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Updated: June 16, 2025
The true unit for comparison of farms is a centuria, which contains two hundred jugera, but if one deducts forty jugera, or one-sixth, from Cato's two hundred and forty jugera, I do not see how in applying this rule one can deduct also one-sixth of his thirteen slaves; or, even if we leave out the overseer and the housekeeper, how one can deduct one-sixth of eleven slaves.
Cato assigns to an estate of 100 -jugera- one, to one of 240 -jugera- three, yoke of oxen; a later writer on agriculture, Saserna, assigns two yoke to the 200 -jugera-. Three asses were, according to Cato's estimate, required for the smaller, and four for the larger, estate. Slaves The human labour on the farm was regularly performed by slaves.
The size of the new allotments which Gracchus projected is not known; it probably varied with the needs and status of the occupier, perhaps with the quality of the land, and there is some indication that the maximum was fixed at thirty jugera.
A vineyard naturally required a larger expenditure of labour: an estate of 100 -jugera- with vine-plantations was supplied with one ploughman, eleven serfs, and two herdsmen.
But, in the year 367 B.C., the tribunes Licinius and L. Sextius secured the passage of three memorable laws in the Curiata Tributa—the abolition of the military tribunate, which had increased the power of the patricians, and the restoration of the consulate, on the condition that one of the consuls should be a plebeian; the second, that no citizen should possess more than five hundred jugera of the public lands; and the third, that all interest thus paid on loans should be deducted from the principal.
Cato's unit of 240 jugera was based on the duodecimal system of weights and measures which the Romans had originally derived from Babylon but afterwards modified by the use of a decimal system. Cf. Donaldson's Agricultural Biography, tit. Jethro Tull.
The number, of course, varied according to the method of husbandry pursued. An arable estate of 200 -jugera- without orchards was estimated to require two ploughmen and six serfs: a similar estate with two orchards two plough-men and nine serfs; an estate of 240 -jugera- with olive plantations and sheep, three ploughmen, five serfs, and three herdsmen.
Of draught animals XIX. In respect of those instruments of agriculture which are called inarticulate, Saserna says that two yokes of oxen will be enough for two hundred jugera of arable land, while Cato prescribes three yokes for two hundred and forty jugera in olives: thus if Saserna is correct, one yoke of oxen is required for every hundred jugera, but if Cato is correct a yoke is needed for every eighty jugera.
These ideas the three confederates revived in the colonial laws, which Saturninus as tribune of the people had partly introduced already , partly now introduced . As early as the former year the interrupted distribution of the Carthaginian territory had been resumed primarily for the benefit of the soldiers of Marius not the burgesses only but, as it would seem, also the Italian allies and each of these veterans had been promised an allotment of 100 -jugera-, or about five times the size of an ordinary Italian farm, in the province of Africa.
At any rate, any supposition is better than a hypothesis which requires us to believe as it were in a miraculous multiplication of the food of the Roman household. The Roman farmers were far less modest in their requirements than their historiographers; they themselves conceived that they could not subsist even on allotments of seven -jugera- or a produce of one hundred and forty -modii-.
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