CUP (2021) p/b 307pp £24.99 (ISBN 9781107535732)
Economics in the ancient world is a hard subject to tackle because the evidence is limited and partial; our great literary sources were not used to looking at history from this perspective. The topic covered here, the small businesses serving the growing urban populations during Rome’s greatest growth period (late Republic and early Empire), seems especially brave. We know something about how the wealthy managed their affairs and how the rural economy worked, but almost nothing, directly, about the small builders, the food suppliers, the weavers and so on who kept the cities going. We have to make inferences from the few traces they have left in (mostly) funerary inscriptions, legal documents on papyri and (increasingly) archaeological finds. Yet the part they played is vital if we are to understand why Rome grew as fast as it did during that period and why it later stopped growing. H. goes through such evidence as there is, and what other scholars have made of it, with great thoroughness, and builds a case for the following model.
Consumer demand in Rome and other cities was always highly seasonal and, on top of that, highly uncertain; most citizens were not well off in real terms, and there was little encouragement for regular production of manufactured goods.
This uncertainty meant that artisan businesses were reluctant to incur fixed costs through large-scale growth and integration; instead, when their type of business allowed it, they tended to group into professional networks or associations (collegia) which could help to establish trading standards, offer loans and other kinds of protection.
They also used manumission of slaves who had been trained in the relevant skills; in exchange, these ex-slaves, set up in their own businesses would agree to supply labour services when required (operae libertorum), possibly for a long period; this helped to ensure that skilled labour would be available on short-term contract when required during busy periods while avoiding the cost of retaining such labour when demand was flat. The manumission system could thus be very convenient for the manumitter.
Again because of the thinness of markets, artisans tended not to employ their sons in heir own business but to set them up in separate careers, since they cold not guarantee to have regular employment for them; for the same reasons, women were mostly employed on the needs of the household, although they could, and sometimes did, learn income-generating work and run businesses.
In developing this picture, H. draws on comparisons other scholars have made with pre-industrial Europe (‘the long eighteenth century’), when also economies were growing and cities were sucking in populations from the countryside.
But he suggests that, in the end, the Roman situation was worse. Markets always remained so thin and unstable that avoiding going bust must always have been the primary concern (H. quotes a number of passages from Artemidorus [On the Interpretation of Dreams] in which specific dreams of artisans were interpreted either as promising success or, too often, financial ruin). The strategies for ensuring a supply of skilled labour without being saddled with the cost led to conditions within which productivity could not improve, and growth therefore eventually stalled.
The book is promoted by the publisher as ‘the first comprehensive study of economic conditions and economic life in Roman cities during the late Republic and early Empire’. As such, it clearly should be on every ancient historian’s reading list. It makes a convincing case, and handles the scanty evidence very well. It is also readable and intelligible to the non-economist, although, from the nature of the subject, hard concentration is often needed. Don’t let that put you off!
Colin McDonald