Download or read book Tilling the Hateful Earth written by Michael Decker and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2009-07-30 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A study of the agrarian landscape and economy of the late-antique eastern Mediterranean. Michael Decker describes the ways in which Roman farmers succeeded in producing food surpluses, fuelling a surge in population and a flowering of cultural expression and economic prosperity in the century before the arrival of Islam.