Trade and empire - In search of organizing concepts for the Roman economy

Past and Present

Volumn 195, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 3-54

  Bang, Peter Fibiger ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN   (Denmark)

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EID: 34748914193     PISSN: 00312746     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/pastj/gtl031     Document Type: Article

References (331)

1. Daniel Defoe, The Review, 23 vols. (Facsimile Text Soc., New York, 1928), facsimile bk 8, vol. iii, no. 126, pp. 502-3,
2. cited from J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, 1975), 454.
3. The epigraphs above are from: David Hume, Selected Essays, ed. Stephen Copley and Andrew Edgar (Oxford, 1998), 156 (Of Commerce)
4. Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767), ed. Fania Oz-Salzberger (Cambridge, 1995), 193
5. Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, intro. Hugh Trevor-Roper, 3 vols. (London, 1993), i, 60 (ch. 2).
6. Peter Temin, 'A Market Economy in the Early Roman Empire', Fl Roman Studies, xci (2001), 181.
7. Jean Hatzfeld, Les Trafiquants italiens dans l'Orient hellénique (Paris, 1919)
8. Jean Rougé, Recherches sur l'organisation du commerce maritime en Méditerranée sous l'empire romain (Paris, 1966).
9. Paul Veyne, Le Pain et le cirque: Sociologie historique d'un pluralisme politique (Paris, 1976), available in English in abbreviated form: Bread and Circuses: Historical Sociology and Political Pluralism, trans. Brian Pearce (London, 1990).
10. See also Henriette Pavis d'Escurac, La Préfecture de l'annone: service administratif impérial d'Auguste à Constantin (Rome, 1976)
11. José Remesal Rodríguez, Heeresversorgung und die wirtschaftlichen Beziehungen zwischen der Baetica und Germanien: Materalien zu einem Corpus der in Deutschland veröffentlichten Stempel auf Amphoren der Form Dressel 20 (Stuttgart, 1997), revised German version of Spanish original from 1986
12. Chris Wickham, 'Marx, Sherlock Holmes and Late Roman Commerce', Fl Roman Studies, lxxviii (1988)
13. Wilfiried Nippel, 'Review of Ste. Croix, The Class Strugglee in the Ancient Greek World, in Gnomon, Ivi (1984), 623-33
14. C. R. Whittaker, Land, City and Trade in the Roman Empire (Aldershot, 1993)
15. C. R. Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire: A Social and Economic Study (Baltimore and London, 1994).
16. Geoffrey Rickman, The Corn Supply of Ancient Rome (Oxford, 1980)
17. Boudewijn Sirks, Food for Rome: The Legal Structure of the Transportation and Processing of Supplies for the Imperial Distributions in Rome and Constantinople (Amsterdam, 1991)
18. Lietta De Salvo, Economia privata e pubblici servizi nell'impero romano: I corpora naviculariorum (Messina, 1992)
19. Andrea Carandini, Schiavi in Italia: Gli strumenti pensanti dei Romani fra tarda Repubblica e medio Impero (Rome, 1988)
20. W. V. Harris,'Between Archaic and Modern: Some Current Problems in the History of the Roman Economy; in W. V. Harris (ed.), The Inscribed Economy: Production and Distribution in the Roman Empire in the Light of Instrumentum Domesticum (JI Roman Archaeol., suppl. ser., vi, Ann Arbor, 1993)
21. Jeremy Paterson, 'Trade and Traders in the Roman World: Scale, Structure, and Organization', in Helen Parkins and Christopher Smith (eds.), Trade, Traders and the Ancient City (London and New York, 1998).
22. Keith Hopkins, 'Taxes and Trade in the Roman Empire (200 BC - AD 400)', Fl Roman Studies, lxx (1980)
23. see also Keith Hopkins, 'Introduction', in Peter Garnsey, Keith Hopkins and C. R. Whittaker (eds.), Trade in the Ancient Economy (London, 1983), pp. ix-xxv.
24. A notable exception is Elio Lo Cascio, 'Mercato libero c "commercio amministrato" in età tardoantica', in Carlo Zaccagnini (ed.), Mercanti e politica nel mondo antico (Rome, 2003); the article problematizes this distinction.
25. Keith Hopkins, 'Rome, Taxes, Rents and Trade', in Walter Scheidel and Sitta von Reden (eds.), The Ancient Economy (Edinburgh, 2002)
26. Richard Duncan-Jones, Structure and Scale in the Roman Economy (Cambridge, 1990)
27. Richard Duncan-Jones, Money and Government in the Roman Empire (Cambridge, 1994).
28. M. I. Finley, The Ancient Economy (1973; London, 1985)
29. also M. I. Finley, 'Aristotle and Economic Analysis', Past and Present, no. 47 (May 1970), esp. 13-16, with footnotes. Karl Polanyi's posthumously published, unfinished, The Livelihood of Man ed. Harry W. Pearson (New York, 1977), has been seen as going much further than Finley by locating the birth of the 'modern market' in the Hellenistic period following the work of Mikhail Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1941):
30. see Harris, 'Between Archaic and Modern', 15-16. But it is rather a question of Polanyi making too much of too little, too late. Finley dated the rise of extensive market trade in the Greek world much earlier than Polanyi, but denied that it ever developed into capitalism. See also the discussion in the second edition of Finley, Ancient Economy 178.
31. Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, is the classic treatment of civic republicanism in the early modern world. Chapter 13 discusses Defoe in the context of 'Neo-Machiavellian political economy':
32. see, in particular, ibid., 453-5.
33. Aldo Schiavone, La storia spezzata: Roma antica e Occidente moderno (Rome, 1996), pubd in English as The End of the Past: Ancient Rome and the Modern West, trans. Margery J. Schneider (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 2000), ch. 8, makes inspired use of Defoe to illustrate the economic differences between the Roman world and that of early capitalist England.
34. The main works were: Niccolò Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio (Florence, 1531)
35. James Harrington, The Common-Wealth of Oceana (London, 1656).
36. J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, 4 vols. (Cambridge, 1999-2005), offers many fascinating observations on this process in his grand examination of the gradual emergence of the view of Roman history which underlay Gibbon's Decline and Fall. My treatment of the early discourse on political economy has been greatly helped, in particular, by Pocock, Barbarism and Religion, iii, ch. 16.
37. See also M. I. Finley, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (London, 1980), ch. 1
38. Claude Nicolet, Rendre à César: économie et société dans la Rome antique (Paris, 1988), ch. 1.
39. In the essay On the Populousness of Ancient Nations, in Hume, Selected Essays, ed. Copley and Edgar.
40. Hume, Selected Essays, ed. Copley and Edgar, 158.
41. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), ed. R. H. Campbell, A. S. Skinner and W. B. Todd (Oxford, 1976), 397-410, 557.
42. On Smith and the 'consumer' city, see M. I. Finley, 'The Ancient City: From Fustel de Coulanges to Max Weber and Beyond', Comparative Studies in Society and History, xix (1977)
43. Paul Erdkamp, 'Beyond the Limits of the "Consumer City": A Model of the Urban and Rural Economy in the Roman World', Historia, 1 (2001).
44. Smith, Wealth of Nations, ed. Campbell, Skinner and Todd, 556-64.
45. This gap only widened in the following century where political economists generally had no doubts about the huge differences between the ancient and the capitalist world. Most, therefore, simply lost interest in ancient history. For a recent treatment of this, see Neville Morley, 'Political Economy and Classical Antiquity', JL Hist. Ideas 1ix (1998).
46. Charles Louis de Secondat de Montesquicu, De l'esprit des loix (Geneva, 1748, last revised edn, 1757), bk 3, ch. 9.
47. Adam Smith, Lectures on Jurisprudence, ed. R. L. Meek, D. D. Raphael and P. G. Stein (Oxford, 1978), 237-8.
48. The passage receives extensive analysis by Pocock: See his Barbarism and Religion, iii, 394-6.
49. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, revised edn, ed. Richard Tuck (Cambridge, 1996), 149.
50. For an analysis, see Quentin Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge, 1998), 85.
51. 'Le despotisme est un état violent qui semble ne pouvoir durer. Il est impossible que, dans un empire où des vice-rois soudoient des armées de vingt mille hommes, ces vice-rois obéissent longtemps et aveuglément. Les terres que l'empereur donne à ces vice-rois deviennent dés là même indépendantes de lui. Gardons-nous done bien de croire que dans l'Inde le fruit de tous les travaux des hommes appartienne à un seul. Plusieurs castes indiennes ont conservé leurs anciennes possessions. Les autres terres ont été données aux grands de l'empire, aux raïas, aux nababs, aux omras'. Voltaire, Essai sur les mœurs et l'esprit des nations et sur les principaux faits de l'histoire depuis Charlemagne jusqu'à Louis XIII (1754), ed. René Pomeau, 2 vols. (Paris, 1963), ii, 782 (ch. 194).
52. 'Il est difficile de comprendre comment des souverains, qui ne pouvaient empêcher leurs propres enfants de lever contre eux des armées, étaient aussi absolus qu'on veut nous le faire croire': ibid., 778.
53. Egon Flaig, Den Kaiser herausfordern: Die Usurpation in römischen Reich (Frankfurt am Main, 1992)
54. Peter Garnsey and Richard Saller, The Roman Empire: Economy, Society and Culture (London, 1987), ch. 2.
55. Adam Smith knew this well, of course. This is presumably why traditional economics has found it much more difficult to engage with the last books of the Wealth of Nations, where the relationship between state and the economy is explored in greater detail than in the first books, where the doctrine of free trade is presented. Karl Gunnar Persson, Grain Markets in Europe, 1500-1900: Integration and Deregulation (Cambridge, 1999), chs. 4 and 6, makes the important observation that in many European states it was precisely the developing modern bureaucracies of authoritarian governments that forced through the implementation of the new doctrine of laissez-faire.
56. Dominic Lieven, Empire: The Russian Empire and its Rivals from the Sixteenth Century to the Present (London, 2000).
57. Pliny the Younger, Epistulae, x. 77-8
58. see also ibid., x. 21-2.
59. J. Starcky, Inventaire des inscriptions de Palmyre, fasc. 10, L'Agora (Damascus, 1949), no. 29 (for the collection of the so-called tetarte, a 25 per cent customs duty on foreign imports, farmed out to an Antiochene councillor).
60. See Raphaela Drexhage, Untersuchungen zum römischen Osthandel (Bonn, 1988), for a basic treatment of the inscriptional evidence from Palmyra.
61. See also, more generally, the discussion of the Oriental luxury trade going through both Egypt and Palmyra in Gary K. Young, Rome's Eastern Trade: International Commerce and Imperial Policy, 31 BC - AD 305 (London and New York, 2001), chs. 2 and 4.
62. Anthony Giddens, The Nation-State and Violence (Cambridge, 1985), 181, rightly notes that the discipline of economics itsel farose as an integral part of the intensified state-building process - an attempt consciously to devise more efficient economic strategies and thus strengthen the state and its society.
63. The magisterial survey by Chris Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800 (Oxford, 2005), particularly chs. 3, 10 and 11, is fundamental for the continued vitality of economic life in the late Roman world.
64. The surveys of Bryan Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (Oxford, 2005), chs. 5-7
65. J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, The Decline and Fall of the Roman City (Oxford, 2001), ch. 2
66. and Michael McCormick, The Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce, AD 300-900 (Cambridge, 2001), pt 1, still prefer to treat the period within an overall framework of decline. But it is characteristic of their approach that it is shaped especially by the experience of the western European part of the empire, that decline only sets in fairly late, and that much of the story they tell is one of survival and even growth.
67. Cf. the paradoxical title of Liebeschuetz's survey,'The Survival of the Cities', in his Decline and Fall of the Roman City, ch. 2. The fact that we are able to discern shifts in the areas of greatest economic activity within a territory the size of the Roman empire over a stretch of half a millennium, for example 200-700, really ought not to surprise us, and can certainly not be taken as evidence of overall economic decline.
68. The vast catalogue compiled by A. J. Parker, Ancient Shipwrecks of the Mediterranean and the Roman Provinces (Brit. Archaeol. Repts, internat. set., dlxxx, Oxford, 1992), for instance, has frequently been thought to document a peak of shipping in the first century BC to the first century AD. But that is mistaken. The evidence is heavily skewed towards the Gallo-Italian trade in wine, carried in Dressel 1 and 2-4 amphorae. The much bigger shipping operation of the Alexandrian grain fleet goes virtually undetected in the wreck statistics, to say nothing of the late Roman rise of African exports of grain, olive oil and ceramic tableware which make a surprisingly poor show in the records, with Tripolitanean oil amphorae virtually absent.
69. For recent trends in research on the hitherto underexplored eastern part of the empire, see Sean Kingsley and Michael Decker (eds.), Economy and Exchange in the East Mediterranean during Late Antiquity: Proceedings of a Conference at Somerville College, Oxford, 29th May, 1999 (Oxford, 2001)
70. on regional changes in agricultural production, see Tamara Lewit, Agricultural Production in the Roman Economy, AD 200-400 (Brit. Archaeol. Repts, internat. ser., dlxviii, Oxford, 1991).
71. Martin Millett, The Romanization of Britain: An Essay in Archaeological Interpretation (Cambridge, 1990), chs. 7-8
72. Barry C. Burnham and John Wacher, The 'Small Towns' of Roman Britain (London, 1990).
73. For a summary, see Susan E. Alcock, Graecia Capta: The Landscapes of Roman Greece (Cambridge, 1993), 48-9.
74. On Syria and Palestine, see the summary discussions by Nigel Pollard, Soldiers, Cities, and Civilians in Roman Syria (Ann Arbor, 2000)
75. and Clive Foss, 'The Near Eastern Countryside in Late Antiquity: A Review Article', in J. H. Humphrey (ed.), The Roman and Byzantine Near East: Some Recent Archaeological Research (JI Roman Archaeol., suppl. ser., xiv, Ann Arbor, 1995).
76. The seminal archaeological work was done by Georges Tchalenko, Villages antiques de la Syrie du nord, 3 vols. (Paris, 1953-8)
77. e siècle (Paris, 1992).
78. Allan Walmsley, 'Byzantine Palestine and Arabia: Urban Prosperity in Late Antiquity', in N. Christie and S. T. Loseby (eds.), Towns in Transition: Urban Evolution in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Aldershot, 1996)
79. and Leah Di Segni, 'Epigraphic Documentation on Building in the Provinces of Palaestina and Arabia, 4th 7th c.', in J. H. Humphrey (ed.), The Roman and Byzantine Near East: Some Recent Archaeological Research, ii (JI Roman Archaeol., suppl. ser., xxxi, Portsmouth, RI, 1999), document the vitality of urban communities further south.
80. On developments in Roman North Africa, see D. J. Mattingly and R. B. Hitchner, 'Roman Africa: An Archaeological Review', Jl Roman Studies lxxxv (1995).
81. Fundamental archaeological field survey work is presented in R. B. Hitchner, 'The University of Virginia-INAA Kasserine Archaeological Survey, 1982-86', Antiquitès africaines, xxiv (1988)
82. Graeme Barker and D. J. Mattingly (eds.), Farming the Desert: The UNESCO Libyan Valleys Archaeological Survey, 2 vols. (Paris, 1996)
83. and Soren Dietz et al. (eds.), Africa Proconsularis: Regional Studies in the Segermes Valley of Northern Tunisia, 3 vols. (Copenhagen, 1995-2000).
84. Henry Hurst, 'Cartagine, la nuova Alessandria', in Arnaldo Momigliano and Aldo Schiavone (eds.), Storia di Roma, iii, L'età tardoantica (Turin, 1993), pt 2.
85. Claude Lepelley, Les Cités de l'Afrique romaine au Bas-Empire, 2 vols. (Paris, 1979-81), is the fundamental work on late Roman urbanism in Africa.
86. D. J. Mattingly, Tripolitania (London, 1995), 205.
87. Clementina Panella, 'Merci e scambi nel Mediterraneo tardoantico', in Momigliano and Schiavone (eds.), Storia di Roma, iii, pt 2.
88. See also S. J. Keay, Late Roman Amphorae in the Western Mediterranean: A Typology and Economic Study. The Catalan Evidence, 2 vols. (Brit. Archaeol. Repts, internat. ser., cxcvi, Oxford, 1984)
89. Paul Reynolds, Trade in the Western Mediterranean, AD 400-700: The Ceramic Evidence (Brit. Archaeol. Repts, internat. ser., dciv, Oxford, 1995)
90. and D. P. S. Peacock et al., 'Roman Pottery Production in Central Tunisia', Jl Roman Archaeol., iii (1990).
91. Andrea Carandini, 'Pottery and the African Economy', in Garnsey, Hopkins and Whittaker (eds.), Trade in the Ancient Economy;
92. and J. W. Hayes, Late Roman Pottery (London, 1972), have been important in drawing the attention of economic historians to the growth of African exports in Late Antiquity.
93. Andrew Wilson, 'Machines, Power and the Ancient Economy', Jl Roman Studies, xcii (2002), 9 (saqqiya), 9-15 (watermill).
94. Wilson's assertion that 'The breakthrough of the water-mill had certainly occurred by the second century AD, and almost certainly considerably before that' is unsupported by the evidence he presents: ibid., 11.
95. Only a handful of mills can be dated to the period before AD 200, whereas most data pertains to the following centuries. To this should be added the predominance of animal-driven mills in Pompeii, their use in second-century Ostia - see Russell Meiggs, Roman Ostia, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1973), pl. XXVIII b - and their anecdotal appearance in Apulcius' Golden Ass (Metamorphoses, IX. 11), which takes their widespread use for granted.
96. All this should warn us against exaggerating the generalized spread of the watermill in the second century, even if we now have a few conspicuous examples from this date, such as the mill-works at Barbegal, recently redated by Philippe Leveau, 'The Barbegal Water Mill in its Environment: Archaeology and the Economic and Social History of Antiquity', Jl Roman Archaeol., ix (1996).
97. For the general state of research, see Örjan Wikander (ed.), Handbook of Ancient Water Technology (Leiden, 2000).
98. See the convenient table in D. P. S. Peacock and D. F. Williams, Amphorae and the Roman Economy (London, 1986), 51-3.
99. On investment in Africa, see D. J. Mattingly, 'Africa: A Landscape of Opportunity?', in D. J. Mattingly (ed.), Dialogues in Roman Imperialism: Power, Discourse, and Discrepant Experience in the Roman Empire (Jl Roman Archaeol., suppl. ser., xxiii, Portsmouth, RI, 1997).
100. One can easily acknowledge these developments without necessarily subscribing to the up-beat rhetoric, for example, of R. Bruce Hitchner, '"The Advantages of Wealth and Luxury": The Case for Economic Growth in the Roman Empire', in J. G. Manning and Ian Morris (eds.), The Ancient Economy: Evidence and Models (Stanford, 2005), 207-22.
101. See also the contribution to the same volume by Richard Saller, 'Framing the Debate over Growth in the Ancient Economy'.
102. The survey in Liebeschuetz, Decline and Fall of the Roman City, ch. 2, documents the link between urban development and imperial/ gubernatorial residences. Liebeschuetz, however, includes this in a narrative of decline which is much less persuasive.
103. For some examples of this recent trend in research on the late Roman world, see Jairus Banaji, Agrarian Change in Late Antiquity: Gold, Labour, and Aristocratic Dominance (Oxford, 2001)
104. Peter Garnsey and C. R. Whittaker, 'Trade, Industry and the Urban Economy', in Averil Cameron and Peter Garnsey (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, xiii, The Late Empire, AD 337-425, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1998)
105. Jean-Michel Carrié, 'Les Échanges commerciaux et l'État antique tardif', in Jean Andreau, Pierre Briant and Raymond Descat (eds.), Économie antique: Les échanges dans l'Antiquité. Le Rôle de l'État (Saint-Bertrand-de-Cominges, 1994).
106. Constantinople, for example, received a food supply on the Roman model. As Rome lost its position as the preferred imperial residence, its population will have declined. But it remained a giant city. On aggregate, the combined burden of supplying both Rome and Constantinople will probably have been larger than before. During the third and fourth centuries measures were also introduced to support the grain supply to Antioch and Alexandria. See Peter Garnsey and Caroline Humfress, The Evolution of the Late Antique World (Cambridge, 2001), 110-14
107. Carrié, 'Les Échanges commerciaux et l'État antique tardif', 183-6
108. and, more fully, Jean Durliat, De la ville antique à la ville byzantine: Le problème des subsistances (Rome, 1990), 37-280, 321-81. The food supply of other secondary imperial capitals was less of a problem because these cities had smaller, though by no means insubstantial, populations. There is no evidence of corn-doles for these. But it is probable that the residing emperor will have taken an active interest in maintaining supplies.
109. Ramsay MacMullen, Corruption and the Decline of Rome (New Haven, 1988), with discussion and further bibliography.
110. On the late Roman army, see the discussion by A. D. Lee, 'The Army', in Cameron and Garnsey (eds.), Cambridge Ancient History, xiii, ch. 7. Even if the Roman army had become a paper tiger, as MacMullen insists (but not persuasively) in his Corruption and Decline of Rome, pt 4, the imperial government still had to finance the inflated number of soldiers.
111. The notorious edict on maximum prices promulgated by Diocletian is a good, albeit extreme, example of the more ambitious - at times even quite unrealistic - scale of late antique governmental regulation. Less conspicuous, but all the more revealing of the greater level of state penetration, perhaps, is the practice of collecting prices in local markets to facilitate the process of taxation which developed in the fourth century, as attested, for example, by The Oxyrhynchus Papyri li, ed. and trans. J. R. Rea (London, 1984), nos. 3624-6, 3628-33.
112. On these Egyptian price declarations, see the discussion of Elio Lo Cascio, 'Considerazioni su circolazione monetaria, prezzi e fiscalità nel IV secolo', in G. Crifò and S. Giglio (eds.), Atti dell'Accademia Romanistica Costantiniana: XII Convegno Internazionale (Naples, 1998).
113. Christopher Kelly, Ruling the Later Roman Empire (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 2004) is now fundamental on the greater control achieved by the late Roman government.
114. See also Jill Harries, Law and Empire in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 1999).
115. A. H. M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 284-602: A Social, Economic and Administrative Survey, 3 vols. (Norman and Oxford, 1964), ii, chs. 20-1. These are still valuable on the subject, though in need of modification.
116. Duncan-Jones, Structure and Scale in the Roman Economy, ch. 12
117. Garnsey and Saller, Roman Empire, ch. 5.
118. Simon James, 'The Fabricae: State Arms Factories of the Later Roman Empire', in J. C. Coulston (ed.), Military Equipment and the Identity of Roman Soldiers (Brit. Archaeol. Repts, internat. ser., cccxciv, Oxford, 1988)
119. De Salvo, Economia privata e pubblici servizi nell'impero romano;
120. Jones, Later Roman Empire, i, 448-62
121. André Cerati, Caractère annonaire et assiette de l'impôt foncier au Bas-Empire (Paris, 1975), pt 1.
122. For a case study of mobilization in kind, see J. T. Peña, 'The Mobilization of State Olive Oil in Roman Africa: The Evidence of Late 4th-C. ostraca from Carthage', in J. T. Peña et al. (eds.), Carthage Papers: The Early Colony's Economy, Water Supply, a Public Bath and the Mobilization of State Olive Oil (Jl Roman Archaeol., suppl. ser., xxviii, Portsmouth, RI, 1998).
123. e siècle pour servir à l'histoire monétaire', in Luciano Camilli and Sara Sorda (eds.), L'inflazione nel quarto secolo d.C.: Atti dell'incontro di studio, Roma, 1988 (Rome, 1993)
124. and Banaji, Agrarian Change in Late Antiquity, rightly emphasize the continued importance of monetary taxation. They are also right to insist that the literary and legal evidence, being predominantly normative in nature, does not enable us to prove stricto sensu an expansion of the state redistributive economy in kind. But the evidential basis of the opposite view is really no less uncertain - quite the reverse. We simply do not possess any global statistics on the late Roman economy. In that case, all we can do is weigh the probabilities of competing interpretations. No one doubts that the Roman state claimed a considerable amount of taxes in kind. As the state grew, the volume of this activity most probably followed suit; and that expectation seems to be borne out by the much more detailed, elaborate and comprehensive character of late Roman state regulations compared with the Principate.
125. The process was uneven. Julian revoked the original decision and gave back control of lands to the cities. Ammianus Marcellinus, XXV. 4. 15; Codex Theodosianus, X. 3. 1. Julian's measure was, in turn, annulled: Codex Theodosianus, v. 13. 3; X. 1. 8. On imperial confiscation of municipal and temple estates, see Liebeschuetz, Decline and Fall of the Roman City, 175-8
126. Jones, Later Roman Empire, i, 414-16. The extent of 'royal' domains, in Rome as generally in pre-industrial monarchies, was determined by the opposite movement of two forces. Monarchical estates accumulated as a result of confiscation and inheritance; they were reduced by royal grants and sales to the benefit of state servants, aristocrats, and religious and civic institutions. We cannot document the precise development of imperial landholdings during the Principate and the Dominate; it is a matter for conjecture. But the fourth-century confiscations of civic and temple lands across the empire must represent a high-water mark; it came right after a prolonged period of civil war where defeat inadvertently brought death and confiscation of property to a long line of losing factions.
127. Peter Garnsey, Social Status and Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1970).
128. For a recent survey of social developments in the Late Empire, see Garnsey and Humfress, Evolution of the Late Antique World, ch. 5. Interesting testimony on the ability of the high and mighty to distort market operations and crowd out ordinary merchants is offered by Codex Justinianus, IV. 63. 3: 'Nobiliores... perniciosum urbibus mercimonium exercere prohibemus ut inter plebeium et negotiatorem facilius sit emendi vendendique commercium'.
129. Late Roman law contains several discussions of traders in the service of great aristocratic households, for example Codex Theodosianus, XIII. 1. 4-5.
130. See also Scriptores Historiae Augustae, 'Pertinax', III. 1-4.
131. Further evidence is collected by Jones, Later Roman Empire, ii, ch. 21; iii, 1360-1 n. 102
132. and C. R. Whittaker, 'Late Roman Trade and Traders', in Garnsey, Hopkins and Whittaker (eds.), Trade in the Ancient Economy. Whittaker's discussion is crucial for any understanding of the phenomenon, though Carrié, 'Les Échanges commerciaux et l'État antique tardif', 197-9, is right to insist that this was not an expression of '"décommercialisation" des échanges'. As Whittaker himself notes, Roman aristocrats needed gold - lots of it - which implies extensive market involvement. Aristocratic households also engaged in trade during the Republic, Early and High Empire. But they now seem more prominent. This may turn out merely to be a function of the surviving sources. But growing legal uncertainty combined with expanding aristocratic households makes it more likely to be a reflection of actual conditions.
133. On this, see McCormick, Origins of the European Economy, 87-90, who rightly emphasizes the distorting effects of such privileges on a world of 'free' markets;
134. Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire, 104-13.
135. A key text is Codex Theodosianus, XIII. 5. 24, which exempts navicularii from customs exactions. Other groups also managed to obtain such privileges, former soldiers and palatini, for instance: ibid., XI. 12. 3.
136. Some others exploited sundry connections to the imperial fisc and household, at least on occasion successfully, in order to gain exemption from customs and other trade-related taxes, judging from the need for emperors to restrain such practices: ibid., XIII. 1.5 and 21.
137. Pace Banaji, Agrarian Change in Late Antiquity.
138. Such as Temin, 'Market Economy in the Early Roman Empire', 179, makes it out to be.
139. See the work of Nobel laureates Joseph Stiglitz, 'Markets, Market Failures, and Development', Amer. Econ. Rev., lxxix, 1 (1989)
140. Douglass C. North, 'Economic Performance through Time',
141. Douglass C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge, 1990)
142. George A. Akerlof, 'The Market for "Lemons"', Quart. Jl Econ., lxxxiv (1970).
143. For some further observations on market imperfections in the Roman empire, see Peter Fibiger Bang, 'Imperial Bazaar - Towards a Comparative Understanding of Markets in the Roman Empire', in Peter F. Bang, Mamoru Ikeguchi and Hartmut G. Ziche (eds.), Ancient Economies, Modern Methodologies: Archaeology, Comparative History, Models and Institutions (Bari, 2006)
144. and, for the relative lack of political support of merchant interests, see Jean Andreau, 'Les Commerçants, l'élite et la politique romaine à la fin de la République', in Zaccagnini (ed.), Mercanti e politica nel mondo antico.
145. Willem M. Jongman, 'The Roman Economy: From Cities to Empire', in Lukas de Blois and John Rich (eds.), The Transformation of Economic Life under the Roman Empire (Amsterdam, 2002), argues that pre-industrial historians in general have been too focused on trade. Obviously I have much sympathy with this view.
146. It is inspired by Henri Willy Pleket's comparisons of the Roman and early modern European economy: See his 'Wirtschaft', in Friedrich Vittinghoff (ed.), Europäische Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte in der römischen Kaiserzeit (Stuttgart, 1990). But, as will be demonstrated by this article and the model presented, there were crucial differences in economic organization between these two worlds which Pleket and Jongman tend to underestimate.
147. Temin, apparently, is confident that this need not detain us. Though he guesstimates that more than half of production in the empire was consumed within the producing household, he holds this to be of little relevance to the question of the character of the economy. It must still have been a market economy, he somehow maintains. See Temin, 'Market Economy in the Early Roman Empire', 180.
148. A. V. Chayanov on the Theory of Peasant Economy, ed. Daniel Thorner, Basile Kerblay and R. E. F. Smith, foreword Teodor Shanin (Manchester, 1986).
149. For some more modern literature, see n. 62
150. also Teodor Shanin, Defining Peasants: Essays Concerning Rural Societies, Expolary Economies, and Learning from Them in the Contemporary World (Oxford, 1990)
151. Barbara Harriss-White (ed.), Agricultural Markets from Theory to Practice: Field Experience in Developing Countries (Basingstoke, 1999).
152. This, for instance, is the problem which fuelled the endless Marxist discussions three decades ago about the different modes of production characterizing the pre-industrial world.
153. On the various ways that peasants are integrated in wider networks, I find particularly useful: Daniel Thorner, 'Peasant Economy as a Category in Economic History', in M. I. Finley (ed.), Deuxième Conférence Internationale d'Histoire Économique, Aix-en-Provence 2 vols. (Paris, 1965)
154. Eric R. Wolf, Peasants (Englewood Cliffs, 1966).
155. For the ancient world, see Peter Garnsey's discussion in his Famine and Food Supply in the Graeco-Roman World: Responses to Risk and Crisis (Cambridge, 1988), esp. ch. 4, which is particularly instructive.
156. See also L. de Ligt, 'Demand, Supply, Distribution: The Roman Peasantry between Town and Country-Side', Münstersche Beiträge zur antiken Handelsgeschichte, ix (1990); x (1991)
157. Paul Erdkamp, The Grain Market in the Roman Empire: A Social, Political and Economic Study (Cambridge, 2005), ch. 2.
158. Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History (Oxford, 2000), esp. chs. 6 and 9, exaggerate the role of ecologically imposed 'integration' at the cost of paying insufficient attention to social forces. The basic Mediterranean ecology, however, can hardly provide the explanation for differences between historical societies and periods. These must be found in social relations.
159. See Peter Fibiger Bang, 'The Mediterranean: A Corrupting Sea? A Review-Essay on Ecology and History, Anthropology and Synthesis', Ancient West and East, iii, 2 (2004).
160. I realize it is unorthodox to include slavery in a discussion of rent. However, defined as political exploitation - and that is what we are interested in here - rent can easily accommodate slavery.
161. Finley, 'Ancient City'. Irrespective of where one may stand in the debates about aristocratic incomes from trade and the possible existence of producer/merchant cities in antiquity, the general predominance of rents in sustaining ancient urbanization is not really to be doubted: cf. also the discussion by Erdkamp,'Beyond the Limits ofthe "Consumer City"'.
162. Mogens Herman Hansen, 'The Concept of the Consumption City Applied to the Greek Poleis', in Thomas Heine Nielsen (ed.), Once Again: Studies in the Ancient Greek Polis (Stuttgart, 2004), rejects the consumer-city model for Ancient Greece because most Greek poleis were 'Ackerbürger' cities - in other words, small conurbations of peasants. Finley, however, was well aware of this fact, as is clear from the concluding example: Finley, 'Ancient City', 326-7. But most such poleis can hardly be called cities in economic terms. They were effectively peasant villages with very modest populations of, say, 500-2,000 people. Aristocratic rents play a crucial role where urbanization developed beyond this level.
163. Cicero, De officiis, 1. 151.
164. Paul Veyne's 'Vic de Trimalchion', Annales ESC, xvi (1961), remains strong on this.
165. It was partly this insight which has led some, perhaps in a slightly exaggerated fashion, to speak of gentlemanly capitalism in the British empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: See A. G. Hopkins and P. J. Cain, 'Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Expansion Overseas: 1. The Old Colonial System, 1688-1850', Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., xxxix (1986).
166. For example Ray Laurence, The Roads of Roman Italy: Mobility and Cultural Change (London and New York, 1998)
167. Horden and Purcell, Corrupting Sea, chs. 5 and 9, reacting against A. H. M. Jones, Finley and others.
168. But the limitations of ancient transport technology will have significantly hampered the integration of markets: Cf. Erdkamp, Grain Market in the Roman Empire, 184-203.
169. Codex Theodosianus, xi. 1. 22 (AD 386).
170. See also Bryan Ward-Perkins, 'Specialized Production and Exchange', in Averil Cameron, Bryan Ward-Perkins and Michael Whitby (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, xiv, Late Antiquity: Empire and Successors, AD 425 600 (Cambridge, 2000), 387, who points out how the discontinuation of the cursus publicus in an inland area deprived the local landowners of their primary source of cash income.
171. Marketing networks did not reach sufficiently far into this region to offer an alternative channel for procuring the coins with which to defray their taxes. On the limits of transport, see Duncan-Jones, Structure and Scale in the Roman Economy, ch. 1
172. and the nuanced comments of Keith Hopkins, 'Models, Ships, and Staples', in Peter Garnsey and C. R. Whittaker (eds.), Trade and Famine in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge, 1983).
173. In his analysis of the small African inland town of Segermes, Peter Ørsted suggests that export of agricultural products in a year of abundant harvest may not have happened to the theoretically full extent. A generous olive crop, for instance, would have considerably depressed prices and might not have been able to absorb the unchanged costs of transport. Export, therefore, is likely to have occurred on a more reduced scale, with parts of the crop either left unused - as suggested by Peter Ørsted et al.(eds.), Africa Proconsularis, iii (Copenhagen, 2000), 177-8 - or exploited by the locals as a cheap and abundant source of lamp oil to prolong the nights of study.
174. The latter is implied by Augustine in a stray remark on the darkness prevailing at night time in Italy as compared with his place of origin: see his De ordine, 1. 3. 6
175. e siécle', in Mélanges Paul Thomas: Recueil de mémoires concernant la philologie classique dédié à Paul Thomas (Bruges, 1930).
176. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, lv, ed. and trans. J. R. Rea (London, 1988), no. 3814.
177. The comment of Cicero, Actio secunda in Verrem, v. 167, implies a general need for merchants to have people who could vouch for them in foreign harbours. On this, see Bang, 'Imperial Bazaar'.
178. Niels Steensgaard, Carracks, Caravans and Companies: The Structural Crisis in the European - Asian Trade in the Early 17th Century (Lund, 1973), provides the best available analysis of the difference between the application of force for the purpose either of trade or of tribute.
179. The book was republished the following year under a different title: Niels Steensgaard, The Asian Trade Revolution of the Seventeenth Century: The East India Companies and the Decline of the Caravan Trade (Chicago and London, 1974).
180. See also Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton, 2000), esp. 242-63
181. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, (San Diego, 1974)
182. and, for the significance and function of mercantilist strategies, Jan de Vries, The Economy of Europe in an Age of Crisis, 1600-1750 (Cambridge, 1976).
183. For an attempt to introduce world-systems analysis to the Roman economy, see Greg D. Woolf, 'World-Systems Analysis and the Roman Empire', JL Roman Archaeol., iii (1990).
184. Note how Aristotle, Politics, 1. 3. 8, counts war among the occupations.
185. S. N. Eisenstadt, The Political Systems of Empires (New York, 1963), 27: '"free-floating" resources, i.e., resources - manpower, economic resources, political support, and cultural identifications - not embedded within or committed before-hand to any primary ascriptive-particularistic groups. It also created a reservoir of generalized power, in the society, not embedded in such groups, that could be used by different groups for varying goals'.
186. Cicero, Ad familiares, VII. 7: 'In Britannia nihil esse audio neque auri, neque argenti.
187. Id si ita est, essedum aliquod suadeo capias, et ad nos quam primum recurras'. English translation: Cicero, Letters to Friends, i, ed. and trans. D. R. Shackleton Bailey (Cambridge, Mass., 2001), letter 28.
188. Caesar, Bellum Gallicum, VI. 11-29. 1.
189. Eduard Norden's analysis of the excursus, in his Die germanische Urgeschichte in Tacitus Germania (Leipzig, 1923), 84-105, is still excellent; a similar view ofempire is made explicit by Strabo in his Geographia, II 5. 8. In his view an annexation of Britain would be pointless. The Britons did not constitute a military threat, nor would the province bring in sufficient tribute to make an occupation profitable.
190. Tacitus, Annales, XIII. 50.
191. Hume, Selected Essays, 265 (On the Populousness of Ancient Nations).
192. On Rome, see Neville Morley, Metropolis and Hinterland: The City of Rome and the Italian Economy, 200 BC - AD 200 (Cambridge, 1996).
193. Karl Polanyi, Conrad M. Arensberg and Harry W. Pearson (eds.), Trade and Market in the Early Empires: Economies in History and Theory (Glencoe, III., 1957), 256.
194. Jones, Later Roman Empire, ii, 837
195. see also Carrié, 'Les Échanges commerciaux et l'État antique tardif'.
196. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, xii, ed. Bernard P. Grenfell and Arthur S. Hunt (London, 1916), no. 1414, gives a set of proceedings of the Oxyrhynchite city council debating the proper remuneration rates to both merchants and weavers in connection with deliveries of cloth to the army. Some of these appear to be considerably below the going market rate. But the council also makes adjustments in the face of complaints from the weavers.
197. Allan Chester Johnson, Roman Egypt to the Reign of Diocletian (Economic Survey of Ancient Rome, ii, Baltimore, 1936), no. 437, suggests an early fourth-century date for the papyrus.
198. The preamble frowns on speculating merchants and prices rising in response to sudden surges in demand caused by army units trying to procure supplies: Diokletians Preisedikt, ed. Siegfried Lauffer (Berlin, 1971), contains the text.
199. Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia, v. 12.
200. Ward-Perkins, Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, ch. 5, rightly insists that the diversity and level of Roman material culture was greater than both before and after the empire.
201. On the lead of the court and the aristocracy in promoting this culture of consumption, which then also to some extent trickled further down the social hierarchy, see Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, trans. Alan Shapiro (Ann Arbor, 1988), chs. 7-8
202. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum (Princeton, 1994), ch. 7
203. Greg Woolf, 'Regional Productions in Early Roman Gaul', in David J. Mattingly and John Salmon (eds.), Economies beyond Agriculture in the Classical World (London and New York, 2001).
204. It was Keith Hopkins who, in 1980, drew attention to the need to convert the agricultural surplus into money: See his 'Taxes and Trade in the Roman Empire'; see also his later restatement of the argument in answer to his critics, published in 2002: Hopkins, 'Rome, Taxes, Rents and Trade'. The landowning aristocracy, no less than the state, needed to avail itself of markets in order to convert its agricultural resources into the disposable medium of money. These were a prerequisite for acquiring all the trappings of the sophisticated urban high culture which characterized Graeco-Roman civilization. Hence cities, with their markets, continued to thrive long into the late antique period in many parts of the empire. Cf. Hartmut Ziche, 'Integrating Late Roman Cities, Countryside and Trade', in Bang, Ikeguchi and Ziche (eds.), Ancient Economies, Modern Methodologies.
205. As argued by Whittaker, 'Late Roman Trade and Traders'; and further in his Frontiers of the Roman Empire, ch. 4.
206. Sanjay Subrahmanyam and C. A. Bayly, 'Portfolio Capitalists and the Political Economy of Early Modern India', Indian Econ. and Social Hist. Rev., xxv, 4 (1988).
207. Max Weber, 'Agrarverhältnisse im Altertum', in his Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte (Tübingen, 1924)
208. see also John R. Love, Antiquity and Capitalism: Max Weber and the Sociological Foundations of Roman Civilisation (London, 1991).
209. Elio Lo Cascio, 'Forme dell' economia imperiale', in Arnaldo Momigliano and Aldo Schiavone (eds.), Storia di Roma, ii, L'impero mediterraneo (Turin, 1991), pt 2, ingeniously attempted to place Rostovtzeff's market-centred analysis within a frame-work of Weberian political capitalism. The notion of portfolio capitalism takes this one step further by dissolving the inner tensions in his solution. Processes of market exhange were not prevented from developing into modern forms of capitalism by the predominance of political exploitation. Rather, they were an integrated element in the functioning of political exploitation by enabling a greater and more diversified mobilization of the surplus.
210. See L. Casson, 'New Light on Maritime Loans: P. Vindob. G 40822', Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, lxxxiv (1990)
211. Federico De Romanis, Cassia, cinamono, ossidiana: Uomini e merci tra Oceano indiano e Mediterraneo (Rome, 1996)
212. Dominic Rathbone, 'The "Muziris" Papyrus (SB XVIII 13167): Financing Roman Trade with India', Bulletin de la Société Archéologique d'Alexandrie, xlvi (2001).
213. Peter Ørsted, Roman Imperial Economy and Romanization: A Study in Roman Imperial Administration and the Public Lease System in the Danubian Provinces from the First to the Third Century AD, trans. David Gress (Copenhagen, 1985), explores the relationship between state contracts, mining and the formation of provincial elites.
214. E. Badian, Publicans and Sinners: Private Enterprise in the Service of the Roman Republic, 2nd edn (Ithaca, 1983), is the basic study of state contractors. The speech of Cicero De imperio Cn. Pompei is a textbook case of the link between private business and credit operations, and the extraction of imperial tribute - here from the province of Asia.
215. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, xlviii, ed. M. Chambers et al. (London, 1981), no. 3401 (editor's translation). The dossier of Papnuthis and Dorotheus (nos. 3384-3429 in this volume) was edited by John Shelton.
216. e siècle pour servir à l'histoire monétaire', esp. 139-50.
217. A good impression of the financial activities linked with the collection and payment of taxes is provided by Oxyrhynchus Papyri, xlviii, nos. 3393, 3394, 3937, 3419 (ed. Shelton).
218. Several letters in Pliny's Bithynian correspondence show the constant rivalling, jockeying for position, and volatile fortunes of even municipal politics: Pliny the Younger, Epistulae, x. 56-60, 71-2.
219. Oxyrhynchus Papyri, xlviii, nos. 3393-4 (ed. Shelton).
220. Ibid., no. 3395 dates from AD 371, while no. 3393 is from AD 365.
221. Cassiodorus, Variae, xii. 22. 2.
222. Justinian, Appendix Constitutionum Dispersarum, in Corpus Iuris Civilis, iii, Novellae, ed. Rudolf Schoell and Wilhelm Kroll (Berlin, 1895), 802, vii 2 §6 (AD 554): 'ut per negotiatores coemptiones fiant', treated by Jones in his Later Roman Empire, ii, 840.
223. As can easily be seen from Cicero's discussion of the governor Verres and his manipulation of Sicilian tax grain; it combined forced requisitions, state purchase of an extra 'tithe' as well as monetary conversion: Actio secunda in Verrem, III.
224. For example Tabulae pompeianae Sulpiciorum, ed. Giuseppe Camodeca (Rome, 1999), no. 45
225. Alan K. Bowman and J. David Thomas, The Vindolanda Writing-Tablets (Tabulae Vindolandenses II) (London, 1994), nos. 343, 344.
226. For a balanced analysis of the Roman annona, see Garnsey, Famine and Food Supply in the Graeco-Roman World, 231-9.
227. Rickman, Corn Supply of Ancient Rome, is excessively 'free' market oriented.
228. See also Sirks, Food for Rome;
229. De Salvo, Economia privata e pubblici servizi nell'impero romano. Additionally, on the private element in the deliveries of Spanish oil to the capital,
230. e rencontre franco-italienne sur l'épigraphie du monde romain (Rome, 1994).
231. Cato, De agricultura, 146-7
232. Pliny the Younger, Epistulae, VIII. 2.
233. For an excellent recent treatment of the creation of links between landowners and merchants, see Neville Morley, 'Markets, Marketing and the Roman Élite', in Elio Lo Cascio (ed.), Mercati permanenti e mercati periodici nel mondo romano (Bari, 2000), though he may underestimate the importance of auctions in advance sales. Cato's discussion in his De agricultura, 146, includes a comment on the payment of a praeco, who evidently had organized an auction to sell the olives on the tree.
234. e siècle ap. J.-C.) (Rome, 1987), 588-97,
235. and in Jean Andreau, Les Affaires de Monsieur Jucundus (Rome, 1974).
236. Frederic C. Lane, Profits from Power: Readings in Protection Rent and Violence-Controlling Enterprises (Albany, 1979)
237. Niels Steensgaard, 'Violence and the Rise of Capitalism: Frederic C. Lane's Theory of Protection and Tribute', Review, v, 2 (1981).
238. For example Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum, 3rd edn, ed. Wilhelm Dittenberger, 4 vols. (Leipzig, 1915-24), no. 495
239. Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, xxiv, no. 1095.
240. See also Polybius, Historiae, IV. 45-6
241. Vincent Gabrielsen, 'Economic Activity, Maritime Trade and Piracy in the Hellenistic Aegean', Revue des études anciennes, ciii, 1-2 (2001).
242. Gibbon had already noted the relatively small size of the Roman army: see his Decline and Fall, ch. 1.
243. For a discussion of the low level of military expenditure during the Principate, see Susan P. Mattern, Rome and the Enemy: Imperial Strategy in the Principate (Berkeley and London, 1999).
244. Edward N. Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire: From the First Century AD to the Third (Baltimore, 1976), though with an anachronistic notion of 'grand strategy', is fundamental on the need for the Roman emperors to economize on their use of military resources.
245. This aspect has later been developed by Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire, who introduces the work of Owen Lattimore on the inner Asian frontier of the Chinese empire.
246. See, for instance, the recent discussions in Walter Scheidel (ed.), Debating Roman Demography (Leiden, 2001)
247. Neville Morley, 'The Transformation of Italy', Jl Roman Studies, xci (2001)
248. Robert Sallares, Malaria and Rome: A History of Malaria in Ancient Italy (Oxford, 2002).
249. Polybius, Historiae, I. 1-4, saw clearly how the political and military competition between states created a general process which gave unity to the world of the Hellenistic era. F. W. Walbank, The Hellenistic World (London, 1981), chs. 3-7 and 13, gives an outline of state-formation in the Hellenistic societies.
250. Erich S. Gruen, The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome (Berkeley, 1984), describes the process of Roman conquest of the Greek East.
251. The classic example of this interpretation would be Rostovtzeff, Social and Economic History of the Hellenistic World, i, 255-422.
252. M. I. Finley, 'Technical Innovation and Economic Progress in the Ancient World', Econ. Hist. Rev., 2nd ser., xviii (1965), refuted this argument. But it has more recently been revived, for example by Wilson, 'Machines, Power and the Ancient Economy', 7-9, with further bibliography.
253. For the structural changes in Roman society, see Keith Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves (Cambridge, 1978), ch. 1
254. also, for a synthesis of the 'Italian' version of the changes brought about by imperial conquest, see Schiavone, La storia spezzata, ch. 7.
255. For the development of Rome, see Morley, Metropolis and Hinterland.
256. André Tchernia, Le Vin de l'Italie romaine: Essai d'histoire économique d'après les amphores (Rome, 1986)
257. Nicholas K. Rauh, The Sacred Bonds of Commerce: Religion, Economy, and Trade Society at Hellenistic Roman Delos, 166-87 BC (Amsterdam, 1993).
258. See Jean Andreau, 'La Cité romaine dans ses rapports à l'échange et au monde de l'échange', in Andreau, Briant and Descat (eds.), Économie antique.
259. The discussion by William V. Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome, 327-70 BC (Oxford, 1979), 68-105, shows howlittle even a sympathetic attempt to look at trading interests can adduce in support of a more 'mercantilist' interpretation. Harris, therefore, rightly concludes that this element was not a prominent aspect of Roman imperialism.
260. Cicero, Pro Fonteio, 19-20
261. Friedrich Vittinghoff, 'Portorium', in A. Pauly (ed.), Real-Encyclopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft, xxii (Stuttgart, 1953 edn), 384.
262. e siècle après J.-C. (Rome, 2001), 229-66,
263. though he exaggerates the irregular character of the customs duty on wine exacted in Narbonese Gaul. André Tchernia, 'Italian Wine in Gaul at the End of the Republic', in Garnsey, Hopkins and Whittaker (eds.), Trade in the Ancient Economy, 93, is too one-sided in seeing the toll as only a burden to the Gauls. This is what Cicero, the attorney defending his Roman clients, would like us to believe.
264. On the causes of war between Byzantium and Rhodes, and the terms of the peace treaty, see Polybius, Historiae, IV. 47; IV. 52. 2-5.
265. The recently found inscription with the Lex Portorii Asiae confirms Roman collection of customs on the Bosporus: See the so-called Monumentum Ephesenum, in Helmut Engelmann and Dieter Knibbe (eds.), Epigraphica Anatolica, xiv, Das Zollgesetz der Provinz Asia: Eine neue Inschrift aus Ephesus (Bonn, 1989), §2 and 4 (a new edition is in preparation).
266. Rauh, Sacred Bonds of Commerce, chs. 1 and 7.
267. Hatzfeld, in Les Trafiquants italiens dans l'Orient hellénique, pt 2, chs. 1-2, did his best to ignore or trivialize the obvious connections between publicani and negotiatores in order to assert that the latter belonged within a world of free trade and enterprise. This is one clear example of the advantages offered by the concept of portfolio capitalism. It allows us to account for the close interrelationship between tax-farming and commercial activities.
268. Cicero, De imperio Cn. Pompei, 14-19, makes these connections explicit in relation to Asia. Many examples of Romans and their dependants with negotia in Asia and other provinces making use of their access to government resources are offered in Cicero, Ad familiares, XIII: For example letter 69. Some further examples include letters 6a, 9, 14, 27, 63.
269. The letters from Cicero's correspondence discussing his dealings with the straw men of Brutus during his Cilician governorship offer vivid testimony of these processes. They document Roman investment in private loans which underpinned provincial payment of taxes but were forwarded only at extortionate rates of interest and with the expectation that political connections could be exploited to twist the arm of victim communities and ensure their payment, if need be by military force. Cicero, Ad Atticum, V. 21-VI. 2.
270. See N. Rauh, 'Cicero's Business Friendships: Economics and Politics in the Late Roman Republic', Aevum, lxiii (1989). Fascinating glimpses of this phenomenon can also be found in Cicero's Verrine Orations, and, for example, in Sallust, Bellum Iugurthinum, 26.
271. The principal work on republican publicani is Badian, Publicans and Sinners. For an analysis of the legal evidence, see also Maria Rosa Cimma, Ricerche sulle società di publicani (Milan, 1981).
272. Weber, 'Agrarverhältnisse im Altertum', 234-8, 271-8
273. Max Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft: Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie, ed. Johannes Winckelmann (Tübingen, 1972), 522-3, 649.
274. For an excellent analysis of Weber's views on political capitalism in the Greek and Roman world, see Love, Antiquity and Capitalism, esp. 22-56, 174-95, 223-46.
275. See also Luigi Capogrossi Colognesi, Economie antiche e capitalismo moderno: La sfida di Max Weber (Rome, 1990).
276. P. A. Brunt, Roman Imperial Themes (Oxford, 1990), ch. 17, on publicani under the emperors.
277. But one should be careful not to exaggerate this, as argued by Brunt: ibid., ch. 4.
278. One can easily make too much of Caesar's reform of the Asian decuma reported by Appian, Bellum civile, II. 92; V. 4
279. Plutarch, Life of Caesar, XLVIII. 1
280. and Dio Cassius, Historia Romana, XLII. 6. 3,
281. such as Elio Lo Cascio, Il princeps e il suo impero: Studi di storia amministrativa e finanziaria romana (Bari, 2000), 38-9, tends to do. For a recent survey of the evidence pertaining to Roman taxation in Asia,
282. see Giovanna Daniela Merola, Autonomia locale, governo imperiale: fiscalità e amministrazione nelle province asiane (Bari, 2001)
283. for Caesar's reform, see ibid., 72-84. Though closer to Lo Cascio than the present author, her discussion does reveal the many uncertainties in our knowledge of Caesar's enactments. For instance, which tax figure was it that Caesar lowered - an unusually extortionate one or something more akin to an annual average tribute? This uncertainty can only increase if we take into account the dramatic and desperate attempts to tax Asia by the different contenders for power in the decade following Caesar's death. At what level the Asian tribute settled under imperial rule it is almost impossible to say, but the decuma, pre-dating Caesar, is still mentioned in the Monumentum Ephesenum from Nero's reign. It is far from certain that this is simply an obsolete remnant from the first republican tax law rather than a reflection of the current state of affairs, as Merola argues.
284. Claude Nicolet, Space, Geography, and Politics in the Early Roman Empire (Ann Arbor, 1991).
285. See Werner Eck, 'Part II: Government and Civil Administration', chs. 4-7, in Alan K. Bowman, Peter Garnsey and Dominic Rathbone (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, XI, The High Empire, AD 70-192, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 2000)
286. for a summary of the development of the imperial government, see ibid., ch. 4.
287. Dio Cassius, Historia Romana, LII. 19. 3.
288. The literature is vast. Keith Hopkins, Death and Renewal (Cambridge, 1983), ch. 3, is the best analysis of the transformation of the imperial aristocracy.
289. Greg Woolf, 'Becoming Roman, Staying Greek: Culture, Identity and the Civilizing Process in the Roman East', Proc. Cambridge Philol. Soc. XI (1994)
290. Greg Woolf, Becoming Roman: The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul (Cambridge, 1998)
291. and Peter Garnsey, 'Rome's African Empire under the Principate', in P. D. A. Garnsey and C. R. Whittaker (eds.), Imperialism in the Ancient World (Cambridge, 1978), are fundamental on the development of provincial society and elites.
292. OsOrsted, Roman Imperial Economy and Romanization, shows how provincial elites in the Danube area were admitted to a share of the tribute through mining contracts.
293. The analyses of A. H. M. Jones, The Greek City from Alexander to Justinian (Oxford, 1940),
294. and Brunt, Roman Imperial Themes, ch. 12, are still valuable.
295. C. R. Whittaker, 'Trade and the Aristocracy in the Roman Empire', Opus, IV (1985), has even convincingly argued that the entry of provincial elites into the Roman senate had a considerable effect on import patterns to Rome.
296. For the best treatment of this development, see Tchernia, Le Vin de l'Italie romaine.
297. For a recent analysis of this phenomenon in Gaul, see Woolf, 'Regional Productions in Early Roman Gaul'.
298. See the still unsurpassed survey of Hatzfeld, Les Trafiquants italiens dans l'Orient hellénique.
299. Lawrence Keppie, 'The Army and the Navy', in Alan Bowman, Edward Champlin and Andrew Lintott (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History, x, The Augustan Empire, 43 BC-AD 69, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1996), esp. 377.
300. For discussions of the relatively low level of Roman military expenditure during the Principate, see Luttwak, Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, ch. 1
301. Mattern, Rome and the Enemy, ch. 4. Costs may have risen moderately towards the end of the period.
302. M. I. Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, 2nd edn, revised P.M.Fraser, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1957), i, 172-9, is the classic discussion of the so-called provincialization of production.
303. Hans-Ulrich von Freyberg, Kapitalverkehr und Handel im römischen Kaiserreich (27 v. Chr. - 235 n. Chr.) (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1989), is the best modern attempt to restate this position. The perspective, however, is wrong.
304. For an extended discussion of the question, see Peter F. Bang, 'Romans and Mughals: Economic Integration in a Tributary Empire', in De Blois and Rich (eds.), Transformation of Economic Life under the Roman Empire.
305. Pomeranz, Great Divergence, 242-63, has analysed a similar tendency at provincialization in Chinese production in the eighteenth century. The relatively marginal advantages of specialization in a world of pre-industrial technology often made the use of monopolies essential for maintaining such specialization. In the short run this might not, economically, be the most efficient. In the longer term, the benefits might show. Many of the monopolies instituted by Colbert in France's West Indian trade were an economic liability during his own lifetime. But over a century they enabled the development of a thriving economy which benefited France enormously.
306. See Frederic C. Lane, Venice and History (Baltimore, 1966), 392-7. Today's comparative advantage may not be tomorrow's, as the economists now say. The less profitable option may have greater potential for development in the long term.
307. On the relatively high level of violence under the pax Romana, see, for example, Greg Woolf, 'Roman Peace', in John Rich and Graham Shipley (eds.), War and Society in the Roman World (London and New York, 1993)
308. Wilfried Nippel, Public Order in Anient Rome (Cambridge, 1995)
309. Pollard, Soldiers, Cities, and Civilians in Roman Syria, ch. 3.
310. On banditry and pirates, see Brent D. Shaw, 'Bandits in the Roman Empire', Past and Present, no. 105 (Nov. 1984)
311. Keith Hopwood, 'Bandits, Élites and Rural Order', in Andrew Wallace-Hadrill (ed.), Patronage in Ancient Society (London and New York, 1989)
312. Philip de Souza, Piracy in the Graeco-Roman World (Cambridge, 1999).
313. In addition to the bibliography given in Section II above (from n. 28 onwards), a good introduction to the problems is offered by Luke Lavan, 'The Late-Antique City: A Bibliographical Essay', in Luke Lavan (ed.), Recent Research in Late-Antique Urbanism (Jl Roman Archaeol., suppl. ser., xlii, Portsmouth, RI, 2001).
314. See Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire.
315. Lactantius, De mortibus persecutorum, VII. 4, though of course fiercely hostile to Diocletian because of his persecution of the Christians, still provides a good sense of the kind of political resistance that the state encountered as it tried to develop a more fine-grained administrative apparatus.
316. e siècle ap. J.-C.) (Strasbourg, 1983), is fundamental.
317. e siècle à l'avènement de Charlemagne (Bari, 1996), 59-70
318. Mark Whittow, 'Ruling the Late Roman and Early Byzantine City: A Continuous History', Past and Present, no. 129 (Nov. 1990).
319. For a recent study of the development of aristocratic property, see Banaji, Agrarian Change in Late Antiquity, chs. 5-7.
320. For a recent discussion of the use of federate troops, see Ward-Perkins, Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization, esp. 37-40.
321. Chris Wickham, 'The Other Transition: From the Ancient World to Feudalism', Past and Present, no. 103 (May 1984)
322. Whittaker, Frontiers of the Roman Empire, chs. 5-7.
323. On the greater size of aristocratic properties in the West, see Jones, Later Roman Empire, i, 554-7.
324. Cf. Duncan-Jones, Money and Government in the Roman Empire, 57-9.Growth of private estates may have caused the tax rate in Egypt to decline; revenue fell by up to a third. But this conclusion is very uncertain, based as it is on extremely fragmentary evidence. The average tax rates calculated for the Principate and the Dominate are based on different areas; and since taxes varied from locality to locality, depending on quality of land, extent of irrigation, and the ratio of public and private landholdings, the results of such a comparison are going to be very uncertain. Also, the calculations are probably skewed by the city of Oxyrhynchus, which features very large in the late material, but had a below-average amount of public (and hence higher tax-paying) land during the Principate; overall, therefore, the late rate can be expected to come out lower than the average calculated for the Principate.
325. This is the main result of Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages, chs. 3, 10 and 11.
326. For summaries of the twin developments of economic decline and the gradual erosion of state taxation in the West, see ibid., 144-50, 819-24.
327. For a comparison of the income from the eastern parts and new western acquisitions of the Justinianic empire, see Michael F. Hendy, Studies in the Byzantine Monetary Economy, c. 300-1450 (Cambridge, 1985), 157-73.
328. For a structural analysis, see J. F. Haldon, Byzantium in the Seventh Century: The Transformation of a Culture, revised edn (Cambridge, 1990), 15-23.
329. The argument was first presented in Keith Hopkins, 'Economic Growth and Towns in Classical Antiquity', in Philip Abrams and E. A. Wrigley (eds.), Towns in Societies: Essays in Economic History and Historical Sociology (Cambridge, 1978)
330. and elaborated on two years later in the Journal of Roman Studies: Hopkins, 'Taxes and Trade in the Roman Empire'.
331. This tallies with Saller, 'Framing the Debate over Growth in the Ancient Economy', who argues that the technological developments identified by archaeologists in the period are consonant with a very limited growth scenario.