AN UNDERDEVELOPED ECONOMY 85development of popular wines, particularly in Campania and the north
Adriatic region from Veneto to Piceno, and by the diversifi cation of grands
crus. The early empire was a period of modest innovations in agricultural
technology, to judge from the rather patchy accounts of Columella and the
elder Pliny, more particularly the latter. Thus Pliny refers to Greek- invented
devices for raising water, such as the water wheel and pump, in his discussion
of the irrigation of a market- garden; and he presents stages in the development
of the lever press in some detail and with attention to chronology.^27
Columella’s forte was arboriculture, especially viticulture. He himself
introduced refi nements of technique (for example, an improved auger for
bore- grafting) and as one of a new breed of provincial farmers who bought
up farms in Italy (Iulius Graecinus, father of Agricola and composer of an
agricultural treatise, was an earlier representative), was well informed about
and perhaps personally involved in the importation and acclimatization of
more productive foreign vines and other fruit- bearing trees.^28
This picture is clearly at odds with the thesis of Italian decline, which
dominates the modern literature and must be treated in some detail. The
classic formulation is that of Rostovtzeff.^29 Provincial competition caused
the collapse of medium- sized estates where the bulk of the production of
wine and oil for the market was located. These estates (and the small
freeholdings, the expropriation of which continued under the empire) were
absorbed by a few wealthy proprietors who were satisfi ed to take in a safe
though low rent, and turned away from direct exploitation through slaves
under a bailiff to indirect management through tenancy, from the production
of wine and oil by ‘scientifi c’ methods to corn- growing essentially by the
methods of peasant agriculture. This impressive edifi ce is built upon a
number of isolated texts, mainly literary, from the period Nero-Trajan:
Columella’s picture of a wine industry on the defensive or in the doldrums;
Domitian’s vine edict forbidding the planting of vines in Italy and ordering
the destruction of all or some provincial vines; Pliny the younger’s grumblings
about the short supply of suitable tenants; the depressed condition of the
Italian countryside as revealed by the alimentary scheme of Trajan.
None of this amounts to much. Around the Augustan period a change-
around occurred as Italian wine producers unable to maintain their bulk
exports to Gaul looked for other outlets. Columella’s treatise, as we have
seen, refl ects these positive developments, as well as the standard, recurring
criticisms of viticulture. As the most speculative branch of farming, viticulture
had always been the object of hostile attention from the more cautious and
conservative landowners. These traditional opponents were now perhaps
joined by those farmers who had been unable to respond to changing
conditions, who had perhaps persisted with old, unproductive vines when
newer, more fertile provincial species were available. If provincial competition
set back the Italian wine industry in this period, it was in this very limited
way, rather than by displacing Italian wine from the market of Rome, which
was more or less insatiable.