Chapter 14 — Commerce

CHAPTER XIV

COMMERCE

Saint Paul’s journey¹ in custody from Jerusalem to Rome was probably not unusually full of adventures for one that included half the length of the Mediterranean. To find a ship going Romeward, his centurion took him on board an Asiatic coasting vessel at Caesarea, whence they skirted Syria and Cilicia. At Myra they transferred to an Alexandrian boat bound west. When the winds proved contrary, they decided to put in at Crete for the winter, but were prevented by a storm that drove them helplessly up and down the Adriatic. Throwing overboard some of the tackle, they finally reached the coast of Malta, where the frightened crew plotted to abandon the 276 passengers and make for land in the lifeboat; they were restrained only by the soldiers on board. The ship struck the shoals, and its cargo of wheat was jettisoned, but to no purpose. When the vessel broke apart, the passengers had to make for land as best they could on pieces of wreckage. They remained all winter at Malta, sailing in the spring on another Alexandrian ship that had wintered there. Putting in first at Syracuse and then at Rhegium, they finally reached Puteoli, whence the passengers bound for Rome made the rest of the journey—150 miles—by road. Alexandria is now considered to be about four days from Rome.

¹ Acts 27 and 28.

A very brief account of Cicero’s crossing of the Aegean,² a distance of some 250 miles, in sixteen days sine timore et sine nausea, is given us in a letter to Atticus. Six days brought him the 100 miles from Athens to Delos. “Sailing has not been all play, though it is midsummer. We reached Delos six days out from Athens. On the sixth of July we reached Zoster in a contrary wind that held us there on the seventh. On the next day we had a pleasant sail to Ceos; thence we continued to Gyrae in a savage though not adverse wind, and thence to Syros and Delos somewhat more speedily than we intended. You know yourself what the open Rhodian boats are like. Well, I won’t stir from Delos till the peaks of Gyrae stand clear.” Greek steamers now make the journey to Smyrna in one day.³

² Cic. Ad Att. V, 12; cf. V, 13.

³ These were, of course, slow journeys. Pliny, N. H. XIX, 1, says that in favorable weather Sicily could be reached from Alexandria in six or seven days and Puteoli in eight, and that six days might bring a sail from Cadiz to Ostia. When Cicero was proconsul in Cilicia, he usually received his mail from Rome—via Brundisium, the Gulf of Corinth, Athens, and Smyrna—in five or six weeks.

It is to be noticed that neither of these travelers had Roman boats. St. Paul took passage on an Asiatic and two Alexandrian freighters; Cicero, out of regard for his station and his mission, chartered a special boat, but it was apparently Rhodian. The fear of wind and weather apparent in both accounts was probably due neither to ignorance of seamanship⁴—the Greeks fairly lived on the sea—nor to the fragility of the boats; the average large freighter was then a boat of 200 or 300 tons,⁵ as large, therefore, as those in which our early Salem skippers roamed to India and China without fear. The chief difficulty for the ancient mariner resulted from his lack of a compass. It was this that made him follow courses along well-known coastlines and islands, which in turn exposed him to frequent danger of shipwreck whenever storms arose; and it was chiefly this that brought all shipping to a standstill in winter, when the sun and stars were seldom visible.

⁴ It is generally agreed that the Greeks and Romans knew the art of tacking against adverse winds; cf. Pliny, N. H. II, 12, 8; Lucian, Navig. 9.

⁵ There are many references to boats of 10,000 talents, about 250 tons. The ship that carried the Vatican obelisk to Rome seems to have had a capacity of 1,900 tons. Cf. Torr, art. “Navis,” in Darem.-Saglio.

Of the organization and methods of Rome’s maritime trade in the late Republic, we are not well informed. At Athens, the situation can be reconstructed from the cases of the Attic Orators, whose orations are full of references to shipping. Since Romans at this time seldom engaged in commerce, the orations offer practically no information. Some compensation is afforded us in cases cited by the jurists of the Digest. These, to be sure, are somewhat too late for our immediate purposes, but since they reveal a logical development of maritime commerce from the situation depicted in Lysias and Demosthenes, we may proceed by striking a mean between the earlier and later evidence and comparing our conclusions with such casual references as we have from the Ciceronian age.

The Greek merchants,⁶ like our Salem skippers of colonial days, were usually independent shipowners, sometimes even shipbuilders, who “tramped” from port to port with whatever cargo seemed to promise the best profits. They employed their own capital or sums borrowed at high maritime rates; they personally conducted the buying and selling of their cargoes; and, when the season neared its end, they found, if possible, a desirable cargo for the home port, whither they repaired to await the return of the spring sun. Of course, they also “rented space,” as they called it, to merchants who filled orders for foreign consignees, but this was considered a minor part of their business. “Packet boats” with regular schedules or prescribed routes seem to have been unusual. When such a trader grew wealthy, he was apt to acquire more boats, in which he placed trusted agents to do the same kind of business for him. Since, however, these agents had less discretion than the owner and generally had to be advised what courses to take and in what articles to trade, the growth of such shipping houses tended somewhat to reduce tramp trading in favor of more regular packet shipping. But progress along these lines did not continue far in Greece.

⁶ Huvelin, art. “Negotiator,” Darem.-Saglio.

In Cicero’s day, the irregular service pictured by the Greek writers apparently still prevailed, especially in eastern waters, where Greeks and Orientals seem to have dominated the seas.⁷ The interesting mariner’s guidebook called the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea⁸ implies that the merchant trader of the old type dominated the Arabian, Persian, and Indian trade. Claudius’ decree⁹ encouraging grain importation leaves the inference that shipbuilders, shipowners, and grain merchants were sometimes identical. Trimalchio¹⁰ is pictured as a merchant who built his own ships, and Philostratus¹¹ still assumes that Greek merchants accompany their cargoes from port to port.

⁷ In 59 B.C. Cicero assumes that the negotiatores who carry most of the goods through the harbors of the province of Asia are Greeks (Ad Att. II, 16, 4). In the Civil War of 49, Pompey thought he could starve Italy into submission (Ad Att. X, 8, 4) by seizing the ships of Alexandria, Colchis, Tyre, Sidon, Aradus, Cyprus, Pamphylia, Lycia, Rhodes, Chios, Byzantium, Lesbos, Smyrna, Miletus, and Coos (Ad Att. IX, 9, 2). In the Civil War of 43, Dolabella was able to collect a hundred freight ships of over 2,000 talents on the coast of Lycia in a very short time (Ad Fam. XII, 14; 15). Finally, though Claudius gave special rewards to Romans and Italians who entered the service of the annona, the inscriptions of the shipping companies stationed at Ostia show a preponderance of foreigners (Bull. Com. 1915, 187).

⁸ Schoff’s translation with notes may be consulted (Longmans, 1912). The book was written in the Neronian age.

⁹ Suet. Claudius, 19 and 20. See also Cic. De Off. III, 50.

¹⁰ Cena Trimalchionis, 76.

¹¹ Vita Apoll. IV, 32, 1.

When, however, the Romans began to build ships and invest in foreign trade, the more regular system illustrated by the jurists made some headway. Ulpian and Paulus usually assume that the owners of vessels, exercitores, employ shipmasters¹²—navicularii—who transport goods for importers and exporters¹³—mercatores—or, as they call it, “rent space to” them, very much as is generally done today. They even assume that ships often have regular routes,¹⁴ engage in a definite line of business, and that some, like those running between Brundisium and Dyrrhachium, specialize in regular passenger service.¹⁵

¹² Digest, 14, 1, 1, 3, 7, 12, and 15. Ulpian, however, knows of instances in which the mercator is also navicularius, Digest, 4, 9, 7, 2.

¹³ Digest, 14, 2, 2, 1; 14, 1, 1, 3.

¹⁴ Digest, 14, 1, 1, 12.

¹⁵ Digest, 14, 1, 1, 12. The passengers apparently had to carry their own food for the journey, 14, 2, 2, 2.

This advanced specialization and organization of the business was to be expected from the conditions prevailing at Rome. When timber became scarce in certain centers of industry and orders had to be placed at more favored ones,¹⁶ shipbuilding naturally became specialized. Merchants who grew wealthy in trade and expanded their business far and wide naturally had to employ agents and supercargoes to supervise part of it. This tended to create import and export firms that directed the course of commerce from land. When, moreover, the state undertook to encourage and insure regular shipping with the grain-producing provinces in order to make certain of Rome’s food supply, organized schedules¹⁷ were established to so many important points that shipping companies could depend upon the service and conduct their business from their offices.

¹⁶ The premiums offered by Claudius to Romans and Italians did not suffice, so Nero had to extend premiums to foreign shipbuilders as well (Tac. Ann. XIII, 51). This was probably due to the lack of timber in Italy. Ostian shipbuilders doubtless imported lumber from abroad, since the Ostian guilds of shipbuilders continued to flourish, C. I. L. XIV, no. 256.

¹⁷ The Alexandrian grain fleet is frequently mentioned, and the shipping companies that had their offices behind the theater at Ostia seem also to have engaged in a very regular service; Calza, Bulletino Com. 1915, 187.

That Romans had some share in this development of the shipping industry is clear from the new methods introduced, but our explicit references are few. Cicero mentions a Lentulus¹⁸ who owned ships that ran between Athens and Rome. Rabirius, mentioned above, seems to have had a “fleet” of ships. He was therefore both shipowner and merchant, but probably did not accompany his cargoes in the Greek fashion. In the Empire, when the publican companies were no longer strong enough to engage sufficient grain ships for Rome’s food supply, Claudius, as we have noted, tried to encourage Roman and Italian builders and traders to supply the want.¹⁹ That his offer did not suffice is evidenced by the fact that Nero presently had to offer tax exemptions to foreigners who would aid in this service; and the existence of several foreign companies at the offices of the Ostian grain bureau may be taken as a commentary on the failure of Claudius’ measure and the success of Nero’s.

¹⁸ Ad Att. I, 8; I, 9, 3. Cicero asked Atticus to ship him some statuary by these boats. The goods were later put off at Caieta, near Cicero’s Formian villa.

¹⁹ He offered ship insurance and certain civil rights to those who built large ships and engaged in the importation of food to Rome for a period of six years. Suet. Claud. 19, 20.

If we wish to gain a fair idea of Rome’s commerce before the Empire, a convenient method is to study Rome’s chief seaport of that time, the city of Puteoli,²⁰ on the Bay of Naples. In the Second Punic War, Rome was hampered in her operations against Hannibal at Capua by not having a port of her own in this region. Immediately after the war, therefore, she sent a small colony of 300 men to the old town of Puteoli. This number was obviously just enough to guard the port; indeed, the Senate apparently failed to comprehend the great possibilities of the place, for no land was given the colony on which it might expand or gain the support of a rural population of its own. Port dues were instituted, but the shipping of the Roman colony at Capua was invited by placing another customhouse between Naples and Roman Campania.

Puteoli soon began to grow as a Roman port at the expense of Ostia, even though it was 150 miles farther away. The chief reasons were that the harbor was deep and sheltered and that ships could find some exports at Puteoli for return cargoes, whereas Ostia, near Rome, offered very few. As we have seen, the iron industry of Populonia moved to Puteoli and extended to the nearby towns of Cales and Minturnae. The excellent bronzeware made at Capua was establishing a market all over the North and West, and large quantities of it were shipped especially to Marseilles, whence traders carried it up the Rhône for wide distribution in Gaul and Germany. It was also found that the volcanic sand²¹ of Puteoli—pozzolana—possessed excellent qualities for the making of hydraulic cement, and it was in demand wherever harbors and deep foundations were to be built. Sulfur from the Solfatara, and the earthenware of Cales and Puteoli made from the clays of Ischia, likewise found extensive markets. Thus the port grew steadily in importance, though, of course, because of Neapolitan competition, not very rapidly. Lucilius,²² writing in the Gracchan days, calls it “a lesser Delos,” and at the time Delos had perhaps 10,000 to 15,000 inhabitants.

²⁰ See the excellent history and description of Puteoli by Dubois, Pouzzoles Antique, 1907.

²¹ On the industries, see Dubois, p. 117.

²² Delumque minorem, Lucilius, III, 123. In Augustus’ day it was the chief port of Italy, but even then imports exceeded exports, Strabo, XVII, 793.

The proximity of Puteoli to old Greek harbors like Naples was, on the whole, an advantage, for it could draw ships, experienced shipbuilders, and sailors from well-equipped yards. After Rome acquired provinces in the East, it could also find numerous Greek-speaking business agents and clerks for the publican companies and the capitalists who turned eastward. Nor is it surprising that bankers like Philostratos²³ of Syria drifted to Naples to take advantage of these new Greco-Roman connections. Such bankers profited especially by writing marine insurance not only for Puteolan firms but also for foreign shippers whose return cargoes loaded at the harbor.

²³ Bull. Corr. Hell. 1912, p. 67.

The Social War of 90 B.C. aided Puteoli in an unexpected way. This is indirectly revealed by Cicero’s Verrine speeches. It would seem that when such Greco-Campanian towns as Pompeii, Nola, and Abella were punished for their adherence first to the allied cause and later to the democratic party under Marius, many of the inhabitants took refuge with Sertorius in Spain. Later, when this rebel leader began to lose power, many of them, being accustomed to the sea, engaged as sailors wherever possible, not abstaining entirely from joining Spanish and Cilician pirates at times. Ultimately, great numbers drifted into the service of Puteolan shippers, so that when Verres undertook to apprehend at Sicilian ports such sailors as were accused of piracy, there arose a cry²⁴ from the firms of Puteoli that he was arresting their sailors, business agents, and even members of the firms! The incident proves illuminating for the history of Puteolan commerce, although Cicero did his best to conceal the disagreeable items of the story.

²⁴ Verr. V, 154. This, of course, explains how Verres put “Roman citizens” to death. They were probably former socii who might claim citizenship by the laws of 89 and 88. Verres was too much of a Sullan to recognize such claims in the case of socii who had taken to privateering rather than accept the decision of the Social War.

The city soon took on a semi-Oriental appearance because traders from all the great Eastern seaports, like their successors of the medieval fondachi at Venice, established agencies there. Such foreign colonies rented particular docks and warehouses, took possession of a separate quarter of the town, erected their own temples, and had their own cemeteries. In the second century, the “station” of the Tyrians²⁵ was still paying annual rentals and dues amounting to 100,000 denarii—then about $7,000—although the colony was “then far smaller than formerly.” The colonies of Beirut, of the Nabataeans, and of other peoples had temples of their own; the people of Baalbek had a cemetery of four acres; and dedicatory inscriptions erected by natives of Asiatic cities are very numerous. Such inscriptions at Rome’s principal harbor raise serious doubts as to whether the Romans ever succeeded in becoming a seafaring people.

²⁵ Inscr. Gr. XIV, 830. The inscription shows that the Tyrians had a similar statio at Rome. Stationes municipiorum are mentioned in Suet. Nero, 37. Cantarelli (Bull. Com. 1900, 129) has well compared these with the foreign fondachi at Venice.

It is not our purpose to follow the vicissitudes of commerce through the Empire. Suffice it to say that when Claudius dredged out a good harbor at Ostia and built jetties to keep the Tiber mouth clear, Puteoli lost much of its shipping, especially its grain trade. However, the lack of return cargoes at Ostia still prevented that new harbor from monopolizing all the shipping. Many boats preferred to make port at Puteoli and send the goods bound Romeward by road or by small coasting vessels.

The trade of Italy was, of course, very unevenly balanced. Even Puteoli, in the best days of Campanian industry, could never fill the ships that came in loaded.²⁶ Latium exported very little. Italian wines went eastward through Egypt, according to the Periplus²⁷ cited above, but these were doubtless Calenian and Falernian wines carried cheaply as ballast. The Alban varieties could not compete with the numerous good Greek brands. Latium began to export some olive oil²⁸ in Cicero’s day, but this did not last long. In the Empire, when Rome had learned the value of this article, very large quantities were imported from Spain and Africa. No manufactured articles of importance seem to have gone from Latium: in the long lists of goods enumerated in the Periplus, Rome is not even mentioned.

Campania exported chiefly iron and bronzeware, some pottery, wine, olive oil, and Capuan ointments. The rich Po Valley²⁹ sent wine, pitch, lumber, grain, pork, wool, and cloth chiefly to Rome, and the jars that contained Venetian and Istrian products have been found far up in the valleys of the Tyrol.³⁰ Arretine pottery, as we have seen, also found a market all over the western provinces until, in the early Empire, the branch potteries of Gaul captured the trade of the mother firms.

That completes the list of important Italian exports. Needless to say, in such circumstances Italy could not sustain an equilibrium of trade. Her ledgers balanced only because of the large credit accounts on capitalistic investments and the constant inflow of tribute. Even then, the government found the outflow of specie disturbing and had to resort to desperate measures to keep it at home. We are reminded of recent governmental orders by the law Gabinius³¹ had passed in 67 forbidding provincials to borrow money at Rome, and by the effort Cicero made in his consulship³² to have customs officials at Puteoli seize all silver and gold that was being taken out of the country. Such measures were, of course, futile in the long run. Pliny,³³ a century later, informs us that at least five million dollars per year went to China, India, and Arabia for articles of luxury.

²⁶ Strabo, XVII, 793.

²⁷ Periplus, 6 and 49.

²⁸ Pliny, N. H. XV, 2.

²⁹ Strabo, V, 12.

³⁰ Dessau, Inscr. Lat. Sel. 8572.

³¹ Cic. Ad Att. V, 21, 12. The law was also meant to prevent provincials from being able to misuse funds in influencing courts at Rome. However, the attempts made to keep gold and silver in Italy at this time seem to reveal the real animus of the law. Cicero (Pro Flacco, 67) states that several consuls had tried to prevent the export of silver and gold.

³² In Vat. 12; cf. Pro Flacco, 67, which shows that efforts were also made to prevent the hoarding of gold in temples. Perhaps the Jews, when prevented from sending temple gold from Italy, simply drew on accounts in the provinces, and the governors had instructions to check this indirect drain upon the supply.

³³ Pliny, N. H. XII, 84.

The principal imports,³⁴ aside from grain, originated in the East. The provinces of Asia and Pontus supplied some grain, salt fish, timber, dried fruit, precious stones, wine, and the tapestries, draperies, and rugs for which Anatolia is still famous. Syria sent much glassware from factories in Sidon and the famous purple dyes and cloths for which Tyre was noted. The linens of Byblus and Beirut and the cedar of the Lebanons were also highly prized at Rome. In times of peace, northern Syria tapped the caravan trade of Parthia, whose merchants brought Chinese silk and Indian cotton, pearls, ivory, and spices. To Gaza in the south came the Nabataean caravans, bringing Arabian incense, spices, myrrh, and precious stones. The state factories of Egypt exported much fine cloth, glass, and paper, and Alexandrian merchants expedited Ethiopian ivory, beasts for the games, and Black slaves, besides transporting from the harbors of the Red Sea all the products of India and Arabia. This eastern sea trade received a great impetus from Augustus, who, contrary to Roman traditions, adopted from Egypt the mercantilist policy of the Ptolemies, so far improving upon it that the shipping of the harbor at Myos Hormos³⁵ on the Red Sea quickly tripled and quadrupled.

³⁴ This is but a brief summary of the lists given in Darem.-Saglio, art. “Mercatura,” by Cagnat and Besnier. For Pontic trade, see Robinson, “Ancient Sinope,” Am. Jour. Phil. 27, 125.

³⁵ Strabo, II, 5, 12.

From the West came fewer finished articles but more raw products. Marseilles, then an independent Greek city, controlled the trade of the Rhône and brought down metals, hides, rough wool, salt meat, cheese, slaves, and amber from the north in return for Italian iron, bronze, earthenware, and the fine handiwork of the East. Her traders also brought tin from the British Isles by way of the Rhône and Seine. Farther west, the Roman colony of Narbo³⁶ established a new road by way of the Gironde in search of British tin and tapped the mines of Aquitania. From northern Spain came rich stores of metals and also finished products made of the excellent Spanish steel. The central portions produced good fabrics of wool and linen, and the south an ever-increasing quantity of olive oil, wine, wheat, salt pork, fish, and leather.

³⁶ Cicero, Pro Fonteio and Pro Quinctio, show that these colonists and Roman negotiatores were carrying on a large wine trade and an extensive banking and real-estate business in Narbonese Gaul.

Despite this great amount of trade, the machinery of transportation is so far from showing uniformity that we can hardly expect well-organized systems of salesmanship and distribution, though in general we may assume that every harbor had a wharf and market³⁷ where buyer and seller might meet. But the use of this market varied according to time and place. In the period when commerce was mostly of the “tramp” class—the condition that in fact created these marketplaces—the incoming merchant unloaded whatever wares he thought he might sell and displayed them in the market while his ship stood at anchor. At the same market, he could look over the wares of his competitors, buying and taking on board what seemed to him to promise good profits elsewhere. To the same market came, of course, the small shopkeepers of the town to buy for their retail trade. In this system, which still prevailed to some extent in Cicero’s day, middlemen, buyers, and salesmen were not essential.

³⁷ See Besnier, art. “Portus,” Darem.-Saglio.

But there was an advanced stage of trade, already noticed at Puteoli, that also dispensed with middlemen to a certain extent. The Tyrian exporters, for instance, did not sail the seas with their cargoes but rented warehouses and dock space at Puteoli, where their countrymen, agents, or partners received consignments, presumably displaying and selling their wares to retailers in their local offices. They had a similar statio at Rome, to which their Puteolan agents sent such parts of the consignments as were destined for the city. Puteolan inscriptions prove that this system was used by many eastern cities. Indeed, the Italian agora at Delos is apparently an instance of Occidentals adopting the same system, and the stationes of Ostia³⁸ were apparently erected by Rome for analogous purposes. With the development of the shipping business and the growth of exporting firms that operated from land, there doubtless also arose commission houses at the ports of entry, though we are not explicitly informed about them.³⁹

³⁸ Calza, in Bulletino Com. 1915, 187.

³⁹ Probably some of the ἔμποροι of Delos were commission merchants, Bull. Corr. Hell. 1883, p. 467; 1887, 245 and 252. In some cases they are agents of the shippers.

Of a developed system of salesmanship there is little trace, probably because there were few factories such as now send out salesmen and “drummers,” and the general existence of marketplaces created by a more primitive system generally brought the product to the buyer with sufficient success. There is, however, an indication that some factories did not have to bring their goods to the marketplace. At the potteries of Auvergne⁴⁰ have been found large invoices of goods that are thought to be orders placed by wholesale pottery merchants for manufacture and future delivery. If this is a typical case, the buyers went to such factories as then existed and placed their orders.

⁴⁰ Déchelette, Les Vases Céramiques de la Gaule, I, 86 ff. The buyer in this case seems to have been a wholesale dealer and distributor of earthenware, probably the merchant spoken of in inscriptions as negotiator artis cretariae, C. I. L. XIII, 1906 and 6366.

In general, it may be said that the producer was in that simpler day nearer the consumer than at present; that in foreign trade the shipper brought his goods to the harbor marketplace for the retailer or consumer; and that, to a far greater extent than today, the producer of domestic articles was himself an artisan and shopkeeper who sold directly to the consumer what he made in his small shop. Middlemen⁴¹ were relatively very few.

⁴¹ Many of the negotiatores mentioned in imperial inscriptions are wholesalers who act as middlemen between large producers and retailers. As such, we should probably class the following: neg. artis saponariae, C. I. L. XIII, 2030; neg. ferrariarum, X, 1931; negotiator calcariarius, X, 3947; Notus... vendenda pelle caprina, IX, 4796; negotians coriariorum, VI, 9667, etc. However, shopkeepers sometimes style themselves negotiatores, e.g., VI, 9664; 33881.

The jurists also speak of “circitores who sell or hawk goods for clothiers or linen weavers” (Dig. 14, 3, 5, 4). They resemble our peddlers and were very numerous, but the jurists speak of them as being for the most part slave agents. The jurists likewise speak of “slaves who are sent out to buy merchandise for their masters’ shops” (Dig. 14, 3, 5, 7). The use of slaves in such capacities probably militated against the growth of a middleman system.

Freight and passenger rates seem moderate, despite the high insurance and slow movement on the sea. The reason was, of course, that ships were built and manned by cheap labor and that port dues were generally lower then than in tariff countries today. A thousand bricks—over two tons—were sent from Athens to Delos, 100 miles, for about fifteen to twenty drachmas, or $3 to $4, which was about 25 percent of the purchasing price. For half a hundredweight of minium sent from Athens to Ceos, the express charge was one obol, or three cents. The freight on a ton of stone from Paros to Delos⁴² was twenty-five drachmas, but heavy stones were expensive to handle with the cranes of the day. In the third century A.D., wheat was brought to Rome from Alexandria for two cents a bushel, which is about the modern rate. In this case, the ships were probably insured gratis by the state. Of course, regular freight rates hardly came into consideration in a large part of the tramp shipping, since the merchant went up and down the seas bartering with his own goods.

⁴² The freight prices cited for Delos are for the third century B.C.; cf. Glotz, Jour. de Savants, 1913, pp. 16 ff. Other items may be found in Böckh, Die Staatshaush. der Athener, I², 76.

Passenger fares seem to us to have been very low. Passengers, however, appear to have been responsible for their own sustenance; the quarters were probably far from luxurious; and, of course, loss of life by shipwreck, unlike loss of freight, entailed no financial loss to the carrier. The fare from Aegina to Athens seems to have been two obols, and from Alexandria to Athens only two drachmas. One could cross the Aegean for four obols.

Did the Romans follow the suggestions of Gracchus and enter the commerce of the world that their armies had opened to them? If we gather all the literary references to Romans who were in business in the provinces and add the inscriptional records of conventus⁴³ of Romans abroad, we must conclude that many heard and obeyed the call. Cicero’s speeches Pro Quinctio,⁴⁴ delivered in 81 B.C., and Pro Fonteio, given in 69 B.C., are evidence that the colony at Narbo, founded for commercial purposes by Gracchan followers, had accomplished its purpose. It had undoubtedly succeeded in capturing the western Gallic trade from Marseilles.

The Gracchan colony at Carthage was deprived of its primary function when the Senate stupidly refused to let a city be built that might have become an excellent trading center, and thus the chief commerce was thrown to independent African cities like Utica. But the settling of the Gracchan colonists is no doubt what accounts for the presence of Roman traders in places like Cirta⁴⁵ during the Jugurthine War. The Verrine speeches prove that, besides moneylenders and real-estate speculators, there were also some merchants, especially Campanian ones, in Sicily, despite the refusal of the Senate to allow Roman publicans to exploit the tithe gathering.⁴⁶ The entry of the Roman trader into the province of Asia to take advantage of the bargains offered by the tax gatherers we have already noticed.⁴⁷

⁴³ Kornemann, art. “Conventus,” Pauly-Wissowa; Schulten, art. “Conventus,” in Ruggiero, Diz. Epig.; Panran, Die Nationalität der Kaufleute.

⁴⁴ Quinctius had been a partner of one Naevius in real-estate business, farming, cattle raising, and slave trading near Narbo. Fonteius was accused of having, as governor of Narbonese Gaul, created difficulties for Roman traders by exacting unreasonable duties on wine.

⁴⁵ Sallust, Jugurtha, 26, at Cirta; 47, at Vaga; 64, at Utica. See also “Caesar,” Bell. Afr. 97 and 36. The negotiatores driven from Sardinia (Livy, 32, 27) by Cato were probably Carthaginians.

⁴⁶ Rostowzew, Staatspacht.

⁴⁷ A typical trader is Falcidius (Pro Flacco, 91), who bought from the publicans the tithes of whole towns. Avianius, mentioned in Cic. Ad Fam. XIII, 75, had gone into the Eastern grain trade after serving for a while on Pompey’s official grain commission.

Despite the fact that the Senate did not care to procure preferential tariffs for Romans,⁴⁸ they did have certain advantages in provincial trade. Not only did they possess the kind of prestige that comes from a strong nation’s protection—a thing often neutralized by a haughty bearing toward the natives—but they also had an advantage in the courts. Roman citizens, and somewhat to our surprise other Italians with them, formed separate communities in foreign cities called conventus.⁴⁹ From this group the governor was required to draw his jurors. Thus they were generally assured a sympathetic hearing in their cases against natives, a fact that often secured them a trifle more than due justice, unless the governor was a very haughty aristocrat like Verres, who carried to the province his Rome-bred animosity against businessmen. Such conventus of Roman and Italian bankers, publicans, traders, landowners, and ex-soldiers settled in the provinces existed in almost every town of importance during the last years of the Republic. They happen to be mentioned in at least twenty-five cities of Asia, twelve cities of Greece, seven of Africa, five of Sicily, and three of Syria.

⁴⁸ Romans and Italians were exempted from the octroi duties of Ambracia by an early treaty, but this is the only record of its kind. See Frank, Roman Imperialism, p. 279.

⁴⁹ See Kornemann, loc. cit.

We must, however, bear in mind the definition of negotiator during the Republic. He was primarily a banker and land speculator, not a real merchant. We need also to remember what the survey of Asia, Delos, and Puteoli has taught: that even these capitalists are more often Campanians and Italiote Greeks who became “Roman citizens” by the laws of 89 and 88 than representative Romans of the old stock; that many of the “Roman citizens” settled in the provinces are native ex-soldiers⁵⁰ who have attained citizenship by service in the army; that the trade that depended upon connections with the quasi-public tithe farming was of a temporary character; and that we actually have very few references to Roman shippers like Lentulus and Rabirius. In other words, Rome’s participation in commerce can all too readily be overestimated if hasty conclusions are drawn from the existence of conventus and negotiatores.

⁵⁰ For example, the old soldiers called back to service in Macedonia and Crete, Caes. B. C. III, 4. Some of these were Italians who settled down in the country where they were discharged. Some were natives simply returning home.

In the East,⁵¹ references to Roman negotiatores and conventus dwindle very rapidly during the early Empire, showing how slight was their hold upon trade. Bankers and investors who had come in the train of publicans to profit from unsettled conditions apparently did not thrive when the publicans were withdrawn and a reign of peace permitted the natives to stabilize their finances. The normal commerce of the East never got beyond the control of the natives, while the grain trade into which Romans had entered came to an end with the development of Egypt and Africa. Eventually, the Occidentals who had settled in the East—Italic Greeks, some home-seeking Romans and freedmen, veterans of the army, and members of Caesar’s proletarian colonies—lost their identity and merged into the Hellenic population. It is surprising to find how soon the colonists at Sinope, for instance, became Hellenized and forgot how to use respectable Latin on their tombstones.⁵² Roman investments, of course, remained in the East, especially in latifundia accumulated by purchase or by the foreclosure of mortgages. But it is probable that their management was undertaken by native agents under the supervision of occasional visits from the Roman dispensatores. At any rate, the East remained socially under Eastern control.

⁵¹ Panran, op. cit., p. 120.

⁵² Robinson, Ancient Sinope; Hahn, Rom. und Romanismus, p. 95.

In the rich province of Egypt, annexed by Augustus, Roman business made even less headway. The Ptolemies had so thoroughly organized the state monopolies and Alexandrian trade for the benefit of the treasury that the emperors saw no advantage in taking these things out of practiced hands. Roman businessmen found no bargains there and generally remained away.

In the West, however, the situation was more favorable to Roman enterprise. Here the conquerors met people in a lower stage of culture who were eager to learn their language, buy their wares, and adopt their manners. With the fall of Marseilles in the Civil War, Roman colonies like Narbo, Lyons, and Arles became the centers of culture. From such places men went not only to lend money and buy land but also to direct trade by the numerous riverboats of the Rhône, the mule road over Tolosa—Toulouse—to Burdigala—Bordeaux—and the merchant camps on the Rhine frontiers that supplied the traders in Germany. Many of these traders again bear Greek cognomina,⁵³ as the ubiquitous freedmen generally did. Native Gauls also entered into the currents of traffic in great numbers, as the Celtic names show, but there were enough Romans, with the aid of a liberal naturalization policy on the part of the emperors and the frequent establishment of Roman schools, to transform the West quickly into a thoroughly Romanized country. By the fourth century, it is likely that more people in Gaul than in Italy read Vergil and Cicero.

⁵³ Panran, op. cit., pp. 24, 35.

The imperial inscriptions⁵⁴ of the city of Rome go far to bear out the inference generally drawn from the pages of Cicero: that Romans were in general averse to trade. However much the great merchant was respected, the successful wholesaler is usually a man who has served an apprenticeship in retail trade, and for him Rome had little good to say. That is, of course, an important reason why there are so many colonies and stations of foreign shipping cities at Rome, Ostia, and Puteoli, and also why so very many of the names of Roman wholesale dealers—negotiantes vinarii, olearii, materiarii, vascularii, and the rest—bear Greek cognomina.

⁵⁴ Ibid., pp. 41, 42.

The freedmen were the folk who gained control here also. Acquiring their liberty through diligent and obsequious service, they applied the skill they had acquired in managing some rich master’s affairs and the money that the master willingly lent with a prospect of good returns, and pushed boldly into all the ventures that the land-loving Roman of the old school refused to touch. Typical of this class is Trimalchio, who in Petronius’⁵⁵ sketch entertains his fellow freedmen over the cups with the rambling story of his ventures at the seaport town of Puteoli:

“I too was once just like you, but by my ability I’ve come to this. It’s brains that makes the man; all the rest is trash. I buy cheap and sell dear; others may have different ideas. I’m running over with good luck. As I was saying, it’s my careful management that has brought me all this wealth. I was only as big as that lamp when I came from Asia; in fact, I used to measure myself by it every day. By heaven’s help, I became master in the house, and then I caught the fancy of my fool of a lord. So at his death he made me co-legatee with the emperor, and I got a senator’s fortune.

“But no one ever has enough. I wanted to go into business. To cut the story short, I built five ships, loaded them with wine—it was worth its weight in gold then—and sent them to Rome. Every ship was wrecked just as though I had ordered it; that’s a fact. In one day Neptune swallowed up thirty million sesterces. Do you think I lost courage? No, by heaven, the loss only whetted my appetite, as if nothing had happened. I built more ships, larger, better, and luckier ones, so that no one should say I wasn’t a man of courage. You know a great ship has great strength in itself. I loaded them with wine again, pork, beans, perfumes, and slaves.

“Then my wife did a respectable thing: she sold all her jewelry and dresses and put into my hand a hundred pieces of gold. This was like heaven to my fortune. What heaven wishes comes quickly; by one trip I cleared a round ten million. At once I bought back all the estates that had belonged to my master. I built a house and traded in cattle; everything I touched grew like a honeycomb. When I found that I had more than all the citizens of the town put together, I quit the counter and set up my freedmen in business for me.

“Then I built this house. As you know, it was once a hovel; now it’s fit for a god. It has four dining rooms upstairs, my own bedroom, this viper’s sitting room, a very fine porter’s lodge, and spare rooms for guests. Take my word for it: if you have only a cent, you are valued at a cent, but if you’ve got something, you’ll be thought worth something. So your humble servant, who was a pauper, has come to be a prince.”

⁵⁵ Petronius, Cena Trimalchionis, 75–76. The translation is in part from Lowe’s edition. It may be noted that the articles mentioned in Trimalchio’s cargo are those generally exported from Campania. The scene is laid at or near Puteoli.

CHAPTER XIV

COMMERCE

Saint Paul’s journey in custody from Jerusalem to Rome was probably not unusually adventurous for a voyage covering half the length of the Mediterranean.¹ To find a ship sailing toward Rome, his centurion put him aboard an Asiatic coastal vessel at Caesarea, from which they sailed along the coasts of Syria and Cilicia. At Myra, they transferred to an Alexandrian ship bound westward. When contrary winds arose, they decided to put into Crete for the winter, but a storm prevented them and drove them helplessly back and forth across the Adriatic. After throwing some of the ship’s tackle overboard, they finally reached the coast of Malta. There, the frightened crew plotted to abandon the 276 passengers and reach land in the lifeboat, but the soldiers aboard restrained them. The ship struck the shoals, and its cargo of wheat was thrown overboard, but without success. When the vessel broke apart, the passengers had to reach land as best they could on pieces of wreckage. They remained at Malta throughout the winter and sailed in the spring on another Alexandrian ship that had wintered there. They put in first at Syracuse and then at Rhegium, finally reaching Puteoli. From there, the passengers bound for Rome completed the remaining 150 miles by road. Alexandria is now considered to be about four days from Rome.

¹ Acts 27 and 28.

Cicero gives us a very brief account of his crossing of the Aegean,² a distance of about 250 miles, in sixteen days, sine timore et sine nausea—without fear and without seasickness. Six days brought him the 100 miles from Athens to Delos. “Sailing has not been entirely easy, even though it is midsummer. We reached Delos six days after leaving Athens. On July 6, we reached Zoster in a contrary wind that kept us there on the seventh. The next day, we had a pleasant sail to Ceos. From there, we continued to Gyrae in a violent but not adverse wind, and then to Syros and Delos somewhat more quickly than we intended. You yourself know what the open Rhodian boats are like. Well, I shall not leave Delos until the Peaks of Gyrae stand clear.” Greek steamships now make the journey to Smyrna in one day.³

² Cicero, Ad Atticum V, 12; compare V, 13.

³ These were, of course, slow journeys. Pliny, Natural History XIX, 1, says that in favorable weather Sicily could be reached from Alexandria in six or seven days, and Puteoli in eight, while six days might bring a ship from Cadiz to Ostia. When Cicero was proconsul in Cilicia, he usually received his mail from Rome—by way of Brundisium, the Gulf of Corinth, Athens, and Smyrna—in five or six weeks.

It should be noticed that neither traveler used Roman ships. Saint Paul traveled on one Asiatic and two Alexandrian freighters. Cicero, out of consideration for his rank and mission, chartered a special boat, but it was apparently Rhodian. The fear of wind and weather evident in both accounts was probably not caused by ignorance of seamanship:⁴ the Greeks practically lived on the sea. Nor was it caused by the fragility of their ships. The average large freighter was then a vessel of 200 or 300 tons,⁵ and was therefore as large as the ships in which the early captains of Salem sailed fearlessly to India and China. The ancient mariner’s principal difficulty resulted from his lack of a compass. This forced him to follow routes along well-known coastlines and islands, which in turn exposed him to frequent danger of shipwreck whenever storms arose. It was chiefly this lack that brought all shipping to a standstill in winter, when the sun and stars were seldom visible.

⁴ It is generally agreed that the Greeks and Romans knew how to tack against adverse winds; compare Pliny, Natural History II, 12, 8, and Lucian, Navigium, 9.

⁵ There are many references to ships of 10,000 talents, or about 250 tons. The ship that carried the Vatican obelisk to Rome seems to have had a capacity of 1,900 tons. Compare Torr, article “Navis,” in Daremberg-Saglio.

We are not well informed about the organization and methods of Rome’s maritime trade in the late Republic. The situation at Athens can be reconstructed from the cases of the Attic Orators, whose speeches contain many references to shipping. Because Romans at this time seldom engaged in commerce, their speeches provide practically no information about it. Some compensation is supplied by cases cited by the jurists in the Digest. These cases are admittedly somewhat too late for our immediate purposes. However, because they reveal a logical development of maritime commerce from the conditions described by Lysias and Demosthenes, we may proceed by finding a middle ground between the earlier and later evidence and then comparing our conclusions with the casual references that survive from the age of Cicero.

Like the Salem captains of colonial times, Greek merchants⁶ were usually independent shipowners and sometimes even shipbuilders. They “tramped” from port to port with whatever cargo appeared to promise the greatest profit. They used their own capital or money borrowed at high maritime interest rates. They personally conducted the buying and selling of their cargoes, and, when the sailing season approached its end, they found, if possible, a desirable cargo for their home port, where they remained until the spring sun returned. They also, of course, “rented space,” as they called it, to merchants filling orders for foreign consignees, but this was considered a secondary part of their business. “Packet boats” with regular schedules or prescribed routes seem to have been unusual.

When such a trader became wealthy, he was likely to acquire more ships and place trusted agents aboard them to conduct the same kind of business for him. Because these agents had less discretion than the owner and generally had to be told which routes to take and which goods to trade, the growth of such shipping houses tended to reduce tramp trading somewhat in favor of more regular packet shipping. Progress along these lines, however, did not go very far in Greece.

⁶ Huvelin, article “Negotiator,” Daremberg-Saglio.

In Cicero’s time, the irregular service described by the Greek writers apparently still prevailed, especially in eastern waters, where Greeks and Orientals seem to have dominated the seas.⁷ The interesting mariner’s guidebook called the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea⁸ implies that the old type of merchant-trader dominated Arabian, Persian, and Indian commerce. Claudius’s decree encouraging grain imports suggests that shipbuilders, shipowners, and grain merchants were sometimes the same people.⁹ Trimalchio is portrayed as a merchant who built his own ships,¹⁰ and Philostratus still assumes that Greek merchants accompany their cargoes from port to port.¹¹

When the Romans began to build ships and invest in foreign trade, however, the more regular system illustrated by the jurists made some progress. Ulpian and Paulus usually assume that vessel owners, or exercitores, employ shipmasters, or navicularii,¹² who transport goods for importers and exporters, or mercatores—or, as they put it, “rent space” to them—much as is generally done today.¹³ They even assume that ships often follow regular routes,¹⁴ engage in a definite line of business, and, in some cases, such as vessels sailing between Brundisium and Dyrrhachium, specialize in regular passenger service.¹⁵

⁷ In 59 B.C., Cicero assumes that the negotiatores carrying most of the goods through the ports of the province of Asia are Greeks (Ad Atticum II, 16, 4). During the Civil War of 49, Pompey thought he could starve Italy into submission (Ad Atticum X, 8, 4) by seizing the ships of Alexandria, Colchis, Tyre, Sidon, Aradus, Cyprus, Pamphylia, Lycia, Rhodes, Chios, Byzantium, Lesbos, Smyrna, Miletus, and Cos (Ad Atticum IX, 9, 2). During the Civil War of 43, Dolabella was able in a very short time to collect 100 freight ships of more than 2,000 talents on the coast of Lycia (Ad Familiares XII, 14; 15). Finally, although Claudius gave special rewards to Romans and Italians who entered the service of the annona, the inscriptions of the shipping companies stationed at Ostia show a predominance of foreigners (Bulletino Comunale, 1915, 187).

⁸ Schoff’s translation, with notes, may be consulted (Longmans, 1912). The book was written during Nero’s reign.

⁹ Suetonius, Claudius, 19 and 20. See also Cicero, De Officiis III, 50.

¹⁰ Cena Trimalchionis, 76.

¹¹ Vita Apollonii IV, 32, 1.

¹² Digest 14, 1, 1, 3; 14, 1, 1, 7; 14, 1, 1, 12; and 14, 1, 1, 15. Ulpian, however, knows of instances in which the mercator is also the navicularius: Digest 4, 9, 7, 2.

¹³ Digest 14, 2, 2, 1; 14, 1, 1, 3.

¹⁴ Digest 14, 1, 1, 12.

¹⁵ Digest 14, 1, 1, 12. Passengers apparently had to provide their own food for the journey: 14, 2, 2, 2.

This advanced specialization and organization of the business was to be expected under the conditions prevailing at Rome. When timber became scarce in certain industrial centers and orders had to be placed in more favorably situated places,¹⁶ shipbuilding naturally became a specialized trade. Merchants who became wealthy and expanded their operations over a wide area naturally had to employ agents and supercargoes to supervise part of their business. This tended to create import and export firms that directed commerce from land. Moreover, when the state began to encourage and guarantee regular shipping with the grain-producing provinces to secure Rome’s food supply, organized schedules¹⁷ were established to so many important places that shipping companies could depend on the service and conduct their business from their offices.

¹⁶ The rewards Claudius offered to Romans and Italians were insufficient, so Nero had to extend rewards to foreign shipbuilders as well (Tacitus, Annals XIII, 51). This was probably because Italy lacked timber. Ostian shipbuilders doubtless imported lumber from abroad, since the Ostian guilds of shipbuilders continued to flourish: Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum XIV, no. 256.

¹⁷ The Alexandrian grain fleet is frequently mentioned, and the shipping companies that had their offices behind the theater at Ostia also seem to have maintained a very regular service. See Calza, Bulletino Comunale, 1915, 187.

That Romans played some part in this development of the shipping industry is clear from the new methods introduced, but explicit references are few. Cicero mentions a Lentulus¹⁸ who owned ships sailing between Athens and Rome. Rabirius, mentioned above, seems to have had a “fleet” of ships. He was therefore both a shipowner and a merchant, but he probably did not accompany his cargoes in the Greek fashion.

Under the Empire, when the publican companies were no longer strong enough to hire enough grain ships for Rome’s food supply, Claudius, as already noted, tried to encourage Roman and Italian builders and traders to meet the need.¹⁹ That his offer was insufficient is shown by the fact that Nero soon had to offer tax exemptions to foreigners who would assist in this service. The presence of several foreign companies at the offices of Ostia’s grain bureau may be taken as a commentary on the failure of Claudius’s measure and the success of Nero’s.

¹⁸ Ad Atticum I, 8; I, 9, 3. Cicero asked Atticus to send him some statues on these ships. The goods were later unloaded at Caieta, near Cicero’s villa at Formiae.

¹⁹ He offered ship insurance and certain civil rights to those who built large ships and imported food into Rome for six years. Suetonius, Claudius, 19, 20.

If we wish to gain a fair idea of Rome’s commerce before the Empire, a convenient method is to study Rome’s chief seaport of that period, the city of Puteoli²⁰ on the Bay of Naples. During the Second Punic War, Rome was hampered in its operations against Hannibal at Capua because it had no port of its own in this region. Immediately after the war, therefore, Rome sent a small colony of 300 men to the old town of Puteoli. This number was obviously only large enough to guard the port. Indeed, the Senate apparently failed to understand the place’s great possibilities, because the colony received no land on which it could expand or gain the support of its own rural population.

Port duties were established, but shipping from the Roman colony at Capua was encouraged by placing another customs house between Naples and Roman Campania. Puteoli soon began to grow as a Roman port at Ostia’s expense, even though it was 150 miles farther away. The principal reasons were that its harbor was deep and sheltered, and that ships could find exports at Puteoli for their return cargoes, whereas Ostia, near Rome, offered very few.

As we have seen, Populonia’s iron industry moved to Puteoli and extended to the neighboring towns of Cales and Minturnae. The excellent bronze ware made at Capua was establishing a market throughout the North and West, and large quantities were shipped especially to Marseilles. From there, traders carried it up the Rhône for wide distribution in Gaul and Germany. It was also discovered that Puteoli’s volcanic sand, or pozzolana,²¹ had excellent qualities for making hydraulic cement, and it was in demand wherever harbors and deep foundations were being built. Sulfur from the Solfatara and the pottery of Cales and Puteoli, made from the clays of Ischia, likewise found extensive markets.

The port therefore grew steadily in importance, although, because of competition from Naples, it did not grow very rapidly. Lucilius,²² writing in the time of the Gracchi, calls it “a lesser Delos,” and Delos at that time may have had between 10,000 and 15,000 inhabitants.

²⁰ See the excellent history and description of Puteoli by Dubois, Pouzzoles Antique, 1907.

²¹ On the industries, see Dubois, p. 117.

²² Delumque minorem, Lucilius III, 12. In the time of Augustus, it was Italy’s chief port, but even then imports exceeded exports: Strabo XVII, 793.

Puteoli’s proximity to old Greek ports such as Naples was, on the whole, an advantage, because it could draw ships, experienced shipbuilders, and sailors from well-equipped shipyards. After Rome acquired provinces in the East, Puteoli could also find numerous Greek-speaking business agents and clerks for the publican companies and for the capitalists who turned eastward. Nor is it surprising that bankers such as Philostratos²³ of Syria moved to Naples to take advantage of these new Greco-Roman connections. Such bankers profited especially by providing marine insurance not only for Puteolan firms but also for foreign shippers whose return cargoes were loaded at the port.

²³ Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 1912, p. 67.

The Social War of 90 B.C. helped Puteoli in an unexpected way. This is indirectly revealed by Cicero’s speeches against Verres. It appears that when Greco-Campanian towns such as Pompeii, Nola, and Abella were punished for supporting first the allied cause and later the democratic party under Marius, many inhabitants took refuge with Sertorius in Spain. Later, when this rebel leader began to lose power, many of them, being accustomed to the sea, found work as sailors wherever possible, and they did not entirely refrain from joining Spanish and Cilician pirates at times.

Ultimately, great numbers entered the service of Puteolan shippers. Consequently, when Verres attempted to arrest at Sicilian ports sailors accused of piracy, the firms of Puteoli protested²⁴ that he was arresting their sailors, business agents, and even members of the firms themselves. The incident is illuminating for the history of Puteolan commerce, although Cicero did his best to conceal the unpleasant parts of the story.

²⁴ In Verrem V, 154. This, of course, explains how Verres put “Roman citizens” to death. They were probably former socii who could claim citizenship under the laws of 89 and 88. Verres was too much a supporter of Sulla to recognize such claims when made by socii who had turned to privateering rather than accept the outcome of the Social War.

The city soon acquired a partly Oriental appearance because traders from all the great eastern seaports, like their successors in the medieval fondachi at Venice, established agencies there. Such foreign colonies rented particular docks and warehouses, occupied separate quarters of the town, built their own temples, and maintained their own cemeteries.

In the second century, the “station” of the Tyrians²⁵ was still paying annual rents and dues amounting to 100,000 denarii—then about $7,000—even though the colony was “then far smaller than formerly.” The colonies of Beirut, the Nabataeans, and other peoples had temples of their own. The people of Baalbek had a cemetery covering four acres, and dedicatory inscriptions erected by natives of Asiatic cities are very numerous. Such inscriptions at Rome’s principal port raise serious doubts about whether the Romans ever succeeded in becoming a seafaring people.

²⁵ Inscriptiones Graecae XIV, 830. The inscription shows that the Tyrians had a similar statio at Rome. Stationes municipiorum are mentioned in Suetonius, Nero, 37. Cantarelli, in Bulletino Comunale, 1900, 129, has appropriately compared these with the foreign fondachi at Venice.

It is not our purpose to trace the changing fortunes of commerce throughout the Empire. It is enough to say that when Claudius dredged a good harbor at Ostia and built jetties to keep the mouth of the Tiber clear, Puteoli lost much of its shipping, especially its grain trade. However, Ostia’s lack of return cargoes still prevented the new harbor from monopolizing all shipping. Many ships preferred to make port at Puteoli and send goods bound for Rome either by road or by small coastal vessels.

Italy’s trade was, of course, very unevenly balanced. Even during the best period of Campanian industry, Puteoli could never fully load the ships that arrived with cargoes.²⁶ Latium exported very little. According to the Periplus cited above, Italian wines were sent eastward through Egypt,²⁷ but these were doubtless Calenian and Falernian wines carried cheaply as ballast. The Alban varieties could not compete with the many good Greek brands.

Latium began to export some olive oil in Cicero’s time,²⁸ but this did not continue for long. Under the Empire, when Rome had learned the value of this product, very large quantities were imported from Spain and Africa. No important manufactured articles seem to have been exported from Latium. In the long lists of goods given in the Periplus, Rome is not even mentioned.

Campania’s chief exports were ironware and bronze ware, some pottery, wine, olive oil, and Capuan ointments. The rich Po Valley²⁹ sent wine, pitch, lumber, grain, pork, wool, and cloth chiefly to Rome, and jars that had contained Venetian and Istrian products have been found far up the valleys of the Tyrol.³⁰ Arretine pottery, as we have seen, also found a market throughout the western provinces until the early Empire, when the branch potteries in Gaul captured the trade from the original firms.

That completes the list of important Italian exports. Needless to say, under these circumstances Italy could not maintain a balance of trade. Its accounts balanced only because of the large credits from capital investments and the constant inflow of tribute. Even then, the government found the outflow of currency disturbing and had to resort to desperate measures to keep it at home. We are reminded of recent governmental orders by the law Gabinius³¹ passed in 67 B.C., which prohibited provincials from borrowing money at Rome, and by Cicero’s attempt during his consulship³² to have customs officials at Puteoli seize all silver and gold being taken out of the country. Such measures were, of course, futile in the long run. A century later, Pliny³³ informs us that at least five million dollars a year went to China, India, and Arabia to pay for luxury goods.

²⁶ Strabo XVII, 793.

²⁷ Periplus, 6 and 49.

²⁸ Pliny, Natural History XV, 2.

²⁹ Strabo V, 12.

³⁰ Dessau, Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae 8572.

³¹ Cicero, Ad Atticum V, 21, 12. The law was also intended to prevent provincials from misusing funds to influence courts at Rome. However, the attempts made at this time to keep gold and silver in Italy seem to reveal the law’s real motive. Cicero, Pro Flacco, 67, states that several consuls had tried to prevent the export of silver and gold.

³² In Vatinium, 12; compare Pro Flacco, 67, which shows that attempts were also made to prevent the accumulation of gold in temples. Perhaps, when Jews were prevented from sending temple gold from Italy, they simply drew on accounts in the provinces, and governors were instructed to check this indirect drain on the supply.

³³ Pliny, Natural History XII, 84.

Apart from grain, the principal imports³⁴ originated in the East. The provinces of Asia and Pontus supplied some grain, salted fish, timber, dried fruit, precious stones, wine, and the tapestries, draperies, and rugs for which Anatolia is still famous. Syria supplied large quantities of glassware from factories in Sidon, as well as the famous purple dyes and fabrics for which Tyre was known. The linens of Byblus and Beirut and the cedar of Lebanon were also highly prized at Rome.

In times of peace, northern Syria connected with Parthia’s caravan trade, whose merchants brought Chinese silk and Indian cotton, pearls, ivory, and spices. To Gaza in the south came the Nabataean caravans carrying Arabian incense, spices, myrrh, and precious stones. Egypt’s state factories exported large quantities of fine cloth, glass, and paper. Alexandrian merchants forwarded Ethiopian ivory, animals for the games, and Black slaves, in addition to transporting all the products of India and Arabia from the ports of the Red Sea.

This eastern maritime trade received a great stimulus from Augustus. Contrary to Roman traditions, he adopted Egypt’s mercantilist policy from the Ptolemies and improved it so effectively that shipping at Myos Hormos³⁵ on the Red Sea quickly tripled and quadrupled.

³⁴ This is only a brief summary of the lists given by Cagnat and Besnier in Daremberg-Saglio, article “Mercatura.” For Pontic trade, see Robinson, “Ancient Sinope,” American Journal of Philology 27, 125.

³⁵ Strabo II, 5, 12.

Fewer finished goods but more raw materials came from the West. Marseilles, then an independent Greek city controlling the trade of the Rhône, brought down metals, hides, coarse wool, salted meat, cheese, slaves, and amber from the north in exchange for Italian iron, bronze, pottery, and the fine handiwork of the East. Its traders also brought tin from the British Isles by way of the Rhône and Seine.

Farther west, the Roman colony at Narbo³⁶ established a new route by way of the Gironde in search of British tin and gained access to the mines of Aquitania. Northern Spain supplied rich quantities of metals, as well as finished goods made from excellent Spanish steel. The central regions produced good woolen and linen fabrics, while the south produced ever-increasing quantities of olive oil, wine, wheat, salted pork, fish, and leather.

³⁶ Cicero’s Pro Fonteio and Pro Quinctio show that these colonists and Roman negotiatores were conducting a large wine trade and extensive banking and real-estate operations in Narbonese Gaul.

Despite this large volume of trade, the machinery of transportation was so far from uniform that we can hardly expect to find well-organized systems of salesmanship and distribution. In general, however, we may assume that every port had a place—a market³⁷—where buyers and sellers could meet. The use of this market varied according to time and place.

During the period when commerce was mostly conducted by “tramp” merchants—a condition that had, in fact, created these marketplaces—the arriving merchant unloaded whatever goods he thought he could sell and displayed them in the market while his ship lay at anchor. In the same market, he could inspect his competitors’ goods and buy and take aboard whatever seemed likely to produce a good profit elsewhere. The town’s small shopkeepers naturally came to the same market to purchase goods for retail sale. Under this system, which still survived to some extent in Cicero’s time, middlemen, buyers, and salesmen were not essential.

A more advanced stage of trade, already observed at Puteoli, also dispensed to some extent with middlemen. Tyrian exporters, for example, did not sail with their cargoes. Instead, they rented warehouses and dock space at Puteoli, where their countrymen, agents, or partners received consignments and presumably displayed and sold the goods to retailers from their local offices. They had a similar statio at Rome, to which their Puteolan agents sent the portions of consignments intended for the city.

Puteolan inscriptions prove that many eastern cities used this system. Indeed, the Italian agora at Delos is apparently an example of westerners adopting the same arrangement, while the stationes at Ostia³⁸ were apparently erected by Rome for similar purposes. As the shipping business developed and land-based export firms grew, commission houses doubtless also arose at ports of entry, although we have no explicit information about them.³⁹

³⁷ See Besnier, article “Portus,” Daremberg-Saglio.

³⁸ Calza, Bulletino Comunale, 1915, 187.

³⁹ Some of the ἔμποροι of Delos were probably commission merchants: Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, 1883, p. 467; 1887, pp. 245 and 252. In some cases, they were agents of the shippers.

There is little evidence of a developed system of salesmanship. This was probably because few factories existed of the kind that now send out salesmen and “drummers,” and because the general presence of marketplaces, created by a more primitive system, brought products to buyers with sufficient success.

There is, however, some evidence that certain factories did not need to bring their goods to the marketplace. Large invoices have been found at the potteries of Auvergne⁴⁰ that are believed to record orders placed by wholesale pottery merchants for manufacture and future delivery. If this is a typical case, buyers visited the factories that existed at the time and placed their orders there.

⁴⁰ Déchelette, Les Vases Céramiques de la Gaule, I, 86 and following. In this case, the buyer seems to have been a wholesale dealer and distributor of pottery, probably the merchant described in inscriptions as negotiator artis cretariae: Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum XIII, 1906 and 6366.

In general, it may be said that in that simpler age the producer was closer to the consumer than today. In foreign trade, the shipper brought his goods to the port marketplace for the retailer or consumer. To a much greater extent than today, the producer of domestic goods was himself an artisan and shopkeeper who sold directly to the consumer what he made in his small shop. Middlemen⁴¹ were relatively few.

⁴¹ Many of the negotiatores mentioned in imperial inscriptions were wholesalers who acted as middlemen between large producers and retailers. The following should probably be placed in this category: neg. artis saponariae, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum XIII, 2030; neg. ferrariarum, X, 1931; negotians calcariarius, X, 3947; Notus... vendenda pelle caprina, IX, 4796; negotians coriariorum, VI, 9667; and others. Shopkeepers, however, sometimes called themselves negotiatores; for example, VI, 9664 and 33881.

The jurists also speak of “circitores who sell or hawk goods for clothiers or linen weavers” (Digest 14, 3, 5, 4). These resembled our peddlers and were very numerous, but the jurists describe most of them as enslaved agents. The jurists likewise mention “slaves who are sent out to buy merchandise for their masters’ shops” (Digest 14, 3, 5, 7). The employment of slaves in such roles probably worked against the development of a middleman system.

Freight and passenger rates seem moderate despite high insurance costs and slow travel by sea. The reason was, of course, that ships were built and crewed with cheap labor, and port duties were generally lower than they are in modern countries with tariffs.

A thousand bricks, weighing more than two tons, were shipped from Athens to Delos—a distance of 100 miles—for about fifteen to twenty drachmas, or $3 to $4. This amounted to about 25 percent of the purchase price. The express charge for sending half a hundredweight of minium from Athens to Ceos was one obol, or three cents. Shipping one ton of stone from Paros to Delos⁴² cost twenty-five drachmas, but heavy stones were expensive to handle with the cranes of the time.

In the third century A.D., wheat was transported from Alexandria to Rome for two cents a bushel, which is about the modern rate. In this instance, the ships were probably insured without charge by the state. Regular freight rates naturally mattered little in much of the tramp-shipping trade, since the merchant traveled the seas bartering with his own goods.

⁴² The freight prices cited for Delos are from the third century B.C.; compare Glotz, Journal des Savants, 1913, pp. 16 and following. Other examples may be found in Böckh, Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener, I², 76.

Passenger fares appear very low to us. Passengers, however, seem to have been responsible for their own food. Their quarters were probably far from luxurious, and, of course, unlike the loss of freight, the loss of life in a shipwreck imposed no financial liability on the carrier. The fare from Aegina to Athens seems to have been two obols, while the fare from Alexandria to Athens was only two drachmas. A person could cross the Aegean for four obols.

Did the Romans follow the advice of Gracchus and enter the worldwide commerce that their armies had opened to them? If we collect all the literary references to Romans conducting business in the provinces and add the inscriptions recording conventus⁴³ of Romans abroad, we must conclude that many heard and followed the call.

Cicero’s Pro Quinctio,⁴⁴ delivered in 81 B.C., and Pro Fonteio, delivered in 69 B.C., show that the colony at Narbo, founded for commercial purposes by followers of the Gracchi, had fulfilled its purpose. It had undoubtedly succeeded in capturing the trade of western Gaul from Marseilles.

The Gracchan colony at Carthage was deprived of its primary function when the Senate foolishly refused to permit the construction of a city that might have become an excellent commercial center. As a result, the principal commerce was diverted to independent African cities such as Utica. The settlement of the Gracchan colonists, however, doubtless explains the presence of Roman traders in places such as Cirta⁴⁵ during the Jugurthine War.

The speeches against Verres prove that, besides moneylenders and real-estate speculators, some merchants—especially Campanian merchants—were active in Sicily, despite the Senate’s refusal to allow Roman publicans to exploit the collection of tithes.⁴⁶ We have already observed how Roman traders entered the province of Asia to take advantage of the bargains offered by the tax collectors.⁴⁷

⁴³ Kornemann, article “Conventus,” Pauly-Wissowa; Schulten, article “Conventus,” in Ruggiero, Dizionario Epigrafico; Pinran, Die Nationalität der Kaufleute.

⁴⁴ Quinctius had been the partner of a man named Naevius in real-estate operations, farming, cattle raising, and slave trading near Narbo. Fonteius was accused of having created difficulties for Roman traders while governor of Narbonese Gaul by imposing unreasonable duties on wine.

⁴⁵ Sallust, Jugurtha, 26, at Cirta; 47, at Vaga; 64, at Utica. See also “Caesar,” Bellum Africum, 97 and 36. The mercatores expelled from Sardinia by Cato—Livy 32, 27—were probably Carthaginians.

⁴⁶ Rostowzew, Staatspacht.

⁴⁷ A typical trader is Falcidius, Pro Flacco, 91, who bought from the publicans the tithes of entire towns. Avianius, mentioned in Cicero, Ad Familiares XIII, 75, had entered the eastern grain trade after serving for a time on Pompey’s official grain commission.

Although the Senate did not care to obtain preferential tariffs for Romans,⁴⁸ they did enjoy certain advantages in provincial trade. They possessed the prestige that comes from the protection of a powerful nation, although this advantage was often neutralized by arrogant behavior toward the native population. They also had an advantage in the courts.

Roman citizens—and, somewhat surprisingly, other Italians along with them—formed separate communities in foreign cities called conventus.⁴⁹ The governor was required to select his jurors from this group. Consequently, Roman citizens were generally assured of a sympathetic hearing in cases against natives. This often secured them slightly more than justice required, unless the governor was a very arrogant aristocrat, like Verres, who brought to the province his Rome-bred hostility toward businesspeople.

Such conventus of Roman and Italian bankers, publicans, traders, landowners, and former soldiers existed in almost every important town during the final years of the Republic. They happen to be mentioned in at least twenty-five cities in Asia, twelve in Greece, seven in Africa, five in Sicily, and three in Syria.

⁴⁸ Romans and Italians were exempted from Ambracia’s octroi duties by an early treaty, but this is the only surviving record of its kind. See Frank, Roman Imperialism, p. 279.

⁴⁹ See Kornemann, cited above.

We must, however, keep in mind the meaning of negotiator during the Republic. A negotiator was primarily a banker and land speculator, not a true merchant. We must also remember what the surveys of Asia, Delos, and Puteoli have shown: these capitalists were more often Campanians and Italiote Greeks who became “Roman citizens” under the laws of 89 and 88 than representative Romans of the old stock.

Many of the “Roman citizens” settled in the provinces were native former soldiers⁵⁰ who had gained citizenship through army service. Trade that depended on connections with the semipublic system of tithe farming was temporary. Moreover, we have very few actual references to Roman shippers such as Lentulus and Rabirius. In other words, Rome’s participation in commerce can be overestimated all too easily if hasty conclusions are drawn from the presence of conventus and negotiatores.

⁵⁰ For example, the former soldiers recalled to service in Macedonia and Crete: Caesar, Bellum Civile III, 4. Some were Italians who settled in the country where they had been discharged. Others were natives simply returning home.

In the East,⁵¹ references to Roman negotiatores and conventus diminish very rapidly during the early Empire, showing how weak their hold on trade had been. Bankers and investors who had arrived in the company of publicans to profit from unsettled conditions apparently did not thrive after the publicans were withdrawn and a period of peace allowed the native population to stabilize its finances.

The normal commerce of the East never passed out of native control, while the grain trade into which Romans had entered ended with the development of Egypt and Africa. Eventually, the westerners who had settled in the East—Italic Greeks, some Romans seeking homes, freedmen, army veterans, and members of Caesar’s proletarian colonies—lost their separate identity and merged into the Hellenic population. It is surprising how quickly, for example, the colonists at Sinope became Hellenized and forgot how to use respectable Latin on their tombstones.⁵²

Roman investments naturally remained in the East, especially in latifundia accumulated through purchase or foreclosure. It is probable, however, that native agents managed these estates under the supervision of Roman dispensatores who visited occasionally. In any case, the East remained socially under eastern control.

⁵¹ Pinran, cited above, p. 120.

⁵² Robinson, “Ancient Sinope”; Hahn, Rom und Romanismus, p. 95.

Roman business made even less progress in the rich province of Egypt, annexed by Augustus. The Ptolemies had organized the state monopolies and Alexandrian commerce so thoroughly for the treasury’s benefit that the emperors saw no advantage in removing them from experienced hands. Roman businesspeople found no bargains there and generally stayed away.

In the West, however, conditions were more favorable to Roman enterprise. There, the conquerors encountered peoples at a lower stage of culture who were eager to learn their language, buy their goods, and adopt their customs. After Marseilles fell during the Civil War, Roman colonies such as Narbo, Lyons, and Arles became centers of culture.

From these places, men went out not only to lend money and buy land but also to direct trade through the numerous riverboats on the Rhône, over the mule road through Tolosa—Toulouse—to Burdigala—Bordeaux—and toward the merchant camps on the Rhine frontier that supplied traders in Germany.

Many of these traders again bore Greek cognomina,⁵³ as the ever-present freedmen generally did. Native Gauls also entered the channels of trade in large numbers, as the Celtic names demonstrate. Nevertheless, there were enough Romans, aided by the emperors’ liberal policy of naturalization and the frequent establishment of Roman schools, to transform the West rapidly into a thoroughly Romanized country. By the fourth century, it is likely that more people in Gaul than in Italy read Vergil and Cicero.

⁵³ Pinran, cited above, pp. 24, 35.

The imperial inscriptions⁵⁴ of the city of Rome strongly support the inference generally drawn from Cicero’s writings: Romans were generally opposed to trade. However highly the great merchant might be respected, the successful wholesaler was usually a person who had first served an apprenticeship in retail trade, and Rome had little good to say about such a person.

That is, of course, an important reason why there were so many colonies and stations belonging to foreign shipping cities at Rome, Ostia, and Puteoli. It also explains why so many Roman wholesale dealers—the negotiantes vinarii, olearii, materiarii, vascularii, and others—had Greek cognomina.

The freedmen gained control here as well. After earning their freedom through diligent and obedient service, they applied the skills acquired while managing the affairs of a wealthy master. They also used money that the master willingly lent when good returns seemed likely, and they boldly entered all the ventures that the land-loving Roman of the old school refused to touch.

⁵⁴ Ibid., pp. 41, 42.

A typical representative of this class is Trimalchio. In Petronius’s sketch,⁵⁵ he entertains his fellow freedmen over their wine with the wandering story of his ventures in the port city of Puteoli:

“I too was once just like you, but through my ability I have risen to this position. It is brains that make the man; everything else is trash. I buy cheaply and sell dearly. Others may have different ideas. I am overflowing with good luck. As I was saying, it is my careful management that has brought me all this wealth.

“I was only as tall as that lamp when I came from Asia. In fact, I used to measure myself against it every day. With heaven’s help, I became the master of the household, and then I won the favor of my foolish lord. So, when he died, he made me co-legatee with the emperor, and I received a senator’s fortune.

“But no one ever has enough. I wanted to go into business. To make the story short, I built five ships, loaded them with wine—it was worth its weight in gold then—and sent them to Rome. Every ship was wrecked, just as though I had ordered it. That is a fact. In a single day, Neptune swallowed up thirty million sesterces.

“Do you think I lost courage? No, by heaven. The loss only sharpened my appetite, as if nothing had happened. I built more ships—larger, better, and luckier ones—so no one could say I lacked courage. You know that a great ship has great strength in itself. I loaded them again with wine, pork, beans, perfumes, and slaves.

“Then my wife did a respectable thing. She sold all her jewelry and dresses and placed 100 gold pieces in my hand. This was like a gift from heaven to my fortune. What heaven desires happens quickly. In a single voyage, I cleared a round ten million.

“At once, I bought back all the estates that had belonged to my master. I built a house and traded in cattle. Everything I touched grew like a honeycomb. When I discovered that I owned more than all the citizens of the town combined, I left the counter and put my freedmen into business for me.

“Then I built this house. As you know, it was once a hovel; now it is fit for a god. It has four dining rooms upstairs, my own bedroom, this viper’s sitting room, a very fine porter’s lodge, and spare rooms for guests.

“Take my word for it: if you have only a cent, you are valued at a cent; but if you have something, people will think you are worth something. And so your humble servant, who was once a pauper, has become a prince.”

⁵⁵ Petronius, Cena Trimalchionis, 75–76. The translation is partly based on Lowe’s edition. It may be noted that the goods named in Trimalchio’s cargo are those generally exported from Campania. The scene is set in or near Puteoli.