274 Grey
(arbores frugiferas, aut sylvas, vineta, vel segetem).47 While it is difficult to ascer-
tain whether this apparent interpenetration of cultivated fields and main-
tained woodlands is a novelty of the period, it is nonetheless striking that it
is acknowledged so explicitly in the Edictum Theoderici, for as the legislation
on agri deserti reminds us the late Roman sources tend to seek to maintain
a strict dichotomy between cultivated and uncultivated land.48 This does not
appear to have been the case in the Ostrogothic period, and as a consequence
we should resist the temptation to interpret the dissolution of this distinction
as evidence for a widespread deterioration in cultivation practices or propor-
tions of cultivable land.
At any rate the mention of a dispute over damage to property invites us to con-
sider who owned the fields and forests being exploited during the Ostrogothic
period. It is certainly not difficult to find individuals and institutions possess-
ing large and extensive holdings. The widespread holdings of Theodahad in
the territory of Tuscia have already been mentioned, while the holdings of the
Gothic noblewoman Ranilio seem also to have been considerable.49 Alongside
these large landowners, we must imagine small-scale agriculturalists whose
holdings may perhaps be visible in the seeming explosion of small sites in
rural Italy over the course of the 6th century.50 Of course the archaeological
evidence cannot provide definitive evidence for ownership of these hold-
ings, but we catch occasional glimpses of small landowners in our texts, as for
example, in a letter of Cassiodorus who responds to the petition of two such
individuals who claim to have been forcibly dispossessed by a more powerful
figure of their rightful property, a small farm, or agellus, known as Fabricula.51
This incident has been taken as evidence for the practice of invasio, or forc-
ible dispossession of small landholders by the powerful, a phenomenon that
receives a certain amount of attention in the Edictum Theoderici and which
has as a consequence been identified as a particularly pressing problem under
the Ostrogoths.52
However, we should not assume uncritically that large landowners com-
pletely drove out smallholders in the period, or that forcible dispossession was
widespread, for the legal prominence of a phenomenon is not by any means
47 Edictum Theoderici 98.
48 Grey, “ ‘Problem’ of Agri Deserti”, pp. 362–3; 370–3. Note the contrasting interpretations of
Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, pp. 422–4; Lafferty, Law and Society, p. 98.
49 Ranilio: P. Ital. 13. Fuller discussion in Vera, “Proprietà terriera”, p. 161.
50 Christie, Constantine to Charlemagne, p. 427.
51 Cassiodorus, Variae 8.28; cf. 4.44.
52 Lafferty, Law and Society, pp. 229–32.