23 - The land

Summary

INTRODUCTION

In the Graeco-Roman world land was the source of subsistence and of wealth. Land was looked to primarily for food. Other goods derived from the land directly, such as metals and timber, or indirectly, such as clothing and containers, will not be discussed in this chapter. Though important, they were lower priorities than food.

Food made up the major part of surplus production. For the very few whose estates produced more than enough of it, food was the main medium of profit and of power. For the rest of the population, most of whom were employed on the land but had only a limited stake in it, life revolved around the frequently desperate search for food. Production of food was hindered by a combination of natural and man-made constraints. Staple foods were in relatively short supply and were distributed in accordance with wealth and status rather than need.

Food, therefore, was a much more vital concern then than it is now, at any rate in the developed West. A comparison between ancient societies and contemporary developing countries might have more point (was Graeco-Roman antiquity a ‘third world’?), or between antiquity and the pre-modern era in the West, before it slipped the net of famine, food shortage and malnutrition. One does not have to go far back in European history to encounter societies in the grip of chronic malnutrition, the consequence of poor diets and excessive claims on diet due to exposure to disease. It was only after the mid-eighteenth century that ‘normal’ endemic malnutrition, itself the main cause of very high mortality levels, began to lose its hold on European countries, including Britain.