A model of real income growth in roman Italy

Historia - Zeitschrift fur Alte Geschichte

Volumn 56, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 322-346

  Scheidel, Walter ^a  

^a STANFORD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 36849079094     PISSN: 00182311     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (116)

1. nd ed. London 1985), the single most influential work in this field, is emblematic of this attitude; see W. Scheidel, "Progress and Problems in Roman Demography", in W. Scheidel (ed.), Progress and Problems in Roman Demography (Leiden 2001) 1-81, at 72-77.
2. The new Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World is the first project to take due account of demographic factors: see esp. W. Scheidel, "Demography", in W. Scheidel/I. Morris/R. P. Sailer (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World (Cambridge 2007) 38-86.
3. Cf. also W. Scheidel, "Demographic and Economic Development in the Ancient Mediterranean World", Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 160 (2004) 743-757.
4. See P. A. Brunt, Italian Manpower 225 B.C.-A.D. 14 (rev. ed. Oxford 1987) 131-155 for a highprofile example.
5. For tentative quantification, see W. Scheidel, "The Demography of Roman State Formation in Italy", in M. Jehne/R. Pfeilschifter, R. (eds.), Herrschaft ohne Integration? (Frankfurt 2006) 207-226.
6. For tentative quantification, see W. Scheidel, "Human Mobility in Roman Italy, II: The Slave Population", JRS 95 (2005) 64-79, and below, section 4.
7. E. g., N. Morley, Metropolis and Hinterland (Cambridge 1996).
8. Polyb. 2.24, an account of dubious value, although it probably índicates the right order of magnitude: see W. Scheidel, "Human Mobility in Roman Italy, I: The Free Population", JRS 94 (2004) 1-26, at 3-4.
9. J. F. Lazenby, The First Punic War (Stanford 1996). The historian Polybius reports the loss of some 650 Roman ships (each of which could in theory carry up to 420 men) in three major disasters between 255 and 249 BC.
10. Brunt, Manpower (as in n. 3) 13-14.
11. N. Rosenstein, Rome at War (Chapel Hill and London 2004) 107-140, esp. 136-137 (overall rates), 137-140 (probably too low).
12. The rates from 28 BC onward are revised from W. Scheidel, Measuring Sex, Age and Death in the Roman Empire (Ann Arbor 1996) 94-97. The percentage rates are derived from Brunt's reconstruction of overall citizen numbers: a larger number of citizens (see below, at notes 26-29) would reduce the precentages in this graph without greatly altering its overall shape.
13. R. P. Sailer, Patriarchy, Property and Death in the Roman Family (Cambridge 1994) 25-41, with my reconsideration in W. Scheidel, "Roman Funerary Commemoration and the Age at First Marriage", CPh (in press).
14. While we must allow for the possibility of city-country differences, the case of fifteenth-century Tuscany, with much earlier marriage in villages than in towns (D. Herlihy/C. Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans and their Families [New Haven 1985] 203-211), seems uniquely extreme: see Scheidel, "Commemoration" (as in n. 16).
15. There is no evidence for widespread unions between freebom women and freed slaves either. Partly due to domestic slavery, employment opportunities for single women seem to have been scarce: J. K. Evans, War, Women and Children in Ancient Rome (London and New York 1991) 101-165.
16. J. Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers (New York 1988) 53-94 is the most detailed discussion. I will address this problem in W. Scheidel, "Femicide and Sex Ratios in the Ancient Mediterranean World" (in progress).
17. For tentative quantification, see Scheidel, "Mobility" (as in n. 8) 10-12, based on Brunt, Manpower (as in n. 3).
18. Scheidel, Measuring (as in n. 15) 93-97.
19. The disease environment of ancient Rome has been reconstructed by R. Sallares, Malaria and Rome (Oxford 2002) 201-234
20. and W. Scheidel, "Germs for Rome", in C. Edwards/G. Woolf (eds.), Rome the Cosmopolis (Cambridge 2003) 158-176.
21. Cf. E. A. Wrigley, People, Cities and Wealth (Oxford and New York 1987) 135 for early modern London. A. Scobie, "Slums, Sanitation, and Mortality in the Roman World", Klio 68 (1986) 399-433 discusses deficient hygiene.
22. L. del Panta, 'L'Italie', in J.-P. Bardet/J. Dupâquier (eds.), Histoire des populations de l'Europe II (Paris 1998) 513-532, at 515 (Italy).
23. This case has been made in detail in Scheidel, "Mobility" (as in n. 8) 5-9 and restated in "Roman Population Size: The Logic of the Debate", paper delivered at the conference "Peasants, Citizens and Soldiers: The Social, Economic and Demographic Background to the Gracchan Land Reforms", University of Leiden, June 2007, against the 'high count' recently revived by Elio Lo Cascio, e. g. in E. Lo Cascio, "Population of Roman Italy in Town and Country", in J. Bintliff/K. Sbonias (eds.), Reconstructing Past Population Trends in Mediterranean Europe (3000 B.C.-A.D. 1800) (Oxford 1999) 161-171;
24. G. Kron, "The Augustan Census Figures and the Population of Italy", Athenaeum 93 (2005) 441-495;
25. E. Lo Cascio/P. Malanima, "Cycles and Stability: Italian Population before the Demographic Transition (225 B.C.-A.D. 1900)", Rivista di Storia Economica 21.3 (2005) 197-232.
26. For the nature of this epidemic, probably smallpox, see R. J. Littman/M. L. Littman, "Galen and the Antonine Plague", AWJPh 94 (1973) 243-253;
27. for its likely scale (25% mortality?), see Y. Zelener, "Smallpox and the Disintegration of the Roman Economy after 165 A.D." (unpubl. dissertation Columbia University 2003).
28. S. Hin, "Fertility and Mortality: Demographic Behavior in Roman in Italy" (unpubl. dissertation University of Leiden, in progress). I am indebted to Saskia Hin for sharing her thoughts with me.
29. A single aqueduct built in 144-140 BC cost 45 million denars (Frontin. Aqu. 1.7), probably somewhere around 200-400, 000 tons of wheat equivalent, enough to feed 1-2 million people for a year. T. Frank, An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome I (Baltimore 1933) 145, 228 estimates total state spending on construction from 200-90 BC at five to six times that amount.
30. G. Rickman, The Corn Supply of Ancient Rome (Oxford 1980) 156-197.
31. A. Alföldi, Oktavians Aufstieg zur Macht (Bonn 1976) 101.
32. P. Temin, "Estimating GDP in the Early Roman Empire", in E. Lo Cascio (ed.), Innovazione tecnica e progresso economico nel mondo romano (Bari 2006) 31-54 (for an imperial GDP of 2.5 billion denars around AD 100, which needs to be reduced to account for the sizeable contribution of Egypt after 30 BC and intervening growth). Disbursement necessitated the large-scale minting of bullion stocks, the reminting of provincial silver coin, and the introduction of gold coins, all of which are well attested for this period: K. W. Harl, Coinage in the Roman Economy, 300 B.C. to A.D. 700 (Baltimore 1996) 52-60, 71-72.
33. Cf. D. H. Fischer, The Great Wave (Olford 1996).
34. For a brief discussion, see F. Millar, "The Mediterranean and the Roman Revolution: Politics, War, and the Economy", P&P 102 (1984) 3-24
35. repr. in Id., Rome, the Greek World, and the East, I: The Roman Republic and the Augustan Revolution (Chapel Hill and London 2002) 215-237.
36. R. Sailer, "Framing the Debate over Growth in the Ancient Economy", in W. Scheidel/S. von Reden (eds.), The Ancient Economy (Edinburgh 2002) 251-269
37. and again in J. G. Manning/I. Morris (eds.), The Ancient Economy (Stanford 2005) 223-238, provides an incisive discussion of the problems involved in estimating Roman economic growth. For ancient Greece, see below, n. 61.
38. The most recent discussion is W. V. Harris, "The Late Republic", in Scheidel, Morris and Sailer, Economic History (as in n. 2)511-539.
39. A. J. Parker, Ancient Shipwrecks of the Mediterranean and the Roman Provinces (Oxford 1992) esp. 549 fig. 3. Due to uneven exploration coverage, these data are disproportionately concentrated in the western Mediterranean, and therefore work best as an index of changes in the volume of Italycentered commerce, which is precisely what matters here.
40. For summaries of recent scientific research, see A. Wilson, "Machines, Power and the Ancient Economy", JRS 92 (2002) 1-32, at 25-27;
41. F. de Callatay, "The Graeco-Roman Economy in the Super-long Run: Lead, Copper, and Shipwrecks", JRA 18 (2005) 361-372.
42. D. Backendorf, Römische Münzschätze des zweiten und ersten Jahrunderts v. Chr. vom italienischen Festland (Berlin 1998);
43. K. Lockyear, "Hoard Structure and Coin Production in Antiquity - An Empirical Investigation", AT 159 (1999) 215-243.
44. W. V. Harris, "A Revisionist View of Roman Money", JRS 96 (2006) 1-24 stresses the importance of credit arrangements.
45. On technology, see Harris, "Republic" (as in n. 44) 536 table 19.2.
46. P. Temin, "Financial Intermediation in the Early Roman Empire", JEH 64 (2004) 705-733 argues that "financial institutions in the early Roman Empire were better than those of eighteenth-century France, albeit not as developed as those of eighteenth-century England and Holland" (729);
47. this finding also encompasses the late Republican period. For Roman shares, see U. Malmendier, "Roman Shares", in W. N. Goetzmann and K. G. Rouwenhorst (eds.), The Origins of Value (Oxford 2005) 31-42.
48. E. Lo Cascio, "La "New Institutional Economics" e l'economia imperiale romana", in M. Pani (ed.), Storia romana e storia moderna (Bari 2005) 69-83, at 78-80 briefly considers lowered transactions costs.
49. On market transactions in general, see P. Temin, "A Market Economy in the Early Roman Empire", JRS 91 (2001) 169-181.
50. I. Shatzman, Senatorial Wealth and Roman Politics (Brussels 1975) is the most comprehensive collection of the elite-related evidence.
51. Rudimentary direct measurements are possible only for classical Athens and Roman Egypt, and tentative investigation of change over time is feasible only for the latter: M. M. Markle, "Jury Pay and Assembly Pay at Athens", in P. Cartledge/F. D. Harvey (eds.), Crux (Exeter 1985) 265-297;
52. W. Scheidel, "A Model of Demographic and Economic Change in Roman Egypt after the Antonine Plague", JRA 15 (2002) 97-114
53. and Id., "Real Slave Prices and the Relative Cost of Slave Labor in the Greco-Roman World", AncSoc 35 (2005) 1-17.
54. The discussions by Frank, Survey (as in n. 30) 384-385
55. and S. Mrozek, Lohnarbeit im klassischen Altertum (Bonn 1989) 85, 111-112 show that there is simply no usable wage information for the city of Rome in particular.
56. nd ed. Cambridge 1982) 345-346
57. For a new indirect method of estimating free wages, see W. M. Jongman, "The Early Roman Empire: Consumption", in Scheidel, Morris and Sailer, Economic History (as in n. 2) 597-618, at 601-602, who, drawing on the manumission fees recorded in first-century BC Delphi (Greece) of 7 tons of wheat equivalent per adult male slave, argues that at 10 % annual financing and depreciation costs, slave labor must have yielded 700 kg of wheat equivalent per year in excess of subsistence, and that free labor ought to have commanded a comparable premium. The main problems are that we do not know how representative these freed slaves were (as they may have been skilled and thus more valuable), and how their manumission fees related to purchase prices.
58. For a brief overview, see S. L. Dyson, Community and Society in Roman Italy (Baltimore 1992) 30-31.
59. Closer consideration of the nature of staple crop production on large slave estates has led to an appreciation of the symbiotic nature of permanent slave labor and seasonal free labor, much of which was probably provided by neighboring peasants: W. Scheidel, Grundpacht und Lohnarbeit in der Landwirtschaft des römischen Italien (Frankfurt 1994) 153-224, esp. 159-164.
60. W. M. Jongman, "Slavery and the Growth of Rome: The Transformation of Italy in the Second and First Centuries B.C.E.", in Edwards/Woolf, Rome (as in n. 23) 100-122, at 112-115.
61. The scale of large-scale slave-run livestock raising should not be exaggerated either: J. S. Thompson, "Transhumant and Sedentary Sheep-raising in Roman Italy, 200 BC-AD 200" (unpubl. dissertation Cambridge University 1989);
62. P. Garnsey, Peasants, Cities and Food in Classical Antiquity (Cambridge 1998) 166-179.
63. TBA, "The Impact of Globalization in the Roman Empire, 200 B.C.-A.D. 100', JEH (forthcoming).
64. Scheidel, "Mobility" (as in n. 6) 65-71 (numbers), 71-79 (imports).
65. For this conjecture, cf., e. g., P. A. David, "The Growth of Real Product in the United States before 1840: New Evidence, Controlled Conjecture", JEH 21 (1967) 151-197;
66. L. A. Craig/D. Fisher, The European Macroeconomy (Cheltenham 2000) 113-118;
67. and see Temin, "GDP" (as in n. 37) for an application to the Roman empire.
68. Jongman, "Consumption" (as in n. 51) 613-614, based on the surveys of A. King, "Diet in the Roman World: A Regional Inter-site Comparison of the Mammal Bones", JRA 12 (1999) 168-202
69. and M. MacKinnon, Production and Consumption of Animals in Roman Italy (Portsmouth, RI 2004).
70. C. De Ruyt, "Exigences fonctionelles et variété des interprétations dans 1'architecture des macella du monde remain", in E. Lo Cascio (ed.), Mercati permanenti e mercati periodici nel mondo romano (Bari 2000) 177-186, at 178-179.
71. See also C. M. Holleran, "The Retail Trade in the City of Rome" (unpubl. dissertation University of Manchester, 2005) 141.
72. I. Morris, "Economic Growth in Ancient Greece", Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics 160 (2004) 709-742
73. and Id., "Archaeology, Standards of Living, and Greek Economic History", in Manning and Morris, Economy (as in n. 43) 91-126.
74. G. Kron, "Anthropometry, Physical Anthropology, and the Reconstruction of Ancient Health, Nutrition, and Living Standards", Historia 54 (2005) 68-83.
75. Incidentally, Roman livestock was also uncommonly big, an indication of increased productivity: G. Kron, "Archaezoological Evidence for the Productivity of Roman Livestock Farming", MBAH 21.2 (2002) 53-73.
76. W. M. Jongman, "They Never Had It So Good: The Rise and Decline of Roman Living Standards", Paper delivered at Stanford University, January 16, 2007, with reference to G. Klein Goldewijk and W. M. Jongman, "They Never Had It So Good: Roman Stature and the Biological Standard of Living" (in progress).
77. "The Economy of the Roman Empire: Integration, Growth and Decline", directed by A. Bowman and A. Wilson, Oxford, 2005-2009, funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (UK).
78. E. g., S. R. Joshel, Work, Identity, and Legal Status at Rome (Norman 1992) (trades);
79. Morley, Metropolis (as in n. 7) 55-142, esp. 81-82 (farming for urban market).
80. W. Scheidet, "The Comparative Economics of Slavery in the Greco-Roman World", in E. Dal Lago/ C. Katsari (eds.), Slave Systems, Ancient and Modern (Cambridge in press), drawing on C. Hanes, "Turnover Cost and the Distribution of Slave Labor in Anglo-America", JEH 56 (1996) 307-329.
81. S. Treggiari, "Urban Labour in Rome: mercennarii and tabernarii", in P. Garnsey (ed.), Non-slave Labour in the Greco-Roman World (Cambridge 1980) 48-64, at 55-56;
82. Joshel, Work (as in n. 65) 124-128;
83. and cf. now more generally H. Mouritsen, "Freedmen and Decurions: Epitaphs and Social History in Roman Italy", JRS 95 (2005) 38-63.
84. C. Hawkins, "Work in the City: Roman Artisans and the Urban Economy" (unpub. dissertation University of Chicago 2006) is the first proper study of this topic. For the huge range of attested professions, see Treggiari's paper.
85. F. Kudlien, "Anniversarii vicini: Zur freien Arbeit im römischen Dorf", Hermes 112 (1984) 66-84.
86. nd ed. Cambridge 1994) 644-688, for the complexity of the late Republican metropolitan populace.
87. The property thresholds were set at 25, 000 denars for the first class, 18, 750 for the second, 12, 500 for the third, and 5, 000 for the fourth, with a very low limit for the fifth class. At 5-6 % annual return on capital, even fourth-class citizen would have earned between 250 and 750 denars a year, or two to six times the traditional basic army stipend; and income from crafts and trades may well have generated higher income relative to assets than farming. The overall number of such citizens is unknowable but likely to have ranged in the 100, 000s: see W. Scheidel, "Stratification, Deprivation and Quality of Life", in M. Atkins/R. Osborne (eds.), Poverty in the Roman World (Cambridge 2006) 40-59, at 48-52, for discussion and guesstimates.
88. The muddled tradition about the Gracchan land distribution schemes in the late second century BC is probably the most famous case in point: see K. Bringmann, Die Agrarreform des Tiberius Gracchus (Stuttgart 1985) for a trenchant critique.
89. L. de Ligt, "Poverty and Demography: The Case of the Gracchan Land Reform", Mnemosyne 57 (2004) 725-757.
90. The latter habit is well established: see esp. Duncan-Jones, Economy (as in n. 51) 120-237 for quantitative data.
91. For models and analysis, see H. U. von Freyberg, Kapitalverkehr und Handel im römischen Kaiserreich (27 v. Chr.-235 n. Chr.) (Freiburg 1989);
92. K. Hopkins, "Rome, Taxes, Rents, and Trade", Kodai 6/7 (1995/6) 41-75
93. reprinted in Scheidel/von Reden, Economy (as in n. 43) 190-230.
94. For signs of population pressure in this period, see E. Lo Cascio, "II rapporto uomini-terra nel pae-saggio dell'Italia romana", Index 32 (2004) 107-121.
95. As usual, the evidence of field surveys is ambiguous: Dyson, Community (as in n. 52) 113-114.
96. For the inverse relationship of population growth and real wages, cf., e. g., R. D. Lee, "Population Homeostasis and English Demographic History", in R. I. Rotberg and T. K. Rabb (eds.), Population and Economy (Cambridge 1986) 75-100. 1 will explore this this issue more generally in "Population, Productivity, and the Limits of Prosperity: A Neomalthusian Perspective on Roman Economic Growth" (in progress).
97. Population size: J. J. A. Dias, "A populacão", in Id. (ed), Portugal da renascimento à crise dinástica (Lisbon 1998) 11-52, at 13 and n.10 (census of 1527/32);
98. M. L. R. Pinto/J. D. Rodrigues/A. B. Madeira, "A base demográfica", in A. de F. de Meneses (ed.), Portugal da paz da restauração ao ouro do Brasil (Lisbon 2001) 385-403, at 389, 395 (1, 700).
99. Migrants: C. R. Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire 1415-1825 (London 1969) 52 (2, 400);
100. For the empire, see Boxer's book and J. F. Labourdette, Histoire de Portugal (Paris 2000) 161-195.
101. Dias, "Populacão" (as in n.79) 23.
102. A. J. R. Russell-Wood, A World on the Move (Manchester 1992) 123-134 for a good survey.
103. A. C. de C. M. Saunders, A Social History of Black Slaves and Freedmen in Portugal 1441-1555 (Cambridge 1982) 21, 33 (imports), 79 (slaves could earn their price in one year), 88.
104. For the underpopulation of the Portuguese countryside, see Boxer, Empire (as in n. 79) 53
105. nd ed. Cambridge 1976) 151.
106. On male migration, see Dias, "Populacäo" (as in n.79) 23-26.
107. J. de Vries/A. van der Woude, The First Modern Economy: Success, Failure, and Perseverance of the Dutch Economy, 1500-1815 (Cambridge 1997) 50, 72, 75.
108. Wrigley, People (as in n. 23) 152.
109. See Scheidel, "Demography" (as in n. 2) for the general premises.
110. I follow Finley, Economy (as in n. 2 [1985]) 182 in adopting R. J. Chorley/P. Haggett's (Socioeconomic Models in Geography [London 1968] 22) poignant definition of a model as "a simplified structuring of reality which represents supposedly significant relationships in a generalized form" which "do not include all associated observations or measurements, but as such (...) are valuable in obscuring incidental detail and in allowing fundamental aspects of reality to appear".
111. C. Virlouvet, Famines et érneutes à Rome des origines de la République à la mort de Néron (Paris 1985);
112. P. Garnsey, Famine and Food Supply in the Graeco-Roman World (Cambridge 1988) 198-217;
113. D. Cherry, "Hunger at Rome in the Late Republic", EMC 12 (1993) 433-450.
114. Scale: for cross-cultural context, see W. Scheidel, "Creating a Metropolis: A Comparative Demographic Perspective", in W. V. Harris/G. Ruffini (eds.), Ancient Alexandria between Egypt and Greece (Leiden 2004) 1-31, esp. 3-18.
115. Police: W. Nippel, Public Order in Ancient Rome (Cambridge 1995).
116. See Scheidel, "Economics" (as in n. 66) for the nexus between chattel slavery and demand for labor.