Quote Originally Posted by LordCurlyton View Post
Don't ask me why this popped into my mind but now that it has it won't leave.....
The scenario: You are an eccentric millionaire living in West Central Florida in the United States. Being eccentric, you decide that to ensure you maintain your street cred among the other eccentric millionaires you will engage in some historical fun. You buy yourself a nice chunk of property (say 100 acres) and decide that your home will be built in the style of a Roman villa, just with modern accoutrement. However, that's not nearly eccentric enough. You also decide that your yard will not only be aesthetically pleasing but consist only of various crops that would have been grown or harvested in the wild during the time of the Late Republic/Early Empire by a Roman.
So that is the challenge, EB-ers. You have 100 acres to play with, with the dual stipulations that whatever is grown in the yard must have been grown by the Romans during the end of EB's timeframe and it must be aesthetically pleasing in some way. Tree, bush, pulses, grains, etc, they are all viable. If an extremely wealthy Roman could have possibly obtained it, our millionaire is allowed to use it. We are not limited to major crops but spices and such as well. For ease of consideration, I will consider "obtainable by a Roman noble" to be the boundaries of EB's map, so China and most of India are out unless you can show that Roman nobles did in fact obtain and occasionally grow crops that originated in such far off lands. If, to make the yard more aesthetically pleasing, introducing some farm animals that would crop plants by eating them would be necessary, that is allowed to, plus it makes the millionaire even more self-sufficient (a good side effect of his eccentricity).
Like I said, a weird idea, but its been niggling my mind for a while.
If its in Arabia, I'd grow frankensence, murr, and dates-dates up the rear. perhaps some tribe might make a god of dates, or a god from dates? that said, frankensence tops it-especially in the area of yemen and Oman.

If in Kyrene, I'd grow Silphium and wheat..

in Italy, wheat and olives

in he holy land, figs, wheat, and olives

in mesopotamia, barley, dates and figs

It depends in the end on where I am, what the local and/or international demand is, and how good is the local labor.

sorry, I think practically (money)..