pastoralism, Roman
pastoralism, RomanPastoralism, whether good, bad or indifferent, provided the most lucrative returns, according to Cato the Elder (Cicero, De officiis 2. 89; Columella, De re rustica 6 Praefatio 4–5; Pliny (the Elder) Naturalis historia 8. 29–30). Thus scholars have traditionally focused on such profitable forms of stockbreeding (sometimes described as ‘ranching’) as Varro's long-distance, large-scale transhumance of sheep between Apulia and the Abruzzi (De re rustica 2. 2. 9)—entrepreneurial pastoralism largely divorced from, or even in competition with, settled agriculture which exploited Rome's post-Hannibalic control of Italy (see Rome (history) §1.4). More recently, evidence from archaeology (patterns of rural settlement, villa excavation, and analysis of animal bones and plant remains)...
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