered to be a figure for the canon at the end of the 4th century and enough for 800,000 inhabitants at 500 lbs of bread per person per annum[49] Pliny the Younger painted a picture that Rome was able to survive without Egyptian wheat in his speech the Panegyricus in 100 AD.
Sixteen overshot water wheels arranged in two columns were fed by the main aqueduct to Arles, the outflow from one being the supply to the next one down in the series.
[51] The capacity of the mills has been estimated at 4.5 tons of flour per day, sufficient to supply enough bread for the 12,500 inhabitants occupying the town of Arelate at that time.
[52] Vertical water wheels were well known to the Romans, described by Vitruvius in his De architectura of 25 BC, and mentioned by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia of AD 77.
There is evidence from bas-reliefs that farmers in northern Gaul (present day France) used a kind of automatic harvester or reaper when collecting ripe grain crops.
"In addition to invasions by Carthaginians and Celtic tribes, slave rebellions and civil wars which were repeatedly fought on Italian soil all contributed to the destruction of traditional agricultural holdings.
