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Wine and Wealth in Ancient Italy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

N. Purcell
N. Purcell
Affiliation:
St. John's College, Oxford
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Extract

This account of viticulture in Italy during the period from the Punic Wars to the crisis of the third century A.D. is written in the conviction that the ‘economic’ history of the ancient world will remain unacceptably impoverished if it is written in isolation from the social and cultural history of the same period. The orthodoxy which sees a revolution in Italian agriculture in the age of Cato the Censor and a crisis in the time of the emperor Trajan seems to me to be an example of this. It is based on a traditional and limited selection of evidence, and is unable to answer many of the questions which are increasingly being asked about production and exchange in the ancient world, questions about the social background and cultural preferences which underlie production strategies and the evolution of demand. I hope that this study may show some other possibilities, which have still been only partly explored by researchers, of illuminating the changing patterns of Roman agriculture and trade, through the use of comparative evidence and the re-examination of the relevant literary texts for data that are more than simply ‘economic’ in the most restricted sense.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 75 , November 1985 , pp. 1 - 19
Copyright
Copyright © N. Purcell 1985. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Material in this paper has been presented at a meeting of the Roman Society in January 1984, and at a seminar in Cambridge in February 1985; I am grateful for the response and comments of both audiences, and to Lin Foxhall and Hamish Forbes. It is written in friendly disagreement with the view of Dominic Rathbone (JRS 71 (1981), 11) that ‘agrarian history should be treated primarily as economic history’. He admits that ‘social factors cannot be excluded totally’: I believe that the inadequate evidence forces us to concentrate on them.

2 Principally in the volumes Società Romana e Produzione Schiavistica, edd. Giardina, A., Schiavone, A. (1981)Google Scholar, the product of the 1979 Istituto Gramsci conference at Pisa. See especially the articles in vol. II, Merci, mercati e scambi nel Mediterraneo, by D. Manacorda (pp. 3 f.), C. Panella (p. 55) and J.-P. Morel (pp. 81 f.). Cf. Peacock, D. P. S., Pottery in the Roman World (1982), esp. chs. 7 and 10Google Scholar.

3 Dion, R., L'histoire de la vigne et du vin en France (1959)Google Scholar.

4 The case of viticulture does not fit well with the more extreme orthodoxy of Moses Finley about the complete lack of economic ratiocination among ancient agriculturalists, The Ancient Economy (1973), 110.

5 For example the remarks in Studies in Roman Property, ed. Finley, M. I. (1976), 4 (by the editor)Google Scholar.

6 The consumption of wine among ancient aristocrats is now receiving serious attention: L. Bek, ARID 12 (1983), 81 f.; A. Rathje, ibid., 7 f.; cf. Gras, M., in Forme di contatto eprocessi di trasformazione (1983), 1067 fGoogle Scholar. See also the forthcoming paper of B. Bouloumié in the Acta of the Sixth British Museum Colloquium of Classical Archaeology.

7 Cicero, de leg. agr. 2, 48: ‘luxuriosus est nepos qui prius silvas vendat quam vineas’.

8 Aymard, A., ‘Les capitalistes romains et la viticulture italienne’, Annales ESC 2 (1947), 257 fGoogle Scholar., oddly not mentioned in K. D. White, Roman Farming (1970), Kolendo, J., L'agricoltura nell'Italia romana (1980)Google Scholar, or the Istituto Gramsci volumes (above, n. 2).

9 REA 84 (1982), 261 f.

10 HN 17, 213: ‘quia vilitate reditum impendia exuperent’.

11 Varro, RR 1, 8, 1: ‘contra vineam sunt qui putent sumptus devorare’.

12 e.g. Rathbone, op. cit. (n. 1), 10 f. Cf. the view of Finley, M. I., Opus 1 (1982), 204,Google Scholar that slave systems regularly coexisted with a free rural population. But note Columella, RR I, 9: vinitores were often chained slaves, cf. Kolendo, J., Acta Conv. XI Eirene (1970), 34 fGoogle Scholar.

13 The most sensitive account of the economics of viticulture in Roman Italy, making this point (p. 59), is Duncan-Jones, R., The Economy of the Roman Empire, Quantitative Studies2 (1982), ch. 2Google Scholar.

14 Pliny, HN 17, 196–8 on the planting of the fodder crop ocinum in vineyards (cf. Cato, Agr. 33). Did the ordinary clover trifolium give its name to the new Campanian wine Trifolinum (HN 14, 69, cf. below, p. 19)?

15 Pliny, HN 19, 47: ‘sunt duo genera non nisi sordido nota volgo, cum quaestu multum polleant’.

16 Livy 22, 15, 2, the ager Falernus ‘consita omnia magis amoenis quam necessariis fructibus’.

17 Levick, B., Latomus 41 (1982), 50Google Scholar ff., at 66 and f. It is interesting how most philosophical discussions of ebrietas (e.g. Seneca, Ep. 83) have a clearly élite background. See also Pliny, HN 14, 137–50.

18 The senatorial names on wine amphorae are best taken as showing involvement in the pottery production (thus Paterson, J., JRS 72 (1982), 154Google Scholar f.) or carrying trade (thus Castrén, P., Ordo Populusque Pompeianus (1975), 32Google Scholar; Andreau, J., Les affaires de M. Jucundus (1974), 231Google Scholar; D'Arms, J., Commerce and Social Standing in Imperial Rome (1981), 51–2, 56–8Google Scholar). The phenomenon is characteristic of the age of Cicero and should not be casually retrojected. For the problem of the supposedly protectionist prohibition of viticulture and oleiculture in a part of Narbonese Gaul, Cicero, Rep. 3, 16, see recently J. Paterson, CQ 28 (1978), 452 f. with bibliography.

19 Esp. Agr. 1, 7. The archaeological evidence showing the third-century prominence of the Campanian wine trade has much weakened the case; vigorous trade and the holdings of senators in Campania did not begin together. For an example of this orthodoxy see Astin, A., Cato the Censor (1978), 240Google Scholar.

20 The difficulty here is that vineyards do not flourish for long. Between Africanus and Seneca the vineyard would have needed at least four replantings, as well as continuous care.

21 Whatever it indicates, the first imperial nomenclature on amphorae is Domitianic: Callender, M. H., Roman Amphorae (1965), 238Google Scholar. This period is also that of the first allusions to the imperial administration of the Falernian and Statan vineyard regions: Frederiksen, M. W., Campania (1984), ch. 2, p. 50 n. 49Google Scholar.

22 Columella, RR 10, 182: ‘utraque Caecilii de nomine dicta Metelli’.

23 At HN 14, 16 an improvement in maturing wine is attributed to Tiberius, but it is a purchaser's discovery, not a producer's. Nor do Hortensius' 10,000 amphorae (HN 14, 96) need to be his own produce (for investment in wine, Pliny, HN 14, 56–7). It is a still more telling sign of desperation to use the story of his watering trees with wine (Macrobius 3, 13, 3) as evidence of senatorial viticulture (Shatzman, I., Senatorial Wealth and Roman Politics (1974), 346Google Scholar)!

24 Livy 22, 15, 2 (cit. above, n. 16) has a Falernian vineyard during the Hannibalic War; this could be as anachronistic as Silius Italicus 7, 260. Falernian was often supposed to be the oldest Italian wine to win fame (Silius Italicus 7, 160 for an aetiology). Cf. the supposed Thessalian origin of the Aminaean grape, also really Campanian: Σ Virgil, Georg. 2, 17, cf. F. Olck, PW, s.v. Aminaea. The two are identified by Macrobius 3, 30, 7 (cf. n. 87). Pliny's dissenting and unorthodox view that Surrentine wine is senior (HN 23, 33) refers to medicinal uses.

25 Cato mentions only Cales, Capua, Casinum, Minturnae, Nola, Pompeii, Rome, Suessa, Venafrum. For Cato as the oldest viticulturalist, HN 14, 46–7.

26 For an excellent survey of the amphora evidence, Paterson, art. cit. (n. 18); more recent bibliography in Rodriguez-Almeida, E., Il Monte Testaccio (1984)Google Scholar. For the Hellenic background the pamphlet of Grace, V., Amphoras and the ancient wine trade (1961)Google Scholar, is still useful. Fundamental are F. Zevi, Arch. Cl. 18 (1966), 208 f., a general survey, A. Tchernia, Archivo Esp. Arqueologia 44 (1971), 38 f., on the role of Hispania Tarraconensis, but with vital methodological points, and the collaborative version of these two scholars in Recherches sur les amphores romaines, Coll. Éc. Fr. Rome 10 (1972), 35Google Scholar f. Méthodes classiques et méthodes formelles dans l'étude des amphores, Coll. Éc. Fr. Rome 32 (1977)Google Scholar, contains much useful material of a more technical kind; more historical material is to be found in the papers of A. Tchernia and C. Panella on Falernian, MAAR 36 (1980), 305 and 251 respectively. The synthesis of C. Panella, op. cit. (n. 2), is also of the highest importance. On the Greco-Italics, and their early origins and third-century development see now Lyding Will, E., Hesperia 51 (1982), 338Google Scholar f.; Gianfrotta, P. A. and Pomey, P., Archeologia subacquea (1983), 151Google Scholar; Paterson, art. cit., 150. The first large-scale trade securely attested (by wrecks containing several hundred amphorae, Grand Congloué and El Lazareto) is that of form c, dated 200–190 B.C.; form d, which is that of Trebius Loisius (below, n. 28), is prominent at Cosa and may represent the background to the first Dressel I amphorae there and the trade of the Sestius stamps. For a possible third-century prototype of this stamp, Lyding Will, 346. The first Mediterranean amphorae are Levantine and connected intimately with the development of maritime trade: Grace, nn. 11–20; Gianfrotta and Pomey, 146–7; Mele, A., Prexis ed emporie (1979), 56Google Scholar. For the first arrival of viticulture in Italy, C. Ampolo, Dd'A 2 (1980), 15 ff. at 31 with bibliography; Etruscan large-scale exports at Saint-Blaise near Marseilles, Bouloumié, B., Latomus 41 (1982), 74Google Scholar f. (sixth century); contacts between Campania, home of the Greco-Italic trade, and the Mediterranean koine, Campania (cit. n. 21), chs. 3–5.

27 See A. Hesnard and C. Lemoine, MEFRA 93 (1981), 243 f. The trade is old enough for there to be a link with the settlement of Romans in the ager Falernus in 314 B.C. (on which see Campania (cit. n. 21), ch. 8). It makes more difficult the view that investment viticulture arrived in Italy from Sicily in the third century; but cf. Pliny, HN 14 (a vine introduced to Italy from Tauromenium). The practice of arbustum was said to be Punic, and much used at Surrentum (Columella, Arb. 4, 1). For Italic influence on Sicily note HN 14, 66, cf. 97 with Athenaeus 1, 27d, the Sicilian wine called Mamertinum or Italiotes, and HN 14, 35, cf. 46, the wine of Morgantina called Murgentinum after the town's Italic name.

28 Lepore, E., PdelP 7 (1952), 300Google Scholar f.; Storia di Napoli (1967), 241 f., using evidence from G. Buchner's excavations on Ischia. Note too the Neapolitan merchant Trebius Loisius (Callender, op. cit. (n. 21), 1737), cf. Campania (cit. n. 21), 305; Lyding Will, op. cit. (n. 26), 350.

29 For the Dressel 1 trade, Paterson, art cit. (n. 18), 152.

30 Jashemski, W., The Gardens of Pompeii (1980), chs. 10 and 11Google Scholar, cf. AJA 77 (1973), 27 f. Note also that the large single vine of the Porticus Liviae of Rome yielded twelve amphorae of wine yearly, Pliny, HN 14, 11.

31 See provisionally Archéologie et histoire 78 (1978), 56Google Scholar f.

32 For Pompeian viticulture see Castrén, op. cit. (n. 18), 40–1, 94–6. The town itself gave its name to a grape variety, Pliny, HN 14, 38.

33 For the Lassii, some of whose amphora stamps are in Oscan, see Heurgon, J., PdelP 7 (1952), 113Google Scholar; Castrén, op. cit. (n. 18), 181, no. 212 (with other bibliography). Stamps of a M. Porcius, which may refer to a prominent Pompeian of the mid-first century B.C., are also known, but their origin is disputed: Castren, 88–9. For the Clodii, Castrén, 94–6 and 154–5, no. 119. Cf. Callender, op. cit. (n. 21), 11, mistranslating SVRR(entinum) CLOD(ianum), which is Sorrento wine from the vineyard of Clodius.

34 Castrén, op. cit. (n. 18), 165, no. 160. The active involvement of free and libertine Fabii from Pompeii in the wine trade, if not in actual production, should also be noticed: Castrén, 166, no. 161, cf. Callender, op. cit. (n. 21), 10 with references to amphorae marked SVR(rentinum) FABIAN(um), etc.

35 For the Holconia vitis, Columella, RR 3, 2, 7; Pliny, HN 14, 35; Holconii are not known except at Pompeii, Castrén, op. cit. (n. 18), 176, no. 197. Ibid., 133, no. 23 for the Alleii, not noticing CIL IV, 5571, amphora marked ALLIANUM.

36 Granii, Castrén, op. cit. (n. 18), 172, no. 187; Callender, op. cit. (n. 21), no. 454. Numisii, Castrén, 197, no. 278, cf. Pliny, HN 14, 34 on the naturalization of their grape at Tarracina (below, n. 76). Tiburtii, Castrén, 229, no. 409.

37 There is scattered evidence for viticulturalists of this social milieu elsewhere in Italy. ILLRP 487, with Nicolet, C., L'ordre équestre à l'époque républicaine 1 (1966), 303–4Google Scholar for the Ancharii of Amiternum; Varro, RR 1, 2, 8, a junior officer who had a very successful vineyard at Faventia; cf. n. 76 for the coloni at Caecubum (who ruined the vines); Nicolet 11, 942 f. Cf. Corellius, the Cisalpine eques who improved chestnut stock on his estate near Naples by grafting it on to itself. His freedman Tereus repeated the process. Both resulting strains were successful, and took their names from the grafter.

38 Shatzman, op. cit. (n. 23), 107: ‘on the whole, the enrichment of the senatorial class cannot be explained by truly economic activity’; Nicolet, op. cit. (n. 37), 308–11. See too Sallust, Cat. 4, 1: ‘agrum colundo aut venando, servilibus officiis’.

39 Aedificatio was a popular way of adding to the market value of a villa; of agricultural practices only pastio villatica appealed much, because of its aesthetic and recreational aspects: hence its emphasis in Varro, who also needed (RR 1, 4, 3) to persuade his readers that good farming made a farm ‘vendibiliorem, atque adiciunt ad fundi pretium’. Reitzenstein, R., De scriptorum rei rusticae libris deperditis (Diss. Berl., 1884), 28,Google Scholar saw agricultural decline behind the odd lack of agricultural treatises after the Georgics from so literary an age. See n. 47 below for the gulf between great and small landowners. The date of c. 58–7 B.C. for the composition of Varro, RR 1 argued by Martin, R., Recherches sur les agronomes latins (1971), 237Google Scholar fits our argument well. P. A. Brunt, CR 22 (1972), 304 argues rightly that Varro is anachronistic in attributing his optimism to Scrofa.

40 For the Catalan wine trade see recently R. P. Guasch, IJNA 13 (1984), 245 f. The fundamental account remains A. Tchernia, Archivo Esp. Arqueologia cit. (n. 26). On imports in general Tchernia and Zevi, op. cit. (n. 26); Panella, Gramsci 1, cit. (n. 2), 55 f. For the long survival of the importation of Greek wines to Rome, below, n. 43.

41 The best recent discussion of the Vine Edict is by B. M. Levick, art. cit. (n. 17). For the sources, ibid., n. 70.

42 A. Tchernia, MAAR 36 (1980), 305 f. (Falernian), simply disbelieved by Duncan-Jones, op. cit. (n. 13), 376.

43 See Tchernia and Zevi, art. cit. (n. 26), 66–7: ‘de tels échanges [as the Spanish and Gallic imports to Italy] témoignent seulement de la qualité du niveau de vie et de la facilité des relations commerciales’. La Longarina, A. Hesnard, MAAR 36 (1980), 141 f.; Terme del Nuotatore, Ostia 3 ( = Studi Miscellanei 21) (1973), 667–8Google Scholar; eastern Mediterranean trade, Rathbone, D. W., Opus 2 (1983), 81Google Scholar f. On Greek wine Paterson, art. cit. (n. 18), 151 n. 35. It was still popular according to Varro (RR 2, 1, 3). For Italian alongside Greek in the sumptuary law of 89 B.C., below p. 18. For Hellenic antecedents of the Greco-Italic trade, Lyding Will, op. cit. (n. 26). A recently explored wreck off Mallorca at Sant Jordi (Cerda, D., La nave romana republicana de la Colonia de Sant Jordi (1980)Google Scholar) of c. 125–100 B.C. was carrying a revealing mixture of Dressel I amphorae, fine pottery and Greek wine amphorae. Italian wine exports inserted themselves, it seems, into the existing wine trade.

44 Levick, art. cit. (n. 17). The arguments which I offer for the nature and effects of the growth in consumption of wine in the Empire during the first and second centuries, and for the nature of hostility to the vine and its product, help reinforce the case made in this article. Suetonius' ‘excessive zeal for viticulture’ (cf. ‘summa ubertas vini’—hardly a crisis!) (Dom. 7, 2), Philostratus' observation that wine led to plans for revolution (Vit. Soph. 520), and Statius (Silv. 4, 3, 11–12) on the return of land to Ceres are texts which can only properly be understood against the background of viticultural boom outlined here. It is hard to see how they could ever have been taken to illustrate a protectionism conceived of to protect ailing Italy from competition for a limited market.

45 Columella, RR I, 1 on earlier authors; 3, 3, 11 attributes his zeal to his predecessor Julius Graecinus (the father of Agricola), cf. Reitzenstein, op. cit. (n. 39), 41. Some of the enthusiasm of these men may derive from the successful experiences of provincial viticulture (Pliny has several admiring references to the vineyards of Gallia Narbonensis, but their tone is still that of the vindication of Italy: Columella I, pr., is indignant that ‘vindemias condimus ex insulis Cycladibus ac regionibus Baeticis Gallicisque’.

46 Eprius Marcellus: Scriptores Rei Rusticae, ed. G. J. Schneider (1794), 2, 1, p. 19; 2, 2, p. 673.

47 See p. 4 above on the Nomentan freedman. Pliny, HN 14, 49 gives his gentile name as Vetulenus, and confirms that he is a freedman. CIL IV, 5481–2 has TIRON(ianum vinum), which some have connected with Cicero's Tiro. The parallel case of Corellius Tereus, above, n. 37. Compare the self-consciously earthy and unlearned agricultural ethos of the small-holder Castricius, CIL XI, 600, a former military tribune of the Augustan period; the story of Furius Chresimus, Pliny, HN 18, 41, displays similar attitudes.

48 Dion, op. cit. (n. 3), 202 f.

49 Levi, M. A., Athenaeum 41 (1963), 392Google Scholar f.

50 Meiggs, R., Roman Ostia 2 (1973), 283Google Scholar, 317 on Ostian wine trade. For the Forum Vinarium (once, not plausibly, identified with the Piazza delle Corporazioni), CIL XIV, 318 = ILS 6162; CIL XIV, 376; CIL XIV, 409 = ILS 6146; CIL XIV, 430 = ILS 6168; H. Bloch, Epigraphica 1 (1939), 37 f.

51 By Levi, art. cit. (n. 49).

52 Levi, art. cit. (n. 49); id., R. Line. 29 (1974), 313 f.; H. Bloch, NSc 1953, 240. It was in a Temple of Bacchus that one of these vinarii dedicated the Torlonia Relief (Meiggs, op. cit. (n. 50), plate 20), showing the unloading of wine amphorae in the Claudian Harbour in the early third century.

53 CIL VI, 9189–90; 37807; cf. S. Panciera, Rend. Pont. Acc. 43 (1970–1971), 110 f. CIL XI, 3256 refers to the Portus Vinarius superior, no doubt upstream; CIL VI, 37807 a lagonarius from the Portus Vinarius.

54 CIL VI, 8826 (A.D. 102), cellae vinariae Nova et Arruntiana Caesaris; AE 1937. 71 (A.D. III), Civiciana; AE 1971. 30, Lucceiana, cf. R. E. A. Palmer, Bull. Comm. 85, 1976–7 (1980), 135 ff., at 156; CIL VI, 706, Groesiana; 31065 = 37309, Nigriniana. See now Rodriguez-Almeida, op. cit. (n. 26), 35 and figs. 26–8.

55 CIL VI, 712 (second century); CIL IX, 4680; CIL XIV, 2886. Cf. the Forum Vinarium of CIL VI, 9181, a, b, c, probably different from that of Ostia.

56 J. Rougé, REA 59 (1957), 320 f. It is clear from the epigraphic evidence discussed here that by the fourth century barrels (cupae) were in common use for this trade.

57 CIL XIV, 2886, XI, 3156, VI, 9181 a, b, c; 9189–90. For the same reason many wine merchants diversified, just as viticulturalists did: ‘negotiator pecoris et vinorum’, CIL VI, 9671; ‘negotiator vinarius et omnium generum transmarinarum’.

58 RR 2, 6, 5; cf. Columella, RR 1, 2: it is cheaper for the farmer to hire oxen than to keep them. For Varro's date of writing, above, n. 39.

59 Paterson, art. cit. (n. 18), 154 f. The term culleus for a twenty-amphora measure suggests the regular use of skins, confirmed by some well-known pictorial evidence. For barrels see n. 56 above. For amphorae even in local Italian wine trade, Martial 13, 112.

60 Pini, A. I., ‘La viticultura italiana nel medioevo’, Studi Medievali 3, 15 (1974), 74Google Scholar. Duncan-Jones, op. cit. (n. 13), 376 quotes a range of 0·6c./i.–i–2 c./i. for early-twentieth-century Calabria; A. Aymard, Annales ESC 28 (1973), 479, 0·82–1·33 c./i.

61 Clout, H., Agriculture in France on the Eve of the Railway Age (1980), 139Google Scholar.

62 For eighteenth-century consumption in Paris, Valladolid and Barcelona, below, n. 71. At Rome in the same period per caput consumption ranged between 210 and 280 litres each year; since this was mostly cheap, low-alcohol, local wine it perhaps affords a close parallel for the ancient situation: Revel, J. in Food and Drink in History, edd. Forster, R. and Ranum, O. (1979), 37 ffGoogle Scholar., at 46.

63 Levi, art. cit. (n. 49), 395.

64 Dion, op. cit. (n. 3), 476 f.

65 Toller, O., De spectaculis, cenis, distributionibus in municipiis romanis imperatorum aetate exhibitis (1889)Google Scholar. The practice is very likely to have spread in imitation of the great public banquets of Julius Caesar in 46 B.C. (for an earlier occasion (63 B.C.) Plut. Luc. 37, 3 with Pliny, HN 14, 96). Pliny (HN 14, 66) asserts that official sanction for such occasions was formally given by the dictator, as was to be found in his published letters. The date and popularis context are wholly appropriate. Pliny also suggests (HN 14, 97, with chronological problems) that it was at one of Caesar's public banquets that four kinds of wine were first served together, powerful testimony to the later date of the proliferation. The first passage also perhaps indicates the role of these public distributions in allotting a semi-formal ranking to wines (‘quartum curriculum publicis epulis obtinuere…Mamertina etc.’).

66 Schiess, T., Die römischen collegia funeraticia nach dem Inschriften (1888)Google Scholar, cf. Waltzing, O., Les corporations professionelles I (1895), 51 and 170Google Scholar (the seribibi of Pompeii), cf. IV (1900), 227 f. and 687 f.

67 Hermansen, G., Ostia, Aspects of Roman City Life (1981)Google Scholar, ch. 4, 125 f.: he studies thirty-eight identifiable taverns at Ostia. Kléberg, T., Hôtels, restaurants et cabarets dans l'antiquité romaine (1957)Google Scholar.

68 Hermansen, op. cit. (n. 67), ch. 5, esp. 196 f.

69 Jashemski, op. cit. (n. 30), 215 and 230 f. For parallels from the neighbourhood of Rome see below, n. 83.

70 Ammianus 14, 6, 25; 28, 4, 29 on tavern life; 15, 7, 3 on riots over the price of wine. This was a feature of the growing disorder of the Roman mob as early as the reign of Augustus, when the supply of wine was less assured as the processes of distribution discussed here evolved: Suetonius, Augustus 42 on wine riots then.

71 Tchernia, art. cit. (n. 26), 38 f. In circumstances like this vineyards tended to replace cereal lands, which has been suggested as one of the factors affecting Domitian's Vine Edict (above, n. 44). For consumption figures of 100 litres/person in late-sixteenth-century Valladolid, and 120 litres/person in late-eighteenth-century Paris, Braudel, F., Les structures du quotidien, le possible et l'impossible, 194 fGoogle Scholar., Boissons et ‘dopants’. Cato (Agr. 57) allowed about 250 litres of wine each year to each of his agricultural slaves. Cf. n. 74 below.

72 The eleventh-century recovery of French viticulture was intimately linked with the rebirth of the towns (Dion, op. cit. (n. 3), 201). Wine became a status symbol of the burgensis: note the formula 'burgensis qui ad hospitium vinum bibere solet’. The potationes of the burgenses gave a social context to this development. For the spread of drunkenness in the towns of early modern France, ibid., 486 f.

73 art. cit. (n. 26).

74 A comparison may be made with olive oil. The Testaccio wharves (Rodriguez-Almeida, op. cit. n. 26) handled some 4,000,000 kilos of olive oil annually in some 55,000 amphorae. To provide a million consumers with wine at the rate Cato offered his slaves would require 250,000,000 litres of wine p.a., which in terms of amphorae would be 10,000,000 pieces to handle. It seems self-evident that this demand could not have been met; but the distribution system, and not either agriculture or demand, was the limiting factor. Prices were low enough for the trade to exist on this scale, at least in times of relative abundance: Columella, RR 3, 3, 10 suggests a price of about 15 HS/amphora. The prices calculated by Duncan-Jones, op. cit. (n. 13), 263 and n. 3 are much higher, but note the corrections to his calculations made by Tchernia, A., Epigraphica 44 (1982), 57Google Scholar (23 or 28.5 HS/amphora in A.D. 153). This new estimate is preferable, and is quite an accessible price for wine (an amphora is just over 25 litres). Even Opimianum when produced cost only 100 HS/amphora (Pliny, HN 14, 55–6). But the salient fact about wine prices remains their extreme proheness to violent fluctuation.

75 None of the writers used in this account (principally Cato, Varro, Columella and Pliny) attempts a systematic survey of types of grape or varieties of wine. That Pliny at least had some notion of a total of separable kinds of wine is suggested by 14, 87 (cf. 97): two-thirds of a world total of eighty wines are Italian; and this also implies that he is not just dealing with varieties of some exceptional interest, such as medicinally interesting wines. These he explicitly distinguishes (14, 19; cf. 98–115. Wines made from odd plants are only ‘cognitu iucunda, sollertia humani animi omnia exquirente’ (115)!). Given the different interests of these writers and the other writers to mention a series of different wines (Martial, Galen, Athenaeus, Macrobius), it can perhaps be assumed that we have a representative selection.

76 Caecuban wine is prominent in Horace, (Odes 1, 20,Google Scholar 9; 37, 5; 2 14, 25; 3, 28, 7, the last referring, perhaps jokily, to a vintage of 59 B.C.). Amphorae of it were found in the dump at the Castro Pretorio (of mid-first-century A.D. date), Paterson, art. cit. (n. 18), 146. The vineyard was marshy, which may have increased its yield (Strabo 5, 3, 5; Pliny, HN 14, 61, which is also the source for its extinction. Note, however, mentions by Martial 6, 27, 9 and Athenaeus 1, 27a). Lin Foxhall points out to me that the arbustum method used here will have helped reduce waterlogging. For the introduction of the Campanian grape ‘surcula Numisiana’ at Tarracina, HN 14, 34. The earliest allusion to the wines of Fundi (mentioning Caecuban) is Vitruvius 8, 3, 12; the latest Martial 13, 115, cf. Athenaeus 1, 27a.

77 For the stamps of P. Veveius Papus and the trade of Fundi, A. Hesnard, MEFRA 89 (1977), 157 f.; Paterson, art. cit. (n. 18), 152.

78 On Settefinestre A. Carandini, MAAR 36 (1980), 1 f.; Rathbone, op. cit. (n. 1). For the Sestii at Cosa see Manacorda, D., JRS 68 (1978), 122Google Scholar f.; Gramsci II (cit. n. 2), 3 f.; J. D'Arms, MAAR, cit., 77 f. Although their connection with the production of wine amphorae at Cosa and with the shipping of the wine overseas seems very likely, it has not been demonstrated that they grew the grapes and made the wine. For the antecedents of their trade, above, n. 26.

79 Pliny, HN 14, 67: ‘ab infero autem Latiniensia, Graviscana, Statoniensia’. Cf. Columella on Silvinus' vineyard at Caere, 3, 9, 6.

80 Cato alleged a yield of 15 c./i. for the ager Gallicus: Orig. ap. Varro, RR 1, 2, 7. For Cisalpine viticulture in general V. Righini, Studi Romagnoli 25 (1974), 185, a fundamental account, suggesting that Etruscan practice survived here by contrast with the basically Greek viticulture of west central Italy. For the later Republic Chilver, G., Cisalpine Gaul (1941), 22Google Scholar (possible estates of Livia in Istria). For the great advancement of Istrian vines and the Laecanii Bassi, a local family which made good (cf. Section III), F. Tassaux, MEFRA 94 (1982), 227 f.; Paterson, art. cit. (n. 18), 153 and the works cited in his n. 48. For Julia and Istrian wine, HN 14, 60. The case of Tarius Rufus (above, p. 4) should be seen in this context. HN 14, 69 gives a share in gloria to Adriatic wines, with a hint of condescension. It is striking that the grape Maecenatiana (HN 14, 67) is associated with this region of new investment.

81 For Augustus' own taste, cf. p. 11 above. Setine is more celebrated than Signine, and seems to have remained a high quality, expensive product: Strabo 5, 3, 6, cf. 10; Pliny, HN 14, 61; 23, 21; and an unusually wide range of notices in silver Latin poetry (though HN 14, 52 may be taken as a sign of difficulties there). It did use amphorae at least in part: CIL IV, 1292, Callender. Signine is attested from Strabo (5, 3, 10) to Galen (Kühn) VI, p. 334; x, p. 831, in largely medicinal contexts: which reinforces the impression that in general these wines singled out in the literary evidence have more characteristics than being simply of use to doctors. Note also passing allusions to wine from Arpinum (Varro, RR I, 8), Fregellae (Columella, RR 3, 2) and Privernum (Pliny, HN 14, 65; Athenaeus I, 27a), the last presumably closely associated with the development of the vineyards of Tarracina and Setia. For the importance of water communications to the establishment of a quality vineyard, Dion, op. cit. (n. 3), 57–8.

82 Sombart, W., Die römische Campagna (1888), 27Google Scholar f. for the vigne of the Campagna. Highly relevant is the discusssion in Dion, op. cit. (n. 3), 478 f. of the provisioning of the urban poor (who drank, he argues, much more than the peasantry) with cheap wine specially produced from vines in garden plots and open spaces within the built-up area of the town. The process led eventually to the change-over from quality to quantity production throughout the suburban vineyard (pp. 490–1).

83 e.g. CIL VI, 10239, 15993, cf. N. Purcell, The Gardens of Rome, forthcoming, for the whole process. For the distinctive viticultural practices of the suburbium see also n. 92 below. See also Revel, op. cit. (n. 62), 45 on vino romanesco in the eighteenth century: ‘a multitude of little garden patches, usually rented, were cultivated during free hours by families who drank between forty and sixty per cent of the wine they produced. This wine…was the wine of the poor; it ‘made them feel rich’’.

84 HN 14, 4; Athenaeus 1, 26e and Diocletian's Edict for Tiburtine wine; Athenaeus, cit. for Praenestine and for Labican. For Gabii, Galen (Kühn) VI, p. 334. Arician, HN 14, 3; Laurentine, Pliny, HN 14, 4. The degree of preservation of amphorae labels from earlier periods is another basis for this argument from silence, as no ‘suburban’ wine is thus attested.

85 R. Santangeli Valenziani, Arch. Cl. 32 (1980), 206 f.

86 Dion, op. cit. (n. 3), ch. 14, cf. ch. 6.

87 See above all the spectacular list at Macrobius, Sat. 3, 20, 7 f., including several otherwise unknown but clearly Italic names.

88 For Aminaeum see above, n. 24. Eugeneum, Columella 3, 2, 16; Pliny, HN 14, 25.

89 Consular dates: Opimianum, HN 14, 55–7. For dates known epigraphically, Paterson, art. cit. (n. 18), 150 and n. 26.

90 Strabo 6, 1, 14; cf. Pliny, HN 17, 199. The success of fine wines is interestingly described by political words such as gratia and auctoritas.

91 It is remarkable how little the Roman interest in agricultural improvement has figured even in accounts of Roman agriculture, let alone in the wider debate on progress and invention in ancient society. For a brief account, White, K. D., Roman Farming (1970), 231Google Scholar, cf. 260 and his n. 89.

92 Pliny, HN 17, 199 f., cf. Columella, RR 1, pr. on the need for varietas experimentorum. Note also HN 17, 77, a method of planting-out associated with the particular type of arbustum found sub urbe.

93 The Sasernae and the vine-shoot experiments: HN 17, 199; compare, significantly, 17, 116; ‘nostra aetas correxit’, older, inefficient methods of grafting vines. For disputes about viticulture, Columella 3, 2, 31.

94 HN 18, 317: the ‘Graecanican’ press is a century old, a smaller and more compact version was invented twenty-two years previously (c. A.D. 55); this fits well the needs of the spreading small suburban vineyards.

95 For Dressel II–IV see Paterson, art. cit. (n. 18), 150–1.