Impensae, operae, and the pastio villatica

The chapter explores how our understanding of financial decision-making in the Roman world might be expanded by an exploration of the linguistic and accounting frameworks which landowners employed. By analysing some of the key terms used in the agricultural treatises of Cato, Varro and Columella, which were written at different points in the Roman era, it traces progressions in the use of the terms used to describe income, expenditure, labour, and profit, and suggests that these might demonstrate changes in how investments in the supplementary income streams offered by the pastio villatica were viewed as against the returns available from the core crops of grain oil and wine. The agronomists’ understanding of distinctions between investment and consumption is illustrated by examples of their use of sumptus and impensae , whilst a discussion of fructus quaestus and reditus illuminates shifts in how income and profit were conceptualized. Labour was a key factor of production and it is argued that, whether provided by hired hands or slaves, the use of the opera as a unit of measurement may mean that it was seen as a store of value to be allocated as part of the investment evaluation process. Finally, an analysis of the employment of utilis and expedit suggests that different value-systems might have been applied to core crops and supplementary products, possibly providing a cognitive impediment to the efficient allocation of investment resources.

Economics · Classical Antiquity Studies · Historical and Literary Studies · Historical Economic and Legal Thought · History

• A Pastio Villatica no Rerum Rusticarum de Varão

  Open Access•Helton Lourenço Carvalho•LaborHistórico•2022

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