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The Roman Market Economy the Princeton Economic History of the Western World Joel Mokyr, Series Editor The Roman Market Economy The Princeton Economic History of the Western World Joel Mokyr, Series Editor A list of titles in this series appears at the back of the book. The Roman Market Economy Peter Temin Princeton University Press Princeton & Oxford Copyright © 2013 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW press.princeton.edu Jacket art: Detail of cargo ship from road to market with trade symbols in mosaic. Roman, Ostia Antica near Rome Italy. Photo © Gianni Dagli Orti. Courtesy of Art Resource, NY. All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Temin, Peter. The Roman market economy / Peter Temin. p. cm. — (The Princeton economic history of the Western world) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-691-14768-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Rome—Economic conditions. 2. Rome—Economic policy. 3. Rome—Commerce. I. Title. HC39.T46 2013 330.937—dc23 2012012347 British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Adobe Caslon Pro Printed on acid- free paper. ∞ Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Charlotte This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface and Acknowledgments ix 1. Economics and Ancient History 1 Part I: Prices Introduction: Data and Hypothesis Tests 27 2. Wheat Prices and Trade in the Early Roman Empire 29 3. Price Behavior in Hellenistic Babylon 53 Appendix to Chapter 3 66 4. Price Behavior in the Roman Empire 70 Part II: Markets in the Roman Empire Introduction: Roman Microeconomics 95 5. The Grain Trade 97 6. The Labor Market 114 7. Land Ownership 139 8. Financial Intermediation 157 Part III: The Roman Economy Introduction: Roman Macroeconomics 193 9. Growth Theory for Ancient Economies 195 10. Economic Growth in a Malthusian Empire 220 Appendix to Chapter 10 240 11. Per Capita GDP in the Early Roman Empire 243 References 263 Index 289 vii This page intentionally left blank Preface and Acknowledgments his book presents a progress report in the process of understanding the nature of ancient economies. I am an economic historian who spent most ofT his academic career writing about modern and early- modern economies and teaching modern economics. Sometime before the end of the twentieth century, I became interested in ancient economies. If the Romans wrote all those letters and speeches and built all those roads and buildings, how did they get the resources to do so? Writing takes time and an education that enables a writer to express thoughts in historical perspective. Construction uses materi- als and labor that have to be organized and gathered for this purpose. How were people able to organize these activities and—to broaden our focus— build something as large and complex as the Roman Empire? I read Finley’s book, The Ancient Economy, when it came out over a quarter- century ago (Finley 1973), and more recent books over the years. I found they did not provide convincing answers to the questions I had raised, and I resolved to investigate further the economics of the ancient world. I published and presented papers to ancient-history conferences over the past decade that re- sulted from my curiosity. I offer the insights I gained from writing these papers and rethinking them now in light of subsequent research as a progress report that provides a view of the Roman economy that has become more popular— although not without controversy— than when I started on this quest. I tried to learn a few of the languages needed by ancient historians, but I speedily realized that I would never be good enough to improve on the trans- lations of experts. My comparative advantage— a term I explain more fully in the first chapter of this volume—is in economic analysis, not archaeology or text analysis. All scholars stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before, and I freely acknowledge my debt to the generations of ancient histori- ans whose works I utilize. Even if I disagree with their analyses, I respect and envy their scholarship. I struggle also with modern languages, and my citations reflect my preference for English sources. If one has to choose one language for modern scholarship, it would be English, and I am fortunate to be a native ix x Preface speaker. If I repeat analyses published in other languages, I hope that readers will inform me. I hope also that this book will be received better than my initial foray into ancient history. I wrote a research proposal for myself before I thought seriously about implementing it. I went to Oxford for a conference in 1999 and sent my proposal to a few Oxford people I knew or had arranged to meet. Economists laughed at my proposal at breakfast, and ancient historians laughed at it at lunch. They all assured me— for different reasons— that my proposal was un- workable. With that stimulus, I had to forge ahead! The proposal grew into my most well- known contribution to ancient economic history. It appeared as Temin (2001) in the Journal of Roman Studies, then under the editorship of an ancient historian who had laughed at me earlier. It set out a research agenda that was fulfilled in the chapters of the middle section of this book. It may be wishful thinking, but I detect a movement toward an acceptance of modern economic concepts in the study of the ancient world in the past few years. When I started in this field, theoretical discussions of ancient his- tory all started from Karl Polanyi and M. I. Finley. This is apparent in the extensive introduction to the reissue of Finley’s book on its silver anniversary in 1999 (Morris 1999). Yet less than a decade later, The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco- Roman World was based more on Douglass North than Moses Finley. North, a Nobel laureate in economic history, emphasized the importance of economic institutions in determining economic performance. His work, together with other like- minded economists, has given rise to what is now called the New Institutional Economics (NIE). Almost all the essays in The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco- Roman World take their cue from the NIE, and the volume itself is organized by consideration of institutions. The essays on the regional development of the Roman Empire start from the premise that preexisting institutions affected how Roman expansion affected their economic activities (Scheidel, Morris, and Saller 2007). From everything we know, prosperity in Greece and Rome extended be- yond a royal family or clan into a larger group of people. I have tried to ex- plore how the Roman economy functioned. I chose to focus primarily on the early Roman Empire because the scale of the Roman Empire was vast and the economy seemed to run amazingly well for a long time. It is one thing to run a small economy drawing small amounts of resources from a broad hinterland; it is much harder to involve millions of people into an integrated economic system. As Wickham (2005, 10) described it, “The Roman Empire was a coher- ent political and economic system, operating on a scale that has seldom since been matched in Europe and the Mediterranean, and never for so long.” In addition, we have a lot of information about the economy of the early Roman Preface xi Empire when peace was more prevalent than war. The Roman information was generated by indirection, and we have to tease out economic information from sources designed for other concerns. This, of course, is the intellectual adventure: how to make sense of the fragments we have to understand the Roman economy. It is a great pleasure to acknowledge the generous help I received from many ancient historians as I made this intellectual journey. Far from the haughtiness and clannish attitudes that I was assured typified ancient historians, I found them to be marvelously welcoming to an outside adventurer who took the ef- fort to talk with them. Of course, not everyone agrees with me, and I regret that I have not been able to talk more widely with other ancient historians. The first group is the small set of ancient historians who helped me get started: Alan Bowman, Rebecca Flemming, Martin Goodman, Joshua Sosin, and Dominic Rathbone. They were all happy to answer uninformed questions and correct elementary mistakes. Through it all, they were supportive of my quest, and Dominic coauthored a paper with me that gives chapter 8 its special texture. They remain friends today; Keith Hopkins, who also welcomed me and helped me, unfortunately died before I was prepared to write this book. To this initial group are added the ancient historians I met along the way, who have invited me to conferences, corresponded with me, and become welcome colleagues: Jean Andreau, Roger Bagnall, William Broadhead, Francois de Callatay, Richard Duncan-Jones, Paul Erdkamp, Peter Garnsey, Kyle Harper, William Harris, Christopher Howgego, Willem Jongman, Dennis Kehoe, Elio Lo Cascio, Michael McCormick, Ian Morris, Cécile Morrisson, Steven Ostrow, Walter Scheidel, Alice Slotsky, Richard Talbert, Koen Verboven, and Alan Wilson. Economists Robert Allen, Elise Brezis, Victor Chernozhukov, Richard Eckaus, Bronwyn Hall, David Hendry, Joel Mokyr, Morris Silver, Nathan Sussman, and Joachim Voth also helped me along. MIT students Andrea Crandall, Julia Dennett, Edward Flores, Yerrie Kim, Brendan Sullivan, and Christine Yee helped me through MIT’s Undergraduate Research Oppor- tunities Program. David Kessler, a Harvard economics undergraduate who wanted to write a thesis on the Roman economy, turned into a coauthor of the papers underlying chapters 2 and 5.
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