84 THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Pliny associates with Gaul three innovations: a wheeled plough, an
‘improved’ Gallic scythe for haymaking and a harvesting machine for grain
(known also from sculptured relief and a description in the late imperial
writer Palladius).^25 It is tempting to associate these developments, the impact
of which cannot be properly measured, with the administrative reorganization
of the Gallic provinces by Augustus, the concentration of a very substantial
legionary garrison in the North, and the expansion of urbanization. By the
same token, the emergence of plough coulters and asymmetrical ploughshares
in Britain in the third century might refl ect Rome’s use of the province from
this period as a granary for the Rhine armies. It would be consistent with
this analysis to attribute the comparatively sluggish development of British
agriculture in the fi rst two centuries of the empire to lower demands on
cultivators in that province on the part of the resident army, the civil
administration and the few and modest urban centres. But the prudent
course, given the quality of the evidence, is to avoid exaggerating either the
moribund state of British agriculture or the impact of technological
innovation in Gaul.
It remains to consider the effect of the city of Rome itself on agricultural
production. A city of one million people could only have grown so big, and
remained so big, by drawing on the resources of the whole empire. It is
customary, and accurate, to view the western provinces as the main suppliers
of Rome (leaving aside grain- rich Egypt): African and Sicilian grain, Gallic
wine, African oil, Spanish wine and, more particularly, oil were consumed in
quantity in Rome. Spanish oil alone came in at the rate of about four million
kg per annum in around 55,000 amphorae, as Monte Testaccio, a hill of
broken pottery, bears witness. The western provinces were closer to Rome
and had made greater advances in agricultural production than the eastern
provinces, which were already more or less completely developed, were only
lightly garrisoned and experienced no signifi cant spread of cities.^26 Italy’s
contribution is usually overlooked, or played down. Worse still, Italy is
commonly held to have fallen into gradual and inexorable decline, a victim
of provincial competition. Yet one might have expected Italy to have
prospered in the early empire, or at least those areas of Italy well placed to
supply the capital city, once civil war and associated dislocations (notably
the settling of large numbers of veterans) had ended, and the countryside
could enjoy the benefi ts of freedom from the land tax, absence of an army
to supply or man, and a reduced rural population. These expectations are to
some extent realized, if one studies the performance of Italy, not so much in
cereals – though as much as 10 per cent of Rome’s grain may have come
from Tuscany, Umbria, Campania and Apulia under the Principate – as in
the products that Rome’s inhabitants were able to buy with the money they
did not have to spend on grain, because of the stability and generous
dimensions of the grain distribution system.
Foremost among these products was wine. Rome under Augustus needed
more wine than ever. Italian wine producers responded in two ways, by the