Economics and Agriculture

Cue (NZERS), 1 June 1944, Page 6

Economics and Agriculture

Reference has already been made to the economic flaws of the classical world which was saved first by the wealth suddenly released during the conquest of Alexander the Great, and a second time by the Augustan peace.

. The city-state economy was already suffering the fatal malady which declared itself at the same time as the Barbarian invasions of the- third Century, and the measures adopted and their lack of success should serve as a warning to modern politicians. ■ The wars of the 2nd and last centuries BC had drained the native man-power of the Roman republic, and the small Roman farmer, after long periods of compulsory service was often insufficiently recompensed with new grants of land or found that his old farm was encumbered with debt and he himself dependent upon his creditors. Rome was dependent on corn from Egypt and Africa even before the time of Augustus, when the military command of Egypt was only given to the most

reliable supporters of the ruling party The grain came by sea to Ostia where ’huge granaries were set up. It was distributed thence to the Horrea or bulk stores near the Forum , Boarum, the riverside market area of Rome. , 7> Italian agriculture, partly owing to ineasing dessication, larger population of the city, and transport difficulties had failed for many years to supply the ’urban population. Instead of grain, the luxury fruits, more profitable olives and the rearing of game and fish became the staples’of the Roman area. The small . farmer squeezed off his land or tired of toil, was drifting to the’ city or falling to the status of tenant or overseer on one of the many Patrician .estates. These estates were increasingly run by slaves, now plentiful after the many wars. The large estate which at the beginning of the Empire depended for its manufactured goods on the towns, gradually •tended to become self-supporting, developing a villa-economy which only needed the stimulus of the Barbarian inroads of the 3rd Century, to develop into the fortified "manors'” of the early Dark Ages. This in turn led to a decline of the small-town, a fact which was very apparent even in Roman Britain by the mid-3rd Century.