In 32, Fabatus, despairing of genuine political and moral reform in Rome, decided to flee to the Parthians. He was caught, returned to the capital, and forced to remain there for the rest of his life. His case demonstrated the ancient law forbidding members of the Senate from traveling beyond Italy and (starting in 49) Gallia Narbonen-sis, without the permission of the emperor.
Fabian (d. 250 c. e.) Bishop of Rome and leader of the Christian community therefrom 232 to 250 Fabian divided the city into seven regions or districts to improve the spiritual administration. In 250, when Emperor decius launched his terrible persecutions, he had the distinction of being the first martyr.
Fabianus Papirius (fl. first century c. e.) Roman philosopher
Probably born in the late first century b. c.e. he studied rhetoric before speaking and teaching on his own. His most famous pupil was seneca, who ardently defended his writings by claiming that in style and philosophy Fabian was surpassed only by livy, cicero, and Asinius POLLIO. Fabianus also wrote on natural history and was quoted by pliny the elder in his Natural History.
Fabiola (d. 399) Famous Roman Christian noblewoman and saint
According to tradition, Fabiola was the founder of the first public hospital in the West, the result of her desire to do penance for her divorce and improper second marriage. she adopted an austere life and distributed her vast wealth; her charitable works included funding a hospice for pilgrims, supporting various monasteries, and establishing her hospital. Much influenced by st. Jerome, she journeyed in 395 to Bethlehem, following Jerome to the Holy Land. There she lived for a time with Sts. Paula and Eustochium. Fabiola returned to Rome in 396, in large measure because of the imminent invasion of Palestine by the Huns and in part because of her personal difficulties with the severe asceticism of the community in Bethlehem. Back in Rome, she resumed her charitable efforts.
Falco, Sosius (fl. late second century c. e.) Consul in 192 (with Erucius Clarus)
For a brief time in 193, Falco was proposed as a replacement for the short-reigned pertinax, but never received popular support.
Farming Rome began as a community of farmers and shepherds, as with other cultures throughout the Mediterranean. The Romans, however, made farming a major economic support of their imperial endeavors. Farming was for centuries the gauge of prosperity, both in Italy and in the provinces, and its decline signaled the true deterioration of imperial power and vitality. Although the Greeks, Egyptians, and other cultures increased the efficiency of growing crops throughout the Hellenic and later Seleucid eras, the innovative Roman farmers did much to improve the entire system. crop rotation, amelioration, fertilization, and harvesting were all adapted to Italian lands, and agricultural output was vast. colonies were founded in Italy, especially in such regions as Sicily (sicilia), as former army veterans ploughed and reaped the benefits of the fertile soil.
2o6
At first a farmer worked hand in hand with slaves, using the profits to buy more slaves. As Rome grew as a political entity, estate holders not only distanced themselves from the workers but also added to their properties. By the end of the Punic Wars, massive farms had come into existence, as many small farmers fled war-ravaged Italy and struck out for the colonies. Rome’s colonial expansion introduced Roman agricultural techniques to other peoples.
In Italy, meanwhile, the great estates (the latifundia) of the Patricians and rich slave owners grew in size, while poor farmers, unable to support themselves, were reduced to desperation. They were saved only by the inability of the slave trade to supply the demand for workers and by the government’s refusal to allow the gentry to amass great armies of slaves. When attempts at reviving the smaller farm system proved unsuccessful, a compromise of some importance took place. Tracts of arable land were parceled out to tenant farmers, and thus was born the colonus or sharecropper. A colonus received a private but leased domain from large landholders, including Patricians, or drew it straight from the ager publicus, the public areas owned by the state or the imperial household. Thus an emperor’s holdings (res PRIVATAe), which might include any number of plots, would be partly managed by freed-men or wardens (vilici), and, in the late empire, by the comes rerum privatarum (commissioner of private estates). Most of such lands were leased to the coloni. A tenant would pay rent first in money and then in crops. As it was in the best interest of the owner to squeeze as much profit as possible from the land, all tenants received the most modern equipment possible.
By the late first century B. C.E., no wealthy citizen could claim prestige without a villa and surrounding fields. However, colonization had caused a depopulation of Italy, and the provinces were beginning to out-produce the farms of the Italians. EGYPT had long been a vital key to feeding Rome; by the second century C. E., AFRICA joined Greece and the East in providing wheat, oil, olives, and other grains. The imperial province of Egypt received the personal attention of the emperors, who governed it with a prefect. Thus many latifundia existed throughout Egypt, and these were joined by other acquisitions for the res privatae. The tradition continued of improving local farming techniques, and so even more competition was created, adding to other problems such as soil exhaustion, overproduction, and social instability.
The Italian colonus lost his unique status with the economic death of the middle class, the curatores. Trajan tried to repopulate Italy with veterans, and his successors were only partially successful.
Internal chaos and barbarian invasions created the first conditions of feudalism. Many farmers departed from their fields to the cities, where they could earn a good living in industry and under safer conditions, free of ravaging Goths. Those who remained barely raised enough food to survive.
Taxation became difficult because of constant migration. Thus, foreign and conquered peoples from Gaul, Germany and elsewhere were settled on the land, and land was declared hereditary. Like the curatores and dela-tores, all coloni were forbidden from forsaking their responsibilities. Diocletian placed severe restrictions on the movement of farmers as part of his broad aggrandizement of the central imperial administration. Registrations were required, fixing citizens to their places of residence. CONSTANTINE extended Diocletian’s limitations in 332 C. E. by declaring runaway tenants of equal status with fleeing slaves. They could be tracked down and brought back to their homes in chains, remaining shackled there if necessary Such radical steps were deemed essential and ensured the survival of agriculture even when the Western Empire collapsed.
Farming was one of the subjects most frequently examined by Roman-era writers, showing clearly its importance both as a profession and as a way of life. Mago, a Carthaginian author on agriculture, was translated into Latin after the Punic Wars, and Cato’s De Agri-cultura was published in the second century b. c.e. In the age of the empire, varro (c. 37 b. c.e.) wrote a treatise on agriculture in three books, Res rusticae, virgil acquired greater fame in the late first century b. c.e. as one of history’s finest pastoral writers. He composed the Bucolics, poems on herders, but his Georgics were far more important. Completed in 29 b. c.e., these four poems were tributes to varro that described farming and livestock, with an enthusiasm born out of love for the earth.
A wide number of agricultural implements were required to cultivate the rich variety of soils that were found in Italy. As was true with the Greeks before them, the early Roman farmer used primarily two implements for tilling the soil, the hoe (bidentes or rastra) and the spade (bipalium), although farmers developed many versions of both. The development of the plow, or ard, drawn by one or two animals—especially oxen—made farming more efficient, but the often heavy soils required cross-plowing, in which the plow was run over the furrowed earth at a right angle to guarantee that the soil was turned over completely. Early plows were also unable to dig into the heavier soils in Italy and elsewhere, requiring the use of a heavier plow, with a sturdier coulter and a moldboard that could turn over the furrowed earth. Even late into the imperial era, there were many areas where the plow was impractical, so farmers retained the spade and the hoe.
The harvesting of crops also necessitated the use of several specialized implements. The Romans inherited from the Greeks the balanced sickle (falx messoria) and made numerous improvements in its design. They also used a well-designed sickle (falx veruculata) for harvesting. The chief versions of a harvesting machine, the vallus and the carpentum, were pulled by an animal and permitted the farmer to push them through crops to gather up the stalks and grain, pass them through pointed blades
World History
