lass of
landholders gave rise to the formidable internal crises of the third
and fourth centuries, amidst which it seemed as if the young republic
could not but be destroyed. The revival of the Latin farmer-class,
which was produced during the fifth century partly by the large
assignations of land and incorporations, partly by the fall in the
rate of interest and the increase of the Roman population, was at once
the effect and the cause of the mighty development of Roman power.
The acute soldier's eye of Pyrrhus justly discerned the cause of the
political and military ascendency of the Romans in the flourishing
condition of the Roman farms. But the rise also of husbandry on a
large scale among the Romans appears to fall within this period.
In earlier times indeed there existed landed estates of--at least
comparatively--large size; but their management was not farming on a
large scale, it was simply a husbandry of numerous small parcels.(24)
On the other hand the enactment in the law of 387, not incompatible
indeed with the earlier mode of management but yet far more
appropriate to the later, viz. that the landholder should be bound
to employ along with his slaves a proportional number of free
persons,(25) may well be regarded as the oldest trace of the later
centralized farming of estates;(26) and it deserves notice that even
here at its first emergence it essentially rests on slave-holding. How
it arose, must remain an undecided point; possibly the Carthaginian
plantations in Sicily served as models to the oldest Roman
landholders, and perhaps even the appearance of wheat in husbandry
by the side of spelt,(27) which Varro places about the period of the
decemvirs, was connected with that altered style of management. Still
less can we ascertain how far this method of husbandry had already
during this period spread; but the history of the wars with Hannibal
leaves no doubt that it cannot yet have become the rule, nor can it
have yet absorbed the Italian farmer class. Where it did come into
vogue, however, it annihilated the older clientship based on the
-precarium-; just as the modern system of large farms has been formed
in great part by the suppression of petty holdings and the conversion
of hides into farm-fields. It admits of no doubt that the restriction
of this agricultural clientship very materially contributed towards
the distress of the class of small cultivators.

Inland Intercourse in Italy

Respectin