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Please note that Mommsen uses the AUC chronology (Ab Urbe Condita), i.e. from the founding of the City of Rome. You can use this reference table to have the B.C. dates

THE HISTORY OF OLD ROME

I. The Period Anterior to the Abolition of the Monarchy

From: The History of Rome, by Theodor Mommsen
Translated with the sanction of the author by William Purdie Dickson


The History of Old Rome

CHAPTER XIII - Agriculture, Trade, and Commerce

ELPENOR EDITIONS IN PRINT

The Original Greek New Testament

» Contents of this Chapter

Agriculture ||| System of Joint Cultivation ||| Culture of Grain ||| Culture of the Vine ||| Culture of the Olive ||| The Fig - Management of the Farm ||| Landed Proprietors ||| Pastoral Husbandry ||| Handicrafts ||| Inland Commerce of the Italians ||| Transmarine Traffic of the Italians ||| Commerce, in Latium Passive, in Etruria Active ||| Etrusco-Attic, and Latino-Sicilian Commerce


Agriculture and commerce are so intimately bound up with the constitution and the external history of states, that the former must frequently be noticed in the course of describing the latter. We shall here endeavour to supplement the detached notices which we have already given, by exhibiting a summary view of Italian and particularly of Roman economics.

Agriculture

It has been already observed(1) that the transition from a pastoral to an agricultural economy preceded the immigration of the Italians into the peninsula.

1. Cf. I. II. Agriculture

Agriculture continued to be the main support of all the communities in Italy, of the Sabellians and Etruscans no less than of the Latins. There were no purely pastoral tribes in Italy during historical times, although of course the various races everywhere combined pastoral husbandry, to a greater or less extent according to the nature of the locality, with the cultivation of the soil.

The beautiful custom of commencing the formation of new cities by tracing a furrow with the plough along the line of the future ring-wall shows how deeply rooted was the feeling that every commonwealth is dependent on agriculture. In the case of Rome in particular--and it is only in its case that we can speak of agrarian relations with any sort of certainty--the Servian reform shows very clearly not only that the agricultural class originally preponderated in the state, but also that an effort was made permanently to maintain the collective body of freeholders as the pith and marrow of the community.

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