100 THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Tiberinum ( Ep. 3.19). Pliny displays some proto- economic thinking. He is
aware of the vulnerability of a large property in a single climatic zone, and
he knows and can appreciate the savings that will accrue from employing
one bailiff/manager rather than two, and having to keep up only one
farmhouse to the standard required of a senatorial proprietor. Even if certain
economies in the use of farm equipment and farm labour follow more or less
automatically from a unifi ed management of the two properties, one is left
with the impression that Pliny was not much exercised over these matters,
and that more non- economic factors, including aesthetic considerations,
dictated his decision.
When Pliny bought the property, he was an established senator, his
fi nancial situation was stable, his political position secure. It does not
follow that all landowners at all times shared his casual approach to
economic matters. His uncle was of conservative inclinations, to judge
from his distrust of viticulture and his fondness for Catonian paradoxes
such as ‘nothing could be less advantageous than running your estate as well
as possible’ ( HN 18.37). But he has several anecdotes illustrating the
speculative pursuit of profi t, and only one of them has an unhappy ending:
Tarius Rufus and his disastrous investment in Piceno, the freedmen who
bought a run- down vineyard near Rome, improved it and quickly sold
out at a handsome profi t, and Seneca who bought the same property
for four times the previous price ( HN 14.48–52). Attitudes to profi t- seeking
in agriculture differed, even among the aristocracy. Yet profi t- seeking is
not the same as profi t maximization, and a value system that put a premium
on wealth- consumption could not at the same time promote productive
reinvestment.
In the same way, the grouping of properties at Veleia does not demonstrate
the systematic pursuit of economies of scale. There were farms formed by
the amalgamation of several smaller units, but many others that were
evaluated singly for the purposes of the Trajanic scheme, and by implication
were worked as independent economic units. Some belonging to the same
proprietor were contiguous, but others were not. The full point of the
distribution of properties escapes us, since we cannot map the farms onto
the terrain and read off their likely products. The desirability of linking
arable and pasture was clearly appreciated, but in general the benefi ts of
contiguity would have been realized only imperfectly. In any case those
benefi ts were often outweighed in the minds of proprietors by the advantages
of dispersal of property through diverse ecological zones, a traditional risk-
reducing peasant strategy.
The reality is likely to have been complex. Landowners were fl exible; they
had to be, since the best- laid plans were likely to be disrupted by deaths – or
births. They did not follow any unitary strategy, but in structuring and
administering their properties used a wide variety of options. In making
decisions, they were guided by essentially practical considerations, to do with
the lie of the land, the products of the farm, and the availability of suitable