THE LAND 97way: he has 14 properties of aggregate value 233,080 sesterces but no single
one is worth more than 35,000. The bulk of the ancestral properties of the
Antonii are in the hands of another member of the family, Antonia Vera (as
dowry?), and of an outsider Q. Accaeus Aebutius Saturninus, and his own
share of a divided inheritance consists of a series of small parcels of land. Yet
his scraps of land are almost all in the parish of Albensis, and are commonly
contiguous or nearly so. His is an extreme case of the concentration that
can underlie fragmentation. In short, the holdings of the moderately rich
and the ‘millionaires’ at Veleia conform broadly to the same pattern. What
distinguishes the latter is their control of pasture and also their capacity to
acquire land, considerable in aggregate, away from the area where their
property is concentrated, and indeed outside Veleian territory altogether.
Coelius Verus had land in Parma and Placentia, Mommeius Persicus in
Placentia. In this they evoke comparison with a number of rich declarants at
Veleia who appear to have held much or most of their property elsewhere
and were probably based in Placentia or another town; predictably, they
were interested especially, and sometimes only, in Veleian pasture land.^13
What relevance has the pattern of property- holding in the territory of an
ordinary Italian town among a group of ‘middling’ landowners to the estates
of other local elites and of the Roman elite itself? The confi guration of
property at Veleia about the turn of the fi rst century was a product of the
accidents of inheritance and marriage and the chance operation of economic
forces over an extended period of time. It was not precisely reproducible
elsewhere. Differences in terrain, climate, accessibility from major centres
and transport routes, and population density ensured that city- territories
would project contrasting images. However, the same forces for property
accumulation and division were active in other Italian and non-Italian towns
and their territories. Senatorial and equestrian property was not immune.
The higher status, greater wealth and wider horizons of their owners need
not have made any signifi cant difference. The property of the rich was far
more fragmented than has been imagined, if we are thinking in terms of
units of management and labour.
Management and labour
In no area of ancient economic history are the sources more conspicuously
inadequate and the truth more diffi cult to grasp than in the comparative
historical development of tenancy and slavery. What do we gain by measuring
Columella’s coverage of tenancy against that of Varro or Cato, or the
younger Pliny’s against Cicero’s; by juxtaposing verses of Horace and
Martial indicating the coexistence of slavery and tenancy; or by charting the
growth and decline of a handful of villas?
In matters of management and labour the propertied class had several
options. One was the ‘slave estate’, wherein slaves made up both the