There is considerable debate about whether the Roman economy experienced ‘‘growth’’ as that concept is understood in modern economics (Hopkins 1978d; P. Millett 2001; Saller 2002). Growth is normally defined, in modern textbooks, as the process whereby a community increases its wealth in a manner that is sustained through time and that is generally linked to a per capita rise in production of goods and services (L. G. Reynolds 1986). Aggregate increase in production is not true economic growth if it is simply the product of a commensurate increase in population, with per capita productivity remaining the same. The non-survival of detailed census records and historical documents on productivity from antiquity constrains our ability to answer the question conclusively. Nonetheless, for the Roman world, the evidence seems far stronger for the very end of the republic and the early principate (100 bce-200 ce), for which there is strong archaeological evidence for growth in sectors of the rural economy (Hitchner 1993) and a rise in Mediterranean shipping, urban manufacturing, and the non-agricultural sector of the economy (P. Millett 2001: 31-5).
Although it was very large in scale and advanced in some respects by the standards of other pre-industrial societies, the Roman economy was unlike the sophisticated capitalist systems of modern times. Indeed, it has been argued that Rome practiced a form of‘‘political capitalism,’’ rather than ‘‘mercantile or rational capitalism’’ (Love 1991). In contrast, Rostovtzeff’s classic study (1957) was typical of a simplistic tendency at one time to equate the Roman economy with modern economic behavior, which led to Finley’s scholarly reaction. The issues are still much debated, but the current consensus is now shifting somewhat away from the extreme position taken by Finley, with an increasing recognition that economic growth was achieved in some regions of the Roman Empire and that the overall scale of economic activity, increasingly demonstrable by archaeological data, was significantly higher than that achieved in most pre-industrial societies (P. Millett 2001: 31). Whilst Roman economic concepts and structures were different from modern ones, that does not necessarily justify characterizing them as primitive or underdeveloped. By the standards of preindustrial societies, the Roman economy was vast in scale and surprisingly sophisticated in many of its practices. There are indications in papyri, for instance, that economic rationalism underlay some complex accounting processes (Kehoe 1992; Rathbone 1991). Impressive levels of management can also be traced in areas of craft production (Aubert 1994; see also various studies in Harris 1993a). The Roman economy involved the interplay of rural and urban production, the exploitation of labor (including a significant level of slavery within Italy), and the infrastructures of exchange.
Some measure of the scale of the Roman economy can be gauged from estimates of the cost of running the empire. In the mid-second century ce, Duncan-Jones (1994: 33-46, esp. table 3.7) estimates this at between 832-983 million sesterces (roughly 1,000 times the minimum senatorial census requirement). According to Duncan-Jones, 72-77 percent went to the army, though he probably underestimates the costs of ornamenting and feeding the city of Rome. The ultimate success of the Roman economy was that the state did not have to bleed the provinces dry to meet this level of expenditure (on taxation, Duncan-Jones 1990: 187-210). The development of cities, consumption of manufactured and imported goods, and the rise of regional elites into positions ofpower in the imperial service all attest to the generation oflocal wealth in many provinces. The effects were uneven and we can track a shift in economic power over time - for instance, to Africa by the late second century ce (Mattingly and Hitchner 1995: 198-204).
Another approach to the scale of the economy is to take the astonishing figure of 50-100 million sesterces given by Pliny for the annual cost of imports into the empire from Arabia, India, and China (Nat. 6.101; 12.84). Research in India and on the Red Sea coast is offering support for the strength of these trade links (de Romanis and Tchernia 1997).
World History
