The value of Indian imports entering the Roman Empire is a more significant issue. The six commodities removed from the Hermapollon were valued at over 9 million sesterces by Roman customs agents.41 This was not the entire cargo since the ship was probably carrying parcels of lightweight pearls, gemstones and silk. A million sesterces would purchase 160 of the finest pearls, or perhaps 3,000 large gemstones.42 So the total value of the Hermapollon'’s cargo was probably more than 10 million sesterces. This is significant because the Roman Empire took a quarter of this figure as customs tax.
The Hermapollon's cargo can be used to suggest the overall value of goods from India entering the Empire. Assuming there were 120 ships in the merchant fleet, then Egypt would be receiving: 556 million sesterces worth of pepper and cotton, 158 million sesterces worth of malabathrum and other spices, 32 million sesterces of nard, 60 million sesterces of ivory and 18 million sesterces of turtle-shell.43 Customs agents imposed quarter-rate taxes on all these imports, so the Roman regime could receive enormous annual revenues from this commerce.
A fleet of 120 Roman ships, each carrying a cargo worth approximately 9 million sesterces, would have added over 1,000 million sesterces to Mediterranean commerce every year.44 That is a billion sesterces of goods from India, just from this one aspect of eastern commerce. This trade figure is larger than the annual income that the Roman government needed to sustain its entire
Empire.45
The whole merchant fleet could have been importing over 26,000 tons of eastern goods per annum.46 This quantity of cargo is similar to the size of the grain-dole that Alexandria sent to Rome (29,000 tons). There were over 45 million people living in the Roman Empire, so 26,000 tons of Indian imports is not a large figure. This represents an average of just over 1 pound of product per Roman subject.
World History
