This chapter deals with the agricultural and rural life in the later Roman empire. The relative scarcity of stock-raising land had more than one effect upon ancient life; it affected, for instance, the diet. The chapter discusses the social consequences of the dry farming and irrigatory methods of agriculture which are characteristic of large portions of the Roman Empire. In the Roman Empire rights existed (or at least jurists proclaimed that they existed) on provincial soil because their recipients were precarious grantees of the Roman government. The supremacy of the state and the suspicions of the central government kept company law backward in the Roman world, so that no facilities existed for joint-stock agricultural enterprises or agricultural banks. Explorations in the Decapolis show the ordinary population dwelling in well-built houses of squared stone, and in Asia Minor, the monumental evidences of the later Roman Empire argue a standard of life higher at least than that of the modern Turkish village.