À la mémoire de Fernand Braudel.. Fernand Braudel (1902 – 1985) Promotor Prof. dr. Arjan Zuiderhoek Co-promotor Prof. dr. Paul Erdkamp (VUB) Decaan Prof. dr. Marc Boone Rector Prof. dr. Anne De Paepe Alle rechten voorbehouden. Niets uit deze uitgave mag worden verveelvoudigd, opgeslagen in een geautomatiseerd gegevensbestand, of openbaar gemaakt, in enige vorm of op enige wijze, hetzij elektronisch, mechanisch, door fotokopieën, opnamen, of enige andere manier, zonder voorafgaande toestemming van de uitgever. “Toute la politique part d’un grain de blé” Honoré-Gabriel Mirabeau (1789) ᾿Αλλὰ μὴν πρώτη γε καὶ μεγίστη τῶν χρειῶν ἡ τῆς τροφῆς παρασκευὴ τοῦ εἶναί τε καὶ ζῆν ἕνεκα / But the first and most important of all needs is food, upon which our very existence and life depends. [Plato, Republic, 369 d] Κρύψαντες γὰρ ἔχουσι θεοὶ βίον ἀνθρώποισιν· ῥηιδίως γάρ κεν καὶ ἐπ' ἤματι ἐργάσσαιο, ὥστε σε κεἰς ἐνιαυτὸν ἔχειν καὶ ἀεργὸν ἐόντα· αἶψά κε πηδάλιον μὲν ὑπὲρ καπνοῦ καταθεῖο, ἔργα βοῶν δ' ἀπόλοιτο καὶ ἡμιόνων ταλαεργῶν. ἀλλὰ Ζεὺς ἔκρυψε χολωσάμενος φρεσὶν ᾗσιν. For the Gods keep men’s livelihood hidden indeed, you could easily have worked even for a day, to keep yourself for a year, though remaining idle. Immediately you could hang your steering oar over the fireplace and the toils of oxen and hardworking mules would cease. But Zeus, because of the anger in his heart, hi dit. [Hesiod, Works and Days, 42-47, translated by A. T. Edwards (2014), pp. 44-45] Surplus, subsistence and shortage The grain supply of the Graeco-Roman Mediterranean, between agrarian economy, markets and civic institutions (1st -3rd c. AD) Nicolas SOLONAKIS Proefschrift voorgelegd tot het behalen van de graad van Doctor in de Geschiedenis 2017 Acknowledgements Before opening the discussion, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all the persons without whom I could never have achieved this PhD thesis. First of all, I would like to thank warmly Pr. Arjan Zuiderhoek, for the confidence he put in me for undertaking this research, for his sound advices, revisions, and for the countless stimulating discussions that we had during the past four years. I am also very grateful to the other members of the Doctoral Guidance Committee, Pr. Paul Erdkamp, Pr. Koen Verboven and Pr. François De Callataÿ, for taking the time to revise some parts of this research and for providing me with helpful comments. Their kindness, enthusiasm and understanding have been a crucial support for me. I also wish to thank the Flemish Fund for Scientific Research (FWO) which funded the project ‘Elites and the urban food supply in Roman Asia Minor’, allowing me to undertake this research in excellent conditions. Finally, my gratitude also goes to Pr. Jeroen Poblome for welcoming me at the Sagalassos excavation and allowing me to spend a few wonderful days on the site. Several other people deserve specific acknowledgements, for their active and invaluable contribution to this thesis: Anicet Touré and Mohamed Elhouderi, for spending countless hours programming my Monte-Carlo simulation and fixing my issues; Gerben Verbrugge, who designed the maps presented in Chap. III; Maarten Van Loo (KUL) and Brian J. Dermody who kindly accepted to share with me entire parts of their research and allowed me to reproduce them in my thesis; Pr. Jean-Louis Deneubourg (ULB), who spent hours helping me formalizing the mathematics of Chap. II; Pr. Alain Martin and Alain Delattre (ULB), my former epigraphy and ancient greek professors, who often helped me with the interpretation of difficult inscriptions; Sarah De Laet, for her advices regarding the geographical analysis. I would also like to thank my closest friends: Ludovic Suttor-Sorel, for designing the wonderful cover; Thibault Scohier and Galaad Wilgos, for bringing to my knowledge the works of Cornelius Castoriadis; Sophie Del Ducca and Ludovic once again, who helped me at a critical moment with my bibliography. vii I express further gratitude to my colleagues Lindsey Vandevoorde and Kasey Reed, for the translation of abstracts and summaries, and for the proofreading of parts of this thesis. To my close family, I address another kind of gratitude. To my parents, who instilled in me the thirst of learning; to my mother, for her constant support and invaluable presence; to my father, who did me a big favor by teaching me modern Greek since my early age; to Naomi, finally, for her love and encouragements. Finally, I could not end these acknowledgements without paying respect to three people in particular: my former high school history teacher, Mrs Anne De Broeder, who revealed my passion for History, and my University professors, Pr. François De Callataÿ and Jean-Pierre Devroey, to whom I owe my particular interest for social and economic history. viii Table of Contents General introduction ......................................................................................... 1 Prolegomena ............................................................................................................... 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 3 From grain to fuel: object and purpose of the research .................................. 3 Structure of the argument.................................................................................6 Sources and methodology .......................................................................................... 7 Data and documentary sources ........................................................................ 7 Methods (1) – Interdisciplinary approach: the contribution of philology, economics, environmental sciences, and social sciences ................................................................................................... 7 Methods (2) – Models and formalization ...................................................... 10 Field trip ........................................................................................................... 14 Historiographical debates and theoretical framework ........................................... 15 Food: production, distribution and intervention ........................................... 15 Munificence versus civic finances .................................................................. 16 Chapter 1 Subsistence, populations and environments ............................ 19 1.1 Subsistence needs and socio-demographic constraints ................................ 19 1.1.1 Nutritional requirements and food consumption .............................. 19 1.1.2 Population and urbanization in Roman Asia Minor .......................... 20 1.2 Environmental constraints: landscapes and climate of the Eastern Mediterranean (100 AD – 400 AD) ..................................................................21 1.3 Limits and potential of Graeco-Roman agriculture ....................................... 26 1.3.1 The Graeco-Roman ‘agrarian system’ and the Ancient agricultural revolution ......................................................................... 26 1.3.2 Crop varieties and the ancient diet ..................................................... 30 1.3.3 Seed yields, soil productivity and carrying capacity ........................... 32 Chapter 2 Land exploitation and extraction of surplus ............................. 43 2.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................... 43 2.2 Forms of land ownership and management ................................................. 46 2.3 Economic modelling of ancient agricultural production .............................. 50 ix 2.3.1 The neoclassical model and its shortcomings .................................... 52 2.3.2 Non-decreasing marginal returns : insights from H. C. Carey and P. Sraffa .......................................................................................... 54 2.3.3 Cooperativity and the non-linear dynamic of labor-dependent yield ....................................................................................................... 60 2.3.4 Non-linear labor productivity: addressing neoclassical inconsistencies ...................................................................................... 63 2.3.5 An alternative production function .................................................... 65 2.3.6 Town and countryside: modelling interactions .................................. 67 2.3.6.1 The spatial division of labor ................................................... 67 2.3.6.2 The Neo-classical model ......................................................... 68 2.3.6.3 The Sraffa-Hill model .............................................................. 70 2.3.6.4 Urban-driven growth or diminishing returns…but not both .......................................................................................... 72 2.3.6.5 Urbanization and agricultural production: a generalized model ....................................................................................... 75 2.4 Rents, land values and grain production ....................................................... 83 2.4.1 The economics of land resources ........................................................ 83 2.4.2 Rents and land returns in historical perspective : a case study from western Asia Minor .................................................................... 88 2.4.3 The share of rents in total produce as a proxy for the degree of surplus extraction ................................................................................