The Authority of Writing in Varro's <i>De re rustica</i>

Doody, Aude

doi:10.1017/9781107446724.009

Cited by 3 publications

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“…Secondly, we have to be sensitive to authorial self-presentations and literary constructions in texts we once accepted as realistic portrayals of rural life. This applies not just to the agronomists (Terrenato 2001: 24-25;Reay 2005;Bertoni 2017;Doody 2017;contrasting Steiner 1955;White 1970a;Frayn 1979;overviews include Witcher 2016: 459-460;Hollander 2019: 4-9), but to other texts we commonly refer to as well, from Juvenal 14.161-171 (Evans 1980: 134) and Martial (Kron 2017: 135-136) to Virgil's Georgics, which in particular has been consistently dismissed as unhelpful to the historian (White 1970b: xvi;Kolendo 1993: 202;Hollander 2019: 9). The Moretum in the Appendix Virgiliana and Dio Chrysostom's Euboean discourse (Orationes 7) are at times still used to illustrate the lives of the rural poor (Evans 1980: 143;Erdkamp 2005: 55-105; Hollander 2019: 9 is more sceptical).…”

Section: Finding the Italian Peasantmentioning

confidence: 99%

Finding the Social Life of Rural Non-Elites in Roman Italy

Theng¹

2021

Theoretical Roman Archaeology Journal

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Scholarship generally places peasants on a spectrum of socio-economic independence and dependence. While opinions are shifting away from subsistence, self-sufficiency, and socio-political autarky as mainstays of the peasant condition, the conventional focus on hierarchical relations persists, leaving horizontal or ‘relational’ ones neglected. To address this imbalance, I first detail our need to deal with literary (self-) representations of rural non-elite life. I use Dio Chrysostom’s Euboean discourse to develop a non-exhaustive range of peer-level interactions including hospitality, reciprocity, and cooperative work. Archaeology can help unravel how these played out, but as site 9 from the Ager Lunensis shows, we need better evidence. Nevertheless, I offer tentative possibilities about veteran interactions and the dynamics between villa and small farm workers from site 154 from the Ager Capenas and Case Nuove from the Roman Peasant Project. I close by alluding to the potential of integrating horizontal social relations in broader historical narratives.

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Section: Finding the Italian Peasantmentioning

confidence: 99%

Finding the Social Life of Rural Non-Elites in Roman Italy

Theng¹

2021

Theoretical Roman Archaeology Journal

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The ‘Performance’ of Agricultural Labour in Ancient Rome and Han China

Totten

2024

Place and Performance in Ancient Greece, Rome, and China

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The green granary of the Empire? Insights into olive agroforestry in Sicily (Italy) from the Roman past and the present

et al. 2023

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Groves with ancient olive trees (Olea europaea L.) could be considered remnants of old agroforestry systems. Anything but static, these agro-ecosystems have undergone drastic transformational processes in Mediterranean countries, where abandonment or intensification have been observed far more than continuity, expansion or renaissance, leading to environmental degradation of rural areas. Starting from this assumption and inspired by historical ecology and historical geography, we consider centuries-old olive trees as living archives of human-nature interactions and are thus proxies of past agroforestry. Our aim is to better understand what has driven dynamics of change and persistence, happening today as well as in the past. We first travel backward in time, looking at the ecology of land management systems during the Roman period (ca 200 BC-400 AD) and late Antiquity (ca AD 400-700). The special focus is the island of Sicily, the granary of the Empire, well known as a region where cereal production increased around the latifundia economy. We reconstruct the diversity of land tenure and the ecology of such complex systems, by combining records from Roman agriculturalists and palaeoenvironmental evidence of the past. We then zoom out, to look at today’s management practices in olive groves, thus drawing a parallel between Antiquity and today. Our work provides valuable insights into the correlation between certain organisation models, ecological strategies and adaptation capacity over the long term, clearly showing that human and nature dimensions are interconnected. Such entanglement may be a key element for ensuring these agroecosystems resilience. All elements that may contribute to the re-invention of sustainable forms of their management, for the present and the future.

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The Authority of Writing in Varro's De re rustica

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Finding the Social Life of Rural Non-Elites in Roman Italy

Finding the Social Life of Rural Non-Elites in Roman Italy

The ‘Performance’ of Agricultural Labour in Ancient Rome and Han China

The green granary of the Empire? Insights into olive agroforestry in Sicily (Italy) from the Roman past and the present

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