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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 2220750" data-attributes="member: 4937">The basis of all three big slave revolts where the Latifundia (big essentially government owned plantations) that the Romans had set up in southern Italy and Sicily after conquering the italian kingdoms there.  Similar plantations would be started on these models elsewhere, but my guess is that the slave populations there were indiginous rather than imported.  Not every Roman approved of the practice.  Pliny hated it and argued in favor of free peasant farmers.  Several Roman plays critiqued the holding of slaves in satire.My understanding was that after the slave revolts, the Romans turned back toward the tenant/landlord model of landuse and away from the slave plantation.  The Latifundia continued, but they were increasingly reliant on peasant tenants that were in theory at least free and who were allowed to retain the surplus of the land.  This might well be part of the origin of the serf system, but like everything else between the end of Rome and the beginning of the Middle Ages, its really hard to track what was going on because just about no writing remains from that period.After Marius, every legonairre got a farm on retirement.   Before Marius, the Romans were having a hard time finding enough free land holders to recruit into the army.  The small roman citizen farmer was becoming extinct at precisely the time that Roman was needing to field larger armies.  One could imagine that in the decades and centuries following Marius, the empire was filling up with the families of legonairre free holders that had been born Greek or German or whatever but which now held Roman citizenship, had fought in its wars, and had a nice plot of land.  This helped replenish the Roman 'yeomanry', and (along with sale of citizenships to the merchant class) helped made the burden of living under the empire more tolerable.  I agree with you that the causes are probably complex, and with S'mon in that the Romans probably got better at putting these things down.Also, whether you are aware of it or not, we are starting to tread on some of the most explosive political ground in all of the study of history.  If the other side of this debate could refrain from blowing up and flaming me over my description of the Latifundia as 'big government owned plantations', I'd really appreciate it.</blockquote>

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