Provincializing Rome: The Indian ocean trade network and roman imperialism

Journal of World History

Volumn 22, Issue 1, 2011, Pages 27-54

  Fitzpatrick, Matthew ^a  

^a FLINDERS UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARCHAEOLOGY; ECONOMIC ANALYSIS; ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT; HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY; HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE; IMPERIALISM; STONE AGE; TRADE;

INDIAN OCEAN; ITALY; LAZIO; ROMA [LAZIO]; ROME;

EID: 79958082731     PISSN: 10456007     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jwh.2011.0016     Document Type: Article

References (236)

1. M. I. Finley, The Ancient Economy, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 177-178.
2. M. I. Finley, The Ancient Economy, (1985), Ibid., p. 34.
3. M. I. Finley, The Ancient Economy, (1985). Ibid., pp. 22-23. For a more recent understanding of the intricacies of Roman economics,
4. see P. Temin, "A Market Economy in the Early Roman Empire," Journal of Roman Studies 91 (2001): 160-181.
5. See also E. Lo Caseio, "The Role of the State in the Roman Economy: Making Use of the New Institutional Economics," in Ancient Economies, Modem Methodologies: Archaeology, Comparative History, Models and Institutions, ed. P. F. Bang, M. Ikeguchi, and H. G. Ziehe (Bari: Edipuglia, 2006), pp. 215-234.
6. L. Casson, ed., The Periplus Maris Erythraei. Text with Introduction, Translation and Commentary (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989). Following Roberta Tomber, "Roman trade" here refers to private sector trade emanating from the zone where political and military power stemmed from the apparatus of the Roman Empire, rather than trade undertaken exclusively by people from the city of Rome. R. Tomber, Indo-Roman Trade: From Pots to Pepper (London: Duckworth, 2008), p. 152.
7. Early attempts at refuting Finley-esque or Wallersteinian chronologies of economic development include A. G. Frank and B. K. Gills, The World System: Five Hundred Years or Five Thousand? (London: Routledge, 1993);
8. J. L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System AD 1250-1350 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).
9. It is beyond the scope of this article to enter into a detailed discussion of the mechanics of the "primitivist/modernist" debate about the Roman economy. For this, see the intro-duction to W. Scheidel, I. Morris, and I. P. Sailer, eds., The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 1-12.
10. P. F. Bang, The Roman Bazaar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008);
11. P. F. Bang, "Trade and Empire - In Search of Organising Concepts for the Roman Economy," Past and Present 195 (2007): 3-54.
12. M. I. Rostovtzeff, "The Hellenistic World and Its Economic Development," American Historical Review 41, no. 2 (1936): 248-249. Emphasis in the original.
13. See also M. I. Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 2:576-577.
14. Rostovtzeff, "Hellenistic World," p. 250.
15. See in particular M. G. Raschke, "New Studies in Roman Commerce with the East," Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt II, 9.2, 1978;
16. S. E. Sidebotham, Roman Economic Policy in the Erythro Thalassa, 30 B.c.-A.D. 217 (Leiden: Brill, 1986);
17. J. Thorley, "The Roman Empire and the Kushans," Greece and Rome 26, no. 2 (1979);
18. J. Thorley, "The Silk Trade between China and the Roman Empire at Its Height, circa A.D. 90-130," Greece and Rome 18, no. 1 (1987);
19. J. I. Miller, The Spice Trade of the Roman Empire, 29 B.C.-A.D. 641 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969);
20. F. de Romanis and A. Tchernia, Crossings: Early Mediterranean Contacts with India (New Delhi: Manohar, 1997);
21. W. Scheidel, ed., Rome and China: Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009);
22. G. K. Young, Rome's Eastern Trade: International Commerce and Imperial Policy, 31 BC-AD 305 (London: Routledge, 2001);
23. V. Begley and R. D. De Puma, Rome and India: The Ancient Sea Trade (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991);
24. Tomber, indo-Roman Trade; G. Woolf, "World-Systems Analysis and the Roman Empire," Journal of Roman Archaeology 3 (1990): 53. On Roman literary approaches to the geography of this zone,
25. see G. W. Bowersock, "The East-West Orientation of Mediterranean Studies and the Meaning of North and South in Antiquity," in Rethinking the Mediterranean, ed. W. V. Harris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 167-178.
26. J. F. Salles, paraphrasing David Whitehouse, "Review: Rome and India," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 25, no. i (1994): 106.
27. Young, Rome's Eastern Trade, p. 219. Young here echoes Raschke's judgement that "commercial motives" were "alien to the spirit of Roman government."
28. Raschke, "New Studies in Roman Commerce with the East," pp. 646-650.
29. J. Paterson, "Trade and Traders in the Roman World: Scale, Structure, and Organisation," in Trade, Traders and the Ancient City, ed. H. Parkins and C. H. Smith (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 157-158.
30. J. Paterson, "Trade and Traders in the Roman World: Scale, Structure, and Organisation," in Trade, Traders and the Ancient City Ibid., p. 150.
31. Casson, Periplus Maris Erythraei, p. 11. This chronology antedates by some five hundred years John Hobson's argument that "the West and East have been... interlinked through globalisation ever since 500 CE."
32. J. M. Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
33. Pliny the Elder, Natural Histories, XII:84. Raschke has characterized Pliny's figures as "the snare of the gullible and innocent"; however, his scepticism is not what it seems. Raschke continues "it is not my intention to deny that Rome had an adverse balance of trade with India."
34. See Raschke, "New Studies in Roman Commerce with the East," pp. 634-637. Richard Duncan-Jones argues that Rome's trade deficit was serviced with gold and other precious metals mined in Rome's provinces.
35. See R. Duncan-Jones, Money and Government in the Roman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 103-105.
36. P. Temin, "Estimating GDP in the Early Roman Republic," in Innovarione technica e progresso economico nel mondo Romano, ed. E. Lo Cascio (Rome: Edipuglia, 2007), pp. 31-54.
37. See, for example, N. K. Rauh, Merchants, Sailors and Pirates in the Roman World (Stroud: Tempus, 2003), p. 101.
38. Young, Rome's Eastern Trade, p. 25; P.
39. Veyne, "Rome devant la prétendue fuite de l'or: mercantilisme ou politique disciplinaire?" Annales 34, no. 2 (1979): 211-244.
40. For the classic statement of Stoicism's aversion to luxury, see Seneca, Epistles, 87. For Pliny's Stoicism,
41. see Mary Beagon's introduction to The Elder Pliny on the Human Animal: Natural History Book 7 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 15. On Strabo's links to Stoicism,
42. see D. Dueck, Strabo of Amasia: A Greek Man of Letters in Augustan Rome (New York: Routledge, 2000), pp. 62ff.
43. Seneca, De Vita Beata, 20, 22. For a pithy discussion of this,
44. see A. L. Motto, "Seneca on Trial: The Case of the Opulent Stoic," Classical Journal 61, no. 6 (1966): 254-258.
45. Pliny the Elder, Natural Histories, VI:26, XII:41.
46. Tacitus, Annals, 11:31. It is clear here that the debate between Octavius Fronto and G. Asinius Gallus was one on the morality, not the cost of luxuries obtained through the expansion of the empire.
47. Tacitus, Annals, 111:53.
48. Suetonius, Life of Caligula, 52. The link between silk and luxuria was an enduring one, with the third-century emperor Aurelian also apparently rebuking his wife for her yearnings for a garment that cost its weight in gold. See Vopiscus, Life of Aurelian, 45.
49. G. Parker, "Ex Oriente Luxuria: Indian Commodities and Roman Experience," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 45, no. 1 (2002): 40-95.
50. Young, Rome's Eastern Trade, p. 205.
51. M. G. Raschke, "Papyrological Evidence for Ptolemaic and Roman Trade with India," Proceedings of the XIV international Congress of Papyrologists (Oxford: British Academy, 1974), p. 245.
52. As Keith Hopkins and Peter Temin have shown, this wealth did not simply lay idle, but became part of a complex financial web between Rome and the provinces.
53. K. Hopkins, "Taxes and Trade in the Roman Empire (200 BC-AD 400)," Journal of Roman Studies 70 (1980): 101-125;
54. P. Temin, "Financial Intermediaries in the Early Roman Empire," Journal of Economic History 64 (2004): 726-727.
55. C. Howgego, "The Supply and Use of Money in the Roman World, 200 BC-AD 300," Journal of Roman Studies 82 (1992): 4-5.
56. Duncan-Jones, Money and Government in the Roman Empire, p. 21. Walter Scheidel offers the best figures on the relative purity of Roman coinage during different periods.
57. W Scheidel, "The Monetary Systems of the Han and Roman Empires," in Scheidel, Rome and China, pp. 170ff.
58. Duncan-Jones, Money and Government in the Roman Empire, pp. 103-105;
59. Scheidel, "Monetary Systems of the Han and Roman Empires," p. 179.
60. Ryan Geraghty argues that even in the period immediately prior to Augustus, senators "generated 200 times more income than a peasant's subsistence wages," which he explicitly links to economic opportunities presented by imperial expansion. See R. M. Geraghty, "The Impact of Globalization in the Roman Empire, 200 BC-AD 100," Journal of Economic History 67, no. 4 (2007): 1051-1052.
61. Raschke, "New Studies in Roman Commerce with the East," pp. 646-647.
62. Livy, Histories, XXI.63.
63. Plutarch, Cato the Elder, XXI:5-6,
64. W. V. Harris, "On War and Greed in the Second Century BC," American Historical Review 76, no. 5 (1971) : 1379.
65. M. W. Frederiksen, "Caesar, Cicero and the Problem of Debt," Journal of Roman Studies 56 (1966): 128-131. Frederiksen coyly suggested that "financial indebtedness and the whole complex of credit and loan which accompanied many a senatorial career, must have sometimes compromised a political position and tempered ideal convictions."
66. Cicero, Pro Lege Manilia, VII:19.
67. See also S. E. Smethurst, "Cicero and Roman Imperial Policy," Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 84 (1953): 216-226.
68. J. D'Arms, Commerce and Social Standing in Ancient Rome (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981).
69. Virgil, Aeneid, VIII:685ff. James Zetzel (in Saidian terms) describes this part of the shield as depicting the victory of "the West over the East, of order over disorder, of civilization over barbarism"; however, a far more straightforward material reading of this scene is equally plausible.
70. See J. E. G. Zetzel, "Natural Law and Poetic Justice: A Carneadean Debate in Cicero and Virgil," Classical Philohgy 91, no. 4 (1996): 309.
71. Virgil, Aeneid, VI:792. On the other Augustan writers and a desire for Eastern expansion,
72. see Sidebotham, Roman Economic Policy, pp. 139ff.
73. Cassius Dio, Histories, L:I;
74. Plutarch, Antony, 54-55
75. Cassius Dio, Histories, L:I6;
76. Plutarch, Antony, 61.
77. Florus, Abridgement of all the Wars over 1200 Years, 11:21:7, in
78. Cleopatra: A Sourcebook, P. J. Jones (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006), pp. 163-164.
79. Appian, Civil Wars, V:9.
80. Pliny, Natural Histories, VI:141, VL160. For Cornelius Gallus,
81. see F. Hoffman, M. Minas-Nerpal, and S. Pfeiffer, Die dreisprachige Stela des C. Cornelius Gallus (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), pp. 5ff. On Aelius Gallus in Arabia,
82. see G. W. Bowersock's judgment that "it is quite clear that Augustus had some kind of expansionist interest at that stage in controlling the rich trade in spices and perfumes."
83. G. W. Bowersock, "A Report on Arabia Provincia," Journal of Roman Studies 61 (1971): 227.
84. J. Schumpeter, Imperialism and Social Classes, trans. H. Norden (New York: August M. Kelley, 1951), pp. 83ff. On the application of Schumpeter to Roman imperialism,
85. see W. V. Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome, 327-70 BC (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979).
86. Raschke, "New Studies in Roman Commerce with the East," pp. 646-650. Raschke contended that although Roman aristocratic elites were heavily involved in trade, this did not affect their political or military decision making.
87. See esp. p. 648 n. 927.
88. Tacitus, Annals, VI: 16-17. Maria Jaczynowska has attempted to quarantine this usury to a subsection of the senatorial class ("the piscinarii") that she says "founded their riches on the profits from the provinces and different sources of income like money-speculation." At least for the imperial period, Tacitus is unequivocal that the practice is far more widespread.
89. M. Jacznowska, "The Economic Differentiation of the Roman Nobility at the End of the Republic," Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 11 (1962): 494.
90. Tacitus, Annals, VI: 19.
91. Pliny, Natural Histories, VI:84-91. For archaeological confirmation that the embassy to Claudius and the trip of Annius Plocamus's freedman to Taprobane were separated by some years,
92. see D. Meredith, "Annius Plocamus: Two Inscriptions from the Berenice Road," Journal of Roman Studies 43 (1953): 38-40;
93. Sidebotham, Roman Economic Policy, pp. 32-33. The comments on the wealth of Taprobane come in the context of Pliny railing once again against luxuria, but also in the context of a discussion of the trade that the island carried out with both the Roman world and China.
94. See Pliny, Natural Histories, VI:88-89.
95. Pliny, Natural Histories, VI:181.
96. W Schur, "Die Orientpolitik des Kaisers Nero," Klio (Beiheft) 15 (1923). For the movement of the trade network to the coast and its effects,
97. see D. A. Welsby, The Kingdom of Kush: The Napatan and Meroitic Empires (Princeton, N.J.: Markus Wiener, 1998), p. 70;
98. L. P. Kirwan, "Rome beyond the Southern Egyptian Frontier," Geographical Journal 123, no. 1 (1957): 13-19.
99. Tacitus, Histories, II:81.
100. Josephus, The Jewish War, VII:7.
101. F. Millar, The Roman Near East, 31 BC-AD 337 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 86-88.
102. Cassius Dio, Roman History, LXVIII: 14.
103. G. W. Bowersock, "A Report on Arabia Provincia," pp. 228fr.
104. W. Ball, Rome in the East: The Transformation of an Empire (New York: Routledge, 2001), pp. 198-200;
105. L. A. Bedal, The Petra Pool-Complex: A Hellenistic Paradeisos in the Nabataean Capital (New York: Gorgias Press, 2004), pp. 14-15. All cite numismatic evidence and the lack of the honorific "Arabicus" in Trajan's title to argue for a lack of a major campaign to incorporate the Nabataean territories.
106. On Trajan's conquest and Eastern trade, see J. Ferguson, "China and Rome," Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt II9, no. 2 (1978): 594. The period of Septimius Severus's expansion into the east lie outside of the purview of this article.
107. See Cassius Dio, Roman History, LXXVI:9-13.
108. Cassius Dio, Roman History, LXVIII:28-29.
109. Eutropius, Brevtarum, VIII:3. "In mari Rubro classem instuit, ut per eam Indiae fines vastaret."
110. That the aristocracy were involved in financing eastern trade does not alter the fact that this is nonstate private sector enterprise. See Casson, Periplus Maris Erythraei, pp. 32-33, esp. n. 50.
111. L. Casson, "Rome's Trade with the East: The Sea Voyage to Africa and India," Transactions of the Philological Association no (1980): 35.
112. Temin, "Financial Intermediaries in the Early Roman Empire," p. 720.
113. Howgego, "Supply and Use of Money in the Roman World," pp. 28-29.
114. See also W. V. Harris, "The Nature of Roman Money," in The Monetary Systems of the Greeks and the Romans, ed. W. V. Harris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 174-207;
115. S. Mrozec, "Zum Kreditgeld in der früher römischer Kaiserzeit," Historia 34 (1985): 310-323.
116. Temin, "Financial Intermediaries in the Early Roman Empire," p. 721.
117. Temin, Ibid., p. 723, contra Richard Duncan-Jones, who imputes an overwhelming "prejudice against trade and traders" under the Principate.
118. R. Duncan-Jones, Structure and Scale in the Roman Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 46-47.
119. C. Adams, Land Transport in Roman Egypt: A Study of Economics and Administration in a Roman Province (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 232-234.
120. Temin, "Financial Intermediaries in the Early Roman Empire," p. 728. Temin suggests that their role in shipping outlasted their role in taxation in the post-Republican period.
121. Tacitus, Annals, XIII;o.
122. See also Bang, "Trade and Empire," p. 30. For the 25 percent import duty,
123. See Raschke, "New Studies in Roman Commerce with the East," pp. 663-664;
124. Casson, Periplus Maris Erythraei, p. 145.
125. Manuel Tröster makes clear the importance of the grain route in the decision to suppress piracy, and that the corn prices tumbled simply with the naming of Pompey as the leader of the expedition.
126. M. Tröster, "Roman Hegemony and Non-State Violence: A Fresh Look at Pompey's Campaign against the Pirates," Greece and Rome 56, no. 1 (2009): 22ff.
127. Adams, Land Transport in Roman Egypt, pp. 233-234.
128. See, for example, A. G. Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998);
129. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony; D. Christian, "Silk Roads or Steppe Roads? The Silk Roads in World History," Journal of World History 11, no. 1 (2000): 1-26. More recently,
130. see Philippe Beaujard, "From Three Possible Iron-Age World-Systems to a Single Afro-Eurasian World-System," Journal of World History 21, no. 1 (2010): 1-43.
131. Christian, "Silk Roads or Steppe Roads?"
132. Yu Huan, "The Peoples of the West," from the Weilue, trans. J. E. Hill, http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/weilue/weilue.html (last viewed 20 December 2010).
133. F. Millar, "Looking East from the Classical World: Colonialism, Culture, and Trade from Alexander the Great to Shapur I," International History Review 20, no. 3 (1998): 507-531.
134. F. Millar, "Caravan Cities: The Roman Near East and Long Distance Trade by Land," in Modus Operandi: Essays in Honour of Geoffrey Rickman, ed. M. Austin et al. (London, 1998).
135. See also V. Begley, "Introduction," in Begley and De Puma, Rome and India, p. 3.
136. Thorley, "Silk Trade between China and the Roman Empire," pp. 71-80; 1.
137. A. Richmond, "Palmyra under the Aegis of Rome," Journal of Roman Studies 53 (1963): 43.
138. Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian: Han Dynasty II, trans. B. Watson (Hong Kong: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 235-236.
139. C. F. Schwitter and C. F. Cheng, "Bactrian Nickel and Chinese Bamboo," American Journal of Archaeology 66, no. 1 (1962): 87-92.
140. S. Cammann, "On the Attempts to Revive the Bactrian Nickel Theory," American Journal of Archaeology 66, no. 1 (1962): 92-94.
141. Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian, pp. 239-240.
142. J. E. Hill, trans., "The Western Regions according to the Hou Hanshu," 2nd ed., http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/hhshu/hou-han- shu.html (last viewed 20 December 2010).
143. For this dating, see Thorley, "Roman Empire and the Kushans," p. 183.
144. Yu, "The Peoples of the West."
145. Rauh, Merchants, Sailors and Pirates, p. 96.
146. This is consistent with Schaffer's understanding of the later role of India in global trade. See L. Scharfer, "Southernization," Journal of World History 5, no. 1 (1994): 1-21.
147. See Pliny, Natural History, VI:88. On the question of the balance of overland and sea trade, I. A. Richmond suggests that Palmyran silk came both overland from Bactria and via the oceanic route.
148. Richmond, "Palmyra under the Aegis of Rome," pp. 52-53. Any other heavier commodity may have been difficult to transport across Eurasia in profitable quantities.
149. Y. S. Yu, Trade and Expansion in Han China: A Study in the Structure of Sino-Barbarian Economic Relations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), pp. 173ff. One important study that has taken the commodities seriously is
150. J. I. Miller, The Spice Trade of the Roman Empire,
151. see esp. chap. 3.
152. Yu, Trade and Expansion in Han China, p. 175.
153. Casson, Periplus Maris Erythraei, pp. 6-7;
154. C. Robin, "The Date of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea in the Light of South Arabian Evidence," in de Romanis and Tchernia, Crossings: Early Mediterranean Contacts with India, pp. 41-65.
155. B. K. Gills and A. G. Frank, "World System Cycles, Crises, and Hegemonic Shifts, 1700 BC to 1700 AD," in Frank and Gills, World System, pp. 164-167. Greg Woolf, following Immanuel Wallerstein, has declared "it remains to be proven that world-economies were at all significant in their effect before the 15th c. AD." Woolf, "World-Systems Analysis and the Roman Empire," p. 54. Given Wallerstein's work is hardwired with Polanyi's and Fin-ley's understanding of antique economics, it is perhaps not surprising that Wallerstein's and subsequently Woolf s sense of a world system does not fit the Roman case.
156. See Woolf, p. 47.
157. X. Liu, Ancient India and Ancient China: Trade and Religious Exchanges AD 1-600 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 31. Although Gills and Frank read these "A" and "B" phases as part of an overarching world system that continues over five thousand years, it is more likely that Janet Abu-Lughod is correct in viewing the Red Sea trade of the era of the Periplus as constituting in and of itself a discrete world system, one that was not renewed through successive cycles of "A" and "B" phases but replaced by later world systems.
158. See Gills and Frank, "World System Cycles," pp. 167-174;
159. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony, p. 43. On the persistence of Roman trade with India
160. see R. Tomber, "Rome and Mesopotamia - Importers into India in the First Millenium AD," Antiquity 81 (2007): 979.
161. F. Chami, "Roman Beads from the Rufiji Delta, Tanzania: First incontrovertible Archaeological Link with the Periplus," Current Anthropology 40, no. 2 (1999): 237-241.
162. Periplus, 16.
163. For representative positions on the question of trans-Saharan trade, see the enthusiastic R. C. C. Law, "The Garamantes and Trans-Saharan Enterprise in Classical Times," Journal of African History 8, no. 2 (1967): 181-200;
164. Pekka Masonen's "Trans-Saharan Trade and the West African Discovery of the Mediterranean," in Ethnic Encounter and Culture Change, ed. M. Sabour and K. S. Vikør (London: Hurst, 1997), pp. 116-142;
165. and the more skeptical J. T. Swanson, "The Myth of Trans-Saharan Trade during the Roman Era," International Journal of African Historical Studies 8, no. 4 (1975): 582-600;
166. T F. Garrard, "Myth and Metrology: The Early Trans-Saharan Gold Trade," Journal of African History 23, no. 4 (1982): 443-461.
167. Casson, "Rome's Trade with the East," pp. 21-36.
168. Rauh erroneously views this barter trade as constituting the predominant share of Roman Indian Ocean trade. Rauh, Merchants, Sailors and Pirates, p. 102.
169. Casson, Periplus Maris Erythraei, pp. 29-31.
170. Thorley, "Roman Empire and the Kushans," p. 184.
171. M. Vickers, "Nabataea, India, Gaul, and Carthage: Reflections on Hellenistic and Roman Gold Vessels and Red-Gloss Pottery," American Journal of Archaeology 98 (1994): 242.
172. See also E. Lo Caseio, "State and Coinage in the Late Republic and Early Empire," Journal of Roman Studies 81 (1980:82.
173. Periplus, 49.
174. E. Lo Caseio, "State and Coinage in the Late Republic and Early Empire, Ibid., 48-49.
175. Ibid., 56.
176. Ibid., 64-66.
177. The best versions of this hermetically sealed Roman economy model include Hopkins, "Taxes and Trade in the Roman Empire," pp. 101-125;
178. and Geraghty, "Impact of Globalization in the Roman Empire."
179. Pliny, Natural History, VI:89.
180. Augustus, Res Gestae, 31;
181. Dio Chrysostom, Discourses, 32.40;
182. Xenophon Ephesus, Ephesian Tales, III: 11.
183. Periplus, 26.
184. J. Whitewright, "Roman Rigging Material from the Red Sea Port of Myos Hormos," International Journal of Nautical Archaeology 36, no. 2 (2007): 290.
185. Raschke, "Papyrological Evidence," pp. 241-243,
186. contra R. Salomon, "Epigraphic Remains of Indian Traders in Egypt," Journal of the American Oriental Society in, no. 4 (1991): 731-736.
187. R. Tomber, "Indo-Roman Trade: The Ceramic Evidence from Egypt," Antiquity 74 (2000): 630.
188. Whitewright, "Roman Rigging Material," pp. 290-291.
189. S. E. Sidebotham, M. Hense, and H. M. Nouwens, The Red Land: The Illustrated Archaeology of Egypt's Eastern Desert (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2008), pp. 189-192.
190. Raschke, "New Studies in Roman Commerce with the East," p. 645.
191. Thapar, "The Image of the Barbarian in Early India," Comparative Studies in Society and History 13, no. 4 (1971): 419-420.
192. K. V. Zvelebil, The Smile of Murugan (Leiden, 1973), p. 35;
193. Rauh, Merchants, Sailors and Pirates, p. 101.
194. Kanakasabai, cited in Vickers, "Nabataea, India, Gaul, and Carthage," pp. 242-243.
195. F. de Romanis, "Rome and the Nótia of India: Relations between Rome and Southern India from 30 BC to the Flavian Period," in de Romanis and Tchernia, Crossings: Early Mediterranean Contacts with India, pp. 107-108.
196. V. Begley, "Arikamedu Reconsidered," American Journal of Archaeology 87, no. 4 (1983): 479-480, 481.
197. See also L. Gorelick and A. J. Gwinnet, "Diamonds from India to Rome and Beyond," American Journal of Archaeology 92, no. 4 (1988): 547-552.
198. Sidebotham, Hense, and Nouwens, The Red Land, pp. 178-182.
199. See also W. Z. Wendrich, R. S. Tomber, S. E. Sidebotham, J. A. Harrell, R. T. J. Cappers, and R. S. Bagnall, "Berenike Crossroads: The Integration of Information," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 46, no. 1 (2003): 59-62.
200. See also Sidebotham and Wendrich's sixvolume edited series Berenike (Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Publications, 2007;
201. Leiden: CNWS Special Series, 1995, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2001).
202. K. P. Shajan, P. J. Cherian, R. Tomber, and V. Selvakumar, "The External Connections of Early Historic Pattanam, India: The Ceramic Evidence," Antiquity 82, no. 315 (2008), Project Gallery, http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/tomber/index.html (last viewed 20 December 2010).
203. See also P. J. Cherian, G. V. R. Prasad, K. Dutta, D. K. Ray, V. Selvakumar, and K. P. Shajan, "Chronology of Pattanam: A Multicultural Port Site on the Malabar Coast," Current Science 97, no. 2 (2009): 236-240.
204. A. S. Gaur, Sundaresh, and S. Triparti, "Evidence for Indo-Roman Trade from Bet Dwarka Waters, West Coast of India," international Journal of Nautical Archaeology 35, no. 1 (2006): 120.
205. Exceptions to this include yellow peridot and the mineral realgar used for paint pigment and medicine. See Wendrich et al., "Berenike Crossroads," pp. 53-56.
206. Periplus, 16.
207. See also D. Whitehouse, "Epilogue: Roman Trade in Perspective," in Begley and De Puma, Rome and India, p. 216.
208. Periplus, 21.
209. Strabo, Geography, XVI:4:22. For details of the expedition
210. see G. W. Bowersock, Roman Arabia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 47ff.
211. Young, Rome's Eastern Trade, p. 17.
212. Pliny, Natural Histories, 12:41.
213. See also Young, Rome's Eastern Trade, pp. 16-17.
214. Contra Pliny, Young correctly argues that incense should not be considered a "luxury" item, as it was not prohibitively expensive in small quantities to many Romans, who would have considered it a necessity for religious observance.
215. G. F. Hourani, "Did Roman Commercial Competition Ruin South Arabia?" Journal of Near Eastern Studies 11, no. 4(1952): 291-295.
216. Strabo, Geography, 11:5:12.
217. Periplus, 26.
218. On the controversy over this, see Casson, Periplus Maris Erythraei, p. 160.
219. Sidebotham, Roman Economic Policy, p. 140.
220. Sidebotham, Ibid., p. 139.
221. A. F. L Beeston, "Some Observations on Greek and Latin Data Relating to South Arabia," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 42, no. 1 (1979): 10.
222. K. W. Butzer, "Rise and Fall of Axum, Ethiopia: A Geo-Archaeological Interpretation," American Antiquity 46, no. 3 (1981): 472-473;
223. J. Phillips, "Punt and Aksum: Egypt and the Horn of Africa," Journal of African History 38, no. 3 (1997): 449-452.
224. Periplus, 5.
225. J. Thorley, "The Development of Trade between the Roman Empire and the East under Augustus," Greece and Rome, 2nd ser., 16, no. 2 (1969): 211;
226. Phillips, "Punt and Aksum," p. 450.
227. Phillips, "Punt and Aksum," p. 450.
228. S. E. Sidebotham, "Ports of the Red Sea and the Arabia-India Trade,"' in Begley and De Puma, Rome and India, p. 15.
229. Consider the salutary effects of Trajan's Dacian campaigns on the Roman economy. See Cassius Dio, Histories, 68:14.
230. See also M. Griffin, "Nerva to Hadrian," in The Cambridge Ancient History Vol IX: The High Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 114.
231. John Thorley explicitly links the proceeds of this war to an increase in trade with the Kushan empire. Thorley, "Roman Empire and the Kushans," pp. 184-185.
232. See Hopkins, "Taxes and Trade in the Roman Empire," and Geraghty, "Impact of Globalization in the Roman Empire."
233. W. Schmitthenner, "Rome and India: Aspects of Universal History during the Principate," Journal of Roman Studies 69 (1979).
234. Polybius 1:3
235. cited in Schmitthenner, "Rome and India," p. 90.
236. Salles acutely points out that examples such as the Phoenicians demonstrate that geopolitical power and economic preponderance were not necessarily interrelated. See Salles, "Review: Rome and India," p. 104 n. 2.