cover cover next page > title : The Corn Supply of Ancient Rome author : Rickman, Geoffrey. publisher : Oxford University Press isbn10 | asin : 0198148380 print isbn13 : 9780198148388 ebook isbn13 : 9780585259628 language : English subject Corn industry--Rome. publication date : 1980 lcc : HD9049.C8R667eb ddc : 338.1/7/31 subject : Corn industry--Rome. cover next page > file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Nidia%20Sant...ntos/NUNO-BOOKS/LIVROS/0198148380/files/cover.html [06-02-2009 15:46:47] page_iii < previous page page_iii next page > Page iii The Corn Supply of Ancient Rome Geoffrey Rickman CLARENDON PRESS OXFORD < previous page page_iii next page > file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Nidia%20Santo...os/NUNO-BOOKS/LIVROS/0198148380/files/page_iii.html [06-02-2009 15:46:47] page_iv < previous page page_iv next page > Page iv Oxford University Press, Walton Street, Oxford OX2 6DP Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Bombay Buenos Aires Calcutta Cape Town Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Oxford is a trade mark of Oxford University Press © G.E. Rickman 1980 First published by Oxford University Press 1980 Special edition for Sandpiper Books Ltd, 1996 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press. Within the UK, exceptions are allowed in respect of any fair dealing for the purpose of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of the licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms and in other countries should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Rickman, Geoffrey The corn supply of ancient Rome. 1. Wheat trade Rome 2. Food supply Rome I. Title 339.4'8'633110937 HF377 79-42924 ISBN 0-19-814838-0 Printed in Great Britain by Bookcraft Ltd., Midsomer Norton, Somerset < previous page page_iv next page > file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Nidia%20Sant...os/NUNO-BOOKS/LIVROS/0198148380/files/page_iv.html [06-02-2009 15:46:47] page_ix < previous page page_ix next page > Page ix Contents Preface vii I 1 The Governing Factors II 26 The Republic III 55 Transition: Pompey, Caesar, and Augustus IV 67 The Early Empire V 94 The Corn Lands VI 120 Transport, Storage, and Prices VII 156 The Corn Distributions VIII 198 The Late Empire Epilogue 210 Appendices 1. The Senate, the Emperor, and the Distributions 213 2. The Praefectus Annonae and Annona Officials under the Empire 218 3. Corpora Naviculariorum 226 4. Africa and Egypt 231 5. Warehouse Leases in Puteoli 236 6. Flour Prices and the Price of Grain at Rome 239 file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Nidia%20...UNO-BOOKS/LIVROS/0198148380/files/page_ix.html (1 of 2) [06-02-2009 15:46:47] page_ix 7. The Table of Heraclea 241 8. Tesserae Frumentariae 244 9. Porticus Minucia 250 10. Curatores Aquarum Et Miniciae 253 11. Corn and Coins 257 Bibliography 268 Index of Classical Authors 277 Index of Papyri 280 Index of Inscriptions 281 General Index 283 < previous page page_ix next page > file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Nidia%20...UNO-BOOKS/LIVROS/0198148380/files/page_ix.html (2 of 2) [06-02-2009 15:46:47] page_v < previous page page_v next page > Page v For E.R.M.R., E.J.R., and D.E.R. < previous page page_v next page > file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Nidia%20Sant...tos/NUNO-BOOKS/LIVROS/0198148380/files/page_v.html [06-02-2009 15:46:47] page_vii < previous page page_vii next page > Page vii Preface This book is a history of the corn supply of ancient Rome. The subject has interested me ever since I was an undergraduate, when I often felt impatient with the traditional topics on which I was asked by kindly tutors to write essays. It was an undeniable exhilaration, in the words of Louis MacNeice, `to draw the cork out of an old conundrum and watch the paradoxes fizz', but what I wanted to know was how the ancient world really worked. A quarter of a century later I have learned from experience how difficult that aim is to achieve but the desire is still in me. My work on Roman Granaries and Store Buildings, published in 1971, led naturally to this attempt at a wider survey of Rome's corn supply, just as Professor Pavis D'Escurac's recent book, La Préfecture de l'annone d'Auguste à Constantin grew out of her earlier unpublished thesis on the storebuildings of Rome, Ostia and Portus. Friends will bear witness that I am no farmer's boy; on the contrary I am rather an urban type. But I have always been intensely aware of the pattern of services and support which have allowed me to lead the kind of urban life I prefer. To understand how Rome worked as a great city in antiquity one of the vital threads is to see how she fed herself, yet there has been no full-scale study of this topic in English. The shape of this book has undergone several changes. An original spare outline became unevenly swollen with learned discussion. Critical readers and kind friends gave encouragement and urged reorganization and the relegation of knotty problems, for which there is often no certain solution, to a series of appendices. I have tried therefore to produce a readable narrative, unclogged by too much scholarship, but setting out a large selection of the evidence available, and drawing attention to the problems which seem to me particularly important and worth discussion. I have been greatly helped in various ways by E. Bowie, M.H. Crawford, D.J. Crawford, Professor R. Crawford, R. Duncan-Jones, M. Frederiksen, Professor J.K.B. Nicholas, J.R. Rea, J.S. Richardson, J.G. Schovánek, D.L. Stockton, R.J. Talbert, Professor J.M. Toynbee, and < previous page page_vii next page > file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Nidia%20Sant...s/NUNO-BOOKS/LIVROS/0198148380/files/page_vii.html [06-02-2009 15:46:48] page_viii < previous page page_viii next page > Page viii Professor G.W. Williams. I owe a special debt to Professor P.A. Brunt for reading and criticizing the whole text, and to Mrs. Mary Bennett, née Fisher, for allowing me to use the notes she made in the 1930s when she started to collect evidence for a study of the Roman corn supply which was never completed. It was Russell Meiggs who passed these notes on to me, and he above all others has taken time and trouble with this book. I wish that it was more worthy of him. The British Academy made a generous grant which allowed me to take my family to Italy for three months during the period of Study Leave granted by the University of St. Andrews when the bulk of the work was written up at the British School at Rome. My wife has typed it in many drafts, and the Oxford University Press has improved it. To all these and to others who, by accident or design, have had to live with the making of this book, I am deeply grateful. It is dedicated to my mother, and to my children. In the De Brevitate Vitae Seneca addressed some salutary advice to his father-in-law Pompeius Paulinus, who was apparently reluctant to retire from being prefect of the corn supply at Rome: `Reflect that you were not aiming from your earliest years, in all your training in liberal studies, at this, that it might be safe to entrust many thousands of modii of corn to your charge.' Enough said. ST. ANDREWS, MARCH 1979 G.E.R. < previous page page_viii next page > file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Nidia%20Santo...s/NUNO-BOOKS/LIVROS/0198148380/files/page_viii.html [06-02-2009 15:46:48] page_xi < previous page page_xi next page > Page xi Abbreviations AEpigr. L'Année épigraphique AHR American Historical Review AJ Archaeological Journal AJA American Journal of Archaeology AJP American Journal of Philology Annales Annales: économies, sociétés, civilisations APF Archiv für Papyrusforschung ArchCl Archeologia Classica BASP Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists BIFAO Bulletin de l'Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale Broughton, MRR T.R.S. Broughton, The Magistrates of the Roman Republic (American Philological Association Monographs No. 15) Lancaster, Pa.; (Oxford, 1951-2) BSAA Bulletin de la Société d'Archeologie d'Alexandrie BullComm Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale di Roma Cardinali, Frumentatio Dizionario epigrafico di antichità romane (de Ruggiero), s.v. frumentatio CE Chronique d'Égypte CEHE Cambridge Economic History of Europe CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum CP Classical Philology CR Classical Review CRAI Comptes Rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres Diz.Epig. Dizionario epigrafico di antichitè romane di de Ruggiero file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/Nidia%20...UNO-BOOKS/LIVROS/0198148380/files/page_xi.html (1 of 2) [06-02-2009 15:46:48] page_xi Duncan-Jones, ERE R.P. Duncan-Jones, The Economy of The Roman Empire (Cambridge, 1974) EcHR Economic History Review EtPap Études papyrologiques FIRA Fontes Iuris Romani Ante Justiniani (S. Riccobono and others) Frank, ESAR Tenney Frank, An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome, 5 vols. (Baltimore, 1933-40) HSCP Harvard Studies in Classical Philology HThR Harvard Theological Review ILS Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae JRS Journal of Roman Studies MEFR Mélanges d'archéologie et d'histoire de l'École Française de Rome MemAcInscr Mémoires présentés par divers savants à l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres MemLinc Memorie della R.