This study examines agriculture and rural life across the Greco-Roman world from the viewpoint of labour, integrating literary, legal, epigraphic, and material evidence. It surveys Greek poets, historians, philosophers, and orators, then follows Roman agricultural practices and thought through successive authors and jurists, assessing slavery, tenancy, landholding, labour organization, and rural economy. The narrative addresses farming techniques, population movements, the development of tenant and coloni arrangements, and transformations in late antiquity, while also considering Christian and Byzantine writings; appendices collect later agricultural compilations and a farmer’s law for comparative perspective.