Michigan 2024 h/b 259pp (ISBN 9780472133482)
One thing that everybody who reads Latin literature knows is that the elite strongly disapproved of trading. It was a business in which they would not dirty their hands. But, of course, their slaves could—and so they did, in the interests of both their masters and themselves. It is unfortunate that S. published her account of how merchants attempted to deal with accusations of infamia without being able to examine this particular aspect of elite behaviour, which has been superbly described and in detail by E.E. Cohen (reviewed here).
But that does not make her account of the broader picture any less valuable. Indeed, in her first chapter, she points out that the state had a relatively ad hoc attitude towards legislation of which merchants took advantage (there was always something of a quid pro quo between the strict demands of the law and the need for a workable trading system), and which, as Cohen shows, enabled the law to ‘close its eyes’ (Ulpian) to the ways in which slaves could make fortunes for themselves and their masters.
The root of the problem that merchants faced was raised by (among others) Aristotle (S. perhaps should perhaps have provided this historical background). He pointed out that, before there was money, goods were exchanged by a process of barter which, by definition, could not yield a profit, because what was bartered had its own specific use (a shoe could not be used for any other purpose than as a shoe). But the advent of money completely changed the equation, enabling the seller to create a profit. That implied the exchange was ‘not fair’, i.e. the customer was being cheated.
But the fact is that, whatever the views of the elite, merchants were the ones enabling the ordinary man in the street to buy what he wanted or, at whatever price, needed (did merchants have much, if any, dealings with the 25% who [in 100 BC] lived at subsistence level?). It was up to the merchants to prove that the general perception of them was wrong. The way to do that was to win a lasting reputation for honest trading. The problem for S. is that there seem to be no records of actual customer satisfaction, though we do, as she says, have records of sales contracts, which demonstrate that agreement was always possible to reach. Otherwise, all we have (apart from stories in novels) are the funerary epitaphs of merchants boasting of the service they offered their customers and their skills, honesty, reliability and dedication, models (they hoped) of honest, reliable, hardworking Romanitas (if there were such a word). Well, they would, wouldn't they?
S., of course, makes extensive and sensible use of such inscriptions. She agrees that they may exhibit a degree of anxiety about their reputations, but they would make no sense if merchants knew they would be treated with scorn whatever they said. Likewise, she argues that merchants such as Verecundus in Pompeii were taking a huge risk in decorating their shop so lavishly and invitingly if customers knew that they were going to be cheated; by the same token, it was important for a merchant to look successful—as long as he did not overdo it.
Further, she points out that the merchant was not only interacting with his customers but also with his peers; and groups of merchants constructed rules of association among themselves to keep each other in order—and also to guard their backs (see the election notices below). It was regularity, consistency, and predictability that lay the foundation for one's reputation as a socially responsible member of society.
S. also calls on New Institutional Economics to argue that, in all the details entailed in making sales, contracts, deals and so on, ‘transaction costs’ were involved, and the happier the customers felt in dealing with the merchant because of his good reputation, the cheaper those costs were for both sides (at least in Rome if you had a complaint you dealt with the merchant in question and not a ‘digital service provider’). One way in which merchants could advertise their bona fides was to decorate the containers of their products with their name and indication of the quality of the content, as the famous Pompeian garum merchant Scaurus did. In this way they could build up vital ‘social capital’ to exploit when needed. Demetrius the silversmith certainly took advantage of his when he persuaded the crowd to make life difficult for Saint Paul after he was considered to have insulted the goddess Artemis and therefore threatened Demetrius’ trade in statues of the goddess.
In the final chapter, S. expands further on different sorts of sanctions and mechanisms designed to keep merchants on the straight and narrow, from gossip and tittle-tattle and the self-regulation laid down in the charters of merchants’ associations (see above) to boycotts and the threat of violence. The point is that, since the markets were not strongly regulated by law, merchants had something of a free hand in how they treated their customers. That was where reputation, expressed in terms of ‘social capital’, was so important. As Publilius Syrus put it, ‘the man of whom all speak well will receive the favours of the people’ (cui omnes bene dicunt possidet populi bona).
S.’s account stimulated random thoughts in this reviewer. Aristotle, Cato the Elder and Pliny the Elder mention monopolies, the efforts to fix prices and complaints about the practice (S., of course, discusses Diocletian). The Emperor Zeno outlawed the practice (AD 483). An edict of Sulla fixed the price to be paid for luxury foods for elite banquets, but senators still bought them at discounted prices from their slaves and clients.
The walls of Pompeii inform us of various groups of merchants, urging the population to vote for their own candidates in forthcoming elections. Among the lobbyists we find mule-drivers, goldsmiths, carpenters, cloth-dyers, innkeepers, bakers, barbers, muleteers, cleaners, millers, chicken-sellers, mat-makers, onion-sellers, apple-sellers, farmers, grape-pickers and hatters. What deals on prices did these make among themselves, especially as it seems to be the case that in the markets vendors of goods would set up their stalls alongside vendors of the same goods? This was surely one way in which the punter could get a sense of whether (s)he was getting a fair deal. And might the extensively reported activities of negotiatores offer any sort of model to help us understand merchants?
S.’s thesis is rather repetitive—what merchants say about themselves can only take one so far—but is still has much of interest and makes a good case for suggesting that the Roman salesman had as much incentive as in today’s world to be known as an honest practitioner. There is a 32 page bibliography and an index.
Peter Jones