Roman Trade with the Far East: Evidence for Nabataean Middlemen in Puteoli

CHAPTER 5 Roman Trade with the Far East: Evidence for Nabataean Middlemen in Puteoli Taco Terpstra Puteoli, a major Italian harbour town serving Rome, was an important port for trade with the East. It was a hub for the Alexandrian grain fleet, but high-value goods such as Tyrian purple dye must have arrived there too.1 The town prob- ably also saw the movement of luxury products from distant lands outside the empire: spices, silk, and frankincense from Arabia, China, and India. While Puteoli has not yielded archaeological evidence for eastern trade of the rare kind unearthed in Pompeii (where an Indian ivory statuette repre- senting a voluptuous nude female figure was found), epigraphic evidence does exist.2 A small but significant body of inscriptions from the Greek world and from Italy shows Nabataean activity in the Mediterranean. In this paper I will investigate this activity, concentrating most of all on Puteoli, the site where more than half of the known epigraphic evidence was discovered. I will argue, first, that Puteoli housed the only permanent Nabataean community in the Mediterranean and, second, that this community established a mercantile connection between the Nabataeans and their Roman buyers, securing a flow of information and establishing mutual trust for purposes of trade. The Nabataean Kingdom, located about halfway between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean, was well positioned to play a major role in East–West exchange. The heyday of its commercial activity seems to have been from roughly the mid second century bce to the late first century ce—the time from its rise as a regional power to the time just preceding its annexation by Rome in 106 ce.3 From the silence in the historic record it would seem that with the Roman takeover, the Nabataeans ‘softly and suddenly vanished away’. Still, a few references linger in the written sources. In a passage referring to India, Apuleius writes: ‘Far away it lies, beyond the learned Egyptians, beyond 1 A Tyrian trading colony existed in Puteoli; Terpstra 2013, 70–79. On the Puteolan Annii family and their likely involvement in the eastern luxury trade, see Schörle this volume. 2 First published in Maiuri 1938/1939, there identified as the Indian goddess Lakshmi. 3 Wenning 2007; Graf 2007; Young 2001, 90–117; Bowersock 1983, 12–27, 59–75. On the Roman annexation of the Nabataean Kindom, see also Nappo this volume. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ��5 | doi ��.��63/9789004�89536_007 74 terpstra the superstitious Jews and the merchants of Nabataea, beyond the children of Arsaces in their long flowing robes, the Ityreans, to whom earth gives but scanty harvest, and the Arabs, whose perfumes are their wealth.’4 These eth- nic stereotypes are poetic stock images of distant peoples, meant to evoke the exotic. Apuleius’ description, in other words, should not necessarily be taken to mean that the ‘merchants of Nabataea’ were still a significant presence in his day; they may have already been a fading memory by the 160s ce. Roman literary sources say expressly that it was the trade in aromatics from Arabia that formed the main source of wealth for the Nabataeans. Diodorus of Sicily makes this explicit, stating that they were the richest Arab tribe, ‘for not a few of them are accustomed to bring down to the sea frankincense and myrrh and the most valuable kinds of spices, which they procure from those who con- vey them from what is called Arabia Eudaemon.’5 From this remark, as well as from the writings of Strabo and Pliny the Elder, it appears that the Nabataeans acted first and foremost as transporters and middlemen. They did not produce goods or cultivate aromatic crops themselves, but instead took over merchan- dise entering their realm from the South and East, carried it over their territory, and brought it to the West. Although they must have taken goods back to the East as well, there can be little doubt that it was the westward movement of goods that formed the backbone of their commercial activity and the well- spring of their prosperity. Two cardinal overland supply lines brought products to the Nabataean realm. Both of these routes as well as their sources are well attested. The most important reference is made by Strabo, who tells us that the incense the Nabataeans traded in was provided by the Minaeans and the Gerrhaeans.6 The first were a south-Arabian tribe living in what is now principally Yemen. The route by which goods travelled from there to Petra ran more or less paral- lel to the eastern coast of the Red Sea. Another literary source, Pliny the Elder, tells us that to reach the Mediterranean, goods had to move through the territory of yet another Arabian tribe, the Gebbanitae, who thus had a chokehold on all northbound traffic and charged a tax for crossing their land.7 4 Apul., Flor. 6.1: ‘ultimis terris, super Aegyptios eruditos et Iudaeos superstitiosos et Nabathaeos mercatores et fluxos vestium Arsacidas et frugum pauperes Ityraeos et odorum divites Arabas’ (trans. H.E. Butler):, 165. See Graf 2007, 175. 5 Diod. Sic. 19.94.5: ‘εἰώθασι γὰρ αὐτῶν οὐκ ὀλίγοι κατάγειν ἐπὶ θάλασσαν λιβανωντόν τε καὶ σμύρναν καὶ τὰ πολυτελέστατα τῶν ἀρωμάτων, διαδεχόμενοι παρὰ τῶν κομιζόντων ἐκ τῆς Εὐδαίμονος καλουμένης Ἀραβίας’ (trans. by R.M. Geer, lcl 1962). See Young 2001, 90–91, 113–115. 6 Strabo 16.4.18. 7 Plin., hn 12.63. On the Yemenite Kingdoms and their role in the incense trade, see Singer 2007..

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