Question

How did many of the landless poor in the roman countryside seek to better their condition in the second century

Answer 1

The landless poor people in the countryside during the Roman empire era, seek to better their condition by acessing to a villa (a Roman villa).

A Roman villa was a country house, built by a landowner from an upper social class. Its functioning could be compared somehow to that of the haciendas that many centuries later flourished in America.

The owners of the villa divided the lands it included and rented those small divisions to landless tenants, who worked the land for a living and to pay the retribution to the owner, and in many cases were allowed to live inside the villa too in order to enjoy certain protection. These institutions started to disappear in the end of the second century BC.