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Suntne vacci laeti?

Agriculture is perhaps the most complicated aspect of any culture's economy to study. Rome is no exception and a deceptive impression is given by the fact that quite a few of its elements are extremely well documented. Unfortunately, the Empire was so large that even the areas that are well documented cannot safely be used to generalize about the agricultural economy of the Empire as a whole. The same holds true for the Celtic peoples who at one time occupied the majority of Europe. Their livelihood varied, just as it did for the Roman empire, from region to region.

To understand the differences and similarities of agriculture, its necessary to present an overview of the two cultures.

From the fifth century military campaigns became common and after the middle of the third century, Rome found herself almost constantly at war because of her ever increasing periphery. Because the land of Italy was extremely productive and since the individual farmer produced only what he needed to maintain his family and pay state taxes, this meant that there existed in the Roman countryside a vast pool of underused labor from which the armies, commanded by the elite could be drawn.

Once Rome began to engage in larger campaigns and extended overseas campaigns, the prolonged absence of the male population from the small farms caused an increasing destabilization in the countryside. Small landholdings were unable to be maintained which resulted in a steady movement of labor from the land to the cities and the small landholdings were either abandoned or absorbed into the larger estates which then relied more and more on slave labor. Slaves, the by product of Rome's wars, became the prime source of the manpower needed to fuel the Roman agricultural economy. In the cities, the urban poor grew into an increasingly volatile mob while in the countryside, the estates of the elite gobbled up the small landholdings.

As the large estates continued to flourish, the owners needed to capitalize on their investments and produce an agricultural surplus as cheaply as possible and market it for the maximum profit. Most classical writers believed the most profitable crop to be vines. According to Pliny, wine production could produce a greater return even in trade with the Far East.

While Rome was going through a phase of social stress and economic readjustment, significant changes were also occurring in Europe even beyond direct Roman control. Rome trade with Gaul continued unabated even while the Germanic hordes came and went during this time. Judging by the distribution of first century BCE wine amphorae in Gaul, the major rivers were the lines of transport used and this has been confirmed by Strabo.

Also its possible to trace, over an incredibly vast area, the emergence of large defended settlements generally known as oppida. This is the word that Caesar applied to these settlements when he first encountered them and they span much of temperate Europe from western France to Serbia and from the Alps to the former Czechoslovakia. Archaeology has provided evidence that a wide range of craft skills were being practised and that the output of such commodities as wheel turned pottery, glass beads and jewelry, as well as quality ironwork, was on an industrial scale. Coins were also being minted in Gaul at this time and evidence points to the oppida as being the centers where the minting was taking place. Given the size and the sheer intensity of production its, at the very least, reasonable to say that they display a significant array of urban characteristics.

This phenomenon, beginning in the second century BCE, might suggest that it came about directly due to the increase of trade between Rome and Gaul. While definitely a contributing factor, it would be wrong to overemphasize the significance of Rome. There are indications of industrialization and the gradual coalescence of smaller migrating groups into more stable political groups even outside the direct sphere of Rome and this strongly suggests that the progress toward urban based economies was already underway before trade with Rome began to intensify.

Both cultures had an agricultural economy sufficiently productive enough to support a significant amount of non agricultural activity. In the next series of articles, I hope to examine the state of current knowledge about ancient agricultural techniques in both regions and cultures.

Agriculture - Doing it in the Dirt (second in the series)

Prehistoric Europe, an Illustrated History, edited by Barry Cunliffe, Oxford University Press, 1994

The Celts, T.G.E. Powell, Thames and Hudson, 1997

Roman Britain, Outpost of the Empire, H.H. Scullard, Thames and Hudson, 1979