Quod Omnium Nationum Exterarum Princeps Sicilia
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Quod omnium nationum exterarum princeps Sicilia A reappraisal of the socio-economic history of Sicily under the Roman Republic, 241-44 B.C. Master’s thesis Tom Grijspaardt 4012658 RMA Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Studies Track: Ancient Studies Utrecht University Thesis presented: June 20th 2017 Supervisor: prof. dr. L.V. Rutgers Second reader: dr. R. Strootman Contents Introduction 4 Aims and Motivation 4 Structure 6 Chapter I: Establishing a methodological and interpretative framework 7 I.1. Historiography, problems and critical analysis 7 I.1a.The study of ancient economies 7 I.1b. The study of Republican Sicily 17 I.1c. Recent developments 19 I.2. Methodological framework 22 I.2a. Balance of the sources 22 I.2b. Re-embedding the economy 24 I.3. Interpretative framework 26 I.3a. Food and ideology 27 I.3b. Mechanisms of non-market exchange 29 I.3c. The plurality of ancient economies 32 I.4. Conclusion 38 Chapter II. Archaeology of the Economy 40 II.1. Preliminaries 40 II.1a. On survey archaeology 40 II.1b. Selection of case-studies 41 II.2. The Carthaginian West 43 II.2a. Segesta 43 II.2b. Iatas 45 II.2c. Heraclea Minoa 47 II.2d. Lilybaeum 50 II.3. The Greek East 53 II.3a. Centuripe 53 II.3b. Tyndaris 56 II.3c. Morgantina 60 II.3d. Halasea 61 II.4. Agriculture 64 II.4a. Climate and agricultural stability 64 II.4b. On crops and yields 67 II.4c. On productivity and animals 70 II.5. Non-agricultural production and commerce 72 II.6. Conclusion 74 Chapter III. Initial Conquest (241-210 B.C.) 75 III.1. Political context 75 2 III.1a. The First Punic War 75 III.1b. The interwar period 76 III.2. On tribute 77 III.3. The Sicilian economy during the interwar period 79 III.3a. Settlement, cities and agriculture 79 III.3b. Commerce 83 III.4. Conclusion 85 Chapter IV. A Roman province (210-100 B.C.) 86 IV.1. Political context 86 IV.2. The Sicilian economy between literature and archaeology 88 IV.2a. The nature of agriculture 88 IV.2b. Slavery and the economy 94 IV.3. The politicization of food in the Republic 97 IV.3a. The struggle over Italian land 97 IV.3b. Sicilian grain for Roman soldiers 100 IV.3c. Sicilian grain for Roman citizens 101 IV.4. The Lex Hieronica 102 IV.4a. Collection 102 IV.4b. Effects on agriculture 104 IV.4c. Trade and shipping 106 IV.5. Conclusion 107 Chapter V. Intensifying ties (100-44 B.C.) 108 V.1. Food politics 108 V.2. A strained province? 110 V.2a. The Verrines: qualitative analysis and critical assessment 111 V.2b. The Verrines: quantitative analysis and archaeological comparison 113 V.3. Romans and Italians in Sicily 118 V.4. Conclusion 121 Conclusion 122 1. The Sicilian economy and the Republic 122 2. Balance of literature and archaeology 123 3. The utility of substantivst analysis for ancient economies 123 Bibliography 126 Ancient sources 126 Academic literature 128 Reviews 138 Appendix 140 3 Introduction 1. Aims and motivation In this thesis, the prime question I seek to answer is: what were the socio-economic developments in Sicily under the dominion of the Roman Republic, and in turn how did Sicily impact the Republic? My geo-temporal focus is on Sicily and Rome between 241 and 44 B.C., with special emphasis on the second century B.C. The starting point for analysis is selected as in that year Rome conquered western Sicily and effectively pulled eastern Sicily into her sphere of influence as well. The terminus is set at 44 B.C., when Caesar bestowed Latin rights upon the Sicilians, which was the first step in the process of Sicily losing her provincial status. Also, the death of Caesar later that same year effectively started a chain of events that would eventually lead to the end of the Republic in 27 B.C.1 Three reasons have motivated my choice for this subject and are related to the goals I wish to achieve with my analysis. The first reason is the crucial role that Sicily has played in the Central-Western Mediterranean during the Hellenistic and Republican periods. Roman dominion over Sicily proves key to understanding the politico-economic developments of the mid-late Republic. Sicily was the first Roman province, and the dynamic operating between Sicily and Rome was one of the first instances where two ancient economies became structurally linked. Already in 70 B.C., Cicero noted the critical role Sicily had played in the expansion of the Republic’s borders and population. The invocation of Cato’s famed wisdom suggests that this insight already predated himself – possibly a by century: ‘Therefore our ancestors made their first strides to dominion over Africa from this province. Nor would the mighty power of Carthage so soon have fallen, if Sicily had not been open to us, both as a granary to supply us with corn, and as a harbour for our fleets.’ ‘Therefore that illustrious Marcus Cato the wise called Sicily a storehouse of provisions for our republic—the nurse of the Roman people.’2 My aim here is to analyse and demonstrate how Sicily aided Rome in her conquests, provided the Republic with administrative models and ‘nursed’ the Roman people. 1 Appian, Sic. 2; Cicero, Att. 14.12; Plutarch, Caes.; 2 Cicero, Verr. 2.2.3; 2.2.5. 4 The second reason is historiographical. Republican Sicily, especially the second century, has been understudied. This is remarkable in light of its importance to Roman history, but not without good reason. The scarcity of evidence for this period of Sicilian history makes studying it a difficult exercise. The preceding Greek and Hieronian periods have consequently received much more scholarly attention.3 Studies of the Sicilian economy under the Republic do exist, but the main problem is that these traditional socio-economic analyses are based almost exclusively on Diodorus Siculus’ fragmentary account of the Servile Wars and Cicero’s Verrine orations. These sources prove invaluable, but present many problems as these cannot be taken at face value. The emphasis of both these sources on the negative side of Roman control, which led to the conception of Republican Sicily as oppressed and exploited. Moreover, archaeology has often been left unconsidered, even though Sicily has seen much archaeological activity over the last decades. In this thesis, I wish to contribute to a more nuanced view of the socio-economic effects of Roman dominion over Sicily by achieving a balance of the literary and archaeological sources. The third and final reason is methodological. The study of ancient economies (AE4) has known widely varying perspectives from the onset: it is an ‘academic battleground’.5 The two main sides here are the formalists-modernists and the substantivists-primitivists, a division that remains relevant until today.6 In the last decades, the AE debate has become dominated by the interrelated theoretical bodies of Development Economics and New Institutional Economics (NIE). This presents a problem, however, as both are built upon modern economic theory and utilize modern ideological standards (i.e. development goals) to ‘measure’ when states and their economies succeed or fail. This opens the way for loss of context as well as anachronisms, and should thus be avoided. Therefore, this dissertation adopts a more historically sensitive methodology which will be applied to Republican Sicily. My methodology is indebted to Polanyi’s substantivism: the concept of a socially embedded economy. The goal is to illustrate that a methodology based on the sources and historical context, rather than external theory, is more suited for analysing of ancient economies. 3 cf. Ross Holloway (2000); Walthall (2013) focuses on the Hieronian period and extends this to the Republican; Smith & Serrati (2000); De Angelis (2016); Malifitana (2004, 2011) comments on this frequently. 4 With the abbreviated from, AE, I denote the study of ancient economies, and concepts and methods related to this, rather than factual ancient economies. 5 Hopkins (1983) ix. 6 Hobson (2014) 11-12. 5 2. Structure The structure of this thesis facilitates comprehensively answering the research question and its three aspects as outlined above. The aim of chapter I is to analyse the problems that exist in studies of the ancient economy and studies of Republican Sicily and to provide a better methodological and interpretative framework to prevent these problems. This serves as a basis to draw upon in the succeeding chapters. The first half of the first chapter is dedicated to historiography, and critical analysis of the methods utilized. This will be done for the field of AE (I.1a) and past studies of Republican Sicily (I.1b). A recent study will receive special attention, as pertains to Republican Sicily and draws used NIE as its interpretative framework (I.1c). The next section offers a methodological framework consisting of two parts which are both geared towards preventing the denoted problems: balancing the use of sources and reintegrating substantivism into AE studies (I.2). Finally, an interpretative framework will be set out to make concrete how I plan to achieve a satisfactory substantivst analysis (I.3). Chapter II is devoted to a study of the archaeological evidence for the economy of Republican Sicily. Traditional studies of Republican Sicily have given the literary sources too much primacy, whereas recent AE research have used large datasets that lead to overgeneralisations. To prevent this, I have collected a dataset consisting of surveys, urban and rural archaeology of eight ancient cities and their surrounding territories in Sicily (II.1). For the western half of the island, I have selected Segesta, Iatas, Heraclea Minoa and Lilybaeum (II.2).