Chapter 11 — Industry At The End Of The Republic

CHAPTER XI

INDUSTRY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC

Recent students of Roman industry have disagreed fundamentally regarding its scope, its aims, and its processes, some¹ comparing it with the primitive methods of an undeveloped rural society, and others applying to it the language of the intricate industrial system of modern times. This disagreement is, of course, largely due to the inadequate information found in the ancient writers, who were for the most part statesmen interested in political history and who concerned themselves little with the occupations of slaves and freedmen. Except for some agricultural treatises, the volumes of Frontinus on Rome’s water supply, and a few books of Pliny devoted to the technical methods of production, Roman writers have left the economist to the mercy of parentheses, obiter dicta, and the mute objects brought to light by the excavator’s spade. If progress is to be made in this nebulous subject, a patient reckoning with the evidence of archaeology is essential.

It is my intention in this chapter to examine several typical industries, especially those that have provided some record of themselves in the form of trademarks and makers’ signatures,² in order to procure definite data regarding the scale of production, the degree of centralization, the extent of the market, and the class of people involved in their production. In the next chapter, by way of corrective and supplement, I shall attempt a survey of the economic structure of Pompeii, the only Roman city that has survived to such an extent as to permit a reliable reconstruction, and to this I shall append a summary of such conclusions as seem to be justified.

¹ Cf. Rodbertus, Jahrb. f. Nationalök. IV, 341; Bücher, Entstehung d. Volkswirtschaft⁴, 1904, p. 117. The opposite view is held by E. Meyer, Kleine Schriften, pp. 79 ff. and 169 ff. The advocates of both views have gone to untenable extremes. A part of this chapter has appeared in Classical Philology, 1918, pp. 155–168.

² Such inscriptions have been collected in the fifteenth volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum.

It may be said at once that, in general, the Roman producer was much nearer the consumer than he is today; that the handicraftsman who sold in his small artisan shop the product of his own labor was the typical maker and merchant; and that a full-fledged factory system of production emerged only under certain favorable circumstances. What these were may be gathered from the examination of the individual industries that follows.

The tableware that was most popular in Augustus’ day was a red-glazed pottery ornamented with designs in low relief and called, after the most important city of manufacture, Arretine ware.³ It frequently bears the stamp not only of the manufacturer but also of the particular craftsman who designed the piece—or, rather, the mold from which the piece was turned—for the processes were those of mass production in a factory rather than of individual craftsmen’s shops. The designer, for instance, produced a variety of stencils, probably in clay, with patterns of leaves, geometrical designs, human figures posturing, and so forth; and with these he would stencil running friezes, not into each bowl, but into a mold that could serve for the production of hundreds of bowls. The designer was a trained craftsman who could model in clay and who had some taste in the composition of patterns, but we need hardly suppose that he was an original artist like the men who so frequently produced exquisite work in the famous Greek vases, since in Arretine ware the patterns were usually borrowed from those of silver plate.

³ See C.I.L. XV, 702, and XI, 1081; Chase, Catalogue of Arretine Pottery (with bibliography), 1916.

To judge from the instances in which we can actually apply a test to the form of the signature,⁴ the designer was usually a slave or a freedman. If the designer was a slave, we may be fairly sure that the ordinary laborers were. The owners of the factories were, of course, Roman citizens, but it is surprising how frequently they bore a foreign cognomen, a fact that implies that they or their ancestors of no remote date had come up from slavery. Indeed, some of the owners appear to be the very persons who designed the patterns of an earlier style, an indication that slave-artists sometimes secured their freedom and a sufficient competence to gain possession of their masters’ factories.

⁴ See Am. Hist. Review, 1916, p. 693, for criteria; also Oxe, Rhein. Mus. 1904, 108. The pottery produced at Cales two centuries earlier was designed almost wholly by the shopowners, who were free citizens; see Pagenstecher, Die calenische Reliefkeramik, pp. 148 ff.

The extensive proportions of some of the factories are proved beyond a doubt. Thus, for instance, the ware of certain firms has been found—not, to be sure, over the whole Roman world, for each firm seems to have supplied the regions opened by the natural arteries of trade—but at least over half the Mediterranean basin. Indeed, for one period it is true that the potteries situated in three districts—that is, near Puteoli, at Arretium, and in the valley of the Po—supplied the whole demand for moderately good tableware throughout the Empire, excepting only the southeast.

The scale of production⁵ is also indicated by the great number of workmen engaged in certain firms. That of Cornelius, for instance, has provided the names of some forty designers. To be sure, they were not all contemporaneous, but at any rate a single designer could keep a large number of mixers, potters, and furnacemen busy, since presumably he merely made the molds and touched up the designs. Calidius Strigo had at least twenty designers, Perennius as many, and there were a dozen other firms of goodly proportions at Arretium.

Finally, mass production with a view to extensive trade is disclosed in the establishment of branch factories in Gaul and elsewhere, the purpose being, of course, to save what was in that day the heavy item of freight. Indeed, the home factories were eventually put to rout by these new ones, whether because the clays of Gaul were better, the makers more enterprising, or the provincial market more conservative when fashions began to change in Italy. Thus, for instance, a consignment of red ware that had reached Pompeii shortly before the eruption—the box had not yet been opened—contained more Gallic pieces than Italian, although the box had apparently been packed at Rome.⁶

⁵ Notizie degli Scavi, 1896, p. 455, describes a large pottery. The mixing vat had a capacity of 10,000 gallons. The Gallic potteries also produced on a large scale: Déchelette, Les vases céramiques de la Gaule, p. 91.

⁶ Atkinson, Jour. of Roman Studies, IV, 27.

In this industry, then, we find the machinery of an extensive factory production of articles intended for wide distribution. Of course, the student of Roman society sees in this instance an exception to, rather than an example of, the usual rule, but it is apparent that conditions here favored the development of large-scale production.

Two elements were of prime importance. One was the quasi-trade-secret involved in making the paste; for, though there was no copyright and this particular clay could be, and in fact was, manufactured in several places, exact knowledge of a rather intricate formula was, after all, essential. Secondly, a designer of some skill, training, and taste was required; consequently, competition could not spring up overnight, and the expense of keeping a skilled designer naturally suggested the advisability of gathering under him enough unskilled labor to occupy his time. Hence it is that this industry developed in a way that was rather unusual in the Roman world.

By way of contrast, both in workmanship and in conditions of production, it is interesting to compare the manufacture of another article of pottery—namely, the ordinary clay lamps,⁷ millions of which must have been manufactured every year and sold for a very few cents apiece. Many of these lamps have a little decoration, but seldom does a pattern show any real artistic worth. They were turned out in molds by an ordinary potter, and the clay paste was little better than that used in good roof tiles. Furthermore, they were so cheap that it would hardly have been worthwhile to ship them any considerable distance.

To be sure, the recurrence in all parts of the world of certain types of lamps bearing a well-known firm name succeeded until recently in deceiving archaeologists into thinking that certain firms commanded the trade over wide areas. But it has now been proved⁸ by measurements that the greater number of these lamps came from local potteries that simply used various shapes successively popular at some center like Rome, importing the originals and using them, firm name and all, as molds.

Since, then, in the absence of protective copyright, there was here no difficult formula or trade secret to aid in excluding competition, and no great economic inducement for gathering considerable labor, the industry scattered in such a way that local potteries usually supplied the needs of each community. Concerning the class of labor used, we have some indications. The firm names are usually in briefest form—a cognomen alone—though in early examples good Roman gentile names occur. Judging from the frequency of Greek cognomina, we may suppose that the potteries that produced these cheap wares fell into the hands of the class that in general managed Rome’s industries, at least in the Early Empire—that is, the freedmen.

⁷ C.I.L. XV, 784; Fink, Sitzungsb. Akad. München, 1900; Loeschcke, Keramische Funde in Haltern, p. 210.

⁸ Loeschcke, op. cit. p. 210.

Certain developments of the glass industry in Augustus’ day⁹ bring us back to conditions not unlike those of the red-glazed pottery. Glassmaking apparently grew out of the art of surface-glazing in Egypt at a very early age, and in Roman times the ware of Alexandria, chiefly mosaics of varicolored glass pastes, was shipped the world over. It is likely that there were very large factories in Egypt, but since the ware bears no trademark and since it was successfully copied at Rome and elsewhere, we are quite unable to determine the proportions of such factories.

There is, however, a translucent glass of Rome, usually figured and signed, and apparently made with the blowpipe, that provides some little information of value. When Strabo says that in his day certain new inventions at Rome had greatly increased the production of glass and brought down the price to a cent or two per article, he may well be referring to the discovery of the process by which a bubble of glass paste was manipulated with the aid of a blowpipe. It is obvious why this method revolutionized the production of clear glass.

Hitherto, for the making of bottles and for many shapes of beakers, a new mold had to be shaped for each individual article, a labor-consuming process and one that, because of the sand and clay of the mold, left the article far from clear. With the blowpipe, a permanent outer mold was used that might contain the figured pattern—figures were the fashion in all wares of Augustus’ day—and the glassblower, with the use of his pipe, could force the paste to fill the mold and assume the pattern desired. The product was clearer and smoother, and the work was far more rapidly done than by the old method.

It is not surprising that the makers of the new glass, inartistic though it was, showed such enthusiasm over the new process as to put their names in prominent letters upon the pattern. The ware, which can readily be distinguished, is not only found widely distributed, but the maker’s name is printed in Greek as well as in Latin, apparently on the supposition that the articles would find a wide sale.

⁹ Kisa, Das Glas im Altertum, pp. 261, 702; Eisen, Am. Jour. Arch. 1916, p. 143; Morin, La Verrerie en Gaule, 1913; C.I.L. XV, 871.

Here again, as in the case of Arretine ware, conditions favorable to monopolistic production existed. Whether or not modern methods can extract glass paste with ease from the sands and pozzolanas of Italy everywhere, it is clear from Strabo and Pliny that the ancient glassmaker had great difficulty in finding a tractable sand. This alone prevented much competition.

Moreover, the new invention made a peculiar distribution of specialists necessary. Hitherto, the workman who handled the hot glass paste at the furnace must also be skilled at molding it quickly into the desired pattern. By the new process, one designer could shape any number of exterior molds, and any number of glassblowers might produce the articles on these molds, given only special skill in glassblowing. Thus, again, it was good economy to gather labor into one place and about one designer.

There is one additional fact of interest here that deserves mention in passing. The manufacturers of this glass bear Greek names and call themselves natives of Phoenician Sidon. It may be that some of the factories were in Sidon; at least Ennion’s work is found mainly in that region. On the other hand, the work of Artas, Neikon, and Ariston appears mostly at Rome. Either we are dealing with an eastern product that captured the trade of Rome or, what is more likely, we are dealing with skilled artisans and manufacturers who, realizing that Rome offered the best market, set up their main factories in Italy. Perhaps these are the factories on the Volturnus River mentioned by Pliny.

The brickmaking industry¹⁰ was another that tended toward factory and monopolistic methods at Rome, though for a very different set of reasons. During the Republic, the industry found little encouragement. Public buildings were largely made of tufa blocks, and when concrete was introduced it came to be lined with stone, large blocks, or small squares set in cement. Clay was burnt chiefly for roof tiles.

In the early Empire, until Claudius’ day, the stone facing and opus reticulatum still continued in vogue, though broken roof tiles were also introduced for the facing of concrete walls. In the reign of Claudius, however, brick facing became more general, so that brickyards had to supply new forms in addition to the roof tiles. It was in Nero’s reign, especially when, after the great fire, a large part of the city had to be rebuilt, that the brick industry came into its own. It is evident that the brick kilns then in existence had to supply an inestimable quantity of material for the facing of concrete walls, and brick-faced concrete remained the standard material for construction thenceforward.

¹⁰ C.I.L. XV, 1; Van Deman, Am. Jour. Arch. 1912, 247 ff.

There were, of course, both centrifugal and centripetal forces in this industry at Rome as elsewhere. The recipe was centuries old and by no means a secret. Furthermore, good clays for bricks were abundant. To be sure, the excellent Pliocene shales behind the Vatican that now feed the great kilns of Rome seem not to have been exploited to any great extent in ancient times, but the alluvium of the Anio and the Tiber, which combines the limestone silt of the Apennines with the volcanic pozzolanas of Latium, still produces some of the finest red bricks of Rome; and here, to judge from the texture of the old bricks and from the brick stamps, were the chief yards of ancient Rome. That supply was inexhaustible and could not well be controlled by any single firm.

Since the product was too heavy for ready transport, it was not easy for a firm to secure control of the trade over large areas. Only in very few instances do the ancient brick stamps appear widely distributed. Bricks from Roman yards were, of course, barged down to Ostia, and some wares of the Campanian and even the Ligurian and Gallic coasts went by sea to Rome’s seaport and vice versa, possibly as ballast. Yards on the Tiber above Rome, even a hundred miles away, gained a market down the river; and when a particularly good article was desired by a nobleman for his Alban villa, he would pay the expenses of a costly transport from the metropolis. But this list fairly completes the cases of transshipment.

And yet certain brick firms at Rome grew to immense proportions, owing possibly to a capacity and ability to grasp the opportunities offered. Interesting in this connection is the growth of the property of the famous Gallic orator Domitius Afer. Arriving at Rome a poor man in the reign of Tiberius, he gained wealth and political position by his remarkable gift of speech, ready wit, and calculating devotion to the reigning prince. Like any Roman ambitious to establish a social position, he invested in landed estates, and it was probably in this way that he became an owner of a brickyard, since tile burning was still looked upon as a legitimate branch of agriculture and therefore respectable beyond the realm of ordinary business.

The times were auspicious, for bricks were just working their way into fashion. Afer’s adopted sons and heirs, Tullus and Lucanus, profiting doubtless by the devastating fire that destroyed most of Rome, and perhaps also skillfully using for business purposes the political influence they both inherited from their ennobled father, extended their enterprises enormously. They acquired, as their trademarks show, the yards of several different estates, which they finally conducted under a score of managers.

There is hardly a public or private building of importance during their period—an epoch of enormous building activity—where their trademark is not prominent, if not predominant, among the brick stamps found. These, by the way, are the properties that formed the main group of the imperial yards of a later day, for they passed by inheritance through the hands of Lucilla, the daughter of Lucanus, to her grandson, who became the emperor Marcus Aurelius. In his day, indeed, the brickyards of Rome had largely become imperial property, well-nigh an imperial monopoly—a situation that, however, was largely due to the accident of intermarriage between the families that owned the chief yards at the beginning of the second century and the succession by due inheritance into the family of the Annii.

It is deserving of notice that brickmaking is practically the only industry at Rome in which the aristocrat does not hesitate to display his connections with the profits of a factory. The reason probably lies in the associations with agriculture already mentioned. The Roman noble was supposed to be a landlord, and it was always proper for him to be intimately acquainted with all the processes of agriculture and to develop all the resources of his land, whether by grain- or stock-raising or by turning a clay bank into a tile yard. Indeed, Asinius Pollio was one of the first nobles at Rome to have his name stamped upon tiles that he apparently made at his Alban villa, and there is little reason to doubt that the tiles bearing the name of Tuli from the vicinity of Tusculum were made at the favorite Tusculan villa of Cicero.

This fact again explains a peculiar business practice in the association of the owner and slave-managers of such factories, for brick stamps usually indicate the names of both the owner and the superintendent of the yard, the latter invariably a slave or freedman. The practice, of course, simply continues the conditions that regularly held upon the large landed estates. The landlord at this time seldom leased his lands; he rather cultivated them himself, placing a trusted slave or freedman in charge of his property, a position of considerable responsibility and dignity. It is apparent that the superintendent of the brickyards who was permitted to stamp his name upon the brick with that of his master corresponds in every way to the vilicus of the estate.

Regarding the manufacture of metalwork, a few definite facts can be elicited from ancient writers and, in the case of bronze and leadware, from producers’ signatures. Wrought iron and steel of excellent quality were made and used in arms and agricultural implements, but since the valved bellows had not yet been invented, a thorough melting of iron ore was not yet possible. The Roman manufacturer¹¹ therefore did not know of cast iron, the cheapest and most serviceable form of the metal. In lieu of thorough melting, he had to content himself with the expensive product that could be procured by patient and reiterated forging on the anvil. Delian price lists quote iron at about six dollars per hundredweight, which seems very high when we consider that the Roman procured his copper at very little above the modern price.

¹¹ Jullian, Art. Fabri, Daremberg-Saglio; Blümner, Technologie.

In Cicero’s day, there seems to have been a very remarkable concentration of iron production at Puteoli. Italian iron ore came then, as now, from the island of Elba off the Tuscan shore. The ore dug there was brought to the mainland and “roasted” until the mass “resembled sponges,” with such heat as could be produced in low furnaces. At the time of the Second Punic War,¹² the Etruscan cities still held possession of the iron industries of Italy, producing great quantities of arms and implements; but in the second century Puteoli captured the trade and the industry.

Here, according to Diodorus,¹³ manufacturers gathered great numbers of smiths who wrought the crude metal into “arms, mattocks, sickles and other implements,” which merchants bought and carried into all parts of the world. That Puteoli succeeded Tuscany¹⁴ is not surprising when we consider her wealth of fuel in the Phlegraean fields, her excellent harbor, her position near the richest agricultural land of Italy, where iron tools were especially used, and her place as a distributing center for the armies and navies of Rome.

¹² Livy, XXVII, 45.

¹³ Diodorus, V, 13. In Cato’s day, Cales on the border of Campania produced good ironware. The industry may have spread from there to Puteoli. Of course, excellent steel was also made in Spain, Noricum, and Anatolia, in articles that the Romans always imported in quantities.

¹⁴ Pliny’s chance remark that an old decree of the Senate had forbidden mining has led to much futile guessing (Pliny, N.H. III, 138; XXXVII, 201). The iron mines of Elba were being worked in Strabo’s day, and doubtless were worked as long as they proved profitable. It may be that the Senate had once ordered the mines closed in the third century when the Gauls invaded Italy and found arms in northern Etruria. It will be remembered that Porsenna had previously forbidden the use of iron in Latium except for agricultural implements. Needless to say, the senatorial decree must have become a dead letter as soon as the Roman confederacy had complete control of Italy. The law limiting the output of gold at Vercellae, also quoted by Pliny (N.H. XXXIII, 78), was probably intended to prevent a sudden fluctuation of prices such as had taken place when gold was discovered at Aquileia (Pol. XXXIV, 10). Such gold placer-mines did not continue to produce long, and no repeal of the law was therefore necessary, a thing that seems to have misled Pliny into thinking these laws were still in force in his day.

The language of Diodorus might lead the unwary into assuming a real factory system, as indeed it does justify us in applying to the industry the terms of capitalistic production and international commerce. But we must not infer too much. Since the furnaces could not produce thoroughly molten ore in large quantities, cast-iron implements that might have been made en masse were, of course, out of the question. Every iron and steel implement was accordingly the product of repeated heatings and forgings on individual anvils. There was therefore, in all probability, little division of labor and little use of labor-saving machinery except such as any smith would employ.

If some manufacturers, as Diodorus implies, took advantage of Puteoli’s excellent position to gather there under one roof a large number of skilled smiths, slaves or free, they might well be called capitalistic producers; but the essential elements of a factory system, such as we have found in the pottery and glass industries, cannot without further evidence be assumed.

In these circumstances, it is not surprising that all the large cities reveal in their inscriptions the fact that individual producers of iron implements continued to prosper everywhere.¹⁵ They were the artisans who kept a small shop with a single forge where, with the aid of an apprentice-slave or two, they made their own specialty and sold it.

In the Vatican Gallery there stands a typical illustration of such a shop represented upon a tombstone.¹⁶ On one side is pictured the smith forging a blade; on the other he is seen by the side of a small rack of knives and sickles, making a sale to a customer. Nothing could better illustrate the general condition of Roman industry. Very many of the tombstones of Roman artisans reveal this same system prevailing in the iron trade, in that they mention the special craft of shield-maker, sword-maker, sickle-maker, helmet-maker, and the like.

¹⁵ C.I.L. VI, 9886, 2196, 1952, 9442, 9260; II, 3357; X, 3984, 3987; Cic. Cat. I, 8, mentions a house at Rome inter falcarios. The Roman guild of fabri is mentioned in C.I.L. VI, 1892. Pompeii seems to have had hardware stores without forges; probably most of the ironware of that town was supplied from the factories of Puteoli.

Varro also mentions traveling smiths who went from farm to farm, and some landlords found it worthwhile to own slaves trained as smiths; see C.I.L. VI, 6283–5, and Cic. Pro Plancio, 62.

¹⁶ Amelung, I, 275.

In the production of arms and armor, the participation of the government altered conditions in the trade, but this probably did not interfere seriously with private enterprise until late in imperial times. Every army¹⁷ had its group of smiths behind the lines, not only to make the artillery of the army but also to mend shields, swords, and helmets and to supply spearpoints in great abundance.

But the artisans at home, during the Republic at least, did no little work in filling the demand for arms, since every legionary soldier¹⁸ had to provide himself before departure with a helmet, a breastplate or coat of mail, a standard sword, and a steel-pointed lance. It is probable, too, that the armories¹⁹ that every municipality of any size kept well stocked against sudden riots or invasions bought their supplies from private shops or large producers. At any rate, the armamentarium²⁰ of Pompeii that was recently found had no place for production in the vicinity. In the late Empire, as is well known, the government assumed the task of producing all the arms and armor needed by its forces and erected for the purpose large state factories in several cities throughout the Empire.

¹⁷ Vegetius, II, 11; Livy, XXVI, 51; XXIX, 35; Polyb. X, 17.

¹⁸ Tac. Ann. I, 17.

¹⁹ Cic. Pro Rab. 20; Tac. Hist. I, 38.

²⁰ Notizie degli Scavi, 1916, p. 432.

The manufacture of bronze and copperware,²¹ on the other hand, seems to have developed a real factory system, at least in Capua. At the end of the Republic and in the early Empire there was being produced a great abundance of bronze utensils, frequently of seemly shape and artistically ornamented, such as wine containers, platters, ladles, and bowls—not to speak of kitchen pots and pans—and all of these bear producers’ names that recur with remarkable frequency.

This ware, quite uniform in workmanship, had been found in abundance not only in Italy²² but everywhere in Germany and as far north as Scotland, Sweden, and Finland. It is probable that we should look to Capua for the source of these articles. There the Etruscans in the earliest times created a bronze industry; there Cato²³ advises his readers to buy “bronze buckets, containers for wine, oil and water, and all other copper ware”; there Pliny says the best copperware of his day was still produced; and it was there that medieval churches had their campane made. The conjecture that Capua was the producing center of the widely scattered ware has practically been proved by finding on Capuan tombstones the frequent occurrence of the family names that these articles bear: Cipius, Oppius, Nasennius, and others.

²¹ See Willers, Bronzeeimer von Hemmoor, p. 213; Neue Untersuchungen; Studien z. Griechische Kunst, p. 156; Mau-Kelsey, Pompeii, pp. 369–79, for illustrations. See also Pliny, N.H. XXXIII, 130.

²² C.I.L. XV gives the Roman inscriptions.

²³ Cato, R.R. 135; Pliny, N.H. XXXIV, 95; cf. Horace, Serm. I, 6, 116.

Willers, who has studied this ware, believes that the producing factories were large enough to employ thousands of workmen. Considering that during the Middle Ages copper utensils were remelted whenever found, the survival of many dozens of specimens throughout Europe would seem to justify his conclusion. He also seems to be justified in employing the term “factory.” The process of production involved in making these articles was more elaborate and required a greater number of specialized artisans than did the iron industry described above. The metal was melted, mixed with proper proportions of tin or zinc, cast in molds that only trained artists could produce, and then submitted to trained artisans who polished, carved, and forged. Here there was surely not only the investment of large capital but the far-reaching division of labor that characterizes the modern industrial factory.

The reasonable surmise has been made that the existence of these foundries at Capua made possible the extensive employment of bronze in the statues, busts, and objets d’art that have been found in abundance at Herculaneum and Pompeii. To be sure, archaeologists²⁴ are still prone to ascribe many of these to the studios of Athens, but busts of men like Caecilius Jucundus, the Pompeian banker, prove that native work of very good quality could be produced in the vicinity.

It is not improbable that in Cicero’s day and during the century following, the Capuan foundries cast a large number of statues for Greek and Campanian artists residing at Naples, and that much of the work usually assumed to be imported will soon be accepted as native. It is certain that much of the beautiful metal furniture of Pompeii—the bronze lampstands, tables, braziers, and tripods that have influenced later decorative art to such an extent—was made possible by the high development of the bronze industry at Capua.²⁵

²⁴ Deonna, Statuaria in Daremberg-Saglio; Jour. Hell. Stud. 1903, p. 217.

²⁵ Unfortunately, we have no way of determining what class of labor was used in this Capuan industry, since we do not know whether the signatures belonged to the factory owner, the designer, or the workman. It is not unlikely that in Campania, where Greek ideas still largely prevailed, many free workmen labored in the shops, especially since frequent expropriations by Sulla and the triumvirs had removed many natives from the land.

In the manufacture of water pipes—always made of lead—the factory system, however, failed to emerge, despite the fact that large quantities in standard sizes were frequently needed. Here we get our information partly from Frontinus’ businesslike account of the water supply of Rome, but mainly from the stamps upon the pipes, which indicate their owner and maker.²⁶

In general, the imperial water bureau provided for the main aqueducts of Rome and for the distribution of water to all public places—that is, to the imperial palaces, to the public baths and gardens, and to a large number of free public fountains whence the poor carried their water. In Frontinus’ day, the bureau owned some seven hundred slaves to do the requisite work, a part of which consisted in making and laying the lead pipes of the public service; indeed, such pipes usually bear the name of the maker besides those of the water commissioner and the emperor. And here it is interesting to find that the bureau not infrequently had to employ the services of independent plumbers,²⁷ as Frontinus himself implies in his statement that he is compelled to let contracts for part of his work.

²⁶ C.I.L. XV, 906 ff.

²⁷ C.I.L. XV, 7279–83, 7369, 7309a. Compare 7385 with 7563k, and 7196 with 7409.

At Rome, however, the larger number of pipes was contracted for by private individuals who had purchased the right to tap the public water main, a group that included most of the well-to-do of the city. Such pipes were quite regularly stamped with the owner’s name in order to afford ready identification in case of repairs—for often several lines lay parallel to each other under the street. Usually the maker also took this occasion to have his own name recorded.

Now these names reveal some singular circumstances. From the great mass of material recovered and the numerous names recorded, it does not appear that any one firm secured large contracts or tried to build up a stock for large orders, although Frontinus shows that certain standard sizes were in demand. A maker’s name, in fact, very seldom recurs in two widely separated regions of the city; and furthermore, when a contract is large, it is apparently divided among several plumbers.²⁸ Moreover, it is clear that the names occurring upon the pipes were almost invariably made a part of the original mold, which indicates that the pipe was made to order and that no stock was accumulated.

The system in vogue, therefore, was this: small shopowners with a few slaves, with no large capital, and with few facilities, took the orders when they came, bought the metal,²⁹ melted it, and rolled it into plates, which were cut into the requisite strips and soldered into pipes; and finally they laid and connected these. That is to say, the plumber was also the maker of the pipes.

Why this time-consuming system was conserved is difficult to understand. Of course, since the city laid few mains, and the private citizen who desired water had frequently to conduct it for long distances, it was exceedingly important that the owner’s name should be stamped in enduring form, a point certainly secured by this system; but other ways of attaining the same result are conceivable. It would seem that the inertia of this industry is simply an illustration of how tenaciously the small-shop system conserved itself against obvious economic inducements toward centralization—a phenomenon too well known and recognized to need further illustration.

²⁸ C.I.L. XV, 7369–73.

²⁹ Lead was very cheap, since most silver mines produced more lead as a by-product than the market needed. Pliny, XXXIV, 161, quotes the price of pipe lead at one cent the pound.

That the people engaged in this trade, if independent shopowners, were frequently freedmen, or of the same general class as freedmen, is shown by the frequent recurrence of the Greek cognomina. Often, indeed, they were simply practicing a trade that as slaves they had learned in the imperial or municipal bureaus. Thus, the plumber who laid the pipes of the great villa on the Appian Way³⁰ was an imperial freedman, and at Ostia several plumbers bear the descriptive name of Ostiensis in lieu of family names.

³⁰ C.I.L. XV, 7799.

Finally, diverse tendencies of industry may be illustrated from the activities of the jewelers and goldsmiths. There is no evidence that wholesale production played any part in this trade.³¹ Rings and pendants and ornaments of precious stones were generally made and sold in small shops, though we sometimes hear of negotiantes who apparently were not artisans. Since the raw material was costly, an extensive system of custom production usually prevailed, and we frequently hear of individuals bringing their old gold or uncut stones to the goldsmiths to have them made into jewelry.³²

But this was by no means the only practice. The cases of lawsuits cited by the jurists³³ also imply that goldsmiths were at times handicraftsmen who owned their raw material; and the tombstones of many jewelers that record large legacies³⁴ or enumerate long lists of freedmen who had once served them prove that these men often possessed considerable wealth.

In this industry, furthermore, as in many others, wealthy patrons often equipped an artisan’s shop for a skilled slave or freedman, as a profitable way of investing capital. An inscription³⁵ raised by such a patron to the memory of his freedman reads in part:

“To M. Canuleius Zosimus—The patron to his freedman. He did nothing contrary to the wishes of his patron. Though he always had much gold and silver in his possession, he coveted none of it. He excelled in carving Clodian ware.”

³¹ Gummerus has recently discussed this matter in Klio, vols. XIV and XV.

³² Plautus, Men. 525; Digest, 19, 2, 31; 34, 2, 54; 41, 1, 77; 19, 2, 1. Diocletian’s edict assumes custom work in this industry, but at a very late date when free labor was being suppressed.

³³ Digest, 19, 5, 20, 2.

³⁴ C.I.L. VI, 2236, 9433, 9544–45, 9547, 9960, 30973.

³⁵ C.I.L. VI, 9222.

Closely related to the jewelers, and sometimes identified with them, were the gemmarii, cutters of intaglios and cameos.³⁶ In ancient days this art assumed very significant proportions, for the reason that every man of the least consequence must have his own signet ring; and in the later days of the Republic, the aristocratic Romans commanded the services of the very best gem-engravers for these seals, many of which are still treasured as works of exquisite art.

There are, of course, all grades of work. Dioscurides, who was summoned from the East to make the imperial seal, was looked upon as an artist of high rank, and he doubtless did not need to keep a shop. He is a fair instance of the Greek and Oriental artisan who drifted to Rome with the tide of wealth.

At the other extreme are the craftsmen known from humble tombstone inscriptions who designate themselves as gem-engravers³⁷ from the “Sacred Way,” the jewelers’ street. Here was apparently a row of shops where such craftsmen took orders and worked. Their names seem to indicate that they were freedmen. Possibly they had been trained as slave apprentices and had saved enough by extra labor to purchase freedom and set up shops of their own.

Finally, there is a peculiar group of signatures written in Greek, though with Latin praenomina. Presumably these designate men who were also immigrant artists but who had gained citizenship—the right to use the Roman form of name—by direct gift of the state, perhaps in recognition of their work. That is to say, they use the Roman praenomen to distinguish themselves from the freedmen, but write the name in Greek as a means of suggesting the fact that their work is not ordinary crude native cutting.

The signatures seem to indicate that, for one fine craft at least, Rome had to draw largely upon the artisans of Greece and the East. The more ordinary grades of work fell to the slave apprentice, and the business of the small shops was conducted here, as in other trades, by the freedman class. Production on capitalistic lines was naturally out of the question, not only because customers insisted upon having the special attention of some recognized artist, but because most of the work had to be done to order.

³⁶ Furtwängler, Antike Gemmen, p. 300, and plates 49 and 50. See also Arch. Jahrb. 1888.

³⁷ C.I.L. VI, 9433–6, 9545–49, 33872.

CHAPTER XI

INDUSTRY AT THE END OF THE REPUBLIC

(Recent students of Roman industry have disagreed fundamentally about its scope, aims, and processes. Some[1] have compared it with the primitive methods of an undeveloped rural society, while others have described it in the language of the intricate industrial system of modern times.) This disagreement is, of course, largely due to the inadequate information found in ancient writers. Most of them were statesmen interested in political history, and they paid little attention to the occupations of slaves and freedmen. Apart from some agricultural treatises, Frontinus’s volumes on Rome’s water supply, and a few books by Pliny devoted to technical methods of production, Roman writers have left the economist at the mercy of parenthetical remarks, incidental comments, and the mute objects brought to light by the excavator’s spade. If progress is to be made in this nebulous subject, a patient reckoning with the evidence of archaeology is essential.

In this chapter, I intend to examine several typical industries, especially those that have left some record of themselves in the form of trademarks and makers’ signatures,[2] in order to obtain definite data about the scale of production, the degree of centralization, the extent of the market, and the class of people involved in producing these goods. In the next chapter, by way of correction and supplement, I shall attempt a survey of the economic structure of Pompeii, the only Roman city that has survived sufficiently intact to permit a reliable reconstruction. To this I shall append a summary of the conclusions that seem justified.

It may be said at once that, in general, the Roman producer was much closer to the consumer than producers are today. The handicraftsman who sold the product of his own labor in his small artisan’s shop was the typical maker and merchant, and a fully developed factory system of production emerged only under certain favorable circumstances. What these circumstances were may be gathered from the following examination of individual industries.

The tableware[3] most popular in Augustus’s day was a red-glazed pottery decorated with designs in low relief and called Arretine ware, after the most important city in which it was manufactured. It frequently bears not only the manufacturer’s stamp but also that of the particular craftsman who designed the piece—or, rather, the mold from which the piece was turned—for the processes were those of mass production in a factory rather than those of individual craftsmen’s shops. The designer, for example, produced a variety of stencils, probably in clay, with patterns of leaves, geometrical designs, human figures in various poses, and so forth. With these, he would stencil running friezes, not into each bowl, but into a mold that could be used to produce hundreds of bowls. The designer was a trained craftsman who could model in clay and had some taste in composing patterns. But we need hardly suppose that he was an original artist like the men who so often produced exquisite work on the famous Greek vases, since the patterns on Arretine ware were usually borrowed from those on silver plate.

Judging from the instances in which we can actually apply a test to the form of the signature,[4] the designer was usually a slave or a freedman. If the designer was a slave, we may be fairly sure that the ordinary laborers were also slaves. The owners of the factories were, of course, Roman citizens, but it is surprising how often they bore a foreign cognomen. This implies that they, or their not very remote ancestors, had risen from slavery. Indeed, some of the owners appear to be the very people who designed patterns in an earlier style, indicating that slave artists sometimes secured their freedom and enough wealth to gain possession of their masters’ factories.

The extensive scale of some factories is proved beyond doubt. For example, the products of certain firms have been found—not, to be sure, throughout the whole Roman world, for each firm seems to have supplied regions opened by the natural arteries of trade—but at least across half the Mediterranean basin. Indeed, during one period, the potteries located in three districts—near Puteoli, at Arretium, and in the valley of the Po—supplied the entire demand for moderately good tableware throughout the Empire, except in the southeast. The scale of production[5] is also indicated by the large number of workers employed by certain firms. The firm of Cornelius, for example, has provided the names of about forty designers. To be sure, they were not all contemporaries, but a single designer could keep a large number of mixers, potters, and furnace workers busy, since he presumably did no more than make the molds and touch up the designs. Calidius Strigo had at least twenty designers, Perennius had as many, and there were a dozen other firms of substantial size at Arretium. Finally, mass production intended for extensive trade is revealed by the establishment of branch factories in Gaul and elsewhere. Their purpose was, of course, to save what was then the heavy cost of freight.

Indeed, the home factories were eventually defeated by these new ones, whether because the clays of Gaul were better, the makers were more enterprising, or the provincial market was more conservative when fashions began to change in Italy. For example, a shipment of red ware that had reached Pompeii shortly before the eruption—the box had not yet been opened—contained more Gallic than Italian pieces, although the box had apparently been packed at Rome.[6]

In this industry, then, we find the machinery of extensive factory production for goods intended for wide distribution. Of course, the student of Roman society sees this as an exception to, rather than an example of, the usual rule. But it is clear that conditions here favored the development of large-scale production. Two elements were especially important. One was the quasi-trade secret involved in making the paste. Although there was no copyright, and this particular clay could be—and in fact was—manufactured in several places, exact knowledge of a rather intricate formula was nevertheless essential. Second, a designer with some skill, training, and taste was required. Consequently, competition could not arise overnight, and the expense of maintaining a skilled designer naturally suggested the advisability of gathering enough unskilled labor under him to occupy his time. This is why the industry developed in a way that was rather unusual in the Roman world.

By way of contrast, both in workmanship and in conditions of production, it is interesting to compare the manufacture of another pottery item: the ordinary clay lamp.[7] Millions of these must have been manufactured every year and sold for only a few cents apiece. Many of these lamps have a little decoration, but a pattern seldom shows any real artistic merit. They were turned out in molds by ordinary potters, and the clay paste was little better than that used in good roof tiles. Furthermore, they were so cheap that it would hardly have been worthwhile to ship them any considerable distance.

To be sure, the recurrence in all parts of the world of certain types of lamps bearing a well-known firm’s name succeeded until recently in deceiving archaeologists into thinking that certain firms controlled trade over wide areas. But measurements have now proved[8] that most of these lamps came from local potteries that simply used the various shapes that successively became popular at a center such as Rome, importing the originals and using them—firm name and all—as molds. Since there was no protective copyright, no difficult formula or trade secret to help exclude competition, and no strong economic incentive to gather large numbers of workers together, the industry became dispersed, so that local potteries usually supplied the needs of each community.

We have some indications concerning the class of labor used. The firm names are usually given in the briefest form, with a cognomen alone, although good Roman family names occur in early examples. Judging from the frequency of Greek cognomina, we may suppose that the potteries producing these cheap wares fell into the hands of the class that generally managed Rome’s industries, at least in the Early Empire—that is, the freedmen.

Certain developments in the glass industry during Augustus’s day[9] bring us back to conditions not unlike those found in the production of red-glazed pottery. Glassmaking apparently grew out of the art of surface glazing in Egypt at a very early date, and in Roman times the glassware of Alexandria—chiefly mosaics made of varicolored glass pastes—was shipped throughout the world. There were probably very large factories in Egypt, but because the ware bears no trademark and was successfully copied at Rome and elsewhere, we are quite unable to determine the size of such factories.

There is, however, a translucent glass from Rome, usually decorated with figures and signed, and apparently made with the blowpipe, that provides some useful information. When Strabo says that, in his day, certain new inventions at Rome had greatly increased glass production and reduced the price to one or two cents per article, he may well be referring to the discovery of the process by which a bubble of glass paste was manipulated with a blowpipe. It is obvious why this method revolutionized the production of clear glass. Previously, in making bottles and many shapes of beakers, a new mold had to be formed for each individual item. This was a labor-intensive process, and the sand and clay of the mold left the finished article far from clear.

With the blowpipe, a permanent outer mold could be used, and this might contain the figured pattern—figures were fashionable on all wares in Augustus’s day. Using his pipe, the glassblower could force the paste to fill the mold and assume the desired pattern. The product was clearer and smoother, and the work could be done much more rapidly than by the old method. It is not surprising that the makers of the new glass, inartistic though it was, showed such enthusiasm for the new process that they put their names in prominent letters on the pattern. This ware, which can readily be distinguished, is not only found widely distributed, but its makers’ names are printed in Greek as well as Latin, apparently because they expected the articles to be sold widely.

Here again, as with Arretine ware, conditions favorable to monopolistic production existed. Whether or not modern methods can easily extract glass paste from the sands and pozzolanas found throughout Italy, Strabo and Pliny make clear that the ancient glassmaker had great difficulty finding workable sand. This fact alone prevented much competition. Moreover, the new invention required an unusual distribution of specialists. Previously, the worker who handled hot glass paste at the furnace also had to be skilled at rapidly molding it into the desired pattern. With the new process, one designer could shape any number of exterior molds, and any number of glassblowers could produce items from those molds, provided they possessed the specialized skill of glassblowing. Thus, once again, it made sound economic sense to gather labor in one place around one designer.

One additional fact of interest deserves passing mention. The manufacturers of this glass bear Greek names and call themselves natives of Phoenician Sidon. Some of the factories may have been in Sidon; at least Ennion’s work is found mainly in that region. On the other hand, the work of Artas, Neikon, and Ariston appears mostly at Rome. Either we are dealing with an eastern product that captured the Roman market or, more likely, with skilled artisans and manufacturers who realized that Rome offered the best market and therefore established their principal factories in Italy. Perhaps these were the factories on the Volturnus River mentioned by Pliny.

Brickmaking[10] was another industry that tended toward factory-based and monopolistic methods at Rome, although for a very different set of reasons. During the Republic, the industry received little encouragement. Public buildings were largely made from blocks of tufa, and when concrete was introduced, it came to be faced with stone—either large blocks or small squares set in cement. Clay was fired chiefly to make roof tiles.

In the early Empire, until the time of Claudius, stone facing and opus reticulatum continued to be fashionable, although broken roof tiles were also introduced for facing concrete walls. During Claudius’s reign, however, brick facing became more common, so brickyards had to supply new forms in addition to roof tiles. It was especially during Nero’s reign, when a large part of the city had to be rebuilt after the great fire, that the brick industry came fully into its own. The brick kilns then in existence clearly had to supply an incalculable quantity of material for facing concrete walls, and brick-faced concrete remained the standard construction material from then onward.

There were, of course, both centrifugal and centripetal forces in this industry at Rome, as elsewhere. The recipe was centuries old and by no means secret. Furthermore, good brick clays were abundant. To be sure, the excellent Pliocene shales behind the Vatican that now supply Rome’s great kilns do not seem to have been extensively exploited in ancient times. But the alluvium of the Anio and Tiber, which combines the limestone silt of the Apennines with the volcanic pozzolanas of Latium, still produces some of Rome’s finest red bricks. Judging from the texture of the old bricks and from their stamps, this was where ancient Rome’s principal brickyards were located. That supply was inexhaustible and could not easily be controlled by any single firm.

Because the product was too heavy for easy transportation, it was difficult for a firm to control trade over large areas. Ancient brick stamps are widely distributed in only a very few instances. Bricks from Roman yards were, of course, carried by barge down to Ostia, and some products from the Campanian, Ligurian, and even Gallic coasts traveled by sea to Rome’s port, and vice versa, possibly as ballast. Brickyards on the Tiber above Rome, even those a hundred miles away, gained a market downriver. And when a nobleman wanted a particularly good product for his Alban villa, he would pay the cost of expensive transportation from the metropolis. This list, however, fairly exhausts the known cases of transshipment.

Nevertheless, certain brick firms at Rome grew to immense proportions, possibly because of their capacity and ability to seize the opportunities offered. Of interest in this connection is the growth of the property owned by the famous Gallic orator Domitius Afer. Arriving at Rome as a poor man during Tiberius’s reign, he gained wealth and political position through his remarkable gift for public speaking, his ready wit, and his calculating devotion to the reigning prince. Like any Roman ambitious to establish a social position, he invested in landed estates. It was probably in this way that he became the owner of a brickyard, since tile burning was still regarded as a legitimate branch of agriculture and therefore as respectable beyond the limits of ordinary business.

The times were favorable, because bricks were just coming into fashion. Afer’s adopted sons and heirs, Tullus and Lucanus, doubtless profited from the devastating fire that destroyed most of Rome. Perhaps they also skillfully used for business purposes the political influence they inherited from their ennobled father. They expanded their enterprises enormously, acquiring—as their trademarks show—the brickyards of several different estates, which they ultimately operated under about twenty managers. There is hardly an important public or private building from their period—an age of enormous building activity—in which their trademark is not prominent, if not predominant, among the brick stamps found.

These, incidentally, are the properties that formed the main group of the imperial brickyards of a later age. Through inheritance, they passed into the hands of Lucilla, the daughter of Lucanus, and then to her grandson, who became the emperor Marcus Aurelius. Indeed, in his day, Rome’s brickyards had largely become imperial property, almost an imperial monopoly. This situation, however, was largely due to the accident of intermarriage between the families that owned the principal brickyards at the beginning of the second century and to their eventual inheritance by the family of the Annii.

It is worth noting that brickmaking was practically the only industry at Rome in which an aristocrat did not hesitate to display his connection with the profits of a factory. The reason probably lies in the association with agriculture already mentioned. A Roman noble was expected to be a landlord, and it was always proper for him to be intimately familiar with all agricultural processes and to develop all the resources of his land—whether by raising grain or livestock or by converting a clay bank into a tile yard. Indeed, Asinius Pollio was one of the first nobles at Rome to have his name stamped on tiles, which he apparently made at his Alban villa. There is also little reason to doubt that the tiles bearing the name Tuli, found near Tusculum, were made at Cicero’s favorite Tusculan villa.

This fact also explains a peculiar business practice in the relationship between the owner and the slave managers of such factories. Brick stamps usually give the names of both the owner and the superintendent of the brickyard, the latter invariably being a slave or freedman. This practice simply continued the conditions that regularly prevailed on large landed estates. At this time, landlords seldom leased their lands. Instead, they cultivated the lands themselves, placing a trusted slave or freedman in charge of the property—a position of considerable responsibility and dignity. The superintendent of a brickyard who was permitted to stamp his name on the brick alongside that of his master clearly corresponded in every way to the vilicus of an estate.

Concerning the manufacture of metalwork, a few definite facts can be drawn from ancient writers and, in the case of bronze and lead wares, from producers’ signatures. Wrought iron and steel of excellent quality were made and used for weapons and agricultural implements. But because the valved bellows had not yet been invented, it was not yet possible to smelt iron ore thoroughly. The Roman manufacturer[11] therefore did not know cast iron, the cheapest and most serviceable form of the metal. Instead of thoroughly melting the ore, he had to be satisfied with the expensive product obtained by patient and repeated forging on an anvil. Delian price lists quote iron at about six dollars per hundredweight, which seems very high when we consider that the Romans obtained copper at very little above the modern price.

In Cicero’s day, there seems to have been a remarkable concentration of iron production at Puteoli. Italian iron ore came, then as now, from the island of Elba, off the Tuscan coast. The ore dug there was brought to the mainland and “roasted” until the mass “resembled sponges,” using such heat as could be produced in low furnaces. At the time of the Second Punic War,[12] the Etruscan cities still controlled Italy’s iron industries and produced large quantities of weapons and implements. But in the second century, Puteoli captured both the trade and the industry.

According to Diodorus,[13] manufacturers there gathered large numbers of smiths who worked the crude metal into “arms, mattocks, sickles, and other implements,” which merchants bought and carried to all parts of the world. That Puteoli succeeded Tuscany[14] is not surprising when we consider its abundant fuel in the Phlegraean Fields, its excellent harbor, its location near Italy’s richest agricultural land, where iron tools were especially used, and its position as a distribution center for Rome’s armies and navies.

The language of Diodorus may lead the unwary reader to assume that a true factory system existed in this industry, just as it certainly justifies us in applying the terms of capitalistic industry and international commerce. But we must not infer too much. Since the furnaces could not produce large quantities of fully molten ore, cast-iron implements that might have been produced en masse were, of course, out of the question. Every iron and steel implement was therefore the product of repeated heating and forging on individual anvils. In all probability, therefore, there was little division of labor and no use of labor-saving machinery except the equipment any smith would employ. If some manufacturers, as Diodorus implies, took advantage of Puteoli’s excellent location to gather a large number of skilled smiths—slave or free—under one roof, they might well be called capitalistic producers. But without further evidence, we cannot assume the existence of essential elements of a factory system such as we have found in the pottery and glass industries.

Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that inscriptions in all the large cities reveal that individual producers of iron implements continued to prosper everywhere.[15] These were artisans who kept small shops with single forges, where, with the help of one or two apprentice slaves, they made and sold their own specialized products.

In the Vatican Gallery stands a typical illustration of such a shop, represented on a tombstone.[16] On one side, the smith is shown forging a blade. On the other, he is shown beside a small rack of knives and sickles, making a sale to a customer. Nothing could better illustrate the general condition of Roman industry. Many tombstones of Roman artisans reveal that this same system prevailed in the iron trade, because they mention specialized crafts such as shield maker, sword maker, sickle maker, helmet maker, and the like.

In the production of arms and armor, government participation changed conditions in the trade, but this probably did not seriously interfere with private enterprise until late imperial times. Every army[17] had its group of smiths behind the lines, not only to make the army’s artillery but also to repair shields, swords, and helmets and to supply large numbers of spearheads. During the Republic, however, artisans at home did a considerable amount of work to meet the demand for weapons, since every legionary soldier[18] had to provide himself before departure with a helmet, a breastplate or coat of mail, a standard sword, and a steel-pointed lance.

It is also probable that the armories[19] that every municipality of any size kept well stocked against sudden riots or invasions bought their supplies from private shops or large producers. At any rate, the armamentarium[20] of Pompeii that was recently found had no production facility nearby. In the late Empire, as is well known, the government assumed the task of producing all the arms and armor needed by its forces and, for this purpose, established large state factories in several cities throughout the Empire.

The manufacture of bronze and copper wares,[21] on the other hand, seems to have developed a true factory system, at least in Capua. At the end of the Republic and during the early Empire, a great abundance of bronze utensils was being produced. These were often attractively shaped and artistically decorated and included wine containers, platters, ladles, and bowls, not to mention kitchen pots and pans. All of them bear producers’ names that recur with remarkable frequency.

This ware, which is quite uniform in workmanship, has been found in abundance not only in Italy[22] but throughout Germany and as far north as Scotland, Sweden, and Finland. Capua was probably the source of these objects. There, in the earliest times, the Etruscans created a bronze industry. There, Cato[23] advises his readers to buy “bronze buckets, containers for wine, oil, and water, and all other copper ware.” There, according to Pliny, the best copper ware of his day was still produced. And it was there that medieval churches had their campane made.

The theory that Capua was the production center of this widely scattered ware has been virtually proved by the frequent appearance on Capuan tombstones of the family names borne by these objects: Cipius, Oppius, Nasennius, and others.

Willers, who studied this ware, believes that the factories producing it were large enough to employ thousands of workers. Considering that, during the Middle Ages, copper utensils were melted down whenever found, the survival of many dozens of examples throughout Europe would seem to justify his conclusion. He also seems justified in using the term “factory.” The production process involved in making these objects was more elaborate and required a larger number of specialized artisans than the iron industry described above. The metal was melted, mixed with the proper proportions of tin or zinc, cast in molds that only trained artists could produce, and then passed to trained artisans who polished, carved, and forged it. Here, there was certainly not only an investment of substantial capital but also the far-reaching division of labor characteristic of the modern industrial factory.

The reasonable suggestion has been made that the existence of these foundries at Capua made possible the extensive use of bronze in the statues, busts, and objets d’art found in abundance at Herculaneum and Pompeii. To be sure, archaeologists[24] are still inclined to attribute many of these to the workshops of Athens. But busts of men such as Caecilius Jucundus, the Pompeian banker, prove that local work of very good quality could be produced nearby.

It is not improbable that, in Cicero’s day and during the following century, the Capuan foundries cast many statues for Greek and Campanian artists living at Naples. Much of the work usually assumed to have been imported may soon be accepted as local. It is certain that much of Pompeii’s beautiful metal furniture—the bronze lampstands, tables, braziers, and tripods that have so strongly influenced later decorative art—was made possible by the advanced development of the bronze industry at Capua.[25]

In the manufacture of water pipes—which were always made of lead—the factory system nevertheless failed to emerge, despite the fact that large quantities in standard sizes were frequently needed. Here, we obtain our information partly from Frontinus’s businesslike account of Rome’s water supply, but mainly from the stamps on the pipes, which identify their owners and makers.[26]

In general, the imperial water bureau provided the main aqueducts of Rome and distributed water to all public places: the imperial palaces, public baths and gardens, and a large number of free public fountains from which the poor carried their water. In Frontinus’s day, the bureau owned about seven hundred slaves to perform the necessary work, part of which consisted of making and laying the lead pipes used in the public service. Indeed, such pipes usually bear the maker’s name as well as those of the water commissioner and the emperor. It is interesting to find that the bureau quite often had to employ independent plumbers,[27] as Frontinus himself implies when he states that he is compelled to award contracts for part of his work.

At Rome, however, most pipes were commissioned by private individuals who had purchased the right to tap the public water main—a group that included most of the city’s prosperous residents. Such pipes were regularly stamped with the owner’s name so that they could be easily identified when repairs were needed, since several lines often lay parallel to one another beneath the street. Usually, the maker also took this opportunity to record his own name.

These names reveal some unusual circumstances. From the great mass of recovered material and the numerous names recorded, it does not appear that any one firm secured large contracts or tried to build up an inventory for large orders, although Frontinus shows that certain standard sizes were in demand. In fact, a maker’s name very seldom recurs in two widely separated parts of the city. Moreover, when a contract was large, it was apparently divided among several plumbers.[28]

It is also clear that the names appearing on the pipes were almost invariably made part of the original mold. This indicates that each pipe was made to order and that no stock was accumulated. The system in use was therefore as follows: small shop owners with a few slaves, little capital, and few facilities took orders as they came, bought the metal,[29] melted it, and rolled it into plates. They cut these into the required strips, soldered the strips into pipes, and finally laid and connected the pipes. In other words, the plumber was also the pipe maker.

It is difficult to understand why this time-consuming system was preserved. Of course, because the city laid few mains and private citizens who wanted water often had to conduct it over long distances, it was extremely important that the owner’s name be stamped on the pipe in a permanent form. This system certainly achieved that result, but other ways of accomplishing the same purpose are conceivable. The inertia of this industry seems simply to illustrate how tenaciously the small-shop system preserved itself against obvious economic incentives toward centralization—a phenomenon too well known and recognized to require further illustration.

The frequent recurrence of Greek cognomina shows that the people engaged in this trade, when they were independent shop owners, were often freedmen or belonged to the same general class as freedmen. Indeed, they were frequently practicing a trade that they had learned as slaves in the imperial or municipal bureaus. Thus, the plumber who laid the pipes of the great villa on the Appian Way[30] was an imperial freedman, while at Ostia several plumbers bore the descriptive name Ostiensis instead of family names.

Finally, the diverse tendencies of industry may be illustrated by the activities of jewelers and goldsmiths. There is no evidence that large-scale production played any part in this trade. Rings, pendants, and ornaments made of precious stones[31] were generally produced and sold in small shops, although we sometimes hear of negotiantes who apparently were not artisans.

Because the raw material was expensive, an extensive system of custom production usually prevailed, and we frequently hear of individuals bringing their old gold or uncut stones to goldsmiths to have them made into jewelry.[32] But this was by no means the only practice. Lawsuits cited by the jurists[33] also imply that goldsmiths were sometimes handicraftsmen who owned their raw material. Moreover, the tombstones of many jewelers, which record large legacies[34] or enumerate long lists of freedmen who had once served them, prove that these men often possessed considerable wealth.

In this industry, as in many others, wealthy patrons also often equipped an artisan’s shop for a skilled slave or freedman as a profitable way of investing capital. An inscription[35] erected by such a patron in memory of his freedman reads in part:

“To M. Canuleius Zosimus—The patron to his freedman. He did nothing contrary to the wishes of his patron. Although he always had much gold and silver in his possession, he coveted none of it. He excelled in carving Clodian ware.”

Closely related to jewelers, and sometimes identified with them, were the gemmarii, cutters of intaglios and cameos.[36] In ancient times, this art assumed very significant proportions because every man of even modest consequence had to possess his own signet ring. In the later years of the Republic, aristocratic Romans commanded the services of the very best gem engravers for these seals, many of which are still treasured as works of exquisite art.

There were, of course, all grades of work. Dioscurides, who was summoned from the East to make the imperial seal, was regarded as an artist of high rank, and he doubtless did not need to keep a shop. He is a fair example of the Greek and Oriental artisan who drifted to Rome with the tide of wealth.

At the other extreme were the craftsmen known from humble tombstone inscriptions, who described themselves as gem engravers[37] from the “Sacred Way,” the jewelers’ street. Here there was apparently a row of shops where such craftsmen took orders and worked. Their names seem to indicate that they were freedmen. Possibly they had been trained as slave apprentices and had saved enough through extra labor to purchase their freedom and establish shops of their own.

Finally, there is a peculiar group of signatures written in Greek but using Latin praenomina. Presumably these identify men who were also immigrant artists but who had gained citizenship—the right to use the Roman form of name—through a direct grant from the state, perhaps in recognition of their work. In other words, they used the Roman praenomen to distinguish themselves from freedmen, but wrote the name in Greek as a way of suggesting that their work was not ordinary, crude, native cutting.

The signatures seem to indicate that, for at least one fine craft, Rome had to draw largely upon the artisans of Greece and the East. The more ordinary grades of work fell to slave apprentices, while the business of the small shops was conducted here, as in other trades, by the freedman class. Production along capitalistic lines was naturally out of the question, not only because customers insisted on receiving the special attention of some recognized artist, but also because most of the work had to be done to order.

[1] Cf. Rodbertus, Jahrb. f. Nationalök. IV, 341; Bücher, Entstehung d. Volkswirtschaft, 4th ed., 1904, p. 117. The opposite view is held by E. Meyer, Kleine Schriften, pp. 79 ff. and 169 ff. The advocates of both views have gone to untenable extremes. Part of this chapter appeared in Classical Philology, 1918, pp. 155–168.

[2] Such inscriptions have been collected in the fifteenth volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum.

[3] See C.I.L. XV, 702 and XI, 1081; Chase, Catalogue of Arretine Pottery (with bibliography), 1916.

[4] See American Historical Review, 1916, p. 693, for criteria; also Oxe, Rheinisches Museum, 1904, p. 108. The pottery produced at Cales two centuries earlier was designed almost entirely by the shop owners, who were free citizens; see Pagenstecher, Die calenische Reliefkeramik, pp. 148 ff.

[5] Notizie degli Scavi, 1896, p. 455, describes a large pottery. Its mixing vat had a capacity of 10,000 gallons. The Gallic potteries also produced on a large scale: Déchelette, Les vases céramiques de la Gaule, p. 91.

[6] Atkinson, Journal of Roman Studies, IV, 27.

[7] C.I.L. XV, 784; Fink, Sitzungsberichte der Akademie München, 1900; Loeschcke, Keramische Funde in Haltern, p. 210.

[8] Loeschcke, op. cit., p. 210.

[9] Kisa, Das Glas im Altertum, pp. 261, 702; Eisen, American Journal of Archaeology, 1916, p. 143; Morin, La Verrerie en Gaule, 1913; C.I.L. XV, 871.

[10] C.I.L. XV, 1; Van Deman, American Journal of Archaeology, 1912, pp. 247 ff.

[11] Jullian, “Art Fabri,” Daremberg-Saglio; Blümner, Technologie.

[12] Livy, XXVII, 45.

[13] Diodorus, V, 13. In Cato’s day, Cales, on the border of Campania, produced good ironware. The industry may have spread from there to Puteoli. Excellent steel was also made in Spain, Noricum, and Anatolia, in the form of articles that the Romans always imported in quantity.

[14] Pliny’s incidental remark that an old decree of the Senate had forbidden mining has led to much futile speculation (Pliny, N.H. III, 138; XXXVII, 201). The iron mines of Elba were being worked in Strabo’s day and were doubtless worked as long as they remained profitable. The Senate may once have ordered the mines closed in the third century, when the Gauls invaded Italy and found weapons in northern Etruria. It will be remembered that Porsenna had previously forbidden the use of iron in Latium except for agricultural implements. Needless to say, the senatorial decree must have become a dead letter as soon as the Roman confederacy gained complete control of Italy. The law limiting the output of gold at Vercellae, also quoted by Pliny (N.H. XXXIII, 78), was probably intended to prevent a sudden fluctuation in prices such as had occurred when gold was discovered at Aquileia (Polybius, XXXIV, 10). Such placer gold mines did not continue producing for long, so no repeal of the law was necessary—a fact that seems to have misled Pliny into thinking these laws were still in force in his day.

[15] C.I.L. VI, 9886, 2196, 1952, 9442, 9260; II, 3357; X, 3984, 3987. Cicero, Cat. I, 8, mentions a house at Rome inter falcarios. The Roman guild of fabri is mentioned in C.I.L. VI, 1892. Pompeii seems to have had hardware stores without forges; probably most of that town’s ironware was supplied by the factories of Puteoli.

Varro also mentions traveling smiths who went from farm to farm, and some landlords found it worthwhile to own slaves trained as smiths; see C.I.L. VI, 6283–5, and Cicero, Pro Plancio, 62.

[16] Amelung, I, 275.

[17] Vegetius, II, 11; Livy, XXVI, 51; XXIX, 35; Polybius, X, 17.

[18] Tacitus, Annals, I, 17.

[19] Cicero, Pro Rabirio, 20; Tacitus, Histories, I, 38.

[20] Notizie degli Scavi, 1916, p. 432.

[21] See Willers, Bronzeeimer von Hemmoor, p. 213; Neue Untersuchungen; Studien zur griechischen Kunst, p. 156; Mau-Kelsey, Pompeii, pp. 369–79, for illustrations. See also Pliny, N.H. XXXIII, 130.

[22] C.I.L. XV gives the Roman inscriptions.

[23] Cato, R.R. 135; Pliny, N.H. XXXIV, 95; cf. Horace, Sermones, I, 6, 116.

[24] Déonna, “Statuaria,” in Daremberg-Saglio; Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1903, p. 217.

[25] Unfortunately, we have no way to determine what class of labor was used in this Capuan industry, since we do not know whether the signatures belonged to the factory owner, the designer, or the worker. It is not unlikely that, in Campania, where Greek ideas still largely prevailed, many free workers labored in the shops, especially since repeated expropriations by Sulla and the triumvirs had driven many natives from the land.

[26] C.I.L. XV, 906 ff.

[27] C.I.L. XV, 7279–83, 7369, 7309. Compare 7365 with 7563k, and 7113 with 7409.

[28] C.I.L. XV, 7369–73.

[29] Lead was very cheap, since most silver mines produced more lead as a by-product than the market required. Pliny, XXXIV, 161, quotes the price of pipe lead at one cent per pound.

[30] C.I.L. XV, 7799.

[31] Gummerus has recently discussed this matter in Klio, vols. XIV and XV.

[32] Plautus, Menaechmi, 525; Digest, 19, 2, 31; 34, 2, 54; 41, 1, 77; 18, 2, 1. Diocletian’s edict assumes custom work in this industry, but at a very late date, when free labor was being suppressed.

[33] Digest, 19, 5, 20, 2.

[34] C.I.L. VI, 2236, 9433, 9544–45, 9547, 9960, 30973.

[35] C.I.L. VI, 9222.

[36] Furtwängler, Antike Gemmen, p. 300 and plates 49 and 50. See also Archäologisches Jahrbuch, 1888.

[37] C.I.L. VI, 9433–36, 9545–49, 33872.