Pliny's Natural History and the flavian Templum Pacis: Botanical imperialism in first-century C.E. Rome

Journal of World History

Volumn 20, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 309-338

  Elizabeth, ^a   Pollard, ^a  

^a SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARCHITECTURE; FLORA; GARDEN; HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE;

EID: 74349100090     PISSN: 10456007     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (161)

1. Much scholarship explores the links between Rome and the farthest reaches of the world as the Romans knew it: for trade between Rome and the East (especially India), see for example, E. H. Warmington, The Commerce between the Roman Empire and India, 2nd ed. (1928; New York: Octagon Books, 1974);
2. M. P. Charlesworth, "Roman Trade with India: A Resurvey," in Studies in Roman Economic and Social History in Honor of Allan Chester Johnson, ed. P. R. Coleman-Norton (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1951), pp. 131-143;
3. M. P. Charlesworth, Trade-Routes and Commerce of the Roman Empire, rev. ed. (1926; New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1970);
4. M. Wheeler, Rome beyond the Imperial Frontiers (New York: Philosophical Library, 1955);
5. J. I. Miller, The Spice Trade of the Roman Empire, 29 B.C. to A.D. 641 (London: Oxford University Press, 1969);
6. M. G. Raschke, "New Studies in Roman Commerce with the East," ANRW II.9.2 (1978): 604-1361;
7. the various studies of pottery, coins, glass, and bronzes in V. Begley and R. D. de Puma, eds., Rome and India: The Ancient Sea Trade (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991);
8. and most recently G. Parker, "Ex Oriente Luxuria: Indian Commodities and Roman Experience," JESHO 45 (2002): 40-95;
9. and G. Parker, The Making of Roman India (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008).
10. See also G. Parker and C. M. Sinopoli, eds., Ancient India in Its Wider World (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008), p. 2, for a brief review of other India-related scholarship. For Red Sea trade in particular,
11. see S. E. Sidebotham, Roman Economie Policy in the Erythra Thalassa 30 B.C-A.D. 217 (Leiden: Brill, 1986);
12. L. Casson, The Periplus Maris Erythraei (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989);
13. G. Young, Rome' Eastern Trade: International Commerce and Imperial Policy, 31 BC- AD 305 (New York: Routledge, 2001). For Hellenistic (i.e., pre-Roman) interaction between the Mediterranean world and India,
14. see W. W. Tarn, The Greeks in Bactria and India, 3rd ed. (1938; Chicago: Ares Publishers, 1985), republished by F. L. Holt with an updated bibliog- raphy. To expand the lens even wider, to include interactions between Rome and China,
15. see for example, F. Hirth, China and the Roman Orient (1885; repr., New York: Paragon Book Reprint Corp., 1966);
16. F. Teggart, Rome and China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1939);
17. and J. Ferguson, "China and Rome," ANRW II.9.2 (1978): 581-603. The Stanford Ancient Chinese and Mediterranean Empires Comparative History Project (ACME) is a recent attempt to draw comparisons between imperial Rome and China (http://www.stanford.edu/~scheidel/acme.htm).
18. P. Horden and N. Purcell, The Corrupting Sea (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000). N. Purcell, "The Boundless Sea of Unlikeness? On Defining the Mediterranean," Mediterranean Historical Review 18 (2003): 25 n. 2, lists no fewer than twelve critical reviews of their book to which he responds. W. V. Harris, ed., Rethinking the Mediterranean (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) includes essays inspired by, and in response to, Horden and Purcell, not to mention "Four Years of Corruption," pp. 348-375, a defense by Horden and Purcell of their own work. Other recent edited collections on the Mediterranean include D. Abulafia, ed., The Mediterranean in History (London: Thames and Hudson, 2003);
19. and I. Malkin, ed., Mediterranean Paradigms and Classical Antiquity (New York: Routledge, 2005 ), which reprises in book form Mediterranean Historical Review 18 (2003). At the time this article was undergoing final revisions, the much anticipated second volume of Horden and Purcell's project, Liquid Continent, was not yet released.
20. C. Chase-Dunn and T. D. Hall, Rise and Demise (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997),pp.52-55.
21. H. J. Loane, Industry and Commerce of the City of Rome (50 BC-200 AD) (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1938; New York: Arno Press, 1979), pp. 14-28
22. for a discussion of the movement within the Mediterranean region of the products derived from grain, grapes, and olives. G. Woolf, "Imperialism, Empire and the Integration of the Roman Economy," World Archaeology 23 (1992): 283-293,
23. studies amphora types to demonstrate Mediterranean-wide distribution of nonluxury products such as wine and olive oil. This Mediterranean-based exchange, as wide-reaching as it may have been (G. Woolf, "World- Systems Analysis and the Roman Empire," Journal of Roman Archaeology 3 [1990]: 52), was on a smaller geographic scale than that between Rome and India.
24. Res Gestae 31 for Augustus's receiving of ambassadors from India;
25. see Sidebotham, Roman Economic Policy, pp. 129-130;
26. and Wheeler, Rome beyond the Imperial Frontiers, pp. 134-135,
27. for further discussion of these embassies. Charlesworth, Trade-Routes and Commerce, pp. 108-109, 262,
28. for Chinese imperial sources describing Parthian obstruction of Roman embassies to, and overland trade with, China and for the successful embassy from Marcus Aurelius to China.
29. See also Richard Foltz, Religions of the Silk Road (New York: St. Martins Press, 1999), pp. 23-87, for discussion of Buddhism, Nestorianism, and Man- ichaeism on the Silk Roads.
30. For the concept of "fall-off," see Chase-Dunn and Hall, Rise and Demise, pp. 17-18, 53-55.
31. Particularly intriguing questions to be pursued further include the spread of Chris- tianity to the East, especially given the traditions of Thomas in India, and why Buddhism appears not to have spread to the West. On Thomas in India and the settlement of Jews in India after 70 C.E.,
32. see Charlesworth, "Roman Trade with India," pp. 132-133. On holiness and wisdom in Greco-Roman ideas about India,
33. see Parker, Making of Roman India, pp. 251- 307.
34. Woolf, "World-Systems Analysis," pp. 51-52, reviews the debate on whether or not the luxury items exchanged in a prestige goods network are essential.
35. Sidebotham, Roman Economic Policy, p. 45, argues that the plants and plant products from the East were so central to "basic religious, funerary, culinary, and medicinal requirements of ancient life" that such items were necessities and not luxuries. He posits further that "luxuries do not require price regulation [as we will see with spices in Vespasian's reign], necessities of life often do." Woolf, "World-Systems Analysis," p. 55, also argues that while luxury items primarily for ostentatious display are not essential, "goods invested with religious mana, perhaps by use in ceremonies, may be less easy to replace." Pepper and other spices acquired primarily through long-distance trade with the East were used as incense in religious ceremonies and would fall into this category. Regardless, spices were low mass and high price items, making them prestige goods for the purpose of this study.
36. Other sources for Rome's trade with the East include Isidore of Charax's Parthian Stations (early imperial period), Strabo's Geography (early first century C.E., Ptolemy's Geography (second century C.E. and the Periplus Maris Erythraei, a first-century C.E. merchant's guide for sailing and trading on the route from the Red Sea to the southern tip of India.
37. Pliny HN Preface 3 refers to Titus as six-times a consul, a detail which firmly dates the text's dedication to 77 C.E.
38. Pliny the Younger (Ep. 3.5 and 6.20), Pliny's nephew, gives useful information about his uncle, including a list of his lost works such as De laculatione Equestri, Bella Germaniae, and a history A Fine Aufidi Bassi, as well as a recounting of his death. For debate over Pliny's death in the eruption of Vesuvius,
39. see M. Beagon, Roman Nature: The Thought of Pliny the Elder (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. I and n. I.
40. The 1980s was a good decade for Pliny scholarship, including several conferences on Pliny, notably those at Nantes and at London, both of which resulted in published volumes, Helmantica 37-38 and Science in the Early Roman Empire, respectively (A. Wallace-Hadrill, "Pliny the Elder and Man's Unnatural History," Greece and Rome 37, no. 1 [i990]: 82). On Pliny's career, R. Syme, "Pliny the Procurator," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 73 (1969): 201-236;
41. for the rhetoric and larger themes, see Wallace-Hadrill, "Pliny the Elder" (on Pliny's Roman valuing and divinizing of Nature as opposed to the unnaturalness of the Greek ideals of luxury), Beagon, Roman Nature (which takes a holistic, rather than the usual cherry-picking, approach to the text),
42. P. Sinclair, "Rhetoric of Writing and Reading in the Preface to Pliny's Naturalis Historia," in Flavian Rome: Culture, Image, Text, ed. A. J. Boyle and W. J. Dominik (Leiden: Brill, 2003), pp. 277-300 (which explores how Pliny employs the rhetoric of gender, class, and national difference); on Pliny's method, use of sources and skill, or lack thereof, as a botanist (an argument usually based on Pliny's use of Theophrastus and the other herbalists on whose work he draws),
43. see J. André, "Pline l'Ancien Botaniste," REL 33 (1955): 297-318;
44. J. Stannard, "Pliny and Roman Botany," Isis 56, no. 4 (1965): 420-425;
45. A. Locher, "The Structure of Pliny the Elder's Natural History," in Science in the Early Roman Empire: Pliny the Elder, His Sources and Influence, ed. R. French and F. Greenaway (London: Croon Helm, 1986), pp. 20 -29;
46. T. Murphy, "Pliny's Naturalis Historia: The Prodigal Text," in Boyle and Dominik, Flavian Rome, pp. 301-322;
47. and for his popularity among humanists, see C. G. Nauert, "Humanists, Scientists, and Pliny: Changing Approaches to a Classical Author," AHR 84, no. 1 (i979): 72-85.
48. See also G. Serbat, "Pline l'Ancien. Etat présent des études sur sa vie, son oevre et son influence," ANRW II.32.4 ( 1986): 2069-2200, for an exhaustive bibliography of Pliny scholarship, arranged by topic and by chapter in the Natural History.
49. Pliny HN Preface 33 explains that the first book is intended as an index, to keep the reader from having to read the whole work. Sinclair, "Rhetoric of Writing and Reading," p. 290 describes this indexing as "an important advancement in book technology." Interestingly, Pliny's Natural History was published at about the same time that the codex began to come into use, popularized especially among Christians and compilers of letters. For the shift in book technology from papyrus roll to codex in the late first through the fourth centuries C.E., see the classic treatment by Roberts, revised in C. H. Roberts and T. C. Skeat, Birth of the Codex (London: British Academy, 1983).
50. The later books discuss botany (12-19), botany in medicine (10 -27), zoology in medicine (28-32), and metals and stones including artistic, architectural, and medicinal uses (33-37).
51. Pliny must have completed quite a bit of work on his Natural History before the 70s, when during Pliny's service as Spanish procurator, the imperial governor of Hispania Tarraconensis, Larcius Licinius, attempted to purchase from Pliny, for the substantial sum of 400, 000 sestercii, Pliny's research notebooks for the Natural History (Murphy, "Pliny's Naturalis Historia, " pp. 303-308).
52. S. B. Platner and T. Ashby, A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome, rev. ed. (1929; London, 1965), pp. 386 -387, offers a full list of the classical references to the Templum Pacis, noting various elements of its construction and treasures displayed there, including Suet. Vesp. 9 and Dom. 5; Josephus BJ 7.5.7;
53. Cassius Dio 65.15.1 and 72.24; Aurelius Victor Caes. 9.7; Martial 1.2.8; Statius Silv. 4.3.17; Gellius 5.21.9 for the library; Pliny 12.94, 34.84, 35.102, 109, 36.27, 58, Pausanius 6.9.3, and Juvenal 9.23. Several later Roman historians remark on the magnificence of the building (Herodian 1.14.2 and Ammianus Marcellinus 16.10.14). There is some debate about what it means that the structure is called aedes (Victor), neos (Procopius), temenos, opera Pacis (Pliny), and only later writers refer to the whole area as a "forum" (e.g., Ammianus Marcellinus).
54. See R. H. Darwall-Smith, Emperors and Architecture: A Study of Flavian Rome (Collection Latomus 231, 1996),
55. J. E. Packer, "Plurima et Amplissima Opera: Parsing Flavian Rome," in Boyle and Dominik, Flavian Rome, pp. 167-198, for discussions of the Flavian building program as a whole. Even if, as Darwall-Smith suggests, Vespasian did not intend his Templum Pacis to be a part of the existing imperial fora scheme, the propagandistic value of Vespasian's combination of Pax and the gardens within his temple needs to be explained.
56. Comments by Josephus and Pliny about various pieces of artwork housed in the Templum Pacis have led scholars to interpret the building primarily as an art museum (Darwall- Smith, Emperors and Architecture, pp. 58-61). Such an identification does not adequately account for the garden beds to be discussed in this article.
57. Cassius Dio 72.24.
58. The Forma Urbis Romae was found in sixteenth-century excavations. It had been incorporated into the back wall of the Church of Cosmas and Damian. Drawings were made and housed at Vatican libraries. A few authoritative publications on the plan include H. Jordan, Forma Urbis Romae Regionum Xlll (Berlin, 1874); G. Carettoni, A. Colini, L. Cozza,
59. G. Gatti, La Pianta Marmorea di Roma Antica (1955; repr., 1961 );
60. E. M. Steinby, ed., Lexicon Topigraphicum Urbis Romae (1993-2000); and most recently the Stanford Digital Forma Urbis Romae Project (http://formaurbis.stanford.edu), which includes advanced digital imaging, discussion of the 1 , 186 slabs, and a searchable database. L. Taub, " The His- torical Function of the 'Forma Urbis Romae,'" Imago Mundi 45 (1993): 17, argues that the Severan plan was a marble remaking of a painted plan that had been a part of the original Vespasianic structure, but suggests only generally that such a map would "inspire in viewers further admiration of the achievements of Vespasian."
61. Welcome Page, Stanford Digital Forma Urbis Romae Project (2002-2003), accessed May 2006.
62. See A. M. Colini for identification of this structure. Detailed discussion of the Templum Pacis can be found at LTUR IV.67-70, Stanford Digital Forma Urbis Romae Project; L. Richardson, A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); Platner and Ashby, Topographical Dictionary, pp. 386-388;
63. E.Nash, Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Rome (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1961), 1:439 -445.
64. J. C. Anderson, "Domitian, the Argiletum and the Temple of Peace," AJA 86, no. 1 (1982): 105.
65. Ibid., p. 105.
66. Colini, writing before Lloyd, similarly thought of the structures in the Templum Pacis as gardens but did not elaborate on the suggestion. Scholars since Lloyd have accepted his interpretation, but not added much to it (L. Farrar, Ancient Roman Gardens [Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 1998], p. 184 and Darwall-Smith, Emperors and Architecture, p. 58).
67. Recent excavations have reportedly uncovered the structural remains of some of these flowerbeds (Packer, "Plurima et Amplissima Opera," p. 171 n. 31), but there has been no extensive publication of the planters to date. Capitolium.org, the website for the current excavations of the Roman Forum, reported a find of a drainage pipe in the excavations of the Templum Pacis, which would support the garden bed hypothesis (Fori Imperiali, www.capitolium.org/eng/fori/news/index.htm, accessed December 2008). Farrar classified the gardens of the Templum Pacis as among the five public portico gardens at Rome, including also the Porticus Pompeii, Porticus Liviae, the Divus Claudius, and the Adonea.
68. R. B. Lloyd, "Three Monumental Gardens on the Marble Plan," AJA 86, no. 1 (1982): 91.
69. There were 1,800 square meters of garden beds in a space measuring 14,850 square meters, meaning that the beds themselves made up roughly 12 percent of the internal space of the entire Templum Pacis area. The amount of space devoted to garden beds is even more significant-almost 40 percent-if you count only the area of the porticoed enclosure (11,000 square meters) and recognize that two separate areas measuring 25 by 85 meters ( 4, 250 square meters) were devoted to the gardens, counting beds, connectors, and walk- ways in between beds. Lloyd recounts how some modern reconstructions of the Templum Pacis have shown these as twenty-four separate beds or hedges of large trees, which these cannot be, according to Lloyd, because trees are represented with drill holes on the plan (ibid., p. 92).
70. J. W. Stamper, The Architecture of Roman Temples (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 158, following Vitruvius 5.9.5-6 on the value of gardens in civic spaces, has suggested that the functional purpose of such gardens would be "for providing space to walk in the open air, freshened and cleared by the vegetation, a space good for the eyes and lungs," and also that the planters would have created an axis for heightening the perspective of viewing the temple.
71. Lloyd, "Three Monumental Gardens," pp. 95-100. In addition to the gardens in the Templum Pacis, Lloyd discusses the gardens of the Claudianum and the Adonea, also marked on the Severan marble plan. It is not just these gardens, as discussed by Lloyd, that demonstrate the importance of plants in Roman religion. Plants and vegetal imagery were a central aspect of Roman cult, including, for instance, a farmer's care before thinning a grove of trees to propitiate the proper numina that inhabited his property (see e.g., Cato, On Agriculture, pp. 139-140), the bountiful harvest imagery on the Altar of Peace built at Rome by the Senate to honor Augustus, and the cornucopia-laden statues of the goddess Fortuna / Tyche throughout the empire.
72. See also Horden and Purcell, Corrupting Sea, p. 414, for a Mediterranean-wide overview of "woodland religion."
73. Lloyd, "Three Monumental Gardens," p. 93. Lloyd looks to parallels from Pompeii, especially a painting from the House of Lucretius Fronto, as evidence for flower bed planting in porticoed enclosures.
74. J. P. Bowe, Gardens of the Roman World (Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2004), pp. 48-49. Bowe also notes that the Romans followed in the pattern of Assyrians and Egyptians before them, "importing garden plants from the many countries they interacted with through conquest or trade" (p. 43).
75. See Bowe, p. 8 for the range of sources available for Roman gardening, ranging from Cato's De Re Rustica and other treatises by Varro, Columella, and Palladius, to archaeobotanical evidence, to pictorial evidence of frescoes like those at Pompeii.
76. W. F. Jashemski, The Gardens of Pompeii, Volume II: Appendices (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Aristide D. Caratzas, 1993), appendix III and various tables throughout vol. 2. The Getty Villa in Malibu, California, includes a beautiful reconstruction of what such a garden might have looked like.
77. Richardson, New Topographical Dictionary, pp. 195-204. Cassius Dio records that Vespasian enjoyed spending time and entertaining guests at the Horti Sallustiani more so than at the imperial palace (65.10.4).
78. "Colonial botany" and "economic botany" are formal, loaded terms for early modern and world historians;
79. see P. De Vos, "Natural History and the Pursuit of Empire," JWH 17 ( 2006): 400-406, for a detailed discussion, with notes, of colonial and economic botany and the related historiography. By colonial botany in its Roman context, I mean the process by which this imperial power collected and transported plants for study (i.e., the natural historical impulse), although the economic components often associated with this term are of a different scale and character at Rome than is usual in later historical periods. In more modern treatments, separating natural history from economic repercussion is difficult; see, for example, D. R. Headrick, "Botany, Chemistry, and Tropical Development," JWH 7 (1996): 1-20,
80. for a review of botanical gardens, plant stations, and experiment stations, as well as an argument about the deleterious impact on tropical countries of the twentieth-century shift from colonial botany to chemical synthetics. By botanical imperialism, I refer to the ideological and practical constructs and claims of cultural hegemony and military power that develop out of that transplantation and study, which I will discuss further in this article with respect to Flavian Rome. These terms are related to, but not to be confused with, "economic botany" and "ecological imperialism." "Economic botany" is that process by which plant knowledge is gathered and manipulated in such a way as to facilitate plant-based industry. L. H. Brockway, Science and Colonial Expansion: The Role of the British Royal Botanic Gardens (New York: Academic Press, 1979)
81. and De Vos, "Natural History and the Pursuit of Empire," lay out this process by which the British and Spanish empires, respectively, exploited their knowledge of plants to great scientific, economic, and political benefit. This article will not argue that Roman colonial botany, or botanical imperialism, rose to the level of economic botany per se, although I will ultimately discuss the economic elements of Roman botanical interest in India and its limits.
82. "Ecological imperialism," popularized by A. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Biologcal Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), and to some extent earlier with respect to germs by W. H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor / Doubleday, 1976), suggests that European animals, plants, and diseases (not technology) made possible their conquest of the Americas by making them into " Neo-Europes." Ecological imperialism, along the lines of Crosby and McNeill, is not the focus of this argument.
83. P. H. Smith and P. Findlen, Merchants and Marvels: Commerce, Science, and Art in Early Modern Europe (New York: Routledge, 2002); D. P. Miller and P. H. Reill, Visions of Empire: Voyages, Botany, and Representations of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996);
84. N. Jardine, J. A. Secord, and E. C. Spary, eds., Cultures of Natural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), contribute to the wider discussion of the relationship between imperialism and natural historical impulse. I thank my colleague Paula De Vos for directing me toward this body of scholarship.
85. R. O. Steuer, "Stacte in Egyptian Antiquity," Journal of the American Oriental Society 63, no. 4 (1943): 281.
86. D. F. Ruggles, Gardens, Landscape, and Vision in the Palaces of Islamic Spain (University Park, Pa.: Penn State University Press, 2000), p. 17, 226 nn. 7 and 9, offers this story of 'Abd al-Rahman I and his sister, reported in the historians Al-Khushani and later in Al-Maqqari.
87. Ibid., p. 17.
88. D. Freedberg, The Eye of the Lynx: Galileo, his Friends, and the Begnnings of Modern Natural History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), pp. 60-61.
89. Ibid., pp. 38-40. Freedberg's book is an intriguing and well illustrated discussion of the culture of collecting and its meaning among seventeenth-century Italians.
90. K. Pomeranz and S. Topik, The World That Trade Created (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1999), pp. 86-89.
91. On the role of Kew Gardens in "economic botany," see Brockway, Science and Colonial Expansion.
92. Pomeranz and Topik, World That Trade Created, pp. 119-121.
93. The preface to the Natural History offers evidence for Pliny's relationship to Titus (HN preface 4-6, 12, and 20).
94. Columella, Pliny's contemporary, discusses transplantation and its difficulties in his De Re Rustica 3.8.4 and in De Arboribus 1.3 (Sidebotham, Roman Economic Policy, pp. 42-43). Indeed there seems to be a trend in writing about plants in the second half of the first century. Apart from Columella's two treatises and Pliny's Natural History, the army physician Dioscorides was also writing his materia medica about the plants he was encountering and their medical properties. That a Roman military doctor and a panegyricist of Flavian conquest were both writing about plants illustrates the connection between botany and imperialism in first-century C.E. Rome.
95. Pliny HN 12.7.16.
96. Pliny HN 12.43.98. Pliny seems to have figured out by external observation what modern pharmacology proves, namely that the properties of transplanted botanicals change. J. Scarborough, "Roman Pharmacy and the Eastern Drug Trade," Pharmacy in History 24 (1982): 137, discusses the change in the pharmacology of aloe when it is grown outside its native locale.
97. Pliny HN 12.31.57.
98. Pliny HN 12.14.29.
99. It is possible that the problem of growing plants in different environments is why, just before he starts describing plants, Pliny goes into detail about the "parallels of the earth" where there are "shadows of equal length," in which he describes which regions, from as far west as Britain to as far east as India, are in the same latitudinal zone (Pliny HN 6.39). The geographer Strabo also undertakes similar attempts to trace latitude (2.5.3-ff ).
100. Beagon, Roman Nature, pp. 26-54 and passim. While she does discuss Pliny and gardening (pp. 79-91 ), Beagon limits her discussion to ordinary household gardens and does not mention the gardens of the Templum Pacis at all.
101. Wallace-Hadrill, "Pliny the Elder," p. 83.
102. Pliny HN Preface 19.
103. Josephus Jewish War 7.159-160. This quotation comes immediately after Josephus mentions the Roman triumphs celebrating the conquering of the Jewish people. Cassius Dio similarly juxtaposes the long siege of Jerusalem (Dio 65.1) with the dedication of the precinct of Peace in 75 C.E. (in the year of Vespasian's sixth consulship, Dio 65.15).
104. Pliny HN 27.1.
105. Pliny HN 12.42.93.
106. Pliny HN 12.54.111-113 for the extended discussion of the balsam tree.
107. One searches in vain for explicit mention of trees, balsam or otherwise, in Josephus's description of the triumph at Rome to celebrate the Jewish War ( Jewish War 7.123-162). What Josephus does say, though, is that it would be impossible to enumerate everything led in triumph. He does refer generally to the share of riches and rareties of nature (7.132) that were led in the triumph, so it is possible that balsam could be included in that general category. That other depiction of Titus's triumph, the Arch of Titus in the Roman Forum, similarly does not include any trees, but this is not surprising since the reliefs on the arch focus on two other very important scenes, namely Titus in his chariot and a snapshot of the triumphal procession in which the menorah and other implements looted from the destroyed Jewish temple are displayed.
108. A sidenote on Flavian coinage adds to the bigger picture of the theme of Flavian peace. The Temple of Peace does not appear on Flavian coinage (H. Mattingly and E. A. Sydenham, Roman Imperial Coinage, vol. 2, Vespasian to Hadrian [London: Spink and Son, 1926], p. 5,
109. and H. Mattingly, Coins of the Roman Empire in the British Museum, vol. 2, Vespasian to Domitian [1930; repr., London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1966], p. xxxvi), but Pax in various forms occurs quite frequently on coinage throughout the reign of Vespasian. On these coins Pax appears seated and standing, usually holding what is interpreted as an olive branch (see also Darwall-Smith, Emperors and Architechture, pp. 62-63 for a list of Pax coin types). While it might be tempting to link this Peace holding her olive branch to the idea that cuttings of plants from across the empire were ending up in her temple, such temptation must be resisted. It is worthwhile to keep in mind that sometimes an olive branch is just an olive branch. The prevalence of Pax on Flavian coinage could be due to the end of the civil war of 68-69 or to the quelling of the Jewish Revolt (although the latter was celebrated specifically with Judea Capta coins). Given that the Templum Pacis was the centerpiece of Vespasian's forum, Pax on coinage could be a celebration of that templum. Since the temple may itself be a celebration of the end of civil war and /or the Jewish Revolt, however, this third option might amount to the same thing. Either way, the Pax being cel- ebrated on the coinage would allow for the trade that facilitates the foreign interaction that would bring such exotic botanical products to Rome.
110. Pliny HN 27.1-3.
111. In a presentation at the University of California Multi-Campus Research Unit for World History at the University of California, Riverside in May 2006, Willeke Wendrich, one of the excavators of the Roman Red Sea port at Berenike located on the trade route between Rome and India, described a find of pepper pots located in the floor of the Temple of Serapis there. This find offers a parallel for the use of pepper in religious-trading contexts.
112. The word piperataria derives from the Latin Piper, piperis. OLD defines piper as "fruit of the pepper-plant" and offers references from Vitruvius, Ovid, Persius, Horace, and Pliny.
113. Scholars argue over whether Vespasian built the horrea (H. J. Loane, "Vespasian's Spice Market and Tribute in Kind," Classical Philology 39, no. 1 [1944]: 10-21) or whether they were finished or built de novo by his son Domitian (e.g., Nash, Pictorial Dictionary, 1:485; Richardson, New Topographical Dictionary, pp. 194-195;
114. and LTUR 3.45-46). Discussion of the excavations of these horrea and their interpretation can be found in E. van Deman, "The Neronian Sacra Via," AJA 27 (1923),
115. A. Minoprio, "A Restoration of the Basilica of Constantine, Rome," PBSR 12 (1932): 23-24. According to Richardson, the complex, excavated in the early twentieth century and evidenced in part on the marble plan, consisted of "parallel courts, or naves, flanked by chambers of uniform size and plan opening to them." G. Rickman, Roman Granaries and Store Buildings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), p. 106, notes the unusual water tanks found in the excavation of the building and suggests that these may well have been used to dampen the spices (esp. pepper) in order to make the air breathable. Describing the fire that consumed this storehouse and the adjoining Templum Pacis, Dio 72.24 calls it a "storehouse of Egyptian and Arabian goods." The fire was clearly quite impressive, perhaps as a result of the spices in the storehouse and the botanical garden in the templum. The Severan marble plan (Slab VII-11, Stanford 17, known from a Renaissance drawing) includes what might be a separate horrea Vespasiani, located across the via sacra from the Horrea Piperataria (LTUR 3.49). The Horrea Piperataria may be seen on slab 15a, behind the templum proper.
116. Rickman, Roman Granaries, p. 106, argues that the horrea may have been quite large and that perhaps they were as large as the area later occupied by the Basilica. The two fires took place in 191 under Commodus (Dio 72.24.1-2) and in 284 under Carinus; Nash, Pictorial Dictionary, p. 485. See Chronographus AD 354 (Mommsen Chronica Minora 1892-98) L146.
117. For discussion of the various family-named horrea, see Richardson, New Topographical Dictionary, pp. 192-195. Loane, "Vespasian's Spice Market," pp. 19-20: "most of the ware- houses belonged originally to prominent families and passed slowly through the processes of inheritance and confiscation into governmental control e.g. the Seiana, Lolliana, Volusi- ana, Petroniana, Faeniana, and Ummidiana."
118. For the wax market, see Loane, "Vespasian's Spice Market," p. 16 and for the paper market, pp. 15-16.
119. See also Rickman, Roman Granaries, p. 106 who suggests that the horrea would work well for storage and for "the convenient retailing of them in one place where adequate control would be exercised."
120. K. W. Slane, "Observations on Mediterranean Amphoras and Tablewares found in India," in Begley and de Puma, Rome and India, p. 212;
121. Parker, "Ex Oriente Luxuria"; and Parker, Making of Roman India, pp. 147-202, for Roman-Indian commodities exchange.
122. Chinese silk trade falls outside the discussion of Rome's imperial botany, but it is useful to note that two routes connected Rome with China: one overland through Parthia and another more northerly route that could avoid Parthia altogether. For further discussion of these routes,
123. see P. D. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), p. 96.
124. A good text, translation, and commentary of Isidore's work is Parthian Stations by Isidore of Charax, ed. Wilfred Schoff (Philadelphia: Commercial Museum, 1914).
125. Casson, Periplus Maris Erythraei, offers a critical Greek text and translation as well as thorough commentary on the Periplus. Sidebotham, Roman Economic Policy, uses the Periplus among other sources to determine what economic policy, if any, Rome developed for Red Sea trade.
126. See for example, Charlesworth, "Roman Trade with India," p. 133; Wheeler, Rome beyond the Imperial Frontiers, pp. 132-133; Casson, Periplus Maris Erythraei, p. 296;
127. M. A. Selby, "Representations of the Foreign in Classical Tamil Literature," in Ancient India in Its Wider World, ed. G. Parker and C. M. Sinopoli (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2008), pp. 79-90.
128. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade, pp. 96-101.
129. L. Casson, "P.Vindob G 40822 and the Shipping of Goods from India," BASP 23, no. 3-4 (1986): 76-79. Muziris recently made headlines because of new claims by archaeologists of having found the site of ancient Muziris in a small town named Pattanam on the southwest coast of India (BBC News, http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/hi/south-asia/497042.stm, 11 June 2006).
130. Scholars often note that the Templum Augusti on this map suggests a Roman community in southern India and that it might have served as a sort of meeting place for Romans in southern India (e.g., Charlesworth, "Roman Trade with India," p. 142). What is not pointed out is that this is the only Templum Augusti on the entire map and that it is the easternmost icon of its sort. The map is probably using such a temple to illustrate the extent of Roman imperial influence, especially since the only other similar item that far to the east shows the extent of Alexander's route into India. K. Miller, Die Peuttingerische Tafel (Stuttgart: F. A. Brickhaus Komm-Gesch., 1962), provides a reproduction of the map, and A. Levi and M. Levi, Itineraria Picta (Rome: L'Erma' di Bretschneider, 1967) offers thorough discussion of the various symbols on the map, including a list of the forty-four temples on the map (pp. 221-222).
131. Periplus 39 and 49 for the trade goods available in northwest India; Periplus 56 for southwest India; Periplus 56 and 63 for northeast India. These are discussed thoroughly in Parker, "Ex Oriente Luxuria"; Parker, Making of Roman India, pp. 147-202;
132. Casson, Periplus Maris Erythraei; Miller, Spice Trade, pp. 34-109; and Warmington, Commerce between the Roman Empire and India, pp. 226-228 for a list and pp. 180-234 for full discussion.
133. Pliny HN 12.14.
134. Zosimus Nova Historia 5.41 (for the full episode, see 5.35-42), writing about one hundred years after the event, states that the Visigothic leader Alaric demanded, along with the pepper, 5,000 pounds of gold, 30,000 pounds of silver, 4,000 silk tunics, and 3,000 scarlet-dyed fleeces. The payment was raised by a levy from Roman citizens according to their means. Clearly the Romans passed their taste for Eastern goods on to their own con- querors.
135. Wheeler, Rome beyond the Imperial Frontiers, p. 140, for coinage as bullion, noting in particular a consistent mutilation of the coins (an incision on the head) that seems to have marked them as out-of-circulation. Coinage as bullion is a topic of debate (see Casson, Periplus Maris Erythraei, p. 209), but regardless it appears that Roman coinage was a desirable import in India. Charlesworth, "Roman Trade with India," p. 137, underscores that "pottery, glass, wine, metals, silverware [and] human cargo [especially slaves]" came east on Roman ships. Warmington, Commerce between the Roman Empire and India, pp. 261-272,
136. lists the few products that Rome had to offer the East, but comments on the relative "smallness" of the list, especially when examined in comparison with Roman imports. Roman Arretine pottery has been found in excavations at sites on the coast of India, but not in large enough amounts to suggest its importation as a trade good. Conversely, S. B. Deo, in "Roman Trade: Recent Archaeological Discoveries in Western India," in Begley and de Puma, Rome and India, p. 43, argues that although "there is very little concrete archaeological evidence of Roman imports in western India... the extant objects should not be considered an accurate indicator of trade volume." Deo rightly points out that much more extensive and systematic excavation of Indian ports would be needed to resolve the question of trade imbalance.
137. Periplus 49 for the market for Roman money. Casson, "P.Vindob G 40822," pp. 17- 18,
138. for his agreement with the comments from Tacitus and Pliny that bemoan the cash drain to India. Begley and de Puma, Rome and India, p. 2,
139. and Wheeler, Rome beyond the Imperial Frontiers, pp. 137-143, for location and temporal distribution of coin hoards in India. Deo, "Roman Trade," p. 40, offers an updated list of coinage finds in India, concluding that the additional finds only further underscore Wheeler's conclusions (n. 79, above) about the coins being used as bullion.
140. T. Frank, An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome, vol. 5, Rome and Italy of the Empire (Paterson, N.J.: Pageant Books, 1959), p. 45 for the range of problems faced and solutions offered by Vespasian.
141. See for example, Loane, "Vespasian's Spice Market," pp. 11-12.
142. See Parker, Making of Roman India, pp. 165-171, 183-189;
143. Young, Rome's Eastern Trade, p. 25;
144. and Sidebotham, Roman Economic Policy, pp. 36-39, for a discussion of whether Pliny's numbers should be seen as rhetorical fashioning or as a genuine trade deficit.
145. Pliny HN 12.41.84; "take away" is a translation from Pliny's adimunt.
146. Pliny HN 6.26.101. Pliny continues that the Indian goods are sold at one hundred times their original cost. Frank, Economic Survey of Ancient Rome, p. 51, noted that the demand for gold described by Pliny would have required much prospecting for sources of ore during Vespasian's reign.
147. Frank, Economic Survey of Ancient Rome, p. 53, for a range of 1.2-1.5 billion sesterces as the annual income of the empire under Vespasian's concerted attempts to raise money.
148. Charlesworth, "Roman Trade with India," p. 137, for "moralist strain"; Sidebotham, Roman Economic Policy, p. 38, also warns about over-interpreting Pliny's numbers, but accepts that coinage may have been flowing into India as bullion (though Sidebotham sees this as just another commodity).
149. Loane, Industry and Commerce, p. 138.
150. Miller, Spice Trade, p. 230.
151. For Vespasian's ties to business, see Frank, Economic Survey of Ancient Rome, pp. 44- 45, and Loane, "Vespasian's Spice Market," p. 11 : "His grandfather had been an auctioneer's assistant, his father a tax-farmer ... and he himself had overcome the poverty from an honest governorship by trading in mules" (drawing from Suet. Vesp. 1 and 4).
152. Periplus 19.
153. Pliny HN 12 passim for prices of imported spices at Rome. Frank, Economic Survey of Ancient Rome, pp. 285-286, offers a convenient list of spices and their price as cited by Pliny. Diocletian's Price Edict from 301 C.E. lists the maximum prices one could charge. These can be compared to Pliny's prices to demonstrate the inflation that occurred in just over two hundred years. Some examples: Pliny cites the cost of ginger at 6 denarii per pound, the Price Edict lists 250 denarii for a pound of dry ginger (50 for prepared ginger) (32.80- 81); Pliny prices bdellium at 3 denarii per pound, the Price Edict at 100 denarii per pound ( 32. 39);
154. Pliny's prices for frankincense range from 3 to 5 denarii per pound, whereas the Price Edict caps the price of the best frankincense at 100 denarii per pound (32.42). Sadly, pepper prices, which are listed in Pliny (4-15 denarii per pound, depending on the variety, black, white, and long pepper), are not preserved in the Price Edict.
155. Galen had his office in Rome at the Horrea Piperataria in the second century C.E. Loane, "Vespasian's Spice Market," p. 21, notes that by Galen's time "imperial procurators were shipping rare drugs and spices directly to the horrea from all corners of the Empire."
156. K. Hopkins, introduction to Trade in the Ancient Economy, ed. P. Garnsey, K. Hopkins, and C. R. Whittaker (London: Hogarth Press, 1983), p. xi. Woolf, "World-Systems Analysis," pp. 52-53, reviews challenges to the Finley/Jones model; also, Horden and Purcell, Corrupting Sea, pp. 143-152, for a critique of the Finley/Jones model.
157. Hopkins, introduction to Trade in the Ancient Economy, p. xii. Woolf, "World-Systems Analysis," p. 52. G. Woolf, "Beyond Romans and Natives," World Archaeology 28 (1997): 339-350.
158. Pomeranz and Topik, World That Trade Created, p. 86.
159. Ibid., p. 117.
160. Sidebotham, Roman Economic Policy, pp. 120-130 for a thorough treatment of this expedition. He disagrees with scholars who have suggested that the goal of this expedition was to monopolize control of the Rome-India transit trade (p. 121 n. 36 for scholars arguing that it was an attempt to control the route).
161. For additional arguments on the value of looking beyond the Mediterranean, see P. Horden and N. Purcell, "The Mediterranean and 'the New Thalassology,'" AHR III (2006): 740.