This paper argues against seeing Herodian Galilee as a place of social harmony. By contrast, a social-scientific approach to agrarian "aristocratic politics" highlights--the structures of Herodian social stratification; top-down control of patronage, economic production, labor, debt, and taxation; a social world filled with latent tension; and grounds for seeing the Jesus movement as peasant resistance. In general, the paper stresses the importance of explicit models informed by comparative social sciences for understanding the Galilee of Herod Antipas.