Cities and the Economy

The vast majority of the cities of the empire supported themselves through the fruits of local agriculture, either brought in directly for sale or transferred from the landed estates of the elite into building programmes. (The second-century ad physician Galen mentions how, in times of famine, raiders from the city would strip the countryside bare.) A few benefited directly as sea or river ports from the increase in trade that the pax Romana brought to the empire (see further below). The commercial city able to maintain itself from trade or industry alone was unknown although some cities such as Aquileia in the northern Adriatic gained substantial wealth as an entrepot for trade (in this case from northern Europe). One can still walk along

The excavated dockside at Aquileia and see where boats were tied up to be unloaded. Major wharves have been discovered on the banks of the Thames at London and on the Rhine at Vetera, the modern Xanten.

No city had a more artificial economic status than Rome, with its population of over a million by the time of Augustus. Rome fulfilled many roles beyond that of the purely administrative. It was the showcase of the empire, its monumental buildings deeply embedded in ancient rituals and enduring reminders of its great emperors and many victories. The contentment of its volatile population required the importing of an estimated 190,000 tonnes of grain a year. Wheat was preferred to the less nutritious barley. Olive oil was also important. The discarded oil amphorae still heaped up beside the Tiber, the Monte Testaccio, number an estimated 65 million. Although the city was supplied through private enterprise, at first from grain surpluses in Italy and Sicily, the emperors came to exercise substantial control over the process of supply, even providing the surplus of their own estates. The grain of Egypt, the emperor’s personal province, was increasingly drawn on with the grain being collected from peasant farmers directly as tax. (Alexandria became the most important exporting centre of the empire.)

With so much grain coming to Rome from across the Mediterranean, a major problem was finding carriers and, as has been seen, Claudius showed his pragmatic approach to such matters by offering citizenship or exemption from tax to those who signed six-year contracts to bring ship loads of at least 70 tonnes of wheat each year. In Hadrian’s day the corn traders could gain exemption from other public duties. In Rome itself a praefectus annonae had overall supervision of supplies but the emperors also played a major role in developing the port of Ostia. Originally Ostia had been a river port but its frontage was too small to take the number and size of ships now required to supply Rome so under Claudius and then Trajan a seaport (Portus) was constructed and this eventually became the focus of commercial activities. By the middle of the second century Ostia had a population of some 50,000 and its mass of merchants, shipowners, trade associations, and supporting clerical staff made it one of the few ‘middle-class’ cities of the empire. Its Square of the Guilds has mosaics illustrating its main trades, rope makers, tanners, timber merchants, and shipowners among them. There is even a record of an elephant importer! Aerial surveys suggest that a canal ran alongside the Tiber to prevent traffic jams for goods on the way to Rome.

The relationship between cities, such as Rome, and local economies elsewhere can be explored through north Africa, another part of the empire that helped sustain Rome through its grain and other produce. As the Romans incorporated the Carthaginian territories and client states into the empire, the land was surveyed and divided into plots. Surveys of surviving Roman milestones show that 19,200 kilometres of roads were built. As elsewhere, the basis of Africa’s wealth was agricultural, predominantly olives and grain. The region had more rainfall in winter and a more stable climate in summer than today and yields were high so that farmers were left with a healthy surplus. The hungry population of Rome was a short voyage away across the Mediterranean with Carthage, now refounded as a Roman city,

Acting as the connecting port with Ostia. (Shipowners from Carthage are notable in inscriptions in Ostia itself.) Africa was also an important source of marble. (Particularly favoured was the veined yellow and red marble from Smitthu in Numidia, used, for instance, in the Pantheon.) From the second century bc African pottery was also sold throughout the empire.

The overall effect of the incoming wealth was to stimulate and sustain a large number of towns. In origin these were a mix of ancient Phoenician cities, Roman garrison towns, citizen colonies, and local market towns (many of whom were to be given the status of a municipium). In what is now northern Tunisia there were some 200 towns at an average distance from each other of only 10 kilometres. A typical population of one of the north African cities might be between 5,000 and 15,000. About a dozen had a population of over 20,000 (the rebuilt Carthage may have had 100,000, Leptis Magna 80,000). The remains of these cities, with their theatres, temples (often dedicated to the Roman pantheon, Juno, Jupiter, and Minerva), triumphal arches, and gateways still scattering the landscape, attest to the success of the Romans in creating a common imperial culture even if, ultimately, all this prosperity rested on exploiting the artificial ‘pull’ of Rome. (Susan Raven, Rome in Africa, 3rd edition, London and New York, 1993, still provides a good introduction, while Philip Kenrick is providing up-to-date surveys on Libyan sites.)

A good example of a small port growing prosperous on the fruits of agriculture and associated products is Pompeii on the Bay of Naples. The city was destroyed in August AD 79 by a colossal eruption of the volcano Vesuvius. Much was preserved under the ash and it has been possible to piece together the details of almost every aspect of social and economic life in the city. It makes an excellent case study. (See Mary Beard, Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town, London, 2008; Paul Roberts, Life and Death in Pompeii and Herculaneum, London, 2013; and Joanne Berry, The Complete Pompeii, London and New York, 2007.)

The wealth of Pompeii originated in the surrounding countryside of Campania and came predominantly from wine and olive oil. By the mid-first century ad woolprocessing was also an expanding industry with raw wool being brought down from the Samnite highlands for treatment in the city. As the most important port (now silted up as the coastline receded) of its stretch of the coastline Pompeii was ideally placed to export these goods throughout the Mediterranean, and wine amphorae from the town have been found in France. Business must also have benefited from the local villas of the rich with all their needs for building materials and other supplies. What industry there was in Pompeii was related to the marketing of agricultural goods. Pottery production, for instance, centred on the amphorae in which wine, oil, and other local produce could be exported. At the time the city was destroyed, however, there are some indications that its traditional export markets were declining as provincials began developing their own vineyards and making their own pottery. The reversal in trading relationships has been demonstrated in Pompeii by a crate of imported red-gloss pottery arrived from southern Gaul just before the eruption. There is no better place to plot the economics of everyday life in the food shops, taverns, and brothels that made up the typical provincial Roman

Fig. 9 House of the Dancing Faun, Pompeii. This, the largest house so far excavated in Pompeii (1830-2), occupied a whole block (insula) in the town. It dates from the second century bc and preserved its original opulent decoration of that date. The front of the house was occupied by shops (1-4). The visitor entered over a mosaiced pavement at A into an atrium (B) where the statue of the Faun stood. If on business, the visitor would meet the owner of the house in the tablinum (D). The tablinum looked out over the peristyle (G) and had a dining room either side (E and F) with two further dining rooms (J and I) off this first peristyle. Between these two was the famous mosaic of Alexander at the Battle of Issus (100 bc). Such is its quality that some believe an ancestor of the owner must have fought in the battle. The house is unusual in having servants’ quarters around a secondary atrium (b) with a subsidiary entrance (a) and a passage (m) along which the servants could move without disturbing the owners. A kitchen was at M. Finally there was a large second peristyle (K) with quarters for the gardener (q) and keeper of the back door (r).

City. (There remain mysteries. The insides of the storage jars found embedded in counters in the taverns are not glazed so could not have held liquid. So what was sold from them? The only produce actually found in any is walnuts!)

If north Africa showed how a large region could benefit from access to Rome and the wider Mediterranean economy, the army also had its own economic impact. Soldiers were comparatively well paid and there could be several thousand men in a single garrison, such as Vetera on the Rhine. It has been estimated that the agricultural surplus of the surrounding farmlands of the northern border could meet only half of the legions’ food needs. So there were lucrative commercial opportunities to be had for importers, and evidence from the sprawling townships that emerged near the camps suggests that traders were attracted from far afield. On the forts along the Rhine and Danube, the remains of luxury goods, fine tableware from Italy and Gaul, spices from the east, and exotic glassware from Egypt, have been found. Legionaries often kept their families in the townships and in some cases went to live in them when they retired. Although some of the townships appear to have developed their own form of government (complete with magistrates) they normally remained subject to the camp. On occasions a township might be fortified by the legion but there were instances (at Vetera, during the revolt of Julius Civilis, for instance) when a township was razed by the legions to prevent it being used as a base by insurgents.