Taking Measure: Peasants’ Use of Farm Produce in the Roman Empire
This graph offers a speculative model (precise statistics have not survived) of how peasants during the Roman Empire perhaps used what they produced as farmers and herders to maintain their families, pay rent and taxes, and buy things they did not produce themselves. Individual families would have had widely varying experiences and there were definitely strong regional differences in the vast empire, but it is nevertheless likely that most families had to use most of their production just to maintain a subsistence level—a description of poverty by modern standards.
Source: Adapted from Keith Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves: Sociological Studies in Roman History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 17.
Question to Consider
What does the distribution of farmers’ produce reveal about priorities, as well as the nature of their life and existence?