• Part I. Cities: 1. Aspects of the decline of the urban aristocracy in the empire; 2. Independent freedmen and the economy of Roman Italy under the Principate; 3. Economy and society of Mediolanum under the Principate; 4. Urban property investment in Roman society; 5. An association of builders in late antique Sardis; Part II. Peasants: 6. Peasants in ancient Roman society; 7. Where did Italian peasants live?; 8. Non-slave labour in the Roman world; 9. Prolegomenon to a study of the land in the later Roman empire; 10. Mountain economies in southern Europe; Part III. Food: 11. Grain for Athens; 12. The yield of the land in ancient Greece; 13. The bean: substance and symbol; 14. Mass diet and nutrition in the city of Rome; 15. Child rearing in ancient Italy; 16. Famine in history.

'The conventions illuminated by G.'s reding of the sources are remarkable, and it is instructive to follow his analysis of the evidence, buttressed by judicious and critical application of comparative materials and anthropological … the reader has been served a savory meal full of insightful observations and plenty of appetizers'. Scripta Classica Israelica