Chapter 30 of 404

Peasants in the Ancient Mediterranean World

Extrapolating from traditional societies today, some scholars contend that peasants must have constituted at least 90% of the empire’s, and Jewish Palestine’s, population.⁴⁶ These estimates could be high, but everyone agrees that peasants comprised the majority of the population of Judea and Galilee. Indeed, if we define “peasant” broadly as simply an agrarian worker without much land, the estimates could well be accurate. Most of the empire was rural,⁴⁷ and the infrastructure of the Mediterranean economy could not support many massive urban centers like Rome (which depended on its empire for its needs).⁴⁸ Most of the empire’s labor force thus consisted of subsistence-level agricultural labor.⁴⁹

In a system that persisted and developed in Medieval Europe, much of this agricultural force worked other people’s estates; although some smallholders remained, in regions like Italy and Asia Minor most poor people no longer owned their own land.⁵⁰ Those who lived on and worked the estates of the rich were poor tenant farmers,⁵¹ who were often subject to exploitation.⁵²

There is also no question that most of the rural empire was poor,⁵³ so that the connotations readers today often assign to the designation “peasants” are apt for these agrarian laborers. One ancient composer of fables, himself a former slave, opined that it made little difference whether one was a peasant or a slave; it was merely a matter of changing masters.⁵⁴ Subsistence for the poor was minimal, so that most died young; in parts of the empire, most peasants probably made barely enough to stay alive.⁵⁵ That rich landowners oppressed the poor was widely enough known.⁵⁶

The letters of a Roman aristocrat writing the better part of a century later illustrates how aristocrats viewed the problem. Pliny fancies himself a benevolent absentee landowner, but his tenants have fallen so far into debt, despite his reducing the rent, that they no longer even try to catch up on it.⁵⁷ (Meanwhile, his urban servants supervise the peasants to make sure they are working while he enjoys a bit of leisure.)⁵⁸ He complains about a former landowner who sold the peasants’ possessions to compensate for their debt, thereby diminishing their future resources. This, he reasoned, foolishly diminished their future ability to pay.⁵⁹ His response is to consider completely displacing the tenants by some more profitable labor such as slaves.⁶⁰ The aristocrat’s strongest concern, of course, is how to guard his own economic interests.⁶¹

The difficulties that farmers endured throughout much of the rest of the empire presumably impacted Galilee as well. Agriculture was central to the Palestinian Jewish economy;⁶² with only two large cities, Galilee’s population primarily resided in agrarian villages and towns.⁶³ Although much land was fertile,⁶⁴ the peasant farmers held few concerns more pressing than harvest,⁶⁵ an image frequent enough in Jesus’ parables (Mk 4:29; 12:2; Matt 20:1-7). Probably most Galileans, while not destitute, lived challenging lives.⁶⁶

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