Trade, Commerce, and the State in the Roman World

This volume presents eighteen papers by leading Roman historians and archaeologists discussing trade in the Roman Empire during the period c.100 BC to AD 350. It focuses especially on the role of the Roman state in shaping the institutional framework for trade within and outside the empire, in taxing that trade, and in intervening in the markets to ensure the supply of particular commodities, especially for the city of Rome and for the army. As part of a novel interdisciplinary approach to the subject, the chapters address its myriad facets on the basis of broadly different sources of evidence: historical, papyrological, and archaeological. They are grouped into three sections, covering institutional factors (taxation, legal structures, market regulation, financial institutions); evidence for long-distance trade within the empire in wood, stone, glass, and pottery; and trade beyond the frontiers, with the east (as far as China), India, Arabia, the Red Sea, and the Sahara. Rome's external trade with realms to the east emerges as being of particular significance, but it is in the eastern part of the empire itself where the state appears to have adapted the mechanisms of taxation in collaboration with the elite holders of wealth to support its need for revenue. On the other hand, the price of that collaboration, which was in effect a fiscal partnership, ultimately led in the longer term in slightly different forms in the east and the west to a fundamental change in the political character of the empire. Contributors to this volume - Colin Adams, Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at the University of Liverpool Michel Bonifay, Researcher at the Centre Camille Jullian, Aix Marseille Universite Alan Bowman, Camden Professor Emeritus of Ancient History at the University of Oxford Barbara Davidde, Director of the Nucleo per gli Interventi di Archeologia Subacquea at the Istituto Superiore per la Conservazione ed il Restauro, Rome Daniele Foy, Research Director at the Centre Camille Jullian, CNRS, Aix-en-Provence Michael Fulford, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Reading David F. Graf, Professor of Ancient History at the University of Miami William V. Harris, Shepherd Professor of History and Director of the Center for the Ancient Mediterranean at Columbia University Philip Kay, Supernumerary Fellow of Wolfson College, University of Oxford Elio Lo Cascio, Professor of Roman History at Universita di Roma 'La Sapienza' Dario Nappo, Post-doctoral researcher, Departament de Ciencies de l'Antiguitat i de l'Edat Mitjana at Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona Emanuele Papi, Professor of Archaeology at the University of Siena Ivan Radman-Livaja, Senior Curator at the Greek and Roman Department of the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb Paul Reynolds, ICREA Research Professor, ERAUB, Department of Prehistory, History and Archaeology at the University of Barcelona Ben Russell, Lecturer in Classical Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh Boudewijn Sirks, Regius Professor of Civil Law, Emeritus, at the University of Oxford Roberta Tomber, Visiting Researcher in the Department of Scientific Research at the British Museum Andrew Wilson, Professor of the Archaeology of the Roman Empire at the University of Oxford