BMCR 2008.11.13, Emanuele Papi, Supplying Rome and the Empire

Emanuele Papi (ed.), Supplying Rome and the Empire: the Proceedings of
an International Seminar Held at Siena-Certosa di Pontignano on May
2-4, 2004, on Rome, the Provinces, Production and Distribution. Journal
of Roman Archaeology, Supplementary series no. 69.  Portsmouth, R.I.:
Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2007.  Pp. 227.  ISBN 9781887829694.
$69.00.

Reviewed by Edward Luttwak, Center for Strategic and International
Studies, Washington, DC  ([email protected])
Word count:  1923 words
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This exceedingly useful and mostly very readable collection of
conference papers also contains a synthesis paper of which more anon,
but many non-specialists will focus on the particular rather than the
general, because in most cases the subject matter is inherently so
interesting.

Mediterranean fisheries were notoriously poor (they are slightly richer
now because of littoral sewage), fish is the most perishable of foods,
yet the Roman diet was much enriched by fish. Laura Cerri's "Salsamenta
dalla Tingitania" focuses on one aspect of the paradox: In Tingitania
the more abundant Atlantic fishery provided the raw material,
evaporation basins provided the salt, and processing plants produced
salted fish (including Pliny's cordyla or young tuna), whose
preservation required the removal of the innards, which were not wasted
but instead fermented to produce garum, a most transportable source of
protein and pungent condiment for insipid cereal gruels.  Cerri surveys
the industry from production facilities (photographically illustrated)
to the commercial network; a map shows finds of local amphorae as far
away as the lower Rhine.

In "Olio d'oliva per Roma e per il mercato intraregionale," Mariette de
Vos examines another North African product which did not have as much
of a comparative advantage given its Mediterranean ubiquity, olive oil
from Africa Zeugitania, in contemporary Tunisia.  Olive presses have
stone collecting bases, and it is their prevalence that is the focus of
the survey, whose aim is to determine the vitality of the sector.
Received political history would incline one to guess otherwise, but
out of 474 sites, 8% are pre-Roman, 39% are Roman of all periods, no
fewer than 27% are attributed to the Vandal interlude, and 25% to the
Byzantine period.  Careful quantitative analysis is the strength of
this paper: we learn among other things that the single press of a farm
in Ai+n Wassel (others had more, one had 12) could produce 226 kilos of
oil in 24 hours, so that it could supply the household's needs in 4
days of the 90-day season, with up to another 12,510 kilos for sale,
assuming that the landlord received a third of the output as per the
lex Hadriana de rudibus agri--things could have been worse for the
farmer.  In addition to photographs, there are two exceptionally clear
relief maps which identify the farms.

In "Ambra del Nord nell'impero romano" Jerzy Kolendo presents another
kind of survey, not a summation of local archaeological reports but
more of an interpretative essay.  Amber, fossilized tree resin, occurs
in many places around the world but for the Romans it was Baltic amber
that counted.  Most easily found on the beaches from the Vistula east
to the Niemen and especially in Samland (now in the Kaliningrad
enclave), it reached the empire most directly through central Europe to
Aquileia near modern Trieste; but as Kolendo indicates the so-called
"Amber road" was a direction rather than a track, notwithstanding the
impressive accuracy of Pliny's (NH 37.45) estimated distance of 600
[Roman] miles from Carnuntum to the east Baltic shore.  Finds of carved
amber are neither rare nor abundant enough to support quantitative
analysis.

There is more specificity in Andrew Wilson's "The metal supply of the
Roman Empire" which actually covers monetary metal alone.  Coin was
paid out to sustain the army and bureaucracy, then collected again by
taxation. Wilson notes that even 1% attrition due to hoarding and
losses would halve the coinage in 70 years, and also gives credence to
the curmudgeons (Tacitus Ann. 3.52; Pliny NH6.101 and others) who
deplored the outflow of gold to pay for luxury imports; but the
craftsmen and workshops of the empire--some veritable
factories--produced much that its neighbors craved, and the inflow of
gold might well have matched or exceeded the outflow.  What is certain
is that mining augmented the gold supply. Wilson mentions the evidence
for both tunneled hard rock mines and alluvial extraction in many
places but focuses on the Spanish mines, the largest and most advanced,
noting their hydraulic engineering feats, which are clearly explicated.
Wilson next examines the resulting coinage, the aureus worth 25 silver
denarii, set at 7.75 grams and over 99% purity by Augustus in 19 B.C.E.
which was not replaced until the 4.5 gram solidus of Constantine,
though its gold content started to decline from the early third century
(Wilson has a graph).  Spain was also the major source of silver; the
Rio Tinto mines were worked until 1996 (!) . The Augustan denarius
contained c.3.6 grams of silver unalloyed except for original
impurities, but its debasement started early, under Nero with copper.
Again there is a silver content chart, in which the denarius gives way
to the antoninianusof Caracalla, tariffed at two denarii with only 80%
of their silver. Diocletian introduced the supposedly 95% fine
argenteus, but a 310 specimen had 34% silver on the surface and only
23% in the core.  That silver production declined is probable, but
Wilson 's attempt to confirm this with a graph showing lead
concentration levels in Greenland ice-core samples (silver smelting
releases lead), is inconclusive.

Wilson's conclusion depicts a strong relationship between the supply of
fine coin and imperial fortunes, arguing that the "massive" coin
production of the first century did not cause inflation because local
economies were still being monetized; actually it was due to the
increased productivity of tranquil times.

Laura Gasti's "Animali per Roma" does not deal with pigs or sheep but
only with the supply of wild animals for public entertainments in Rome,
including elephants, ostriches and tigers as well as the proverbial
lions; such was its political significance that it continued into the
fifth century, in spite of all the disasters of the times.  Gasti's
detailed survey starts with the cages, documenting different types from
fragmentary frescos and mosaics, including the spectacular and intact
Piazza Armerina "great hunt". Transport is further documented by
narrative sources, including all the different techniques that were
developed to load and unload, and to safeguard animals during long and
difficult voyages to Ostia, including hoists to prevent battering in
stormy seas. Gasti argues that the navalia, Tiber-side storage sheds
for ships were also used to keep caged animals until they were needed,
but with more conjecture than evidence. Animals were displayed in
vivaria and not merely killed in the circus, but again the evidence is
very fragmentary.

J. Theodore Pen~a's much longer, much more detailed "The quantitative
analysis of Roman pottery: general problems, the methods employed at
the Palatine east, and the supply of African Sigillata to Rome" is also
much more specialized. Given that pottery data is studied as an index
of economic activity and more specifically of exports, Pen~a's
ambitious aim is to promote the use of a particular method: C. Orton's
EVE, estimated vessel equivalents, i.e. the sum of the portions of the
various vessels represented, normally determined on the basis of one
specific vessel part, rim, base, handle etc.  Pen~a argues that Roman
pottery specialists have failed to accept EVE because of its
difficulty, thereby continuing to rely on the statistically invalid
EVREP, estimated vessels represented, as well as the plainer measures
of sherd numbers and weights. Pen~a treats Rome's "Palatine East"
excavation data as a case-study, first carefully explaining how the dig
was conducted.  Within that larger frame, he examines the data for
imported African Sigillata (from Tunisia) among the sherds to show how
its interpretation varies under the EVE and EVREP methods. To his
lengthy quantitative analysis that only specialists can evaluate, Pen~a
adds an even more technical note by James McCraw on how to calculate
vessel capacity from profile drawings--obviously important given that
the aim is to estimate the volume of export activity from recovered
sherds.

"Supplying Rome: safeguarding the system" by Boudewijn Sirks refers to
legal and institutional safeguards, such as the collegia of workers who
collectivized responsibilities ensuring their fulfillment and the
societas that could pool capital and outlive individuals (the modern
era added only limited liability).  Sirks can mostly rely on the
well-known legal sources which he analyses from a logistic viewpoint,
so to speak.

Barbara Scardigli begins her survey in "I rifornimenti per l'esercito
in eta\ repubblicana: una rassegna" by defining the respective roles of
the Senate and occasionally the people, who had to authorize and
procure supplies; of the army commander--not necessarily a professional
under the Republic any more than his soldiers--who had to ensure
transport; of private contractors and merchants who delivered supplies
in bulk to the legions on campaign, and of retailers, who sold comfort
items to the troops, and bought  booty slaves, animals and other
valuables from them. Next, Scardigli examines what was supplied,
starting with the cereals that dominated the diet, but also water as
well as fodder, timber and wood for burning. Siege machines were
habitually built on site but weapons came from workshops and indeed
factories, which are almost undocumented in the Republican period.  A
brief chronological overview from early times till Caesar completes
this rather superficial survey.

David Nonnis and Cecilia Ricci also examine supply in their "La legio
II Augustain Britannia: il contributo dei materiali iscritti" but in
thrice focused fashion, by limiting themselves to one legion, to the
epigraphic evidence and to one question: the relative scope of private
enterprise by contractors and merchants, as opposed to state
self-supply, including legionary agriculture and animal husbandry.  Two
centuries of residence at the thoroughly studied Caerleon fortress
provide much evidence, inscribed pottery and bricks, lead seals, and
documents and letters on wooden tablets.  The conclusion is
inconclusive, for there is evidence of both self-supply and private
commerce.

Werner Eck's "Das roemische Koeln: Wie deckt eine Provinzstadt ihren
Bedarf?" is also focused, on the supply of Colonia Claudia Ara
Agrippinensium, a provincial city to be sure but far from unimportant,
and the subject of Eck's well-known city history.  The pottery evidence
features largely in this essay but so does the careful calculation of
agricultural production parameters.

Another group of papers, by M. Bonifay ("Que transportaient donc les
amphores africaines?"); Elisabetta Gliozzo ("The distribution of bricks
and tiles in the Tiber valley: the evidence from Piammano, Bomarzo,
Viterbo," and her further paper "Supplying Italy with black and white
pigments"); Emanuele Papi and Francesco Martorella ("Il grano della
Tingitania"); and Maria Grazia Granino Cecere and Vincenza Morizio
("Nuove testimonianze sull'amministrazione dei marmi nella Roma
imperiale") are no more inaccessible thanks also to mostly excellent
graphics, maps and data tables, but they are too densely documented to
be usefully summarized here, though each contains much for
non-specialists as well.

David Mattingly's concluding overview begins by noting that the
complexity and scale of Roman logistics are "highly atypical of a
pre-industrial state", positioning himself on one side of the debate on
the empire's relative "modernity"--which is the right side, this
reviewer believes.  Also persuasive is Mattingly's next proposition,
that one should think of multiple economies, local, provincial and
imperial, as supposed to a single economy.  A useful table illustrates
their differences, with the archaeological correlates.  He next
differentiates between the Late Republic, Early Principate, the 3rd
century, Constantine, 4th century and later, in tabulating the sources
of government revenue streams, the sources of metal for coinage, and
the epoch's "problems affecting coinage supply", including that
probable trope "luxury trade with the East." In conclusion Mattingly
importantly notes that archaeological evidence has refuted the
assumption that transport costs confined trade to a handful of
luxuries, in part because the annona system that moved mass quantities
of revenue grain could cross-subsidize reverse flows. This too
contributed to an economy that was "extra-ordinary by the stands of the
pre-industrial world."