Roman commerce

• 1. Introduction

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  Roman commerce kept the Roman world running, and it mattered most from the later Republic through most of the imperial age. Popular retellings favor Latin, the common tongue of the empire, and the exploits of the legions. Yet the language and the army both rested on trade, which formed part of their backbone. One argument holds that the Romans were businessmen at heart, and that commerce explains how long their empire lasted. That claim raises several puzzles. Who did the daily buying, selling and lending? Why were senators officially discouraged from trade when so many of them took part? How did bulky goods travel across a world of limited roads? And how far east did Roman merchants really go?

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• 2. Traders and Bankers

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  The negotiatores of Rome were part merchant and part banker. They lent money at interest, and they bought and sold staples in bulk, dealing in wholesale quantities. Beside them worked the argentarii. These agents handled public and private auctions, held money on deposit for individuals, changed currency, and cashed cheques called prescriptiones. Sources sometimes treat the argentarii as a subset of the negotiatores and sometimes as a separate group.

  The mensarii were public bankers appointed by the state, and the argentarii sometimes did much the same work. The argentarii kept strict account books called tabulae, and the courts treated these as legal proof. The arithmetic ran on counting boards and the Roman abacus. Because the abacus used Roman numerals, it suited Roman currency and Roman measures well.

  The mercatores sat at the retail end of the system. They were usually plebeians or freedmen, and they staffed stalls in open-air markets and covered shops. Others hawked goods by the roadside. During campaigns they gathered near Roman military camps, selling food and clothing to soldiers and paying cash for any booty the soldiers brought back.

  Jewish sources from around the 3rd century AD describe itinerant pedlars in Roman Palestine, called rochel. They carried spices and perfumes to the rural population. That detail suggests the economic benefits of the empire reached at least the upper levels of the peasantry. The hardest labor behind all these stalls and ledgers, however, fell mostly to people who owned none of the goods they handled.

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• 3. Slaves and Status

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  Members of the equestrian order ran businesses even though their upper-class values prized military pursuits and leisure. Below them, plebeians and freedmen kept shops or manned market stalls. Vast numbers of slaves did most of the hard physical work. Slaves were also bought and sold, so they were themselves a commodity in the trade they powered.

  Slavery gave Roman commerce a distinct flavor. Slaves probably made up a larger share of society than in Classical Greece. Runaways were a constant reality, and the Servile Wars and several minor uprisings showed how fragile the arrangement could be.

  The majority of people in the empire lived in rural areas. Only a small part of the population engaged in commerce, and those people were much poorer than the elite. Industrial output stayed quite low, because the poor majority could not afford manufactured goods. That weakness held back technological advance. Slaves, rather than machines, supplied most of the productive effort, and urbanization in the western half of the empire remained limited.

  The senators at the top of this order had the most tangled relationship with trade of anyone.

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• 4. Honor and Guilt

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  The Lex Claudia of 218 BC, mentioned by Livy, barred senators and their sons from owning a ship larger than 300 amphorae in capacity, about seven tons. Senators were evidently still trading, because Cicero cites this law while attacking Verres. Yet he makes no move to charge him.

  Smaller ships remained legal for senators. Cato, advising where to build a farm, recommends a site near an accessible river, road or port so that goods can be moved. That advice sits awkwardly beside Livy's claim that every trading profit was dishonorable for a senator. Senators also used free and enslaved agents as a loophole, which let them diversify their income despite the rules.

  Wealth itself was never frowned upon. Pliny says a Roman man should build a large fortune by honorable means, and Polybius compares Carthaginian and Roman attitudes toward trading profit. Terence goes further. In his view, importing large quantities of goods from around the world is fully honorable, especially when the successful trader then buys land and invests in Roman agriculture. Small-scale trade is the dishonorable kind. Tacitus reinforces the point by describing Sempronius Gracchus's dealings in petty trade as vulgar.

  Cato himself took part in trade while warning others that it was risky. That risk may explain the exclusion of senators. A disaster at sea could push a senator below the financial threshold for his rank, while land was a far safer investment. Plutarch describes how Cato ran his business through a proxy, a freedman named Quintio, who managed a group of fifty other men.

  The restriction on senators was first passed through the tribune of the plebeians, a class the rules would never touch. Some suspect the equites and other wealthy merchants were trying to push senators out of a rapidly expanding business.

  Trade had its own god, and he was a forgiving one. Mercury began as the deity of the mercatores and the grain trade, and he eventually watched over everyone in commerce. On the Mercuralia, the 14th of May, a Roman merchant performed the proper rituals. He asked Mercury to lift from him and his belongings the guilt of all the cheating he had done to customers and suppliers.

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• 5. Markets and Measures

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  The Forum Cuppedinis in ancient Rome offered general goods to shoppers. At least four other large markets specialized in cattle, wine, fish, and herbs and vegetables. Even so, the Roman Forum drew the bulk of the traffic.

  Timgad shows how new Roman cities were planned. Like the others, it was laid out on an orthogonal grid that made transport and commerce easier, and good roads linked these cities together. Navigable rivers were used extensively and some canals were dug, but they leave fewer clear archaeological traces than roads, so their role tends to be underestimated. Peace mattered enormously. Settlements, especially small ones, could be placed in economically sensible spots. Before and after the empire, small settlements preferred hilltop defensive positions, and piracy made coastal living hazardous for all but the largest cities.

  By the 1st century, the provinces were trading huge volumes of commodities with one another by sea. Regions increasingly specialized, particularly in manufacturing, agriculture and mining. Egypt and North Africa produced grain, while Italy, Hispania and Greece supplied wine and olive oil.

  A standard jar, the amphora capitolina, sat in the temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill so that other containers could be checked against it. Roman measurement grew out of the Greek system with Egyptian influences, and much of it was based on weight. The units were accurate and well documented, and government agents measured distances and inscribed them systematically on stone. Currency was fairly standard, stable and abundant up to about 200 AD, which also helped trade. Egypt kept its own currency in this period, and some provincial cities issued their own coins.

  Knowledge of the Roman economy remains extremely patchy, because most traded goods were agricultural and leave no direct remains. Wine, olive oil and garum, a fermented fish sauce, are exceptions, since their amphorae survive. The trade in kipi, a stiff quince jam from Syria, is known from a single reference. At Berenice, evidence survives of long-distance trade in black pepper, almonds, hazelnuts, stone pine cones, walnuts, coconuts, apricots and peaches, alongside the more expected figs, raisins and dates.

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• 6. Sea and River Routes

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  The river Tiber carried regular commerce even in the days of the Roman Kingdom, before the Republic existed. Before the Punic Wars completely changed Mediterranean commerce, the Republic traded extensively with its rival Carthage. It signed several commercial and political agreements with that city and also engaged in simple retail trade.

  Monte Testaccio at Rome is a tribute to the scale of later maritime trade. Harbors, moles, warehouses and lighthouses survive at Civitavecchia, Ostia, Portus, Leptis Magna and Caesarea Maritima. Together with ancient manuscripts, they point to vast commercial fleets.

  Sea freight cost sixty times less than land transport. For that reason, bulky and low-value goods such as grain and construction materials moved only by sea. Roman roads were designed more for feet and hooves than for wheels, and most land trade went by pack mule, so long hauls by road were uneconomical.

  Roman merchant ships brought no significant advances over Greek ships of earlier centuries. They were round-hulled sailing vessels, though lead sheeting to protect hulls seems to have become more common. Such ships would have been easy prey for pirates. The liburna galleys and triremes of the Roman navy prevented this, and several centuries of continuous naval patrol of the Mediterranean were one of the main reasons Roman commerce succeeded.

  Cereals for bread and papyrus scrolls for making books flowed from Ptolemaic Egypt to Italy in a continuous stream. The same Egyptian coast would soon become the starting point for much longer voyages.

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• 7. Eastern Horizons

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  Alexander the Great had conquered as far as India, and the god Bacchus was said to have traveled there too. To the Romans, the Far East was as mysterious as sub-Saharan Africa. Augustus had an Indian in his retinue and received embassies from India. One met him in Spain in 25 BC, and another reached him at Samos in 20 BC.

  Trade across the Indian Ocean blossomed in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. Sailors rode the monsoon from Berenice, Leukos Limen and Myos Hormos on the Red Sea coast of Roman Egypt. They landed at Muziris and Nelkynda on the Malabar coast. Their main partners in southern India were the Tamil dynasties of the Pandyas, Cholas and Cheras. The Greek work Periplus of the Erythraean Sea describes the ports and goods of this trade in meticulous detail. Roman artifacts have turned up at Arikamedu in Puducherry, and hoards of Roman coins have been found across southern India.

  From India, Rome imported spices such as pepper, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon and sandalwood. Gems arrived too, including pearls, rubies, diamonds and emeralds, along with ivory. Romans paid in silver and gold. In Latin texts, the word Indi covered all Asians, whether Indian or from farther away.

  Ptolemy's Geography roughly maps Southeast Asia, labeling the land beside the Magnus Sinus as the Sinae. Its port city of Cattigara, beyond the Golden Chersonese, was allegedly visited by a Greek sailor named Alexander. It may well have been the ancient settlement at Oc Eo in Vietnam. There, archaeologists found Roman medallions from the reigns of Antoninus Pius (138-161) and Marcus Aurelius (161-180).

  Chinese records for the year 166 seem tied to this activity. The Weilue and the Book of Later Han say an embassy from Daqin, meaning the Roman Empire, sent by a ruler called An Dun, landed in the southern province of Jiaozhi. It presented tributary gifts to Emperor Huan of Han. Rafe de Crespigny and Warwick Ball contend these visitors were most likely merchants rather than diplomats, since Roman sources never mention the event.

  Sixteen Roman coins from the reigns of Tiberius (14-37 AD) to Aurelian (270-275 AD) have been found at Xi'an in China. They predate the larger number of Byzantine coins from the 4th century onward. Far more Roman coins have turned up in India, which suggests Romans bought most of their Chinese silk there. Silk also reached Rome overland along the Silk Road through Parthian and other intermediaries. Still, the spice trade mattered more to the Roman economy than silk. From the 3rd century, the Chinese text Weilüe set out the products of the Roman Empire and the routes leading to it.

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