by Douglas Boin
By the late third century, bread – not grain – was being distributed in these lotteries. The change must have been a boon for a working‐town like Ostia whose bakers benefited from the policy change. Archaeologists have identified one neighborhood in the southern section of the city that must have been thriving in Late Antiquity. Two houses occupied almost half of a city block; both were used as homes into the fifth century CE. Across the street was a bakery, also in use in the fifth century CE.
Ostia’s bakers must had an especially lucrative business during holidays and on festival days. Several terracotta bread molds have been found throughout the ruins of the city. These show bears mauling gladiators and lions devouring helpless prey. They also show chariot racers posing with their victorious horses and holding victory palms. The style indicates these date to the fourth century CE, a perfect take‐away to enjoy on game day.
10.2 The Arena and Racing Culture
The broad appeal of gladiatorial matches, animal hunts, and chariot races vaulted many gladiators and race‐track drivers to the level of cultural superstars. Throughout the Mediterranean, in homes and taverns, archaeologists have found mosaic floors which depict episodes of hunting, boxing, and chariot racing. Oftentimes, the names of the athletes are set in stone along side these scenes. Sometimes, in chariot scenes, even horses are labeled. A mosaic from Emerita, the city of Mérida in Roman Spain (ancient Lusitania), for example, depicts one race‐driver, named “Marcianus,” with an exhortation to “Victory” (Nica, for the Greek Nikē). Marcianus commands a four‐horse chariot whose ace racer is also named: “Inluminator” (Figure 10.3).
Figure 10.3 During the early empire, the southern Iberian peninsula had been a mining region, where metals like gold, copper, and tin were extracted by slave labor. By the second century, Spanish olive oil had become a popular commodity offloaded at Rome’s wharves. During the “Rule of Four,” the provinces of the Iberian peninsula were reorganized into the diocese of Hispania. Mérida (ancient Emerita), in modern Spain, in the province of Lusitania, was one of its important cities. This expensive mosaic floor comes from a villa at Mérida and is a sign of the high‐level wealth that had been generated throughout the Iberian peninsula by Late Antiquity. It depicts a racer named Marcianus and his star horse, whose Latin name is also given: “Inluminator.” The palm leaf in the center and a Latin version of the word “Nikē” – the Greek word for “Victory” – imply that these two athletes were local heroes whose accomplishments were worthy of being set in stone. Second half of the fourth century CE. Now in the Museo Nacional de Arte Romano, Mérida (inventory number CE26389).
Photo credit: © David Keith Jones/Alamy Stock Photo.
This scene has been dated to the second half of the fourth century CE, and others like it have been found throughout the Iberian peninsula. On the one hand, these pieces of material culture show us the fame such men and their horses could acquire. They also tell us something about the economic world of racing culture more broadly. Although we know nothing more about people like Marcianus or their horses, vivid mosaics like the one in Mérida – commissioned for display in wealthy Roman homes – must have been counted among the owners’ most cherished conversation pieces. Perhaps they even worked to highlight their role as financial sponsors, or maybe they just spoke to their status as zealous fans of a particular team. (In Late Antiquity there were four: the Greens, Blues, Whites, and Reds.)
This culture spanned the entire Mediterranean; and, even after 476 CE, when places like Rome and Spain were cut off from the Roman Empire, it can still be seen in the Roman Empire centered around Constantinople. Around 500 CE, the emperor honored one of the most popular race drivers, named Porphyrius, with seven monuments originally displayed in the hippodrome. Today, only two of these monuments survive. On them, Porphyrius stands at the helm of his four‐horse chariot and receives a crown of victory from the goddess Tyche. The texts inscribed on the lost five monuments are also known from a Greek manuscript:
This Porphyrius was born in Africa but brought up in Constantinople. Victory crowned him by turns, and he wore the highest tokens of conquest on his head, from driving sometimes in one color and sometimes in another. For often he changed factions and often horses. Being sometimes first, sometimes last, and sometimes between the two, he overcame both all his partisans and all his adversaries.
(Greek Anthology 15.47, LCL trans. by W. Paton [1918])
This text tells the story of an athlete who was passionate about his sport but not so single‐minded about his team that he couldn’t recognize a good opportunity if and when it was offered to him. If there was a chance to win with another horse (or if the owners of another color paid him more), Porphyrius followed the money. Many of his adoring fans likely followed him.
10.3 Economic Realities, Third–Sixth Centuries CE
Porphyrius may not have cared where his money came from. He raced for whichever owner gave him a greater cut of the winnings, but other people were not so fortunate. They owned farms and worked the land, scraping by financially and sometimes at a season’s whim. Many rented land on large estates that belonged to wealthier landlords. The residents of the empire’s cities knew the comforts of a life built on consumption and trade. Here, in the empire’s more urban centers, lived people of varying degrees of wealth, and there was social and economic opportunity for those who were connected or took financial risks. Clearly the economy was built on the general concept of exchange, but can we say anything more specific about how it worked?
Economic historian Chris Wickham has been at the forefront of studying this pre‐modern system and has cautioned students and specialists about how difficult it is to generalize about it. Sometimes, a system of economic exchange – in which people trade goods, food, or money – is not necessarily driven by fixed rules. Wickham asks students to imagine the complexity of exchange in this way: “One can buy apples from a shop, or get a gift of apples from a friend, but one can also buy apples from a friend, perhaps at a special price for friends … Is this ‘really’ sale, or [is it a] gift‐exchange?” (Chris Wickham, Framing the Middle Ages [New York: Oxford University Press, 2007], p. 695). Wickham’s concern is that we should not expect the ancient evidence to conform to one set category. Parts of the ancient economy may have been built on values of consumerism and profit; others, on agricultural production and the redistribution of goods among people who needed them. Still others, on the allure of an old‐fashioned barter.
Some aspects of this system were assuredly greased by interpersonal connections. The fourth‐century writer Libanius, a lawyer in Antioch, was a teacher who was called upon to make this networked system work for his students. One of his pupils, Apringius, was planning to pursue further legal training in Berytus, Roman Beirut. He had asked Libanius to help him secure a position in town, based on Libanius’ professional connections. Libanius knew exactly whom to contact:
To Dominus: Thus, you inspire men of maturity to pursue occupations of the young. Apringius, our friend, after several trials before the bar (tribunal), has come to you to study law because it is from you alone that he can acquire knowledge … Try to shorten the time of his studies so that he can put his knowledge to practice. I will also entreat you insofar as tuition is concerned. He is a good man but poor and although he cannot give as much in payment now, he remembers favors.
(Libanius, Letter 1171, trans. by L. Hall, Roman Berytus: Beirut in Late Antiquity [London: Routledge, 2004], p. 209)
As Libanius’ letter on behalf of his impoverished student makes clear, the Roman economy could always be made to work in favor of those who knew the right people, regardless of how it worked for someone else (Political Issues 10.1: Cemetery Workers and a Guild Recruited for Mob Violence).
Political Issues 10.1 Cemetery Workers anda Guild Recruited for Mob Violence
Guilds, or “colleges” (in Latin, a collegium or corpus) were social clubs for people who worked in trades. Shipbuilders, rope and leather merchants, even fune
rary workers could belong to a college. They would dine with other members in a guildhall, or schola. Many guildhalls also had temples that were dedicated to trade’s divine patron.
These colleges met in spaces that were usually set aside by a wealthy owner. In the late second century shipbuilders at Ostia dedicated a statue for their “best patron” (optimus patronus), Publius Martius Philippus (AE 1955, no. 177). Philippus’ donations likely helped the college expand and attract new members. By the third century CE, they had built a temple on the north side of the street and a larger meeting hall, with a banquet hall, on the south. Guild life was diverse and an important part of Roman city life. In the middle of the third century, in Roman Spain, one of the Christian bishops, Martial, and his sons worked in a local funerary guild. They even attended the feasts, held in honor of the college’s patron god (Cyprian, Letter 67.6). A half century later, by Constantine’s time, Christians would be running many of their own funerary guilds.
The parabolani at Alexandria were one such college. Likely named because they took up the risky job of managing corpses – the Greek word parabalos refers to someone “exposed to danger” – these Christian funerary workers were part of a well‐established system that oversaw burial for people in town. Burial in antiquity was a private affair, not paid for by the state, and the parabolani are attested in Egypt through the early seventh century CE (Giessen Papyrus Collection, Germany, Papyri Iandanae [P. Iand.] 8.154; see also Sarah Bond, “Mortuary Workers, the Church, and the Funeral Trade in Late Antiquity,” Journal of Late Antiquity [2013], pp. 140–143).
Alexandria’s Christian funerary workers branched out from their day jobs in “creative” ways, too. By the fifth century CE, the parabolani had become infamous as one of the most cut‐throat urban mobs whose thuggish behavior was at the disposal of Alexandria’s bishop when he needed it. Some scholars suspect that Bishop Cyril himself deployed this guild in his conflict with the Christian government officer Orestes in 415 CE during which Hypatia was killed.
What we know for sure is that the Christian emperor in Constantinople was not amused by their reckless behavior. In 416 CE legislation addressed “the social terror of those who are known as the parabolani” (Theodosian Code 16.2.42, preface). The law decreed that membership would be capped at 500 people, and its ranks could only be drawn from Alexandria’s poor (pauperes), not from wealthy residents or from anyone who attempted to pay or bribe their way in. All names would now have to be submitted to the local prefect for approval (Theodosian Code 16.2.42.1).
Other restrictions were put in place to regulate these riot‐prone Christian funerary workers. They were forbidden to attend “any public spectacle whatsoever or enter a local town council or go into a courtroom,” unless, of course, they had actual business there (Theodosian Code 16.2.41.2).
The two economic corridors of the state
Exchange, whether in money, favors, or a mixture of the two, was the central feature of this economy. As archaeological excavations show, objects made in one city or food harvested in another could travel considerable distances between the third through fifth centuries CE. At this stage, then, we should try to describe how and why the expectation of connectedness took root and what happened to it after the fifth century. The first two questions may seem basic to a student of the ancient Mediterranean; why wouldn’t Rome’s empire have been economically integrated? But here, too, historian Wickham offers a caveat:
It is not inevitable that the Mediterranean, or half the Mediterranean, should be as closely integrated as it was in 400 [CE]; it is not even “natural” given the similarity of resources in most Mediterranean regions. It is even less inevitable that interregional products should get substantially inland from coastlines and waterways … These processes were largely the products of the political and fiscal underpinnings of the Roman world‐system and, when that went away, so in the end did exchange.
(Wickham 2007, p. 718)
These are critical considerations to keep in mind when talking about what happened to the Mediterranean economy in the fifth through seventh centuries CE. The first step in the process of exploring the ancient economy, however, is determining what evidence to use. What do we have that is useful, and where do we find it?
By the early fourth century, the most important aspect of the Mediterranean economy was the emergence of two trade routes which pumped goods and money through the state like a twin set of arteries. These corridors were the two state‐managed sea passages that brought food from North Africa to Rome, in the west, and from Egypt to Constantinople, in the east. Both grain‐producing regions were heavily taxed, and as a result, government policies helped grow and sustain the trade between these provinces and the capitals.
Although the government did not itself determine what was traded, many enterprising merchants – in North Africa, for example – cleverly exploited both the state‐protected shipping routes and the availability of the steady stream of sailing ships to send their own goods to Rome. Fashionable ceramics from Tunisia, for example, could be packed on board in the left‐over cargo holds, offloaded at their destination, then sold in the Italian markets. It was a boon for everyone involved. Baked clay containers may be one of the most unassuming, ubiquitous class of artifacts discovered on archaeological sites, but for historians, these vessels hold more than the residues of olive oil and wine. Even in their broken pieces, they tell a story about the ancient economy.
The importance of ceramic evidence
Archaeologists find ceramics and sherds (not “shards,” a term which refers to glass) nearly everywhere. Marble could also travel great distances, but it was a luxury good. Ceramics were more widely used across a much more economically diverse set of the population.
Tableware, cookware, and kitchenware were made of clay and fired in a kiln. Once fired, these bowls and cups – although they could potentially be damaged in shipping, in the kitchen, or in a domestic fit of rage – were virtually indestructible. Because clay composition can be studied and traced scientifically, many ceramic production centers are known from the Mediterranean. Roman Tunisia was home to one of the most popular. Its kilns were famous from the fourth through eighth centuries CE for manufacturing vessels with a distinctive orangish‐red glaze, called “African Red Slip Ware.” During the third and fourth centuries CE, many North African merchants were filling the extra space in the state‐run grain shipments with extra pieces of African Red Slip Ware.
Ceramics help historians literally connect the dots of the Roman economy. By compiling the data for what kinds of ceramics have been found in which cities, specialists have been able to assemble profiles of the import–export trade across the Mediterranean. Between 300 and 500 CE, for example, most tableware found in the eastern Mediterranean is predominantly Late Roman C and D, a style of container manufactured on the island of Cyprus and in the Levant. African Red Slip Ware, by contrast, shows a greater distribution in cities and regions closer to Tunisia, like Roman Libya. This comparative evidence offers a helpful reminder that, even in the fourth‐century empire, when the state had two capitals and encompassed the entire Mediterranean basin, not everything about the economy was driven by the sweeping movements of trans‐regional trade (Wickham 2007, p. 707). Tableware in the Levant was supplied largely by an intra‐regional economy. Large parts of the Roman world were dominated by local economies.
The importance of the wooden legal texts from Vandal North Africa
A slightly different picture emerges from cities in the western Mediterranean. In 439 CE, when Vandals took control of Carthage, the cozy relationship between the state‐backed food trade and the enterprising merchants who had negotiated to have their own goods shipped in the extra space on board – a partnership which had lasted for two hundred years – was shut down. The Vandal political upheaval (Vandal Kingdom of North Africa and Sicily, r. 439–534 CE) did not halt all trade between North Africa and Italy, but the end of state‐sponsored grain shipments did disrupt a system that had
benefited cities on both shores of the Mediterranean.
The situation for people living in North Africa during Vandal rule was also probably mixed. Farmers who had once been required to pay extravagant rent to their landlords, who, in turn, used the money to pay Rome’s taxes, now found themselves without the burden of an extra bill. As a result, more money in the Vandal period was likely pouring into the accounts of already wealthy citizens of North African cities. For those at the lowest end of the economic ladder, the situation does not seem to have improved. One extraordinarily rare set of documents, legal texts written on wood and found by chance in a storage jug, show us one farming family in Vandal North Africa that had hit hard times. These legal texts, written in Latin, are known as the Albertini Tablets, after the name of the French scholar, Eugène Albertini, who published the first transcription of them.
The Albertini Tablets call forth an intimate picture of the partnership that could exist between landlords and farmers in late fifth‐century CE Vandal North Africa. Many of the contracts specify that they came from the estate of Flavius Geminius Catullinus, which was being overseen by his family’s freedmen, at Tebessa in Roman Algeria. The names of two local peasants, Processanus and his wife Siddana, show up frequently in this collection. This couple owned the right to farm a small part of Flavius Geminius Catullinus’ large estate. And between 493 and 496 CE, Processanus and Siddana – “because [neither of them] knew how to read and write” (Albertini Tablets 13, line 33; Tablet 3, line 45) – worked with Catullinus and his freedmen overseers to sell back the rights to farm the land they rented.
