Where did Italian peasants live

Bibliographic Data

ID11618092
AuthorsPeter Garnsey (Jesus University, corresponding author), P D A Garnsey
Year1979
Volume25
Pages1-25
Publication date1979-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueProceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0068-6735 • E-ISSN: 2053-5899
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0068673500004090
OpenAlexW3004700518
LanguageEN
Citations received61
References cited29

Until recently this was a question that was not asked. It was not asked because there was a prior question that was asked, and that received a negative answer: Did peasant proprietors survive in significant numbers in the late Republic or early Empire? The consensus of opinion has been that they were always to be found, but that they were relatively few. As the traditional rural economy of which they had been the characteristic feature gave way under the impact of new economic forces, they became a residual phenomenon. Moreover, this development had already occurred by the late second century B.C. It is to be noted that peasant proprietors, small farmers working the land they owned, rather than free cultivators as a whole, have usually been the object of inquiry. The roles of tenancy in the late Republic and of wage labour in all periods have rarely been positively evaluated. Again, the idea that small ownercultivators, tenant-farmers and day-labourers were overlapping categories in ancient Italy has been little developed in the scholarly literature

Leasehold estate · Peasant · Phenomenon · The Republic · Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History · Classical Antiquity Studies