61.  III.  V. Fabius and Minucius

62.  II.  I. The Dictator

63.  III.  XI.  Election of Officers in the Comitia

64.  III.  V. Flaminius, New Warlike Preparations in Rome

65.  III.  V. Fabius and Minucius

66.  III.  XI.  Squandering of the Spoil

67.  III.  Vi.  Publius Scipio

68.  III.  Vi.  The African Expedition of Scipio

69.  III.  X. Humiliation of Rhodes

70.  II.  II.  Agrarian Law of Spurius Cassius

CHAPTER XII

The Management of Land and of Capital

Roman Economics

It is in the sixth century of the city that we first find materials for a history of the times exhibiting in some measure the mutual connection of events; and it is in that century also that the economic condition of Rome emerges into view more distinctly and clearly.  It is at this epoch that the wholesale system, as regards both the cultivation of land and the management of capital, becomes first established under the form, and on the scale, which afterwards prevailed; although we cannot exactly discriminate how much of that system is traceable to earlier precedent, how much to an imitation of the methods of husbandry and of speculation among peoples that were earlier civilized, especially the Phoenicians, and how much to the increasing mass of capital and the growth of intelligence in the nation.  A summary outline of these economic relations will conduce to a more accurate understanding of the internal history of Rome.

Roman husbandry(1) applied itself either to the farming of estates, to the occupation of pasture lands, or to the tillage of petty holdings.  A very distinct view of the first of these is presented to us in the description given by Cato.

Farming of Estates
Their Size

The Roman land-estates were, considered as larger holdings, uniformly of limited extent.  That described by Cato had an area of 240 jugera; a very common measure was the so-called -centuria- of 200 -jugera-.  Where the laborious culture of the vine was pursued, the unit of husbandry was made still less; Cato assumes in that case an area of 100 -jugera-.  Any one who wished to invest more capital in farming did not enlarge his estate, but acquired several estates; accordingly the amount of 500 -jugera-,(2) fixed as the maximum which it was allowable to occupy, has been conceived to represent the contents of two or three estates.

Management of the Estate

Object of Husbandry