More Humble Men' The Poor and the Rest
Even adding together senators, equestrians and the curial class, the elite of the empire consisted of a tiny fraction of its total population. There is no reliable figure for this at any period, since the numbers given in the sources are vague, sometimes contradictory and often wildly exaggerated. Usually the estimate of between 5o and 70 million is given for the population in the first century, with many scholars today compromising at 6o million. Ultimately such figures rest on the pioneering work of the nineteenth-century German scholar Beloch, who attempted a systematic study of population densities in the ancient world. Methodical though his work was, it inevitably involved a good deal of conjecture. The same has been true of more recent studies making use of such tools as life tables - charts presenting life expectancy for both genders on the basis of age - from `comparable' modern societies. Not unreasonably they suggest that birth rates and death rates were both high, as indeed they were in virtually every society before i8oo. However, some have opted for an extremely bleak picture of the ancient world, suggesting that life expectancy was as bad as the Neolithic period.
There are no reliable statistics. Ages on tombstones are not necessarily reliable - multiples of five are suspiciously common and there are an improbable number of ioo-year-old people from the African provinces. More importantly, only a tiny minority of tombstones have survived and obviously provide no evidence for those unable to afford them in the first place. Census reports from Egypt are again only a minute fraction of the records that once existed and present their own problems. One study found that 35 per cent of all those recorded were under fifteen, but to conclude that the comparatively fewer young adults was the result of high mortality is questionable. People at this age were far more likely to have left their villages, or to have wanted to avoid the census and the taxation that followed in its wake. Without statistics we are left with guessing. It has probably been wise to assume the grimmest possible conditions and, at the very least, it is extremely unlikely that the figure was lower than the range suggested. It may well have been higher, perhaps substantially so. My own suspicion - and it is no more than that - is that the figure will gradually be raised as more and more archaeological evidence accumulates for the number and size of settlements within the provinces.15
Whatever the overall size of the population, most people lived in the country, on farms and in villages. Some cities were huge. Rome probably had a population of around a million. Alexandria was half the size, but its population combined with those of Antioch and Carthage probably amounted to another million. A few cities may have had as many as ioo,ooo inhabitants, although most were far smaller, with populations numbering tens of thousands or even just thousands. Conditions were often crowded, especially in Rome and particularly for the poor. The multi-storey insulae (apartment blocks) were often badly constructed and liable to collapse. Fire was an ever-present threat. Even without such hazards living conditions were usually cramped, uncomfortable and expensive. The very poor could not afford to rent such accommodation and lived in shanty towns on waste ground or amongst the cemeteries. Such overcrowding made it very easy for disease to spread.
Some scholars suggest that ancient cities relied on a constant flow of immigrants to maintain their population, since unhealthy living conditions meant that the death rate outstripped the birth rate - or to put it more clinically, that cities were net consumers of people. Public bath houses offered improved hygiene, but the use of the same water by so many people also helped to spread some diseases. Roman cities had public lavatories, as well as drainage and sewage systems - which was considerably more than could be said for most cities before or after the Roman period - and yet these may not always have been adequate. Simply disposing of the dead presented problems in a city as large and as densely populated as Rome. Historians wishing to conjure up a grim image of life there are fond of quoting an incident when Emperor Vespasian was interrupted at dinner by a dog carrying a human hand. We should not forget that this was seen as a dreadful omen, not an everyday occurrence."
Conditions in the cities could be squalid, but they were also places where there was a chance of work. One of the reasons why so many great monuments were constructed was to provide the poor with labouring jobs. At Rome citizens were also entitled to a ration of grain. There were also the great festivals and entertainments. The Circus Maximus could seat between 200,000-250,000 people, and the Colosseum at least 50,000. Even today there are few sporting venues able to accommodate so many. Country areas lacked such attractions, although it is a mistake to think of town and country as completely separate, since most villages were fairly close to a city of some description. The great amphitheatre at Dougga in Tunisia had seats for more people than lived in the city, which suggests that many more would travel to see the games.
Conditions for the poor were different in the rural areas, but may have been similarly grim. We hear of wealthy landlords or their representatives intimidating and robbing their smaller neighbours, when authority was too distant or unwilling to intervene. Obviously, stories of the abuse of power - much like tales of attacks by robbers or pirates - were far more likely to be recorded and so appear in our sources than peaceful and hence mundane coexistence. There is a similar problem with the practice of abandoning unwanted babies on rubbish dumps or dunghills, something that attracted a lot of attention in our ancient sources and has received even more from modern scholars. Such infants were often taken to be raised and sold as slaves, and in Egypt they were sometimes given the unfortunate name of Kopros (dung). It is likely that the frequency of such exposures is exaggerated in our sources, which usually have a strongly moral tone and include many Christian manuscripts, and there are cases where Kopros became a proud family name, passed on to successive generations after the initial foundling had done well for himself.'
Slavery was a fact of life in the Roman Empire, and indeed every other ancient society. There was never any pressure for its abolition, although in the second century several emperors had legislated to relieve some of the more brutal practices, such as the castration of boy slaves to gain a better price as eunuchs. How high a proportion of the overall population were slaves is, once again, unknown. Household slaves were common everywhere - we have already encountered Barates' wife Regina - and the domestic staff of the grander houses could easily measure in the hundreds. Slaves seem to have been rare as the main labour force outside the large estates of Italy, and some of the more dangerous and unpleasant tasks such as mining. Domestic slaves often enjoyed better living conditions than the free poor and stood a fair chance of receiving their freedom. It was also common for a slave to run businesses on his or her owner's behalf and eventually buy his or her freedom for a previously agreed sum from the profits. Yet in the end slaves were still property and suffered from severe legal disadvantages. It was normal for slaves to be interrogated under torture if their master was suspected of a crime, since it was otherwise believed that they would not testify against him."
Scholars today all too often present a very simplistic view of the Roman world. On the one hand are the rich - the senators and equestrians, and at a pinch the curial class as well - and on the other hand are the poor - consisting of everyone else, with slaves as a distinct sub-group. To a great extent this inherits the snobbery of the literary sources, which were almost all written by and for the elite. Viewed from the top, the distinctions between the wider population were unlikely to stand out. A senator might easily own more than ten times the property of a magistrate in a minor city, but this does not mean that the latter was poor. The same logic would dictate that anyone today earning less than the managing director of a multinational company must inevitably live in abject poverty.
It is certainly true that the empire had nothing even vaguely resembling the middle class of Victorian and later Britain. Even the equestrian order did not form a coherent group with interests and attitudes of its own, so this should not surprise us. It is equ
ally obvious from all our sources of evidence as well as simple logic that there were many people in the empire of middling income and property. In every village there were some people wealthier than others, and in towns and cities there was even greater variety of wealth and status. Money was not always enough for respectability - the rich freedman is a familiar and derided figure in literature - but successful freedmen were clearly important figures in many communities. It was common for cities to encourage teachers to set up schools. The elite educated their children at home with personal tutors, and these public schools catered for the more moderately welloff. Literacy was not the preserve of the elite, although few from outside their ranks were able to attain the fluency and purity of Greek and Latin expected of a senator."
Society was a good deal more complex than is often claimed and social mobility was always possible. There were also strong links between individuals at all levels. It was important for senators to have as many clients as possible, individuals and even whole communities obliged to them both for past favours and in confident expectation of new ones. Posts in government and the army were overwhelmingly determined by patronage, and influence mattered in nearly every other aspect of life. The letter of recommendation is the commonest form of writing to survive from the Greco-Roman world and operated at all levels, from senators to anyone able to write and to claim a connection with someone of influence. The following is an extract from a letter written to the equestrian officer commanding the garrison at Vindolanda in northern Britain in the early second century:
Brigonius has requested me, my lord, to recommend him to you. I therefore ask, my lord, if you would be willing to support him in what he has requested of you. I ask that you think fit to commend him to Annius Equester, centurion in charge of the region, at Luguvalium, ... you will place me in debt to you both in his name and my own . . .2O
The emperor was the ultimate source of patronage. Anyone believed to be capable of influencing the emperor would also be courted by people seeking favours. People at all levels had influence, if only because they had a link with someone of greater power. The acceptance of this system as perfectly normal is illustrated in a letter written by Pliny to a provincial governor in the early second century: `Your command of a large army gives you a plentiful source of benefits to confer, and secondly, your tenure has been long enough for you to have provided for your own friends. Turn to mine - they are not many.'2'
A man needed to secure plenty of favours if he was to keep his clients content and stop them from seeking preferment from someone else. Inevitably, it is likely that such a system favoured connections over individual talent, but then even modern, supposedly more impartial and scientific systems of selection manage to promote their fair share of incompetents. However, if a man continually recommended clients who were incapable of performing their job adequately, in the long run his appeals were less likely to be successful. Helping an able man gain promotion was also beneficial to the patron, since the former was now in a better position to return the favour. In general the system functioned adequately and seemed as natural to the Romans as it might seem alien to us. In the modern world it is usually considered better to conceal the operation of favour and patronage, even if it is blatant to insiders.
Much the same could be said of the empire's economic system. The academic debate over this has been fierce, all the more so because, once again, it must occur in the absence of any reliable statistics. All agree that it was not exactly the same as a modern market economy, but there is no consensus on just about anything else. It is worth noting that a single system of currency was employed throughout the empire, with just a few exceptions, such as Egypt. Virtually all gold coins in circulation within the empire in the second century had been minted at Rome, as had the majority of silver coins. All carried the head of a Caesar on them. It is also clear that large quantities of goods were able to move over considerable distances. Agricultural products were dominant, and `factories' - or rather, workshops - producing ceramics, metalwork, textiles and other products seem always to have been fairly small scale. The picture is usually of lots of small workshops, often operating next door to each other, rather than great unified industries. However, we know so little about who owned and drew most profit from such enterprises that it is wise to be cautious about making sweeping conclusions. The Romans did not develop a system of corporate law comparable to that pioneered by the Dutch in the early modern era."
Bulky objects were easier and cheaper to transport by water, on rivers and canals, and most of all by sea. Far more wrecks of merchant vessels have been discovered dating to the first and second centuries than from any other period in the Roman era. There were some extremely large vessels, notably the great ships that carried grain from Egypt to Rome, but the vast majority of vessels seem to have been quite small. Again, the picture is of large numbers of small concerns rather than great centralised enterprises. Some goods are easier to track than others. Barrels were common, particularly in Europe, but are very unlikely to leave much trace archaeologically. In contrast, the ceramic amphorae that were used as containers for wine, oil, fish sauce and many other liquids survive in vast quantities. The famous Monte Testaccio in Rome, an artificial hill consisting of vast quantities of broken amphorae is one of the most spectacular examples, but finds of amphorae, and pottery in general, are extremely common throughout the empire. The wreck of a ship with a cargo of amphorae tends to be particularly visible.
Transporting goods by land was often more difficult, but sometimes the only option. Roman roads are justly famous for their sheer size and obsession with straightness. Originally built for military purposes, they also became valuable all-weather communications routes for civilian traffic. There is a persistent myth that the Romans never developed an effective horse harness, severely restricting the use of wagons for hauling heavy loads. Wheeled transport works best on level or only gently sloping surfaces. Italy is so mountainous that pack animals like mules tended to be preferred and were used in great numbers. Elsewhere in the empire carts and wagons were common, pulled by mules, horses according to availability and, if speed was not a priority, oxen. Camels were important as pack and draught animals in Egypt and some parts of the east. Carts and carriages were well designed for their purpose, and - again contrary to the frequent assertions of historians of technology - in most respects as sophisticated as anything before the modern era.
This was generally true of most types of machinery and engineering. The Romans did not develop windmills, but watermills were common from at least the first century and greatly increased productivity. Water power in general was especially developed in a wide range of activities. There were water-powered saws to cut marble and other stones for building. Mining used water pressure for a range of purposes, shifting earth to uncover deposits, then sifting it to separate out the parts containing ore, which was in turn broken into smaller pieces by hydraulicpowered hammers. Excavation has revealed mine-working on a truly massive scale at sites in Spain and north Wales, outstripping anything seen before the nineteenth century. Some of this occurred in state-run projects, often involving the army, but it is also clear that some private businesses were contracted to exploit the imperial-owned mines. Analysis of core samples taken from the polar icecaps has revealed traces of pollution produced by industrial activity such as smelting. The levels of this for the first century BC through to the second century AD dwarf those of both earlier and later centuries, and indeed of any period before the Industrial Revolution."
Much of the technological sophistication of the ancient world is only now being confirmed by archaeology. The Romans were always willing to copy the innovations of others - the barrel, for instance, appears to have been a north European invention. Most of the innovations in waterpowered machinery had been invented in Egypt in the third century BC, but spread widely only after the region's incorporation in the empire. Areas like Gaul were already flourishing before Rome's arrival, with agricultural productivity
showing a marked increase and settlements growing in size and sophistication. Contact and trade with the Mediterranean world probably encouraged this indigenous development. There was long-distance trade, widespread mining and such aids as roads in many parts of Europe and in the pre-Roman Iron Age. Roman conquest further encouraged this development, tying all these regions more closely into a wider world and bigger markets. More consumer goods became available to more people, and many were objects that would be familiar in style and function from one end of the empire to another.24
It is unlikely that anyone living within the empire could have been unaware of its existence. This was also true of peoples living on the fringes or outside, such as the Garamantes, a tribal people living in the Saharan regions of modern Libya. Excavations at their most important settlement have revealed the presence of pottery, glassware, wine and oil during the Roman period in quantities massively greater than either earlier or later phases. The greater part of these goods had to be carried overland from the Mediterranean coast some 600-700 miles away. The Garamantes also seem to have travelled further, trading over massive distances with peoples further south in Africa, and quite possibly taking slaves as an agricultural labour force. During the creation of the empire Roman and Italian traders had preceded the legions virtually everywhere, although they rarely appear in ancient literature. This continued after the empire stopped expanding. Ireland never attracted the attentions of a Roman army, but there was much trading contact. Other merchants from the empire went to the Baltic to obtain amber.Z"
How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower Page 6
