The Principal Crops Of The Roman Empire

Notwithstanding the elegance of Roman cities, the imperial economy was based primarily on agriculture. By the first and second centuries A.D the small family farms of the Roman past were passing into the hands of great aristocrats, who came to hold conglomerations of smaller farms or who, in some instances, consolidated them into large estates tilled by slaves or half-free peasants. Although the products of Roman farming varied considerably from region to region, the principal crops of the Roman Empire were grain, grapes and olives, the so-called Mediterranean triad that had dominated agriculture in the Mediterranean Basin for countless generations. Grain (chiefly wheat and barley) and grape vines were cultivated throughout most of the Empire. From this the Romans produced two of the basic staples of their diet: bread and wine. Olive trees were also grown in abundance, though their vulnerability to cold restricted their cultivation to the frost-free lowlands around the Mediterranean Sea. The inhabitants of the Mediterranean Basin used olive oil in place of butter, which was favored by the Germanic tribes to the north but turned rancid in the southern heat.

Through much of Italy grain production had been giving way to the raising of sheep and cattle, and the fertile wheat-growing provinces of Egypt and North Africa had by now become the primary suppliers of bread for the teeming populace of Rome. Such specialization in agriculture was made possible by the Roman Peace - the Pax Romana - that linked distant provinces into a single political-economic unit and safeguarded the Mediterranean sea lanes.

The culture of Rome's 'golden age' captivated the historians of past centuries. Never, they wrote, was the human race so happy as in the great days of the Empire - the first and second centuries A.D. They viewed Rome's decline and fall as the supreme historical catastrophe, the triumph of barbarism and religion. Today historians see the matter quite differently. Roman classical culture was impressive, but it was also narrowly limited, shared only by the Empire's upper-crust. And although all inhabitants benefited from the Roman Peace, the great majority of them were impoverished and undernourished, and vast numbers were enslaved.