The labor market of the early Roman empire

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Volumn 34, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 513-538

  Temin, Peter ^a  

^a MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 30444444821     PISSN: 00221953     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/002219504773512525     Document Type: Article

References (120)

1. Keith Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves (Cambridge, 1978);
2. Moses Finley, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (London, 1980);
3. Ferdinand Tönnies (trans. Charles P. Loomis), Community and Society (East Lansing, 1957), 231-233
4. (orig. pub. as Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft [Leipzig, 1887]);
5. Karl Marx (trans. Samuel Moore and Edwar Aveling), Capital (London, 1970; orig. pub. Hamburg, 1867), I, 352.
6. Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (New York, 1944);
7. Max Weber (trans. Talcott Parsons), The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York, 1930; orig. pub. in German 1905). More recent views reject the opposition of Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft in favor of a more complex view that sees both ideal types as present in a wide variety of societies. This view, which also derives from Tönnies, questions which form of society is dominant, not ubiquitous, interpreting history as the shifting balance between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft rather than a total transition from one to the other. A society might be regarded as dominated by one mode or the other, but the sense that progress has eliminated Gemeinschaft is gone.
8. See Thomas Bender, Community and Social Change in America (New Brunswick, N.J., 1978).
9. Ian Morris, "Foreword," in Moses I. Finley, The Ancient Economy (Berkeley, 1999; orig. pub. 1973), 1-37, 68.
10. Finley, Ancient Slavery, 68.
11. In "Further Thoughts," Finley reaffirmed his positions, with "nuancing," that "free hired labor was casual and seasonal" and that "there was no genuine competition . . . between slave and free laborers" (185-186). Following Brunt, he acknowledged abundant free laborers in the largest cities, but he insisted that their employment was "strictly speaking casual" (Finley, "Further Thoughts," in idem, Ancient Economy, 177-207);
12. P. A. Brunt, "Free Labor and Public Works at Rome," Journal of Roman Studies, LXX (1980), 81-100;
13. Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves, 14, III.
14. Finley, Ancient Slavery, 68, 127;
15. Aldo Schiavone, The End of the Past: Ancient Rome and the Modern World (Cambridge, Mass., 2000), 156.
16. Labor productivity herein means the output of goods or services that results from a worker's employment, not the average labor productivity of all workers. In economics jargon, it is the marginal product of labor. George J. Borhas, "Does Immigration Grease the Wheels of the Labor Market?" Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, I (2001), 71: "There exist sizable wage differences across regions or states in the United States, even for workers with particular skills looking for similar jobs."
17. John R. Harris and Michael P. Todaro, "Migration, Unemployment and Development: A Two-Sector Analysis," American Economic Review, LX (1970), 126-142.
18. Hans-Joachim Drexhage, Preise, Mieten/Pachten, Kosten und Löhne im Römischen Ägypten bis zum Regierungsantritt Diokletians (St. Katharinen, 1991);
19. Dominic Rathbone, "Prices and Price Formation in Roman Egypt," Economie antique: Prix et formatin des prix dans les economies antiques (Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges, 1997), 183-244;
20. Temin, "A Market Economy in the Early Roman Empire," Journal of Roman Studies, XCI (2001), 169-181;
21. Robert J. Steinfeld, The Invention of Free Labor: The Employment Relation in English and American Law and Culture, 1350-1879 (Chapel Hill, 1991), 26.
22. See also Robert J. Steinfeld, idem, Coercion, Contract and Free Labor in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 2001).
23. Labor mobility was reduced further in continental Europe by guilds and other restrictions. See Sheilagh Ogilvie, State Corporatism and Proto-Industry: The Württemberg Black Forest, 1580-1797 (Cambridge, 1997), for a description of labor conditions in early Germany.
24. Tenney Frank, Economic Survey of Ancient Rome (1940), V, 248-252;
25. Russell Meiggs, Roman Ostia (Oxford, 1973), 314.
26. Rathbone, Economic Rationalism and Rural Society in Third Century A.D. Egypt (Cambridge, 1991), 91-147, 166;
27. Brunt, "Free Labor";
28. Keith R. Bradley, Slavery and Society at Rome (Cambridge, 1994), 59-65;
29. Marcus Tullius Cicero (trans. Walter Miller), de Officiis (London, 1913; orig. pub. 45-44 B.C.), XXI, 1.150-151;
30. Hélène Cuvigny, "The Amount of Wages Paid to the Quarry-Workers at Mons Claudianus," Journal of Roman Studies, LXXXVI (1996), 139-145.
31. Temin, "Estimating Roman GDP," paper prepared for a conference on ancient history, "Innovazióne tecnica e progresso economico nel mondo romano," Capri, April 14-16, 2003.
32. R. P. Duncan-Jones, "The Impact of the Antonine Plague," Journal of Roman Archeology, IX (1996), 108-136;
33. Walter Scheidel, "A Model of Demographic and Economic Change in Roman Egypt after the Antonine Plague," Journal of Roman Archeology, ibid., XV (2002), 97-114.
34. Rathbone, Economic Rationalism, 91-92.
35. CIL III, translated in Naftali Lewis and Meyer Reinhold (eds.), Roman Civilization: Selected Readings (New York, 1990; orig. pub. 1951), II, 948.
36. Peter Garnsey, Cities, Peasants and Food in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge, 1998), 139;
37. Dennis P. Kehoe, Investment, Profit, and Tenancy: The Jurists and the Roman Agrarian Economy (Ann Arbor, 1997);
38. Gaius, as represented in The Digest of Justinian, D. 19.2.25.6,
39. quoted in David Johnston, Roman Law in Context (Cambridge, 1999), 64.
40. Donald Woodward, Men at Work: Laborers and Building Craftsmen in the Towns of Northern England, 1450-1750 (Cambridge, 1995);
41. Gregory Clark, "Farm Wages and Living Standards in the Industrial Revolution: England, 1670-1850," Economic History Review, LIV (2001), 485.
42. Robert Allen, "The Great Divergence: Wages and Prices in Europe from the Middle Ages to the First World War," Explorations in Economic History, XXXVIII (2001), 411-447.
43. Brunt, "Conscription and Volunteering in the Roman Imperial Army," Scripta Classica Israelica, I (1974), 90-115;
44. George R. Watson, The Roman Soldier (Ithaca, 1969), 45.
45. Bradley, Slavery and Rebellion in the Roman World, 140 B.C.-70 B.C. Bloomington, 1989).
46. James L. Watson, "Slavery as an Institution, Open and Closed Systems," in idem (ed.), Asian and African Systems of Slavery (Oxford, 1980), 7.
47. This classification differs from that in William V. Harris, "Demography, Geography and the Sources of Roman Slaves, "Journal of Roman Studies, LXXXIX (1999), 62-75, which classified a slave system as open if slaves were imported and closed if not.
48. Compare Edward Gibbon's magisterial pronouncement early in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (New York, 1961), 36: "Hope, the best comfort of our imperfect condition, was not denied to the Roman slave; and if he had any opportunity of rendering himself either useful or agreeable, he might very naturally expect that the diligence and fidelity of a few years would be rewarded with the inestimable gift of freedom."
49. Stefano Fenoaltea, "Slavery and Supervision in Comparative Perspective: A Model," Journal of Economic History, XLIV (1984), 635-668.
50. Slave revolts do not give evidence of predominantly negative incentives. The attested slave revolts were concentrated in a short span during the late republic, a time of great social upheaval. See Bradley, Slavery and Rebellion.
51. Lucius Apuleius (trans. J. Arthur Hanson), Metamorphoses ("The Golden Ass") (Cambridge, Mass., 1989; orig. pub. 2d century), II, 9.2;
52. Garnsey and Richard Sailer, The Roman Empire: Economy, Society and Culture (Berkeley, 1987), 119, use this example to show the conditions of Roman slaves.
53. Oliver Davies, Roman Mines in Europe (Oxford, 1935), 14-16.
54. Jacques Ramin and Paul Veyne, "Droit Romain et Société ; les Hommes Libres qui Passent pour Esclaves et l'Ésclavage Volontaire," Historia, XXX (1981), 496.
55. Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves, 101;
56. Roger S. Bagnall and Bruce W. Frier, The Demography of Roman Egypt (Cambridge, 1994), 48-49, 71;
57. Scheidel, "Progress and Problems in Roman Demography," in idem (ed.), Debating Roman Demography (Leiden, 2001), 49-61.
58. John A. Crook, Law and Life of Rome (London, 1967), 187-191. If a slave used his peculium to purchase his freedom, his former owner acquired possession of the slave's earnings.
59. Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves, 115-132;
60. Bradley, Slavery and Rebellion.
61. Garnsey, Ideas of Slavery from Aristotle to Augustine (Cambridge, 1996), 87, 97;
62. Ronald Findlay, "Slavery, Incentives, and Manumission: A Theoretical Model," Journal of Political Economy, LXXXIII (1975), 923-934, determined the optimal timing of manumission for a profit-maximizing owner.
63. Bradley, Slaves and Masters in the Roman Empire (Brussels, 1984), 143.
64. This argument can be viewed as an expansion of remarks in John R. Hicks, A Theory of Economic History (Oxford, 1969): "There are two ways in which labor may be an article of trade. Either the laborer may be sold outright, which is slavery; or his services only may be hired, which is wage-payment" (123). Hicks acknowledged that slavery typically is a cruel, brutal institution, but he softened this indictment when slaves have personal relations with their owners and can take economic initiative, as in the early Roman empire. "Perhaps it should be said when this point is reached, the slave is only a semi-slave" (126n.).
65. See Garnsey, Cities, Peasants and Food, 30-37.
66. Lilly Ross Taylor, "Freedmen and Freeborn in the Epitaphs of Imperial Rome," American Journal of Philology, LXXXII (1961), 113-132: "Many freedmen are known from their names alone, but we know of so many of them because they wanted to memorialise their life and achievements in the same way as more august senators and knights, erecting tombstones that have survived until today." 32 Roman slavery shared attributes with another modern institution, indentured service. Poor Englishmen who wanted to emigrate to North America in the eighteenth century but could not afford it often mortgaged their future labor to pay for their passage. Indentures lasted a fixed number of years, often fewer than five, and immigrants were able to resume life without stigma after their indenture was finished. While indentured, however, immigrants could not move, choose occupations, or even determine the certain particulars of their circumscribed lives. They were, in a descriptive oxymoron, short-term slaves.
67. David W. Galenson, White Servitude in Colonial America (Cambridge, 1981).
68. Garnsey, Ideas of Slavery, 7. A few older ancient historians noted the comparatively benign quality of ancient slavery, although without referring to manumission and without distinguishing between Greek and Roman slavery. If Greek slavery was more similar to Roman than to modern slavery, featuring reduced positive incentives of an open slave system, the reason is by no means obvious.
69. See Alfred Zimmern, "Was Greek Civilization Based on Slave Labor?" Sociological Review, II (1909), 1-19, 159-176
70. (repr. in Alfred Zimmern, "idem, Solan and Croesus [London, 1928]);
71. A. H. M. Jones, "The Economics of Slavery in the Ancient World," Economic History Review, IX (1956), 185-204.
72. Scheidel, "Quantifying the Source of Slaves in the Early Roman Empire," Journal of Roman Studies, LXXXVII (1997), 157-169;
73. Harris, "Demography." Bradley, Slavery and Society, 10, asserted that the intent of Augustus' law was to restrict manumission only to those slaves who had proved that they deserved freedom.
74. Titus Livius (trans. B. O. Foster), History (London, 1919; orig. pub. 27 B.C.), I, 2.3-5;
75. Ernst Levy (ed.), Pauli sententiae (Ithaca, 1945), II, 24.3.
76. Scheidel's estimate of 10% was an intermediate one; the actual level could have been higher or lower ("Quantifying," 160).
77. Harris, "Demography";
78. Paul R. C. Weaver, Familia Caesaris: A Social Study of the Emperor's Freedmen and Slaves (Cambridge, 1972), 1:
79. Alan Watson, Roman Slave Law (Baltimore, 1987), 23.
80. Bagnall and Frier, Demography, 71, 342-343;
81. st century A.D.), I, 1.8.19.
82. Apparently, slave women had to have undergone either three live births or had to have three living children at the time of the next birth. The stipulation is clearer in Theodor Mommsen and Paul Krueger (eds.), The Digest of Justinian (Philadelphia, 1985; orig. pub. 553), 1.5.15, which deals with the disposition of triplets under a will that freed the mother at the birth of the third child.
83. Slaves in Baltimore had slightly more hope than others; they were freed with more frequency, although the interval between the decision to manumit and actual freedom was often long. Stephen Whitman, "Diverse Good Causes: Manumission and the Transformation of Urban Slavery, Social Science History, XIX (1995), 333-370.
84. Gwendolyn Hall, Databases for the Study of Afro-Louisiana History and Genealogy, 1699-1860 (New Orleans, 2000);
85. Shawn Cole, "Capitalism and Freedom: Slavery and Manumission in Louisiana, 1770-1820," paper presented at the National Bureau of Economic Research Summer Institute, Cambridge, Mass., July 17, 2003;
86. Robert W. Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (Boston, 1974), I, 150.
87. Stuart B. Schwarte, "The Manumission of Slaves in Colonial Brazil, 1684-1745," Hispanic American Historical Review, LIV (1974), 603-635;
88. Katia M. de Queiros Mattoso, To Be a Slave In Brazil, 1550-1888 (New Brunswick, N.J., 1986), 50, 164;
89. Mary C. Karasch, Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro, 1808-1850 (Princeton, 1987), 66, 346;
90. Meikoi Nishida, "Manumission and Ethnicity in Urban Slavery: Salvador, Brazil, 1808-1888," Hispanic American Historical Review, LXXIII (1993), 365, 376;
91. Francisco Vidal Luna and Herbert S. Klein, Slavery and the Economy of Sao Paulo, 1750-1850 (Stanford, 2003), 162-163.
92. Arnold M. Duff, Freedmen in the Early Roman Empire (Oxford, 1928);
93. Susan Treggiari, Roman Freedmen during the Late Republic (Oxford, 1969);
94. st century), 27.5;
95. Finley, Ancient Slavery, 98.
96. Society became more rigid during the late empire. As opportunities for advancement in urban activities diminished, so did the incentive of manumission. Slavery began to evolve into a different institution. Dred Scott v. Sanford, 60 U.S. 393, 407 (1857).
97. Mattoso, To Be a Slave, 179-183.
98. See also Schwarte, "Manumission"; Karasch, Slave Life, 362;
99. Sidney Chalhoub, "Slaves, Freedmen and the Politics of Freedom in Brazil: The Experience of Blacks in the City of Rio," Slavery and Abolition, X (1989), 64-84;
100. Nishido, "Manumission";
101. Douglas Cole Libby and Clotilde Andrade Paiva, "Manumission Practices in a Late Eighteenth-Century Brazilian Slave Parish: São José d'El Rey in 1795," Slavery and Abolition, XXI (2000), 96-127.
102. Brazilian freedmen were represented in many occupations, but they were concentrated at the lower end of the economic and social scale. Vidai Luna and Klein, Slavery, 172.
103. Bradley, Slavery and Society, 35;
104. Plutarch (trans. Bernadotte Perrin), "Marcus Cato," Parallel Lives (London, 1914; orig. pub. early 2d century), II, 21;
105. Va. Code [1848], 747-748. Education does not even appear in the index to Fogel and Engerman, Time on the Cross. So few Brazilians of any sort were educated that no contrast between slaves and free workers in this context is possible.
106. Gaius (trans. W. M. Gordon and O. F. Robinson), Institutiones (Ithaca, 1988; orig. pub. c. 161), 2.87;
107. Watson, Roman Slave Law, 107;
108. Hicks, Theory.
109. See Andrew Lintott, "Freedmen and Slaves in the Light of Legal Documents from First-Century A.D. Campania," Classical Quarterly, LII (2002), 555-565,
110. for a vivid description of slaves and freedmen as agents in the records of a commercial house in Puteoli. Free people were also agents. Roman jurists began to correct the legal discrepancy between them and slave agents in the Principate (Johnston, Roman Law, 106).
111. Columella, 1.8.1-2: "Igitur praemoneo ne vilicum ex eo genere servorum, qui corpore placuerunt, instituamus, ne ex eo quidem ordine, qui urbanes ac delicates artes exercuerit."
112. Jean-Jacques Aubert, Business Managers in Early Roman Empire (Leiden, 1994), 133;
113. Garnsey, Cities, Peasants and Food, 143-145;
114. Brunt, "Free Labor";
115. M. K. Thornton and R. L. Thornton, Julio-Claudian Building Programs (Wauconda, Il., 1989).
116. Hicks, Theory.
117. Garnsey, Cities, Peasants and Food, 134,
118. citing Gaius, Institutiones, 1.9;
119. Saller, "Status and Patronage," in Alan K. Bowman, Garnsey, and Rathbone (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History. XI.
120. The High Empire, A.D. 70-192 (Cambridge, 2000), 835.