Antiquity and Capitalism: Max Weber and the Sociological Foundations of Roman Civilization

Antiquity and Capitalism Antiquity and Capitalism Max Weber and the sociological foundations of Roman civilization J...

Author: John R. Love

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Antiquity and Capitalism

Antiquity and Capitalism Max Weber and the sociological foundations of Roman civilization

John R.Love

London and New York

First published 1991 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge's collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge a division of Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc. 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 1991 John R.Love All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Love, John R. Antiquity and capitalism: Max Weber and the sociological foundations of Roman civilization. 1. Roman Empire. Economic conditions I. Title 330.937 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Love, John R Antiquity and capitalism: Max Weber and the sociological foundations of Roman civilization/John R.Love. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Rome—Economic conditions. 2. Rome—Social conditions. 3. Weber, Max, 1864–1920—Contributions in Roman civilization. I. Title. HC39. L68 1991 306′.0937–dc20 90–38673 ISBN 0-203-98307-6 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-415-04750-1 (Print Edition)

for my mother Daisy Edna Love and my father William Tylden Love

Contents

Acknowledgements Introduction

viii 1

Part I Antiquity and historical sociology 1 Max Weber and the theory of ancient capitalism

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Part II Max Weber and modern scholarship 2 3 4 5

On the economic character of the ancient agricultural estate: Oikos or enterprise? 43 ‘lndustrial production’ and the economic use of slave labour 81 The economic significance of ancient trade 113 The role of state contracting and the societates publicanorum 128

Part III Capitalism and the fate of Roman civilization 6 The nature of the market and the significance of capitalism in Roman antiquity 7 Why rational capitalism was not established in antiquity Notes Bibliography Index

156 182 205 245 259

Acknowledgements The following work grew out of studies undertaken for a doctoral degree at the University of Melbourne. I wish to thank David Tucker for his invaluable assistance as supervisor, and Gianfranco Poggi for his interest and guidance. I am especially indebted to Harry Redner who has been a friend, support and inspiration to me over many years. I would finally like to thank Jennifer Cook and Steve McCaulay for their effort and care in typing the manuscript.

Introduction If any object can be found to which this term [the spirit of capitalism] can be applied with any understandable meaning, it can only be an historical individual, i.e., a complex of elements associated in historical reality which we unite into a conceptual whole from the standpoint of their cultural significance. Such an historical concept, however, since it refers in its content to a phenomenon significant for its unique individuality, cannot be defined according to the formula gens proximum, differentia specifica, but it must be gradually put together out of the individual parts which are taken from historical reality to make it up. Thus the final and definitive concept cannot stand at the beginning, but must come at the end. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

The work which follows is basically concerned to explore a single historical question: we wish to enquire whether capitalism existed in ancient society, and, if so, in what form(s) and to what extent. In a nutshell, we want to know whether the economy of the most advanced regions of antiquity, those of the Roman world in particular, was affected to significant degrees by the presence of capitalistic or quasi-capitalistic economic pursuits and what bearing this may have had on the course of social development generally. Of course, it goes without saying that such questions mean we must also address the question of the nature of capitalism as such; we shall necessarily have to touch on the whole problem of the relation of antiquity to the modern era where clearly a certain kind of capitalism has been, and still is, of overwhelming importance. The present work is thus a somewhat ambitious study which, by surveying the course of Roman history from the early Republican origins to the era of Rome’s demise, seeks to contribute to the general understanding of the socio-economic structure of ancient civilization. To achieve this we have set as our main task the construction of a complex sociological model—or what we term, following Max Weber, an ideal type—and our efforts will be directed to describing the intricate workings of this model and showing how the constructs produced are adequate to the purpose at hand. Our approach is therefore unashamedly sociological in orientation, though, in the best traditions of the discipline, we have made every effort to be thoroughly cognizant of the relevant historical materials. The questions we shall ask are not those typical of conventional historiography, which usually seeks to uncover novel historical facts or analyses specific causal conjunctions, but rather those of the historical sociologist who, in asking questions of an analytical nature, recognizes the necessity of more theoretically oriented deliberations, even if the concepts and models thereby constructed ultimately depend on materials provided in the first instance by ordinary historical scholarship. The historian of

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antiquity will thus find no new facts disclosed below, but should recognize familiar materials selected, arranged and related in different, and hopefully illuminating, ways. Above all, an effort has been made to produce a clear and consistently formed set of concepts in order to improve the overall coherence of specialist studies dealing with the various facets of ancient society, so avoiding some of the ambiguity and confusion that all too often is a feature of the general literature in the field. From what has already been said, it will not come as much of a surprise, at least to sociologists, to learn that our study engages to a considerable extent with the work of Max Weber. But despite the fact that sociologists and ancient historians will know something of Weber the sociologist of modern society, they are probably alike in their lack of familiarity with his direct contribution to ancient studies. Curiously, it is not at all well known that Weber wrote two major books dealing exclusively with antiquity, and many of his other writings are profoundly concerned with it as well. 1 Thus, it will be a first intention of the present study to revive the scholarly interest in Weber’s historical writings dealing expressly with antiquity. But, important though this may be for the history of ideas and as a contribution to the interpretation of Weber’s work as a whole, in the context of the work to follow these concerns are largely preliminary to the stated task of producing a more adequate account of the socio-economic structure of the ancient world. 2 In our view Weber’s work on antiquity is seminal for two main reasons: First, Weber wrote at a time when a number of the great achievements of modern German historiography were already in place, was well situated to take advantage of these, and did so. Here we shall refer in passing to the contributions of ancient historians like Barthold Niebuhr, Jacob Burckhardt, Theodor Mommsen, Eduard Meyer, August Meitzen, Robert Pöhlmann and Georg von Below and to those of historical economists such as Gustav von Schmoller, Karl Bücher, Wilhelm Roscher and Karl Rodbertus—of course, there are many others that could be listed. But, secondly, Weber’s work is crucial because he is one of the very few historians of high calibre to have written and researched on an almost global range of human cultures—he studied and wrote in detail about the economic, political, religious and cultural life of both eastern and western societies, and did so covering the full panoply of ancient, mediaeval and modern phenomena. In other words, he developed his theories from what is often termed the perspective of universal history, and, with the benefit of the most advanced epistemology of the day, was able to do so in a methodologically sophisticated fashion. Of course, it might be said much of this is true also of a figure like Karl Marx, with whom we shall have occasion to make comparisons on a number of points. But whereas Weber’s scholarship has to a remarkable extent weathered the test of time and, in our view, even now stands with the best historical work since produced, 3 the same cannot be said of Marx’s work, much of which is now dated and obsolete. I say this advisedly knowing full well that numerous followers of Marx have made, and are still continuing to make, efforts to update the master’s contribution in the light of recent advances in the field. But these efforts are, with a few notable exceptions, of limited value. Hence, in the body of the present work we shall not attempt a full-scale comparison of Marx and Weber on antiquity; the sketchy nature of Marx’s empirical knowledge of antiquity and the unsystematic character of his writings on it would make such a project unbalanced

Introduction

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and somewhat artificial. Nonetheless, as the topic is not without interest and has some worthwhile dimensions, we have often included allusions to Marx’s views in passing. Thus, we readily concede that what we shall present on the question of capitalism in antiquity relies heavily, though not exclusively, on the work of Weber. From a conceptual and methodological point of view this dependence is especially significant as regards Weber’s key concepts of ‘rational capitalism’ and ‘political capitalism’. Of course, as with all Weberian concepts, these are much more than categoric definitions, for, properly understood, such terms refer to complex ideal types which theoretically encompass large sets of empirical materials organized for analytic purposes. Our modus operandi in what follows will be to explore the heuristic value of these and certain other key ideal types for the interpretation of the socio-economic life of antiquity. But whereas Weber developed the ideal type of rational capitalism to a high degree (this was a major part of the achievement of his great work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism) unfortunately the same cannot be said of his concept of political capitalism. Weber himself provided only a rough outline of the latter concept, though in our view his conceptual elaboration is basically sound and includes many of the essential elements. Thus, it would be fair to say we are seeking to complement Weber’s work on rational capitalism with a corresponding effort focusing on political capitalism. Just as Weber saw his task in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism as being in significant measure a theoretical one—to develop the concept of rational, or bourgeois, capitalism in itself—correspondingly we shall attempt to explicate the concept of political capitalism. Our discussion below is organized into three parts which can loosely be termed ‘analytic’, ‘descriptive’ and ‘synthetic’. The first, analytic section is made up of a single chapter on the work of Weber. In this we review his contributions to the study of antiquity and expound his main theoretical constructs, showing as far as is possible at this stage their relevance to the questions we wish to address. For Weber the most central question is undoubtedly that of the uniqueness of the modern West, but his solution to this issue differs significantly from Marx’s in that his schematization of comparative socio-economic structures did not preclude the possibility of forms of capitalism preceding the bourgeois form that emerged after the Renaissance. This is where Weber’s distinction between rational or market capitalism and politically oriented capitalism becomes crucial. Whereas politically oriented capitalism is defined as the exploitation of the opportunities for profit arising from the exerciSe of political power (ultimately, violence), market capitalism is more economically rational and focuses on the formally peaceful opportunities of the market. Hence, at the very least we may be able to designate the socio-economic structure of antiquity ‘capitalist’ in the sense of political capitalism—though, as we shall see, aspects of market capitalism may also be relevant. At this point we must sound a warning in anticipation of some possible misunderstandings our conceptual approach may invite. Throughout our deliberations we shall be especially vigilant concerning the precise referents of key terms like capitalism, in order to avoid the the twin dangers of anachronistically projecting modern forms back onto the past or, alternatively, of overstating the uniqueness of the present. Both mistakes abound in the literature on antiquity, and we shall be especially preoccupied with them in the discussions to follow.


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The second section, the ‘descriptive part’, comprises four chapters which cover four general areas of economic life: agriculture, industry, trade and state contracting. In these chapters we shall survey the literature on our topic that has been produced since Weber’s day, and make whatever additions and corrections seem necessary. But more importantly, we shall also attempt the reverse, namely, to interrogate the materials that have been produced by modern historiography in the light of Weber’s sociology. We shall try in particular to determine to what extent various quasi- and proto-capitalist formations appeared in the ancient world. For example, in agriculture we shall focus on the large estates and ask whether these ever became genuine capitalist enterprises; or, did they remain in essence autarkic and traditional owing to the predominance of the oikos? In socalled ‘industry’ the main issue concerns the scale and economic sophistication of the slave-based workshop. Was this at any stage a proto-typical factory with a rational division of labour and was it oriented to profit making? As regards the realm of trade our key concern will be the question of whether certain forms of capitalistic trade, especially those associated with the sea loan, played an important part in the economic life of ancient cities. Finally, we shall consider the significance of state contracting for the fate of capitalism in ancient Rome. Here the role of the state contractors or publicani is the decisive question because of their extraordinary wealth and the nature of the business methods they employed. In In our final, concluding section we shall try to synthesize the great mass of material surveyed in the two previous sections. The intention will be to gain an interpretative grasp of the overall socioeconomic situation in antiquity. We shall focus on two main questions. First, what was the extent of the market in ancient Roman society? And, second, what was the institutional basis of political capitalism? Associated with these problems are a number of subordinate issues, such as why there were limits to the development of a market system and what were the long-term effects of the dominance of political capitalism. To complete our discussion we shall explore in a systematic fashion why rational capitalism failed to develop beyond what was merely an embryonic stage.

Part I Antiquity and historical sociology

1 Max Weber and the theory of ancient capitalism Well this is really a question of terminology. I need hardly point out that no historian of ancien regime societies, a fortiori of ancient civilizations, would ever, when using the word capitalism, have in mind the definition Alexander Gerschenron calmly gives us: ‘Capitalism, that is the modern industrial system’. I have…indicated that capitalism in the past (as distinct from capitalism today) only occupied a narrow platform of economic life. How could one possibly take it to mean a ‘system’ extending over the whole of society? It was nevertheless a world apart, different from and indeed foreign to the social and economic context surrounding it. And it is in relation to this context that it is defined as ‘capitalism’, not merely in relation to capitalist forms which were to emerge later in time. In fact capitalism was what it was in relation to a non-capitalism of immense proportions. And to refuse to admit this dichotomy within the economy of the past, on the pretext that the ‘time’ of capitalism dates only from the nineteenth century, means abandoning the effort to understand the significance—crucial to the analysis of the economy-of what might be termed the former topography of capitalism. If there were certain areas where it elected residence—by no means inadvertently—that is because these were the only areas which favoured the reproduction of capital. Fernand Braudel, The Wheels of Commerce

In the now quite voluminous literature dealing with the work of Max Weber, it is surprising how few commentators have addressed his writings on antiquity. 1 We say surprising because, as already noted above, Weber produced two major books concerned with antiquity, and many of his other writings were concerned with it as well. Thus, it is of more than just passing interest, both for the history of antiquity and also as regards an understanding of Weber’s later work, to look once again at the early phase of his career and to trace the lines of development issuing from it. It is of considerable importance from the point of view we shall advance here that one of the main conceptual concerns of Weber in his early works, indeed the key, unifying theme in them, is the issue of the existence and nature of ancient capitalism. 2 It is not well known that Weber took very seriously the idea that capitalism played an important, even decisive role in the life of earlier societies. As we shall see shortly, Weber’s precise


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view of the role of capitalism in antiquity is rather complex, and involves certain changes of viewpoint on his part over the course of his career. But, it is most instructive to trace the course of Weber’s thinking in these early writings on ancient economics, and not only for the student of ancient society; their close scrutiny informs us among other things as to the nature of the problematic underlying his later, more well-recognized contributions to the analysis of the all-important modern capitalism. Thus, without prejudicing the issue of what is precisely implied by the notion, we can say that the idea of ancient capitalism is not merely of antiquarian interest but has wider implications; in particular, it provides a contrasting perspective which is most useful in constructing a theory of modern capitalism as well as of the course of western historical development generally. In Weber’s oeuvre there are a number of works devoted solely or in significant part to the study of antiquity. They are the following: 1 Die römische Agrargeschichte in ihrer Bedeutung für das Staatsund Privatrecht (1891); 2 The essay ‘The social causes of the decay of ancient civilization’ (1896); 3 The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations (first edition 1897 and second edition 1909); 4 The essay ‘The city’, written between 1911 and 1913, but first published (posthumously) in the Archiv für Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, no. 48 in 1921. This is now included in Economy and Society as Chapter XVI; 5 General Economic History (1919–29), which is not a text actually written by Weber, but the written version of a series of public lectures given by him under the title ‘Outlines of Universal Social and Economic History’. The contents of the lectures were reconstructed from Weber’s own brief notes and those of students who attended the lectures and published (posthumously) in 1923; 6 Finally, in addition to these works, we note that Weber’s magnum opus Economy and Society and Weber’s numerous writings on religion contain a wealth of references to various aspects of antiquity. In the chapter which follows, we shall discuss the first three works listed above in some detail, as antiquity is their central focus; the remaining writings will be utilized where appropriate. We shall argue that Weber begins his work on the economic history of antiquity with an essentially unclarified conception of capitalism, a usage more or less taken over from Theodor Mommsen whose great History of Rome was very clearly an important influence on Weber. The impact of Mommsen is most obvious in Weber’s Die römische Agrargeschichte, a work composed at a time when Weber was closely associated with Mommsen both via social connections and through a series of intellectual exchanges. But a close reading of Mommsen shows that, under the influence of contemporary liberal ideas, he had simply taken over the conventional wisdom concerning the nature of modern capitalism and anachronistically projected its forms back onto the conditions of ancient society—and Weber all too uncritically followed him in this. By the time of his next published contribution, the essay ‘The social causes of the decay of ancient civilization’, Weber has evidently reflected upon and revised his previous view, and seeks to modify his original assessment of the significance of

Max weber and the theory of ancient capitalism

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capitalism. Indeed, he now wants to restrict the scope and relevance of capitalism to a somewhat marginal role, and, under the influence of Rodbertus, he develops a contrasting perspective in which special significance is placed on the economic function of the oikos. At this stage, however, Weber lacks a full appreciation of the nature and use of the ideal type, and does not have the advantage of a developed sociological typology. But all this begins to change in the next few years (1897 onwards) with the publication of The Agrarian Sociology. In the opening introductory section of that work Weber embarks on a detailed study of the problems of concept formation in relation to ancient studies: he recognizes the dangers of anachronization, begins to distinguish different types of capitalistic activity, and becomes conscious of the need to fashion ideal-type concepts for heuristic purposes. It is worth bearing in mind that it was between the first and the second versions of The Agrarian Sociology (1897–1909) that Weber also produced The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and wrote a number of key methodological essays (most notably ‘“Objectivity” in social science and social policy’, in which the epistemology of the ideal type is developed at some length). In the light of this, we shall argue, Weber had begun to recognize that the problem of understanding the nature of capitalism, both ancient and modern, was much more complex and difficult than he had initially thought, and, furthermore, that the issues were incapable of resolution without engaging with another issue altogether, namely, the problem of rationality. In consequence, he proceeds to develop a new and more sophisticated ideal type of modern capitalism around a set of conceptually clarified notions which included those of rational economic action, rational calculation, rational division of labour, and rational technology. Then, against this more refined formulation of ‘rational capitalism’ he contrasts the idea of ‘irrational capitalism’ which he argues appeared in various guises—the capitalism of military adventurers, pirates, booty hunters, slave traders, tax farmers, speculators, money dealers and others. But Weber is by no means so naive as to argue along Hegelian or teleological lines that rational progress, however defined, is an inevitable consequence of the movement of history. Rather, he argues that certain types of rationalization, and only these, have been the peculiar fate of western societies as a result of unique causal conditions. This means, contrary to an all too common misunderstanding of Weber, that rationalization is not to be understood as the all-embracing characteristic of western historical development such that irrational forms of social life cease to be of any contemporary significance. For it needs to be recognized that, despite the increasing dominance of rational capitalism, irrational forms also persist, even in the most advanced societies—we need only consider the large-scale cocaine enterprises of the Colombian drug barons, the world-wide traffic arms and munitions, or the political manipulation of domestic weapons manufacturers to see examples of what Weber calls irrational capitalism prospering today. It would therefore be the greatest misinterpretation of Weber’s view to see the process of rationalization through the filter of an Hegelian Reason, so that the course of historical evolution from, say, primitive to modern is regarded as coinciding in some simple fashion with a general movement from irrational to rational social forms. For, in Weber’s view, premodern societies have also undergone rationalizations, but in different directions and in different spheres to those of the modern west. So we must emphasize here at the outset that in our attempt to work up a Weberian perspective on the economic


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character of antiquity it is not at all a question of explaining the nature of a developmental transition from, say, the irrational capitalism of premodern societies to the rational capitalism of modern society. Rather, it is a question of understanding the peculiar character of different societies—which includes understanding the peculiar directions of their individual rationalization processes, though this does not preclude the possibility of acknowledging lines of development between past and present forms provided these can be properly demonstrated. We must insist, however, that the issue of whether progress has taken place along paths that can be interpreted in rational terms is ultimately an empirical question, and does not depend on a philosophical anthropology or historical Weltanschauung of some kind.

WEBER’S DIE RÖMISCHE AGRARGESCHICHTE: FROM COMMUNISM TO CAPITALISM IN EARLY ROME The full title of Weber’s first work on antiquity indicates it is a study of Roman agrarian history in its relations with state and private law. 3 This was his second major scholarly contribution, his ‘Promotionsschrift’ (which followed his dissertation), and is perhaps the most conventionally historical piece of writing he ever produced. In the work Weber focuses on the emergence in ancient Rome of the system of plantation agriculture, and seeks to demonstrate how our knowledge of ancient economic developments can be illuminated by a consideration of constitutional and civil law. In the first part he analyses the forms of land surveying practised at different periods and tries to make connections with various aspects of law. In the second part he offers an interpretation of the significance of various agricultural developments for Roman economic history generally. He looks in detail at the economic character of the latifundia (i.e., the large agricultural estates) of the classical era, and discusses the Roman agricultural authors Cato, Varro and Columella. Among other topics covered is the issue of the origins of the Roman colonate of the early imperial era. Weber’s specific investigative strategy is to attempt to deduce an idea of the early state of agriculture at Rome from an analysis of the practical meaning of various legal forms dating from later times for which the evidence is sounder. He argues that the way that the land was surveyed was connected with the legal arrangements arising from public involvement in newly acquired territories, and this had implications for civil relations. In a fashion which reflects the influence of the work of August Meitzen, Weber sets out to show how the different ways in which the official surveyors divided the land corresponded to different forms of landholding. 4 ‘Centuration’, a form of measurement and division into square lots, was typical of colonial land which was not subject to taxation; whereas an alternative, more exact measuring system which gave rise to rectangular blocks (per strigas et scamna: furrows and ridges) had been subject to taxation. Weber argues that the first-mentioned kind of mapping (centuration) was connected with the tradition of land division into two iugera parcels (half a hectare), and because these were too small to support the owners and their families, the system must have entailed common land as well. A more individualistic form of land usage, on the other hand, is implied by the practice of subdivision into rectangular lots, because this


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land, ager publicus, was leased for a fee to those who could afford it, and the name of the lessor was recorded. Most importantly, according to Weber, the latter form of land use meant that the richer citizens were thereby able to increase their holdings very greatly, in part at the expense of the conquered peoples, but also in part at the expense of their poorer countrymen. The focus of Weber’s argument is the period of the development of Rome as a continental power. He claims the expansion of Roman territory meant an ever-expanding area of land had become subject not just to political control but was increasingly opened up to direct economic exploitation. This was true especially of the land known as ager publicus, so-called because it was, in theory, property under the control of the Roman state (i.e., in the realm of res publica) owing to the fact that it had been acquired from the territory of conquered powers. According to Weber, there were two main consequences which are closely interrelated: first, major social struggles over land took place periodically as Rome expanded; and, second, Roman political developments were very closely connected with this class conflict. Weber explains how opportunities to make huge profits from landholding were for a long time the main source of political strife at Rome. In particular, there arose the so-called ‘struggle of the orders’, where ‘the actual object of the struggle of the parties was the ager publicus’. 5 He goes on to tell us how ‘never before in a large-scale political system was political power so directly connected with money. That it was like that ages ago is due to the peculiar position of the ager publicus with respect to its economic and legal significance.’ The origins of private property The more technical, legal side of Weber’s study attempts to explain how the ager publicus came to be so accessible to exploitation by what were in effect private capitalist interests. This was an extraordinary outcome for a society which until then had been essentially communal. In particular, Weber is interested to discover precisely how ancient legal institutions came to recognize a conception of property remarkably close to our own. In agrarian communism, which like his teacher Mommsen (and like Marx also) Weber assumes as the original state of affairs at Rome, an individual could neither cede land nor claim it; for at this stage land was not divided into separate lots. Insofar as it is possible to speak of a ‘right’ to hold land, this is evidenced only by the individual’s membership of the agrarian community, not by ownership. In fact the arable sections of land are really owned by the clans (gentes). The clansman cannot dispose of an individual house and garden (hortus) even though its use may have been enjoyed more or less permanently (as his heredium). Free rights of alienation exist only for those things which an individual holds ‘in his hand’ (in manu); that is, excepting his wife and children, it is solely movables such as slaves (manicipia) and cattle (pecunia) that are classed as objects of individual ownership, or res manicipi—immovable property such as land is classed as res nec manicipi (‘things not capable of mancipation’). In the earliest times when disputes arose as to an individual’s use and enjoyment of a particular farm (fundus), an action in law ex delicto was not possible because there were no contracts from which torts as such could arise. Problems of this kind could only be


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resolved by determining whether a person was properly a member of a particular household or kinship group; for on this rested all claims for a share of the group’s land. Before a political association existed, and with it the beginnings of formally rational law, legal contests between claimants probably did not occur, because the norms of the loyalty-bound kinship relationship forbade that a man should summon into court or bear witness against a fellow kinsman. As individual appropriation of the land became more common, however, and as the old clan structure with its system of patriarchal domination was modified under the impact of military and political changes, elementary forms of litigation were found necessary. But at first these were primarily to settle questions of status. It was simply not an issue that one could steal a fundus (not just because of natural obstacles but because no one could steal another’s membership of a group). But one could dispute whether an individual properly belonged to the group, and so there developed a bilateral action, the vindicatio, through which rival claims to membership status could be arbitrated. Under the procedures of this action both parties formally laid claim to the object in dispute, were required to stake a certain amount in copper money to indicate their seriousness, and had to agree to submit to the decision of a third party (the role of arbiter being taken by the praetor). But even here we still cannot speak of a free transfer of real property, owing to the continuing preponderance of the community in the shape of the clans. According to Weber, despite the communism of early times, the individual would have enjoyed the use of a particular plot of land, and naturally developed an attachment to it that was reinforced by custom. And with the subsequent dividing of communal lands, the old shared basis of possession was gradually displaced by the right to possess a particular fundus, by which was meant a specific piece of real estate. The new principle of ownership came about by recognizing that those who had occupied a particular tract of land for a long period possessed a corresponding individual right. Such rights did not emerge into their full proprietorial form, however, without passing through various transitional arrangements. These can best be illuminated by again considering the issue of alienation. Originally, in the very early commune, as we have just seen, there was no question whatsoever of an individual selling his land; he merely had usage rights through membership. Then, at a later stage, alienation became possible, but at first only insofar as the commune could be prevailed upon to accept the arrangements entered into. Here the legal form of sale was still the archaic mancipatio, now broadened in scope and applied to land as well as movables. Mancipation was a most unwieldy means of property transfer, however, and thus it did not have the immediate effect of promoting exchangetype dealings on a large scale. Strictly speaking, the mancipatio was a solemn sale per aes et libram. This involved a ritualistic weighing of the agreed amount of money by a special official (the libripens), and the taking in ‘hand grasp’ of the object by the purchaser in the presence of five witnesses. 6 In addition to these rigid formalities there were other stipulations: the sale was in principle only for ready money, the ritual was only valid for a single economic purpose, and the object for sale and the parties themselves had all to be present. Of course, by later standards all this was rather limiting. If more objects than could be literally held in the hand at any one time required mancipation, the whole ceremony had to be repeated. What is more, special additional


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conditions that a more commercial form of deal might seek to include could not be specified along with the sale, such was the narrowness of focus of the mancipatio. Worse still from an economic point of view was the requirement that the vendor had to guarantee his title to the property against any third parties who might decide to challenge the purchase. Finally, this kind of acquisition was exclusively for use by full Roman citizens (dominum ex iure Quiritium); thus foreigners (peregrini) were unable to take part in such transactions. A fuller development of private property involving a more complete sense of individual entitlement did not come until the emergence of the legal formula of exchange known as the traditio. Whereas with the intermediate mancipatio it was still a question of a certain degree of communal participation, with the traditio the individual citizen was able to sell specific lots of land entirely at his own pleasure. The traditio was a much less formal mode of conveyance; basically, all that was required in law, apart from the actual transfer of possession, was some indication of an actual ‘intention’ to pass over ownership. The importance of this motivational factor was that immediate physical control of the object (i.e., detention) was no longer seen as being alone adequate; rather, it was now ‘juristic possession’ that was decisive. The latter was marked not by corporeal delivery, but, often as not, by simple declaration, and was typically expressed in the causa traditionis, a juristic act which occurred along with the traditio itself, and which could be a contract of sale or a promise. But the contract itself was not the traditio; this still required delivery of the thing exchanged and in addition a price had actually to be paid. The importance of all this in the context of the present discussion is that it represents a trend toward less formal means of exchange. The traditio was undoubtedly well adapted to meet the requirements of traffic in movable goods, and it clearly facilitated a more commercial kind of conveyance. Interestingly, the traditio was a product not of the old ius civile (which had made the Roman citizen’s farm a res mancipi not capable of traditio) but of ius gentium (i.e., law conceived on the basis of reason or nature and not constructed positivistically; thus a body of law made with the object of legally regulating relations between different nations or cultures). Weber is thus arguing that the replacement of mancipatio by traditio only makes sense, given the simplicity of the former, if different contractual arrangements became necessary in order to facilitate a new, more individualized form of land usage; exchangetype dealings in specific land allotments must therefore have been on the increase. The development of these new forms of legal entitlement (involving determinate pieces of real estate) probably came about, he surmises, in proportion to the extent of new occupations of land arising from Roman territorial expansion. The transition from communal to private property in all likelihood took place quite gradually between the early period of the founding of the city, when the communal structures of the tribes and gens were still very important, and the period of the Decemvirs and the Twelve Tables, where private property was already assumed. Weber points out that the Servian reforms, which established a land register (census) as the basis of military service, must also have had a considerable effect on this process.


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The emergence of agrarian capitalism But the highest stage of private property only came with the full development of Roman imperialism and the economic opportunities it opened up via the massive expansion of the so-called ager publicus. The temporary occupation and use of ager publicus by individual citizens had been a normal arrangement from quite early times, the practice probably dating from when Rome first became a minor colonial power. The conquered land was usually leased as a means of raising state revenue, being let out to ordinary citizens at fixed rates of payment (one-tenth for ploughed land and one-fifth for treed land; cleared land in the common Mark was free). But arrangements were changed when the extent of the ager publicus was vastly increased because of the defeat of Carthage and the occupation of her territories. In the first place, the original common Mark (ager compascua) was subsumed under the category of ager publicus, with some concessions being made to previous conditions in the form of assignments of rights for grazing on the common Mark to certain single fundi. Given the general fate of the ager publicus, this worked against the independent peasant proprietors and in favour of the larger patrician owners (i.e., the latifundists). Another development of importance was the increasing tendency for the more powerful patricians to avoid their rent obligations, which was made possible by the gradual displacement of the tax burden onto the tribute-paying subject colonies. As Weber puts it, ‘probably the duty to make payments did not fall into oblivion, but the patricians did not accept it for themselves and [they remained immune from prosecution because] they aligned themselves with the political power struggle of the day’. 7 Highly significant at this stage was the need which was soon felt to find a legal means of resolving the many contending claims to the possession of land which arose because of the increased scope for individual ownership. This, according to Weber, was the purpose of the lex agraria (111 BC), which attempted to ‘transform precarious and new properties into private property by establishing legal titles and preventing the emergence of precarious properties’. 8 However, in the long term, such legal arrangements produced consequences that were far reaching indeed. For whereas the early possessions of conquered lands had been relatively insecure—because they suffered from the absence of census, had limited legal protection and lacked transfer rights—the effect of the lex agraria was to remove all difficulties from the private possession of ager publicus and thus from its conversion into ager privatus (titled-land). As a result, a great proportion of Roman territory was made amenable to appropriation and ready exchange. Landed property in general could now be treated as an object of speculative economic interest and, in Weber’s view, was increasingly so treated by what was an emerging capitalist stratum. 9 The full effect of all this was to allow a kind of agrarian capitalism tremendous scope for development; once unleashed, capitalist interests quickly came to dominate economic life and social affairs generally: Probably a formal equality of rights for all citizens of unlimited access to free grazing and free occupation was established, though an attempt to conceal the incredible facilitation thus given to the sway of capital was made by imposing some payments ‘in theory’. For this free competition was only an advantage for


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the larger capitalists [Grosskapitalist], patrician and plebeian, and not the poor peasants. Indeed, it represents the most unrestrained expansion of capitalism in the agrarian field known in history. The economic and social interests [of the capitalist stratum] are clearly revealed with all their consequences for Roman history. 10 Weber’s view of ancient economic conditions in Die römische Agrargeschichte warrants comparison with the corresponding views of Mommsen as well as Marx. First, as regards Mommsen, it is clear that Weber borrows a great deal from his former teacher; indeed, on most of the main points at issue the two are in complete accord. 11 Weber agrees that in the earliest period of Roman history the practice of farming and the use of land were organized in a basically communal fashion. And they share a view as to the decisive importance of the emergence of private property, with its dissolving effects upon the original communal forms. Finally, their characterizations of ancient capitalism are very similar. Admittedly, Weber is more concerned to describe and analyse the specifically agrarian dimensions of this early form of capitalism, whereas in his History of Rome Mommsen had stressed the combination of large-scale land ownership with domainleasing and state contracting. 12 But there is no doubt that Mommsen and Weber are in general agreement that the latifundists, and the Roman patriciate as a whole, were capitalists in an adequate sense of the term. Both not only unhesitatingly make use of the term capitalist, they also speak of ‘capitalist methods’, ‘a capitalist ethos’, and even, occasionally, ‘a capitalist economy’. One of the weaknesses of such an approach, however, is that the socio-economic structure of antiquity is not adequately distinguished from that of the modern west. In this regard it has to be said that Weber is far too uncritical in accepting Mommsen’s unclarified conceptual usage here, as Marx’s criticism of Mommsen shows. In Capital Marx takes Mommsen (and others like him) to task for finding that ‘in the ancient world capital was fully developed, “except for the absence of the free worker and a system of credit” …’ 13 Marx’s objection to the idea of capitalism in relation to ancient society stems from his conviction that true capitalism must mean the industrial system of production, a unique historical structure known only in modern times. Capitalism involves the social division of the mass of the population into bourgeois and proletarian classes, and the corresponding economic relation of capital with labour. It exists as the generalized form of economic life only because the system of production is organized around the exploitation of living labour in such a way as to enable these two essential, though ultimately contradictory, features to emerge: the capitalist division of labour, and the substitution of machinery for labour. It is thus only as a ‘mode of production’ that one should speak of ‘capitalism’; for only then does capital become the decisive integrating force of society. Clearly, on these grounds antiquity does not qualify as capitalist—this is the case no matter how much the economy was monetarized; no matter how acquisitive, exploitative, and actually wealthy the latifundists; regardless of the pervasiveness of the ethos of greed; and so on. In the light of this, Weber (at least in these early writings now under discussion) and Mommsen are perhaps naive to register the existence of a capitalist society merely because they find money-making and private acquisitiveness having apparently reached


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an advanced stage. They are not as concerned as is Marx with the precise economic features of capitalism that justify the use of the term, even though their empirical description of the ancient economy’s activities is much more detailed and accurate than Marx’s. This said, it should also be remarked that Mommsen and Weber are not quite so naive as Marx would have us believe. For Mommsen and Weber understand perfectly well that the ancient economy was not based on anything closely resembling the factory system, that its form of capitalism was distinctive, being somewhat superficial and for that reason rather precarious. Mommsen and Weber’s shortcoming is not so much that they think that ancient society was capitalist in the modern sense (which is the tendency of Marx’s criticism) but rather that in describing ancient economic and cultural phenomena as capitalist their characterization is too vague and thus potentially confusing. For, in as much as we can find analogues of the putatively capitalist phenomena of antiquity in the corresponding forms of modern capitalism, there equally are important contrasts which need bringing out. Comparison between Marx’s and Weber’s views of the early Roman socio-economic system is also of interest. In his Grundrisse, especially in the section on ‘Precapitalist economic formations’, Marx also describes the earliest forms of the city-state as possessing the essential features of a commune. He wishes to emphasize the communality of key economic and social arrangements, that is, the collective nature of the various undertakings in which the citizens are engaged. Thus, land is owned jointly, the citizens work as a group, distribution is collectively controlled, and military activities are conducted on an equal basis. Even where individualistic elements begin to emerge, such as where there is private property, the commune persists in the form of a unified politicomilitary body in which all citizens participate jointly. It is clear that Marx sees a range of desirable features in this form of society—values such as brotherhood, equality, direct democracy, co-operative labour, harmony with nature. While he would not consider the commune a utopia, he nevertheless refers to it on more than one occasion as ‘the better period of antiquity’ which implies its ethical superiority vis-à-vis later periods. On some of this Weber may have agreed with Marx. Like Marx he emphasizes the collective nature of land ownership and speaks at length about communal participation. This is also a period when—in terms of his later formal sociological terminology, elaborated partly under the influence of Tönnies and Simmel—Weber believes ‘communal’, as against ‘associative’, relationships prevailed (that is, relationships between household and clan members were based on subjective feelings of a predominantly traditional or affectual nature rather than being rationally motivated and formally institutionalized). However, unlike Marx, Weber in no way idealizes these early social arrangements. Indeed, he sees this period as affected to a significant degree by feudal-type obligations, and notes how already at this stage there was considerable internal social differentiation entailing conflict and domination: patricians versus plebeians, slavery, clientage, etc. 14 In particular, within the clan household (oikos), there existed a patriarchal domination in which the position of the Roman paterfamilias was all-powerful (witness his power of life and death over children and slaves). Perhaps from certain viewpoints this early period was preferable to that which later emerged when the powerful class of capitalists held sway, but in Weber there is no romantic nostalgia for


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these origins.

THE MATERIALIST THESIS OF THE ESSAY ‘THE SOCIAL CAUSES OF THE DECAY OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION’ The second contribution of Weber, a lecture subsequently transformed into an essay, is undoubtedly his most accessible piece dealing with antiquity, and forms a natural complement to the previous work on early Roman conditions because the focus is the imperial period and the decline of antiquity. 15 The essay is of interest for a number of reasons. First, although Weber focuses on a single issue, the great question of the causes of decline, in doing this he advances a panoramic overview of the social and economic structure of antiquity as a whole. What is more, in addressing fundamental questions concerning the basis of ancient civilization, Weber again broaches the issue of capitalism. Methodologically, the essay is notable because, at least on a superficial reading, the approach is remarkably close to that of marxism, particularly insofar as Weber attributes decisive causal significance to the economic infrastructure—a clear contrast to his later approach where the orientation is decidedly multi-factoral (where ideal elements are generally deemed equally important). Weber begins his analysis by insisting that the general issue of the decline of the ancient civilization must not be confused with the specific problem of the immediate cause of the final collapse of the political entity known as the Roman Empire. This is because, contrary to popular assumptions, the former phenomenon antedated the latter ‘event’ by at least a century and a half. In other words, according to Weber, the barbarian invasions and eventual military collapse of Rome were by no means the singular event they seem, but were the culmination of a process of ‘inner barbarization’ which had long been at work. Besides, when the barbarians finally took over, they continued essentially Roman patterns of administration and economy which were already degenerate when they inherited them. The question of the cause of the final military and political collapse of Rome is, then, a question of secondary importance—though any serious attempt to explain this event as such should of course go back to the earlier predisposing factors as well. To explain how ancient civilization eventually reached the point of internal degeneration which led to ultimate crisis and decline, Weber first describes Roman society during the so-called Golden Age, analysing its strengths and inner rationale as a preliminary to his diagnosis of what went ‘wrong’. He takes up the story of Rome with the victory of the plebs against the early kings. At this time Rome was a state of peasants who, though living as townsmen, still cultivated the land themselves. Because of land shortages and population growth, however, the larger proportion of the sons of these peasants were obliged to devote themselves increasingly to military adventures; that is, they entered the army and in effect fought for their own estates through conquest and colonization. In Weber’s estimation this was the secret of Rome’s expansive strength, at least initially. But circumstances were fundamentally altered once Rome began to conquer major overseas powers and annex territory on a large scale. Now the interests of an emerging


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aristocracy in exploiting the newly acquired provinces, not those of the peasantry, became the decisive force. The supremacy of the former was in large part the result of the decimation of the latter in the Second Punic War. Up to this time free and unfree labour had existed side by side, the stage of traditional, subsistence economy not having been transcended. But the political struggles of the Gracchan period represent a turning point; for they are the culmination of a series of social and economic processes which ensured the ascendency of slavery over free labour—thus, in this regard the economy as a whole must have undergone a radical transformation. From this period onwards wars tended to have the appearance of slave raids, and it was the farmer of state lands and the tax farmer who basically determined the general direction of economic development. The civilization which the Romans went on to develop was influenced to a high degree by its urban character. The early cities were close to the theoretical model of ‘autarky’ (autarkia), manifesting many of the features of Aristotle’s ideal of urban selfsufficiency. This meant that a market economy was only minimally developed: the products of urban artisans were exchanged for those of the immediate rural neighbourhood, but there was virtually no division of labour to speak of within industry. There was some international trade; but from an economic point of view, this was relatively insignificant being restricted to luxury goods for the patrician elite. Even so, the level of trade was sufficient to cause most ancient cities to be located on the coast to take advantage of the opportunities of traffic by sea. Weber contrasts all this with the situation of the barbarian hinterland which remained a completely ‘natural economy’, either tribal-communal or feudal-patriarchal in character. Significantly, however, no ancient economy was able to create a fully-fledged mass market for consumer goods. The nearest thing to such a market was the provisioning of grain and other goods for the plebs at Rome; but, characteristically, this was a communal responsibility often organized monopolistically by the state, so consequently it did not have the effect of fostering private enterprise. But why was there virtually no economic progress beyond this stage of urban autarky? The economic impact of slavery Weber’s attack on this issue, like Marx’s, centres on the effects of slavery. According to Weber, slavery in Roman society came to predominate because enterprises using unfree labour were comparatively the most ‘progressive’ element in the economy of the day. Basing his analysis on the assumption that ‘in general economic progress is achieved by increased division of labour’ 16 (in a fashion, what is more, reminiscent of Marx’s approach in The German Ideology), Weber reasons along the following lines. There are basically two courses along which economic development can proceed: first, free labour can be the basis of economic growth, in which case progress demands the expansion of the market (extensively by drawing new geographical areas into the sphere of exchange, and intensively by developing the consumption needs of the people); or, second, unfree labour can be used, in which case economic progress requires the accumulation of unfree workers who are organized for a greater specialization of unfree occupations. The two processes are such, however, that they more or less exclude one another. In antiquity it was the second form of economic progress, that based on the exploitation of slave labour,


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that won out. Weber explains this by comparing ancient developments with those of the mediaeval period: In Antiquity…it was the economic importance of unfree labour in autarkic households which increased steadily. Only slaveowners could develop production based on a division of labour, and only they could improve their standard of living. More and more it was slave enterprises which could produce for the market after meeting their own needs…. In mediaeval society, free division of labour developed its market intensively within the economic territory of the city on the basis of production for both the individual orders of customers and the local market. Then as trade with non-local markets increased there was a division of production between local centres [and] new forms of production designed to supply external markets [arose] employing free labour… [and this was] inextricably connected with the tendency for the masses to satisfy their needs more and more through interlocal and then international trade. In Antiquity, on the contrary, the development of international trade was connected with the consolidation of unfree labour in large slave households. 17 It is difficult to decide how necessary or absolute the limits to economic progress were in antiquity. Weber’s argument seems to be that slave enterprises prospered because they were relatively more progressive, yet this form of economic development precluded the more advanced forms of economic growth that were to emerge in the modern era. Thus, only a very limited kind of economic integration of the territory under Roman control was ever achieved. Eventually, looking at the long-term consequences of all this, Weber tells us that the inclusion of large inland areas into the Empire shifted the centre of gravity of Roman civilization away from the urban centres on the Mediterranean coast, and this intensified the position of an increasingly self-sufficient landed aristocracy. Even wealth that was speculatively employed in profit-making activities, like that gained in tax farming, remained associated with land ownership and all that this implied (this was partly because the state demanded land as security when contracts were let, an issue to which we shall return). Even where there seemed a real possibility of capitalist enterprise on a large scale, for example with the latifundia, Weber claims circumstances conspired to forestall such a development. For one thing, the attitude of estate owners was seldom entrepreneurial. Typically, the absentee landlord placed his estate in the hands of an unfree bailiff in order to devote his own time more fully to political activity. And, as already explained, the grain markets of large cities like Rome were closed to private producers because of the system of public distributions; potential demand was thus strictly limited. Another inhibiting factor concerns the nature of grain production: owing to the intensive nature of this kind of cultivation, highly motivated workers are required, and this meant that slaves could not be employed. So the more traditional methods characteristic of unorganized free labour were the only way that staple goods like this, potential items of mass consumption, could be produced in any quantity. The upshot, then, was that grain production was left mainly to coloni (semi-dependent yet self-responsible peasants), who were gradually pushed out to the less fertile lands. By contrast, the larger estates under


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direct management and using slave labour produced only high-priced goods—such as olive oil, wine, vegetables, cattle, poultry and luxuries—for a narrow, elite market. There were also severe difficulties in developing mass markets and a broader exchange network owing to the technical backwardness, and thus prohibitive cost, of land transport. Hence, a system of production of staples for mass consumption in which the market played a crucial role never emerged. In a most inventive borrowing of Marx’s base/superstructure opposition, Weber sets out the general dynamics as follows: Therefore the exchange economy was a sort of superstructure; beneath it was a constantly expanding infrastructure of natural economy in which needs were met without exchange, the economy of the slave establishments which perpetually absorbed human material and satisfied their consumption needs mainly out of their own production rather than from the market…. Thus trade in Antiquity more and more became a thin net over a large natural economy, and as time passed the meshes of this net became finer and its threads more tenuous…[In summary] international trade increased the growth of the oikoi, autarkic establishments based on unfree labour, and the oikoi decreased the basis of the local exchange economies. 18 The causes of the decline of Roman civilization Up until this point, the slaveowner had been ‘the dominant figure in the economy of Antiquity, and a slave-labour system…the indispensable foundation of Roman society’. 19 But the transition to the Empire brought decisive changes. Specifically, it led to the adoption of a largely defensive military posture, which caused the supply of cheap slaves (namely, the opportunities for their recruitment in wars and raids) to dry up. Slave numbers could not be maintained by breeding owing to the nature of the barrack system of keeping them in large numbers; nor could shortages be compensated for by using better techniques or labour-saving machines, as there were no precedents for innovatively applying the fruits of scientific knowledge along such lines. The long-term outcome, Weber tells us, was the ‘separation of the slave from the oikos’ and his transformation into an hereditary serf of the lord. This had the advantage of more effectively reproducing the labour supply because serfs could marry and live as families. There was also the advantage, from the landowner’s point of view, that the costs of maintaining workers, and thus the responsibility for the reproduction of the workforce, were shifted to the labourers themselves. Hence, a gigantic change in the situation of the lower orders of society had taken place. By becoming a serf the slave improved his status upwards: but at the same time the colonus slid down the scale becoming a serf as well. The colonus lost his freedom because the shortage of slave labour made the lord needful of the peasants, and such individuals were not in a position to maintain their previous status, as we shall see in a moment. There were corresponding changes in the administrative structure of Roman society. As estates increased their economic self-sufficiency, they sought independence from the city administrative district (municipium) and became partly responsible for taxation and military recruitment. This put further pressure on the coloni giving rise to their flight


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from the land. Eventually, not only agricultural labourers but city councillors (decuriones) and craftsmen of the various occupational groupings became victims of the ever-increasing tax requirements of the state. At this stage legal restraints were introduced to fetter the various statuses to specific tasks and duties giving rise to a castelike ordering of society. Between the state and the colonus was now interposed an intermediate authority, the landowner…the old simple distinction between free and unfree had been replaced by a division of society into orders. A series of changes, each in itself quite gradual, together constituted a development towards this new social structure, which economic conditions had made inevitable. Feudal society had already started to emerge in the Later Roman Empire. 20 Whereas previously there had been merely a series of restraints of various kinds on market production, under the new conditions it became virtually impossible to produce for the market at all. The wheel of history had all but completed a cycle, and estates became again almost totally self-sufficient. Thus, the veneer of the exchange economy all but disappeared as the oikos withdrew from the urban economy. Weber describes how the emperors attempted to forestall some of these developments which they knew represented a decline in the available material resources at their disposal. But their palliatives merely exacerbated the situation. Their fiscal policies, far from acting as a stimulus to economic growth, instead transformed the state itself into a kind of gigantic self-sufficient oikos. The more all-encompassing this structure became, the greater the inhibitory effect on private capital formation. The state abolished private tax-farming and increasingly used salaried officials to carry out its tasks. Many of the state’s needs (army and bureaucracy) were supplied by forcing craftsmen to deliver goods in kind, though without modern bureaucratic methods there were very severe limits on the extent to which a large-scale planned administration could supply itself ‘socialistically’. Eventually, the ever-growing public expenditure proved too much for what was now little more than a natural economy. As the crisis ensued a struggle developed between those in political control of the Empire and the landed magnates (possessores) over rights to the remaining sources of labour. For the state the immediate problem was how to equip and maintain the vast armies required to stem the barbarian onslaught. To cut costs the attempt was made to reproduce the army by tying the sons of soldiers to military service, and thus it too was partly transformed into an hereditary, caste-like order. Or, alternatively, recruits were drawn from the ‘enemy’, the barbarians, in the partially civilized border zones, in order to preserve the labour force of the larger estates. Another measure resorted to was the exchange of land in return for military service on the frontier. This was the forerunner of the ‘fief’, but its employment stopped short of a full feudalization of the army; had it gone further it would have brought forward the beginning of the Middle Ages and the advent of the feudal system. By this stage, according to Weber, the army controlling the Empire had become little more than an undisciplined horde maintaining only very weak ties with Rome. The process of ‘inner barbarization’ was already so advanced that for many provincial


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inhabitants the invasions constituted little more than a change in the personnel of the force being billeted on them; in parts of Gaul the barbarians were apparently welcomed as liberators, so onerous had the burden of Roman administration become. In order to finance a largely mercenary army, the principal preoccupation of the administration had become raising revenue. But this was self-defeating as long as the pressure of taxation fostered a generalized retreat to a natural economy because this meant a lower taxable surplus. On the other hand, a transition to a system where the military structure was completely consistent with a natural economy would have contradicted the interests of those supporting the Empire; a feudal army could not have maintained a unified command over the huge area under Roman suzerainty. So, in order to retain the existing system of military defence, Diocletian attempted to reform public finances on the basis of uniform money-taxes keeping the city as the lowest unit of state administration. But the economic basis of the cities was weakening all the time. Of the final outcome Weber writes: It is clear, therefore, that the disintegration of the Roman Empire was the inevitable political consequence of a basic economic development: the gradual disappearance of commerce and the expansion of a barter economy. Essentially the disintegration simply meant that the monetarized administrative system and political superstructure of the Empire disappeared, for they were no longer adapted to the infrastructure of a natural economy. It was on the basis of institutions which were adapted to a natural economy that the political unity of the West was re-established. This was accomplished by Charlemagne, who carried out Diocletian’s will half a millennium later. The natural economy basis of his system is apparent…. In a word, then: the civilization of Western Europe has become completely rural. 21 The limits of a political economy of antiquity Perhaps the most noteworthy feature of this account of the rise and fall of Roman civilization is the stress placed on economic structures and causes. Throughout his essay Weber is adamant that the key to the historical fate of Rome lies in the inner logic of the economy. Indeed, the special interest the story of Rome has for the student of history is precisely that ‘it describes the internal [i.e., economic] disintegration of an ancient civilization’. 22 Or, as he puts it at the end of the essay: ‘a great civilization apparently approaches the height of perfection, then loses its economic basis and crumbles away’. 23 The resemblance of such remarks to certain theses of Marx—say, those of the famous 1959 Preface—is striking, to say the least. It is thus difficult to avoid the conclusion that in this essay Weber’s mode of explanation is all but indistinguishable from that of socalled historical materialism. From the exegesis above it is clear Weber places tremendous importance on a single material factor: namely, an adequate supply of cheap slaves as the basis of ancient civilization. All the other elements in the picture—the increasing ineffectiveness of the army, the bureaucratization of the late imperial state, the shift of cultural life from the cities to the countryside—seem to gain their specific gravity from their connection with the factor of slavery.


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But, on the detailed question of slave numbers and the causes of their fluctuation, Weber’s arguments when scrutinized are actually rather weak. 24 He claims to have established that slaves came to be in short supply as early as the time of the Principate by referring to the fact that inspections of the ergastula of large estates took place; apparently, the large landowners had resorted to kidnapping labourers to work deserted lands. But the precise extent of these practices is not as established as Weber would have us believe. And, besides, this is all Weber provides in the form of evidence concerning this crucial issue. Weber’s argument about the role of slavery is in part based on the assumption that slave numbers could only be maintained by conquest or other direct means such as raiding, piracy etc. He dismisses the feasibility of breeding because the barrack system precluded the rearing of children on a sufficient scale to reproduce the slave population. But all this is rather simplistic, and, besides, more recent studies suggest a different picture. William Harris, for example, has shown that in rural settings it was quite normal for female slaves to bear children; he points out how this was specifically encouraged by Varro and Columella, the latter giving time off work for a slave mother of three and even freedom for one bearing four. 25 This does not prove the slave population did in fact reproduce itself once imperial expansion ceased, but breeding must have made an important contribution to slave numbers—anyway, the example of the United States shows that a slave population can even increase by such means (after importation became illegal in 1808, numbers virtually doubled by 1860). 26 Harris argues we must distinguish at least three kinds of slaves: ‘expensive empticii, highly valued because of skill or sexual attraction; vernae, less expensive to obtain but still requiring substantial investment; and the cheaper empticii, usually not very polished or skilled but adequate for most slave tasks’. 27 Obviously some of the more scarce slaves could only have been obtained in the market, but others might easily have come from breeding. Weber does not really consider these possibilities, so his argument loses a good deal of force. Perhaps more important than these criticisms is whether we are right to see in Weber’s summary remarks and in the arguments of the essay itself the adoption of a materialist position pure and simple. It is true that up to a point everything seems to hang on the factor of slavery—as long as the supply of cheap slaves is maintained, Roman civilization flourishes, as soon as numbers fall, the economy goes into decline and the state begins to totter. And the ‘success’ of slavery is connected—admittedly in a rather casual manner— with the idea of economic progress conceived as a simple function of increasing division of labour. But in all this we must say it would be misleading to think Weber believed these elements of economic progress were motive forces of history in a general sense, as in the traditional marxist view for example. For one thing, Weber describes the course of ancient history in the non-evolutionary, non-marxist terms of ‘rise and fall’. Furthermore, he is clearly not concerned with the broader issue of the relation of antiquity to the history of western society in general—as is historical materialism in its attempt to construct a grand theory of historical development all the way from our primitive origins down to the present and with implications beyond. But perhaps most worthy of note is the fact that, despite its superficial resemblance to economic determinism, Weber utilizes perspectives which in effect go beyond a mono-


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causal approach. For on close scrutiny it can be seen he provides a quite different model of the socio-economic base of ancient society than that of Marx. Despite the tendency of some of his remarks, Weber’s approach does not focus exclusively on economics. He actually analyses a wide range of phenomena, such as the military and political preconditions of slavery, the structure of urban life, the struggles of rich and poor over landownership, the nature of the oikos and the forms of the family, the formation of a market sector at the intersection of the urban and rural spheres, luxury-based international trade, and other features as well. Indeed, what is impressive about Weber’s essay, what stands out despite its reductionist tendencies, is the rich and varied series of ideal types— urban economy, oikos economy, mediaeval town economy, the feudal army, the citystate, the coastal trading city, plantation economy, natural economy and so on—and the skilful way the many causal connections, transitions, and mergings are explained. Thus, to the extent that his models and theories in fact involve explanations and descriptions in terms of diverse social and political data in addition to those of an economic nature, then Weber’s practice belies his meta-historical claim to have demonstrated the economic cause of the collapse of ancient civilization. A final point to observe about Weber’s essay is the surprising lack of any direct reference to the issue of capitalism. Whilst it is clear that one of his foci is the quasicommercial use of slaves on the latifundia—he refers to the barrack system of keeping working slaves, the production of goods for market sale, slave markets and the squeezing out of free labour, and so forth—and not their use for purely domestic purposes under patriarchal conditions. Weber at no point speaks of capitalism as such. Indeed, the thrust of many of his remarks, especially those concerned to show the imperfect state of the market, the underdevelopment of industry etc., is precisely intended to indicate that the course and tempo of development was not at all in the direction of capitalism. Of course, Weber’s general argument is concerned with the causes of stagnation and decline, so it makes sense that he emphasizes, and perhaps exaggerates, the non-capitalistic, nonprogressive side. However, it must be said that the perspective of the essay seems somewhat at odds with that of the earlier work discussed above. It is not the emergence of private property and a burgeoning capitalism that is registered and discussed; rather, the central institution remains the oikos, and a natural economy is deemed to persist despite superficial indications of more advanced forms. There are three senses in which Weber regards the oikos as having played a central role. First, the economic development of the slave-worked estate is understood to have taken place within the constraints of the autarkic household. Hence, division of labour always remained elementary, and the scale of production for market resale was correspondingly limited. Second, in the early classical era the independent city-state itself functioned somewhat like an oikos, because it remained autarkic to a high degree, providing many of its needs not through trade but directly from the immediate hinterland and by state requisitioning. Finally, the oikos featured in the later development of the imperial state, especially after Diocletian refashioned the entire social matrix to create the form of a gigantic oikos; within such a structure exchange was reduced to a minimum, many needs being provided in kind by state-controlled workers. There are several possible reasons for this change of perspective on Weber’s part. For one thing, it has to be remembered that the ostensible purpose of the first work is


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different to the second, and the format of presentation is also different in each case (one is an academic thesis, the other a popular lecture). But perhaps a more significant factor here concerns the impact on Weber of two scholars who produced important contributions between the publications of the two works at present under consideration. I am referring to the economic historian Karl Bücher and the eminent historian of antiquity Eduard Meyer; Bücher’s influential Die Entstehung der Volkswirtschaft had appeared in 1893, while Meyer had delivered an important address to the third meeting of German historians in 1895 entitled ‘Die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung des Altertums’. There can be no doubt that Weber was familiar with both, so his efforts in 1896 can be reasonably assumed to be a response to the combined challenge they represented. Bücher, following the ancient historian Rodbertus, had argued that the economic life of antiquity never reached the scale or complexity typical of a modern ‘territorial economy’; indeed, the Greeks, Romans and Carthaginians never even advanced beyond the stage of what he called a ‘closed domestic economy’. In the latter, production is primarily oriented to the satisfaction of immediate wants, there being no exchange to speak of—in its pure form Bücher called this ‘oikos economy’. But, in refusing to acknowledge the possibility of a significant level of exchange at this stage, even between household units, Bücher provoked a reaction on the part of those who believed the slave economies of antiquity clearly testified to the existence of the market and an extensive trade, that an economic system involving profit making and the widespread use of money was well developed. It was Meyer who led this reaction. Meyer insisted that the idea of autarchy and an economy centred on the oikos was quite misleading as a general characterization of ancient economic life because many of the attributes of the modern-type economy were also to be found there, at least in the classical period: international exchange was routine and a transport system interconnecting the known world was already established; the use of money and forms of industrial production for mass consumption existed; there was a businesslike orientation in economic transactions; and there was even commercial accounting. The existence of these and other related phenomena therefore means that analysis of the economy of antiquity can be made using utterly modern categories without distortion; indeed, the use of such concepts is essential. Weber responded to the contradiction between these two views by working up a solution which was consistent with both positions to a degree. On the one hand, he agreed with Bücher (against Meyer) that the concept of the oikos was important, and that the predisposition towards autarchy was a very real impediment to the transition to capitalist enterprise proper. But, on the other hand, he also concurred with Meyer in his insistence on the presence of trade and profit making, and he accepted the latter’s criticism of Bücher for underestimating their importance. Importantly, however, Weber did not follow Meyer in advocating a complete modern parallel. Weber’s hesitancy to use the term capitalism in this 1896 essay was probably a consequence of his growing awareness of the need to be much more cautious in dealing with the quasi-commercial phenomena found in antiquity; besides, under the influence of German historicism, Weber adopted the ideographic stance that views any historical period as an utterly unique historical structure which has to be understood in part at least on its own terms. Whilst Bücher had erred on the side of downplaying the extent of trade, profit making, and the use of money,


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Meyer had clearly gone too far in his opposite, modernizing interpretation—antiquity could only be designated partially capitalistic, if indeed it could be described as capitalistic at all. At any rate, these were views which Weber’s next main work was expressly designed to explore in more detail.

WEBER’S AGRARIAN SOCIOLOGY OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS AND THE PROBLEM OF THE PECULIARITY OF ANCIENT CAPITALISM Weber’s book-length essay The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations (originally written in 1896–7) might fairly be said to complete his coverage of Roman history, even though it focuses on ‘antiquity’ in the broader sense and includes sections on Israel, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece. 28 Whilst, as we have seen, Die römische Agrargeschichte was primarily devoted to early Republican history and the question of origins, and the essay of 1896 was concerned with the later period including the decline of Rome, The Agrarian Sociology, at least its Introduction and the sections on Rome, looks at the time between and focuses on the high civilization of the classical era (though the issues of origin and decline are also briefly tackled again). In the context of the present work, this later book by Weber is of particular interest because it marks his first serious excursion into the new discipline of sociology; despite their originality, his earlier pieces had essentially remained within the framework of conventional historical analysis. The Agrarian Sociology is noteworthy for the extended theoretical discussion of the economic character of antiquity with which it opens. Thus, in what follows we shall be primarily concerned with the longish Introduction to the work where this is chiefly contained. The theoretical problem of capitalism in premodern societies Weber opens his analysis asking a question basically the same as that with which we ourselves began: ‘Did a capitalist economy exist in antiquity to a degree significant for cultural history?’ This question is Weber’s response to the common knowledge that in antiquity there were periods marked by dramatic increases in wealth and these were often followed by decline; the issue, therefore, is whether the existence of periods of apparent economic prosperity and expansion can be taken as evidence of a capitalist economic structure. But first Weber thinks it is necessary to offer a definition of ‘capitalism’: he provisionally suggests the term ought to mean the use of wealth to gain profit in commerce, and that therefore a ‘capitalist economy’ must entail the production of goods, in part at least, for the purpose of trade. In addition, for capitalism to exist, the means of production as well must be objects for exchange. Taking these purely economic criteria as his yardstick, then, Weber proposes the following general definition: ‘Where we find that property is an object of trade and is used by individuals for profit-making in a market economy, there we have capitalism.’ 29 On the basis of this definition, Weber’s view as to the presence/ significance of


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capitalism in antiquity seems at first sight quite unequivocal: following his definition, he goes on to claim ‘that whole periods of Antiquity were shaped by capitalism, and indeed precisely those periods we call “golden ages’”. 30 Of the various economic activities, Weber singles out slave-based agriculture as capitalist in the above sense—‘from the economic point of view’, as he puts it—because both slaves and land were normal objects of exchange and were acquired in the open market. On the other hand, large-scale capitalist enterprises based on free labour and similar to modern capitalist enterprises were not a regular feature of private economic activity, neither in agriculture nor elsewhere. When large enterprises employing only free labour on a regular basis did arise, these were always state concerns. Speaking generally, Weber appears to conclude that a type of market economy existed which, while not corresponding exactly with the modern variant, was nonetheless capitalist in an adequate sense of the term. For ancient capitalism differed from modern capitalism only as regards the mode of appearance of its defining properties. In a fashion reminiscent of Marx’s discussion of the role of interestbearing capital in the slave system, 31 Weber claims that the main differences concern ‘the forms of valorization’ involved owing to the types of capital goods employed (for example, in antiquity slaves and not machines constituted the fixed capital of the enterprise). But what precise significance did this type of capitalism have? What was its part in the overall economic life of ancient society? Weber’s initial response to these problems is indicated in the following passage where he offers a general characterization of the ancient economy: the economic surplus of the ancient city…always had its original basis in the rents which the landed princes and noble clans derived from their estates and from levies on their dependents. This was true to a degree unknown today…the significance of this source of wealth, and with it the specific political conditions of the economic ‘flowering’ of the cities—and hence too their decline— remained very important throughout all Antiquity. The ancient cities were always much more centres of consumption than production…. 32 Here the general idea of Weber’s essay of 1896 is more or less repeated: namely, that the market economy was a relatively superficial structure superimposed on a basically primitive, natural economy. So it would appear that Weber believes capitalism played an important role only during a few key periods, always having a limited and fragile existence against the backdrop of a natural economy. But Weber’s view is not so clear as it at first appears, for when he claims that whole periods were shaped by capitalism, does he mean capitalism during such times became a major means of want satisfaction for the mass of the population? Or did capitalism gain its importance in some other manner? When he uses the term capitalism, we would like to know to what precisely he is referring. Is it to plantations based on slave labour (latifundia)? Or does he intend a wider range of acquisitive activities which includes different forms of enterprise? The character of the market is a crucial issue here. Was this fully developed as a system of money-based exchange as we know it today? Finally, it is pertinent to ask what significance, if any, capitalism had during those periods when it


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wasn’t dominant. What kind of economy existed then? Did capitalism still persist but in a minor way? Unfortunately, Weber’s views with respect to these questions are not easily established. Indeed, we shall argue that Weber’s treatment of the role and character of ancient capitalism in The Agrarian Sociology is distinctly ambiguous and in need of substantial clarification. In discussing the level of development of the ancient economy, and the possibility that at its height the stage of capitalism may have been reached, Weber first considers the evidence as to the scale of trade. He concedes that the volume of trade is indeed impressive; but, at the same time, he warns that this should not be taken as a straightforward measure of the level of capitalist production. There are a number of factors which should caution against this. For example, when ancient cities became dependent on grain imports, contrary to what might be expected, private trade was usually supplanted by state intervention, as at Athens (liturgical provisioning) and Rome (public provisioning). Weber also again draws attention to the oikos-economy theory of Rodbertus and Bücher in which, as we have seen the principle of self-sufficiency is strongly emphasized. Accordingly, he argues that division of labour always remained elementary, and that commerce was restricted largely to the disposal of excess production. In addition, Weber points out that neither a factory system, nor even that stage historically immediately prior to the factory (i.e., ‘cottage industry’), can be shown to have existed. The most advanced point reached by ancient industry is probably marked by the Greek ergasterion where we find little more than an extended servants’ quarters containing a fundamentally undifferentiated grouping of slave workers—or, if the beginnings of an organized division of labour are present, it is only in concerns that are thoroughly dependent on an oikos or plantation, not in genuine, privately owned factories oriented to profit making. Though he refuses to accept the volume of trade as a sufficient index for establishing that capitalism was present, Weber nonetheless goes on to consider various types of ‘capital investment’ from which he draws important conclusions. To cut a long story short, Weber clearly feels he can justifiably argue capitalism was of considerable significance during some periods by referring to the impact of a range of capitalistic activities of various kinds. His list of allegedly capitalist pursuits includes: government contracts (tax farming and public works), mining, sea trade (maritime loans), overland trade, the leasing of slaves, and the exploitation of skilled slaves in craft workshops (ergasterion) or in certain kinds of cottage industry. Thus, when he speaks in general of capitalism in antiquity, Weber seems to have in mind a combination of some or all of these activities. The difficulty with this approach, however, is that it is not at all clear how the specific character of some of the activities just listed can be reconciled with the initial definition of capitalism as meaning the production of goods for market exchange. Consider the example of tax farming: is this capitalistic in the sense formally defined? Clearly, the answer is no, and there are like difficulties with several of the other forms of enterprise listed. We must therefore conclude that Weber’s use of the term capitalism is not consistent. As we shall see below, the proper classification of activities such as tax farming, commenda trading, plantation agriculture etc. is a more involved task than Weber at this stage is aware.


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A further, related problem concerns the specific roles to be attributed to these separate forms of capital investment within the overall economic system. In the text under consideration we do not find an exhaustive assessment of their individual effectivity. Weber merely indicates at one point that ergasteria played a very small role, whereas government contract was of major importance; he also says, in a remark probably aimed at his own earlier work (Die römische Agrargeschichte), that slave-based plantations (latifundia) were certainly not as significant as was once thought. 33 Further on in his Introduction, Weber mentions the fact that in certain periods of antiquity (notably, in the early classical era of Rome) large concentrations of precious metal occurred. Such wealth was usually acquired as booty or through mining, and was often stockpiled in state or temple treasuries—a kind of primitive accumulation. By the classical era, however, some of this wealth was no longer being simply hoarded to be used only in emergencies, in gift exchanges or for ostentatious display, but was instead being ‘invested’ in profit-making ventures of various kinds. Weber speaks of such wealth as having had a certain ‘creative significance’. 34 But again we must ask: did such investment constitute genuine capitalism? Weber’s detailed comments on the economic role of slave labour in agriculture are pertinent here. He notes how in certain circumstances a slave can be said to constitute a capital good par excellence, and in antiquity slaves of this kind were collected in large numbers. Slaves as workers are obviously a means of production, but in addition, because they are easily transportable and can be readily exchanged, they may become objects of speculative trade. Such was certainly the case in antiquity where slaves became abundant through the many markets which appeared wherever conquests occurred, or wherever piracy and slave-raiding provided permanent supply. But despite this tendency toward a quasicapitalistic system based on the exchange of slaves, Weber hastens to tell us there are distinct limitations on the extent to which slaves can be employed in a completely capitalistic fashion. He lists the following disadvantages which attend the use of coerced labour in general: (a) the employment of slaves requires a greater capital investment in assembling the workforce; (b) there is a lack of flexibility in manpower employment; (c) there are considerable risks owing to high slave mortality or political upsets; (d) there is insufficient basis for efficient cost accounting with slave labour, especially when the slave has a family and where he is integrated into the master’s household; (e) female slaves are unsuitable for many industries; and finally (f) slaves lack positive incentives to work or to increase productivity and are consequently unsuitable for tasks requiring intensive effort. In the light of these limitations, Weber explains that the ‘large-scale use of slave labour was in general really profitable only [in agriculture] when the land was fertile and the market price of slaves was low. Hence slave labour was normally used for extensive agriculture.’ 35 For the same reasons, the fully capitalist use of slave labour in industry was not possible either; instead, certain ‘half-capitalist formations’ arose, such as the ergasterion attached to an oikos or merchant’s warehouse. In such cases, the slaves themselves constituted the means of production, and their being owned by a single master was the organizing principle of the enterprise. Obviously here there is no question of the existence of true factories with fixed capital and a rationally co-ordinated division of labour.


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According to Weber, the most effective means of exploiting skilled slaves in industry was either to set them up in business on their own account and to draw rents, or to lease them out to contractors in large numbers. Neither case constitutes a fully capitalist use of slave labour however; such uses of unfree labour are better characterized as instances of ‘wealth investment’ on the part of a rentier, to use a later formulation of Weber to which we shall return. 36 The economic character of slavery can best be understood by considering the system of manumission which became highly significant under ancient Roman conditions, partly because it came to constitute one of the most effective means of securing income for those with funds to invest. Its effect ‘was to transform the capitalist exploitation of the slave as a means of production into the acquisition of profit from the slave as a source of rent and manumission money’. 37 Apart from these avenues, the main opportunities for profit making in antiquity lay in exploiting free labour in various ways. The most profitable method seems to have been the system of tenant farming or share cropping using peasants (coloni). Though formally free, the colonus was in practice semi-dependent; being propertyless and therefore obliged to pay rents to a landlord in order to use the land, he frequently became heavily indebted, and thus was readily exploited by those who were economically stronger. Weber argues that a system based on this kind of labour with a local money economy and limited market exchange predominated wherever land prices were excessive or where population density and slave prices were high. It is perhaps now clearer what Weber means when he claims capitalism was predominant during certain key periods, while for antiquity as a whole this was not the case. Only when military conquest and territorial expansion led to great increases in the supply of slaves, and hence to a significant lowering in their price, could the exploitation of slaves in agriculture, mining, navigation and industry be sufficiently profitable to give rise to capitalist development. Increases in the supply of cheap land through military conquest or revolutionary usurpation also contributed to making plantation agriculture or livestock ranching on capitalist lines feasible. However, in Weber’s view such predisposing conditions arose only exceptionally. Accordingly, we should not regard capitalist formations as constituting part of the normal economic foundation of antiquity. It is for these reasons that, even when they occurred, large enterprises based on slave labour were not created in Antiquity for economic reasons—that is, in order to assure a form of production based on division and coordination of labour: rather, they arose from purely personal circumstances—the fortuitous accumulation of a large number of slaves in the possession of a single individual. 38 The limits of capitalist development in antiquity Now if we compare Weber’s view as presented just above with the tenor of the opening remarks from the same Introduction (or, even more so, with the analysis contained in Die römische Agrargeschichte), a distinct shift of perspective is discernible. In the earlier remarks Weber had been at some pains to point out that capitalist business concerns were not only present in antiquity, but at times had a far-reaching impact. Certainly, he


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regarded them as absolutely crucial for understanding the peculiar course which ancient social development was to take after the defeat of the Carthaginians. Furthermore, these concerns were capitalistic, apparently, in the same sense as are modern capitalist enterprises (the only qualification being differences in the nature of the actual capital goods and the forms of valorization involved). In this work, it will be recalled, Weber includes amongst the principal forms of capitalist investment the ‘capitalist exploitation of slaves skilled in a craft, either owned or leased, sometimes in a workshop and sometimes not’. 39 The following sections of the Introduction, however, represent something of a reversal. The initial judgement about the crucial place of capitalism in antiquity is not only qualified in a number of respects, but indeed the role of capitalism is ultimately reduced to the point where, if it exists at all, it is thought to have been significant only at the extreme margins of economic life, and then fleetingly. 40 In almost every economically relevant respect, Weber is now concerned to show how the ancient forms fell short of ‘genuine capitalism’, here identified more or less with full modern capitalism (interestingly, in a fashion almost identical to that of Marx where the concept of capitalism is synonymous with the modern industrial system). Essential features are judged to have been absent: such as the existence of mass markets, extensive division and rational coordination of labour within a single enterprise, and, finally, technological innovation in the interest of increasing productivity. Now, according to Weber, the owners of capital in ancient societies almost always preferred rents drawn from various sources instead of profits gained in enterprise. In addition to these limitations, Weber tells us how active entrepreneurial involvement was made virtually impossible owing to the social character of the ruling class. As a member of a politically oriented aristocracy, the typical patrician regarded active personal involvement in business as banausic and unfitting of a person of high social standing. Anticipating the thesis of The Protestant Ethic, Weber notes how producers in antiquity lacked strong psychological sanctions along the lines of the modern work ethic, and did not develop the corresponding notion of the vocation. Capitalist entrepreneurs, not to be confused with gentlemen rentiers, generally enjoyed only a rather precarious social position in antiquity…in the classical periods proper most entrepreneurs were metics and freedmen. Another indication of low status is that men engaged in trade were often ineligible for office, even—or especially—in democracies…ancient political theory was based on the ideal of the ‘independent citizen’, which meant in practice a rentier able to live on his income and also—this was especially important in ‘free’ communities—ready to serve in the army whenever needed. 41 To be sure, these difficulties over the question of capitalism in Weber’s assessment of the ancient economy arise in part from the nature of the object: the various economic forms, such as the latifundia, the industrial enterprise using slaves or the different types of state contracting are, perhaps, inherently ambiguous. Like chameleons they sometimes appear quite correctly categorized as capitalist institutions, and then as our point of view alters they suddenly seem otherwise. But, in our view, Weber’s equivocation results just as much from conflicting motives which come into play in the construction of his key


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concepts. In this regard it is instructive how at the outset (in his Introduction) he adopts a definition of capitalism with a distinct modernist bias. As we have seen, he includes only economic factors, designating market-exchange activities oriented to profit as the crucial defining characteristic. Paradoxically, he adopts this standpoint in order to counter a position (that of marxism) which he sees as harbouring an even greater modernizing prejudice. That is, Weber argues that the view that capitalism cannot exist where modern phenomena such as the labour contract are absent arbitrarily restricts the concept to a single form of the valorization of capital, and this unjustifiably introduces ‘social factors’ (that is, considerations such as legal or social status of labour, whether labour is free or otherwise). 42 In Weber’s view, on the contrary, capital by its very nature is indifferent to the social characteristics of labour. But this position seems no less arbitrary than that Weber attacks; for it merely asserts, as if it were a self-evident truth, that the concept of capitalism must take only economic factors into consideration. Weber’s dogmatism here arises from his desire to reconcile two assumptions about capitalism and antiquity which are at first sight in contradiction. On the one hand, he wishes to counter the view (espoused by Marx amongst others) that capitalism is utterly unique to the modern world. With this purpose in mind Weber sets out to fashion a sufficiently broad definition of capitalism (one not based on the labour contract) to allow the inclusion of certain kinds of activity found in antiquity and elsewhere. It is then easy to claim the existence of some ‘capitalistic activities’, such as those involving the exploitation of slaves, because profit making and money were indispensable there. On the other hand, Weber is also concerned to explore the difference of the ancient economy from modern capitalism; though not along the same lines as with the marxist schematization. This explains the qualifying of his initial view (that capitalism existed in antiquity) at times almost to the opposite where, as we have seen, it appears to be only as the description of a borderline case that the category of capitalism is applicable at all. Weber’s conceptual equivocation thus goes back to his desire to overcome the limitations of both the primitivist and the modernist approach; he wants to reconcile the standpoints of historians like Mommsen and Meyer (emphasizing the role of capital and the appropriateness of modern analogies etc.) with those of Rodbertus and Bücher (highlighting the uniqueness of antiquity and the importance of the oikos, urban autarchy and rentiership). We have argued the result is not entirely satisfactory, and one might even say that Weber’s attempted synthesis is at times contradictory.

WEBER’S VIEW OF ANCIENT CAPITALISM FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF HIS LATER SOCIOLOGY It is not altogether misleading to look upon The Agrarian Sociology as an interim report of a research project well underway but yet to be completed. For one thing, apart from the equivocations noted above, it bears the marks of haste. The work also displays, by later standards, an uncharacteristic lack of conceptual rigour. As we shall see, in Weber’s more mature work basic concepts have been further clarified, and there are certain changes in the direction of the basic research programme. Most importantly, a new problematic emerges around 1909. Whereas earlier Weber


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had operated primarily as an historian, with sociology merely as an auxiliary discipline, after The Protestant Ethic, The Agrarian Sociology (2nd edn 1909), and his early methodological essays, works which are in a way transitional, Weber embarks on a massive new project of comparative sociological analysis. The central task is now to comprehend and evaluate the various historical processes of rationalization and their vicissitudes in the context of universal history. And it is at this point that the problematic of the specific rationality underlying modern capitalism crystallizes as the major concern. All this is evident from Weber’s writings on world religions (especially the ‘Author’s Introduction’ to the collected edition of these written in 1920). 43 But in focusing upon the problem of the rationality of modern capitalism, Weber at the same time problematizes the issue of rationality with respect to the study of pre-modern cultures also. As our concern here is antiquity, we shall concentrate in what follows on the implications of Weber’s treatment of rationality for his interpretation of the ancient economy. In his earlier accounts of the Roman economy, as we have just seen, when specifically referring to definitions of capital and capitalism, Weber is by and large in no doubt as to the presence of at least some form of capitalism. But the argument is not satisfactory, for it is one thing to classify, say, plantation agriculture as capitalist (because slaves are acquired in the market and can be deemed a form of fixed capital, because production is oriented to market sale etc.), it is another to so categorize contracting activities like tax farming, the sale of offices, the financing of wars, or the provisioning of supplies for the army. As pointed out above, Weber’s original notion of capitalism had displayed a distinct modernizing bias. Basing his analysis on the idea of commerce and market exchange, he defines a capitalist economy in such a way that both the goods produced and the means of production are objects of trade. Now a question for Weber should have arisen at this point as regards whether activities like tax farming (and state contracting in general) were capitalist in this way. Prima facie, we might expect him to have concluded that tax farming is not capitalist because it is clearly non-commercial in character and does not derive its profit through the market. And, on some occasions, Weber comes close to just such a view. Thus, speaking of the importance of the idea of the production of commodities as objects of trade for the concept of capitalism, he at one point says: this excludes all manorial charges levied in rural areas on subject groups, like the various tributes—rents, dues and services—extracted from the peasants in the early Middle Ages, who had to pay dues in kind and money on their possessions, inheritances, trade and persons. For neither the land owned nor the people subjected can be regarded as capital; title to both depended (in principle) not on purchase in the open market but on traditional ties. 44 While the collection of taxes is not expressly included here, it clearly resembles the other items listed (though not especially feudal, tax farming does not treat subject peoples or their lands as capital). Yet, as regards the situation in antiquity, Weber’s historical intuition leaves him in no doubt that the equestrian class in general and the publicani in particular were capitalists of the first order. This is especially apparent whenever he discusses tax farming, as in the following passage:


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Public finance set the pace for private capital formation in city-states which could do without a bureaucratic apparatus and, instead, used state contractors to administer domains as well as territories and tributes of enormous conquered areas. In Antiquity this was the case in Republican Rome, in which there developed a powerful class of private capitalists, undoubtedly based from the first on the state contract system. In the era of the Second Punic War—the time is significant—they supported the state’s policies even during the war. Their thirst for profit was such that a reformer like Gracchus had to give them control of the provinces and the courts in order to win them over, and their struggle with the senatorial aristocracy (whom they economically controlled as moneylenders) dominated the last century of the Republic. Ancient capitalism reached its high point in this period, as a consequence of the constellation and of the unique political structure of the Roman state. 45 So how does Weber cope with this inconsistency in the use of the key term capitalism? How can he side-step his original criteria as to the essence of capitalism and now include as central the publicani who, at least in their role as tax farmers, were clearly not commercial in orientation? Weber’s mature typology of capitalism Thus far we have considered the idea of capitalism primarily insofar as it concerns the market and exchange. In the terms of Weber’s later theorizing this means the systems of action involved embody relatively high degrees of ‘formal rationality’ (i.e., economic activity adapted to the results of rational calculations using arithmetic, i.e., monetary computations). But in his later thinking Weber does not regard profit making, nor even capitalism as such, as being always highly rational in form. As he explains in his last work General Economic History, we are met in the most widely separated periods with a multiplicity of nonrational forms of capitalism. These include first capitalistic enterprises for the purpose of tax farming… and for the purpose of financing war…second, capitalism in connection with trade speculation, the trader being entirely absent in almost no epoch of history; third, money-lending capitalism, exploiting the necessities of outsiders. All these forms of capitalism relate to spoils, taxes, the pickings of office or official usury, and finally to tribute and actual need. 46 From the more conceptual point of view of Economy and Society, Weber deals with this problem by creating definitions of ‘profit-making’ and ‘economic action’ which allow a more consistent classification of the various types of acquisition known in history. He defines ‘economic action’ as essentially pacific: as the ‘peaceful use of an actor’s control over resources, which is rationally oriented, by deliberate planning, to economic ends’. 47 ‘Profit making’, on the other hand, he defines more broadly: as ‘activity which is oriented to opportunities for seeking new powers of control over goods on a single occasion, repeatedly or continuously’. 48 A distinction is then made between those ‘modes of profitmaking’ which employ force and those which employ peaceful methods: only the latter


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are regarded as coming within the bounds of economic action proper. Weber is adamant that cases of acquisition which involve the use of force must be classified separately for analytical purposes, no matter how frequently and intimately violence and economic action are in fact connected in historical reality. From this it follows that while the case of the modern business firm clearly represents an exemplary case of economic action carried on capitalistically, also included under the heading of capitalism (though not that of economic action in the strict sense) will be activities where the chances of acquisition are directly connected with the use of force— activities such as the capitalistic financing of wars, the sale of offices or tax farming. The category of capitalist activity is thus not coterminous with the idea of peaceful, marketoriented profit making; activities like tax farming or the sale of offices are capitalist in Weber’s schema because, even though they employ violent means, they nonetheless involve the systematic pursuit of profits through the deliberate outlay of funds upon which anticipated yields are estimated in monetary terms—i.e., ‘capitalistically’. On the basis of these and other considerations about the nature of business accounting and the relation of the use of violence to profit making, Weber has constructed a fairly exhaustive typology of historical instances of the capitalistic orientation to profit making. He lists the following basic types: 1 The orientation to profit opportunities in buying and selling on the market, or the continuous production of goods in enterprises based on capital accounting. 2 The orientation to profit opportunities in trade and speculation in currencies, in money transactions of various kinds and finally in the professional extension of credit. 3 The orientation to opportunities for ‘predatory’ profit such as fina financing of wars, revolutions or political parties. 4 The orientation to profit opportunities in continuous business arising out of domination by force or political power, such as colonial profits from plantations and forced trade, or through the farming of taxes or the sale of offices. 5 The orientation to profit opportunities in unusual transactions with political bodies. 6 Financial speculation involving any of: (a) dealings in standardized commodities or in securities; (b) the execution of the continuous financial operations of political bodies; (c) promotional financing of new enterprises through share selling; (d) financing of capitalist enterprises and other organizations in order to profitably regulate market situations or attain power. 49 In broad survey, Weber’s view of the incidence of these forms of capitalism is as follows: Types (1) and (4) are to a large extent peculiar to the modern Western World. The other types have been common all over the world for thousands of years wherever the possibilities of exchange and money economy (for type 2) and money financing (for types 3–5) have been present. In the Western World they have not had such a dominant importance as modes of profit-making as they had in Antiquity except in restricted areas and for relatively brief periods, particularly in times of war. Where large areas have been pacified for a long time, as in the Chinese and later Roman Empire, these types tended to decline, leaving only trade, money changing, and lending as forms of capital acquisition.


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For the capitalistic financing of political activities was everywhere the product of the competition of states with one another for power, and of the corresponding competition for capital which moved freely between them. All this ended only with the establishment of the unified empires. 50 Important here from our point of view is the dichotomy Weber draws between the kinds of capitalism characteristic of the modern West and those typically found in earlier societies (though, interestingly, the latter may still occur today as well). While, as is well known, Weber was especially preoccupied with explaining the specific character of modern bourgeois capitalism, with its sober and methodical pursuit of gain (hence its high rationality), he now makes the task of analysing the non-modern, irrational types of capitalism (types 3–5 above) a major research objective as well. It is of particular interest that he coins a special term—‘politically-oriented capitalism’ (or ‘political capitalism’)— to describe these non-market types of profit making. In Weber’s view such political capitalism has occurred all over the world at various times, but was particularly developed in antiquity: it is only in the modern Western World, on the other hand, that rational capitalistic enterprises with fixed capital, free labour, the rational specialization and combination of functions, and the allocation of productive functions on the basis of capitalistic enterprises, bound together in a market economy, are to be found. 51 On the definition of politically oriented capitalism Let us briefly consider this new notion of politically oriented capitalism. Clearly, such a type of capitalism does not have the same functional significance as do the capitalist institutions of modern society. In the case of the latter, the capitalistic organization of free labour in production is absolutely essential to the provisioning of the material needs of the masses, a fact which gives capitalism its immense cultural significance generally. 52 Political capitalism, on the contrary, cannot by its very nature play such a role; and therefore it did not play that role in antiquity. Which is not to say that it did not have important effects in other directions. Nor does it mean that the provisioning of the needs of the masses in antiquity was not affected in any way whatsoever by forms of capitalism, political or otherwise—for example, the production of wine and olive oil was partly in the hands of private producers who, we shall see, were oriented to the market in some measure. Precisely how capitalistic these activities were, or in what precise sense they were so, is an issue to which we shall return at length in later chapters. Ra Rather than being primarily oriented to the market and the satisfaction of consumption needs, the profits of political capitalism are dependent on opportunities arising directly in the political domain. 53 Weber highlights the distinctive basis of political capitalism vis-à-vis market capitalism by noting that the underpinning of incomes derived from the market ‘is nothing but the possibility of violence in the defence of appropriated advantages’ (i.e., private ownership of the means of production is ultimately secured by the coercive power of the state), whereas ‘predatory incomes and related modes of acquisition are the return on actual violence’. 54 Thus, there can be no question that the theory of political capitalism must entail a rejection of any view that defines capitalism solely in terms of commercial, market-


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oriented exchange. In contrast to his earlier definition, Weber now maintains the following: By no means all profit-making enterprises with capital accounting are doubly oriented to the market and sell their product or final services there. Tax farming and all sorts of financial operations have been carried on with capital accounting, but without selling any products…. It is a case of capitalist profitmaking which is not oriented to the market. 55 The features of tax farming here identified as making it capitalist clearly have nothing to do directly with commerce or the market. Tax farming is capitalist merely because it is a form of profit making involving the operation of organizations (societates publicanorum) which utilize calculations in terms of capital. Clearly Weber’s account of political capitalism has important implications for his interpretation of the ancient economy as a whole. Whereas in The Agrarian Sociology he regarded tax farming as one, though perhaps the most important, of several forms of capital investment, and described the ancient economy in terms of the degree to which an undifferentiated capitalism had arisen, in Economy and Society he distinguishes tax farming as a discrete variant of capitalism governed by laws of its own. That is, tax farming is no longer dealt with along with ordinary commercial activities as if it had the same general basis and contributed to an identical historical outcome; it is now classified quite separately and specifically contrasted with market-oriented capitalism and its accompanying cultural forms. The differing development tendencies of political and market capitalism But there are further consequences of this revision which are only touched on in Weber’s late work. Weber seems to argue that political capitalism (tax farming etc.) and market capitalism are not just separate and distinct phenomena that may combine or coalesce in different ways depending on the historical situation—rather, they are in essence mutually antagonistic, contradictory forces. For political capitalism, he argues, has a powerful retarding effect on the potential development of market capitalism; and the latter leads in quite different directions to the former. (Weber’s theory in this regard, most interestingly, parallels Marx’s argument as to the debilitating effect of merchants’ capital on the development of the capitalist mode of production.) 56 Consider the following passage in which Weber assesses the general impact of tax farming on economic progress: A state which collects money taxes by tax farming is a favourable environment for the development of politically oriented capitalism, but it does not encourage the orientation of profit-making activities to the market. The granting of rights to contributions and their distribution as benefices normally tends to check the development of [market] capitalism by creating vested interests in the maintenance of existing sources of fees and contributions. It thus tends to stereotyping and traditionalizing of the economic system. 57 In other words, the long-run historical tendency set in motion by political capitalism is in


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the direction of feudal or patriarchal-type economic structures—though Weber does not argue for this as an absolutely law-like causal relation (‘though important, the form of organization of the obligations imposed by public finance is not sufficient to determine completely the orientation of economic activity’). 58 With regard to the specific situation in antiquity, Weber says that here was one instance where political capitalism generally, and tax farming in particular, came to have enormous significance. He tells us that ‘in Antiquity, as in the development of the Roman class of tax farming financiers, the equites, [tax farming] became decisive in determining the mode of orientation of capitalistic acquisition’. 59 That is, ancient capitalism developed along lines quite different to those of modern capitalism due in large part to the predominance of acquisitive activities like private tax farming. So the relation between capitalist tax farming and market-oriented capitalism is now virtually the reverse of what it was in Weber’s earlier account. Whereas in The Agrarian Sociology state contracting and the market form of capitalism were regarded as complementary, both contributing to the development of an undifferentiated capitalism, in Economy and Society by contrast it is only political capitalism, now distinguished as a separate genus, which is regarded as having been of any real importance in antiquity and this was antithetical to rational capitalism. According to Weber, the distinctiveness of ancient capitalism is shown very clearly in the legal institutions involved: The significance of the essentially political basis of ancient capitalism is indicated by the fact that those very legal institutions that were lacking for private business were recognized already in the private law of the early Empire with respect to publicans (socii vectigalium publicanorum), i.e., groups of private businessmen to whom the state farmed out the levying of taxes and the exploitation of state-owned mines and salt works. 60 Weber goes on to describe these ‘syndicates’ in detail, and makes direct comparisons with one institution of more modern times, the ‘limited liability company’: The legal and economic structure of these associations was similar to the syndicates, as they are customarily established today, by banks operating in the issuance of bonds and other securities: one or more leading banks undertake toward the issuer the obligation of providing the full capital in question; other banks join the syndicate with internal liability for the full amount, while still others participate with only limited subscriptions. In Rome the socii of the consortorial leader (manceps)…were members of the consortium while the affines subscribed only with limited liability in the manner of a modern commanditista; both internally and externally the legal situation was thus quite similar to that of the modern phenomenon. 61 But, despite the apparent modernity of the associative forms involved, the limited liability Weber has in mind here with the commanditista was a mediaeval arrangement used by merchant bankers like the Medici and did not involve full corporate structure with legal personality as with capitalist firms today. Besides, there were fundamental differences of


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orientation as regards the modes of acquisition in the respective ancient and mediaeval cases, an issue to which we shall return at length below. The shift of perspective between Weber’s earlier and later works can also be registered in the respective arguments he adduces to explain why ancient economic development did not culminate in the transition to a fully modern capitalist system. In The Agrarian Sociology the ‘backwardness’ of antiquity is never theoretically associated with the influence of so-called political capitalism. Instead, a series of comparatively unrelated factors are deemed responsible for keeping the market orientation of economic activity always below a certain level; only one of these is in any way related to tax farming (Weber mentions the unstable structure of capital formation in antiquity). Other factors listed include: the limits on market production owing to the poor development of land transport, the absence of positive incentives for work, the lack of adequate justification of the profit motive, technical limits associated with the use of slave labour, restrictions on private capital formation arising from the political interests of cities and monarchs (such as the imposition of liturgies or confiscations), the inadequacy of cost accounting. In Economy and Society, by contrast, the ground is laid for a different, more structural explanation. In order to understand the debilitating impact of political capitalism (especially tax farming) on market capitalism, on several occasions Weber asks the reader to consider the effect upon an hypothetical market-oriented enterprise where the collection of taxes is farmed out to private enterprise. The result he claims is to render the tax load the enterprise must carry utterly unpredictable, and, thus, rational calculations and systematic planning become extremely difficult, if not impossible. If the modern type of market capitalism is to emerge, ‘it is important that there shall not be unduly heavy burdens placed on the capitalistic employment of resources, which means, above all, on market turnover’. 62 Hence, wherever political capitalism comes to predominate, market capitalism is most unlikely to develop beyond a very primitive stage, or will at best come into being in truncated form only, which is not to say that still other forms of capitalism may not prosper alongside political capitalism; indeed, capitalist tax farming seems eminently compatible with, say, certain kinds of banking or with what Weber calls ‘speculative trade capitalism’; these depend merely upon a money economy and the possibility of exploiting goods as commodities, conditions which appear quite frequently in history. Finally, we should also bear in mind that, despite its association with violence and forces of disorder, political capitalism may involve a measure of rationalization. In considering the Roman equestrians, for instance, Weber at one point speaks of the one class in antiquity ‘whose rationalism might be compared with that of modern capitalism’, and he goes on to contrast the rationalism of the Romans with their ‘less rational’ counterparts in Greece: when a Greek city required credit or leased public land or let a contract for supplies, it was forced to incite competition among different inter-local capitalists. Rome, in contrast, was in possession of a rational capitalistic class which from the time of the Gracchi played a determining role in the state. The capitalism of this class was entirely relative to state and governmental opportunities, to the leasing of the ager publicus or conquered land, and of


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domain land, or to tax farming and the financing of political adventures and of wars. It influenced the public policy of Rome in a decisive way at times, although it had to reckon with the constant antagonism of the official nobility. 63 Here we have action being rationalized in a different direction to that we are more familiar with (i.e., that associated with the contemporary notions of economic progress, the capitalist spirit of The Protestant Ethic, the business use of science and technology, etc.). But we ought not to exaggerate the importance of this, and we certainly do not wish to imply that Rome began rational forms which led directly to modern capitalism; for Weber’s general reflections on rationalism and rationality caution precisely against any presumption that each rationalization must be inherently linked to all others. There is no Hegelian ‘Reason’ at work behind processes of rationalization—indeed, the thrust of Weber’s thinking, with its perspectivism and philosophical relativism, is clearly to the contrary. Besides, the ultimate collapse of the Roman economy and the eclipse of the civilization dependent on it show that these rationalizations led to very ambiguous results indeed. Thus, we have argued that in his final version of a theory of the socio-economic basis of Roman civilization Weber provides an extremely fruitful set of hypotheses which can be utilized in the construction of a general theory of ancient civilization. The splendour and wealth of ancient societies have frequently suggested to historians and others that something like a modern economy was approached; yet Weber shows this to be too simplistic a view. His insights concerning political capitalism and his construction of a theoretical framework which allows the possibility of differing degrees of rationality of capitalistic economic activity have the very great advantage of enabling an explanation of the crucial acquisitive elements of Roman civilization without identifying these with modern forms or assumed universal features of social life. As we shall show in subsequent chapters, a theory built on Weber’s mature approach avoids the extremes of both excessive ‘primitivism’ as well as anachronistic ‘modernism’.

Part II Max Weber and modern scholarship In the four chapters which are to follow we shall explore the scholarship on the socioeconomic structure of Roman antiquity which has been produced since Weber’s day. On the one hand, we shall try to update Weber when and where this seems necessary, and show how various areas of research have developed in the intervening years and with what consequences for the main issues that are our concern. This means criticizing and qualifying Weber’s position where modern research has produced new facts that render his position no longer adequate. On the other hand, we want to interrogate the work of more recent scholars in the light of Weber’s most mature contributions. In particular, we shall explore the utility of some of his main sociological concepts and theories, many of which are either unknown to, or poorly understood by, conventional historians. Central to the discussions below will be our deployment of Weber’s analysis of phenomena such as budgetary management, capital accounting, the work ethic, the market, trade, tax farming, the division of labour, free and unfree labour, and his elaboration of ideal types including the oikos, the enterprise, the factory, the workshop, the sea loan, market capitalism, adventure capitalism and political capitalism. Our intention is to demonstrate how a proper use of these theoretical constructs enables many of the difficulties and confusions of contemporary Roman historiography to be dealt with more adequately. Speaking in the broadest terms, our intention is to develop a detailed model of the ancient economy and its immediate socio political setting, taking into account as much of the empirical material as possible. For this we shall need to range rather widely across the relevant sources, including archaeological, literary and epigraphic. Of course, in addition to these materials we shall need to explore in some depth the major historiographical contributions, in order to ground our hypotheses as solidly as a thorough study of our problem demands.

2 On the economic character of the ancient agricultural estate: oikos or enterprise? Yet it is hard to find any earlier society in which a governing class practised…agricultural methods [like ‘investment agriculture’] so widely or the pursuit of returns and profits was so openly admitted. The conclusion is a clear acquisition of recent studies, and shows that the writings of Cato and Varro, at least, were not without audience. Whether this exploitation can legitimately be called capitalist (the term preferred by Rostovtzeff and Tibiletti) seems to me doubtful, and an answer would require another kind of enquiry; the phenomenon must be understood before it can be classified. Martin Frederiksen, ‘Changes in Agrarian Structures in the Late Republic’

Even the most cursory of surveys tells us the agricultural estates of Roman antiquity were economic institutions of the first importance. At what precise point these institutions reach their highest development is not at all clear, but something of a decline is implied in the growing use of the term latifundia, a word which was only used in the plural and is suggestive of both the mode of ownership and land use—K.D.White suggests the English parallel ‘broad acres’, and notes that implied in many usages of the term is the idea that production was less intensive because of the scale involved. 1 The real difficulty, however, is to determine more precisely what economic function these and related institutions had, and to characterize them in detail. In the context of the present work, the estates of the classical era are of special interest because of their apparent resemblance to capitalist-type plantations (like those of the American South for example). The present chapter will therefore primarily address the following problem: how capitalistic was slave-worked plantation agriculture during the classical era? That is, to what extent did the ancient estate develop into a profit-making enterprise oriented to the market and thus concerned to improve efficiency and output, to minimize costs and maximize profit? We shall also analyse a number of related questions, which concern such things as the level of self-sufficiency, the nature of labour utilization, and the extent of technological innovation. In addition, various developments of late antiquity will be considered where appropriate: the emergence of the colonus, the creeping ‘feudalization’ of the countryside, the retreat in the direction of a natural economy, and the significance of the liturgical provisioning of state needs. We shall proceed as follows. First, we shall briefly survey the literature on ancient agriculture, setting out the positions of the main disputants. Second, we shall look in


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detail at Weber’s early treatment of this question. Third, we shall turn to the classical literature and critically examine what the ancients themselves tell us. Fourth, we shall consider in detail some aspects of the influential work of Moses Finley. Finally, we shall return to Weber, and with the assistance of perspectives deriving from his late work offer our own assessment of the question.

SURVEY OF THE LITERATURE ON THE NATURE OF LARGE AGRICULTURAL ESTATES Over the last hundred years or so the scholarly discussion on the general character of the ancient economy, and on the state of Roman agriculture in particular, has essentially taken the form of a debate between those who have argued that nothing remotely approaching capitalism could have existed in antiquity (the so-called ‘primitivists’), and those who have readily found all kinds of parallels between ancient conditions and those of modern times (the ‘modernizers’). Let us briefly explore the parameters of this debate. The ‘primitivist’ views of Finley and Bücher Typically, this approach holds that the Roman estate involved a form of land use which remained essentially within the bounds of a natural economy, that self-sufficiency was to the fore, and that the landowner never went beyond a traditional approach in the practice of farming. Such a view has most recently been advanced by Moses Finley (whose work will be discussed in detail below). At one point he characterizes the mentality of ancient estate owners in this way: ‘They had a “peasant-like” passion for self-sufficiency on their estates, however extravagant they may have been in their urban outlays.’ 2 Karl Marx also leans in this direction. On one occasion in the Grundrisse he asks: ‘Do we never find [in antiquity] an inquiry into which form of property etc. is the most productive, creates the greatest wealth?’ And he answers: ‘Wealth does not appear as the aim of production [in antiquity]…. The question is always which mode of property creates the best citizens.’ 3 A slightly different perspective is found in the important work of the German economic historian Karl Bücher. While not categorizing the ancient estate as an utterly primitive institution, Bücher is quite definite that it was very remote from capitalist enterprise proper. (Bücher, as we have noted, was not unimportant as an influence on Weber.) In connection with the latifundia, Bücher employs the concept ‘oikos economy’ (which is also a general concept he uses for the purpose of demarcating a stage in the progress toward the modern industrial system). The economic life of the Greeks, the Carthaginians and the Romans was characterized by production based on the extended household unit (or oikos). By incorporating ‘foreign’ elements (that is, slaves or serfs) into the original family unit or tribal community, a means was thereby found of maintaining intact the independent household economy with its accustomed division of labour, and at the same time of making progress towards an increase in the number and variety of wants. For the more numerous the slaves or villeins belonging to the household, the more

On the economic character of the ancient agriculture estate

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completely could its labour be united or divided. In agriculture larger areas could be cultivated. Particular technical employments, such as grinding corn, baking, spinning, weaving, making implements, or tending cattle, could be assigned to particular slaves for their whole life; they would be specially trained for this service. The more prominent the family, the more wealthy the lord, or the more extensive this husbandry, all the more possible was it to develop in variety and extent the technical skill employed in the procuring and working up of materials. 4 Bücher describes the Roman household as typically divided between the familia rustica and the familia urbana. The former was basically a productive unit and comprised managers, overseers and labourers all co-ordinated into a complex subdivision of labour capable of producing a great range of goods and services. The latter was divided into an administrative staff and a staff for the service of the master and mistress within and without the house. Whilst the economic system built on these arrangements represented a real advance from the point of view of productivity, the system lacked the characteristic feature of economic exchange, namely, the direct connection of each single service with its reciprocal service, and the freedom of action on the part of the individual units carrying on trade with each other…. Here we have continuously unfilled gaps in supply, there surpluses which are not consumed on the estates producing them, or fixed instruments of production and skilled labour which cannot be fully utilized. 5 Bücher does not claim that exchange was lacking altogether, but what beginnings there were did not affect the inner structure of economic life; for the labour of each separate household continues to receive its impulse and direction from the wants of its own members; it must itself produce what it can for the satisfaction of these wants. Its only regulator is its utility. That landlord is a worthless fellow’, says the elder Pliny, ‘who buys what his own husbandry can furnish him’…. 6 The ‘modernizing’ views of Yeo and Rostovtzeff In a completely opposite direction to this are the perspectives of the modernizers, of those who argue there are no fundamental differences in mentality or practice between ancient estate owners and their modern counterparts (or at least between the ancient estate system and early American plantation capitalism). C.Yeo, for instance, draws direct parallels between the Roman latifundia and the plantation economies of Brazil, the West Indies and the American South of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These last three are taken as capitalist in a completely adequate sense of the term, any differences between ancient and modern capitalism being reduced to mere questions of scale—the achievements of Rome were more modest mainly because the Mediterranean world never became as large a market as the global market that was being constituted at the time of American slavery.


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This is all too simplistic, however. We must immediately reject Yeo’s approach as methodologically naive: he all too uncritically uses the terminology of modern economics to describe and classify ancient practices, as can be seen in the following passage where the Roman plantation system is described as a capitalistic type of agricultural organization in which unfree or slave labour in considerable quantity was employed under unified management to produce staple crops for sale in both local and foreign markets. This definition implies that (i) the functions of labour and management were sharply distinct; (ii) the system was commercial in purpose and character; (iii) the system was capitalistic involving an investment of money capital, often of large amount, in land, slaves and equipment; (iv) there was a tendency toward specialization— the production of a single crop for market. 7 Another modernizer of this kind is the great Roman historian Michael Rostovtzeff. He tells how as a consequence of the effects of the Romano-Punic Wars there arose a new class of wealthy citizens who did not belong to the established senatorial aristocracy but were ‘capitalists’, acquisitive, adventurous and desirous of investment opportunities, who saw the sphere of agriculture as a suitable place for further extending their business activities. Thus, beside the old system of subsistence farming a new system appeared: a system based on capital and servile labour, and directed by an absentee landlord, who lived at Rome or some other Italian town and gave up his time to other business. These landlords regarded the land merely as an investment, and therefore were eager to discover the most profitable methods of cultivation. 8 Rostovtzeff is even less restrained than Yeo in his use of modern economic conceptions, and has no hesitation in attributing a modern-type business ethos to the Romans. Learning from the existing techniques of the Greeks in southern Italy, and exploiting the markets first established by the Carthaginians in Spain and Gaul, it was natural for the Roman capitalists to increase the scientific culture of vines and fruit on their lands, to plant large tracts of olive trees, and to use the excellent pastures of central and south Italy for scientific stock-raising. All that they thus produced was exported by the Greeks of south Italy to the West, and then to the East as well, when the wine, oil and fabrics of Italy could compete in quality with the produce of Greece. As this capitalistic system of agriculture extended, and as more and more capital was invested in plantations and flocks, the disposal of her produce became a more urgent question for Italy…foreign policy was affected…it was Cato, the author of the first Latin treatise on agriculture, who insisted on the destruction of Carthage—a measure which can only be explained as the suppression of a rival in the production of wine and oil for the western market. 9


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The attempted compromise of Hopkins A kind of compromise assessment, which, noting the limits of ancient economic thinking (by modern standards), still acknowledges the importance of profit making and the large scale of some enterprises, has more recently been advanced by Keith Hopkins. According to Hopkins, during the Roman era Italy was partially transformed into a market economy in the course of a ‘revolution’ in agricultural productivity which took place with the advent of the latifundia. Economic progress and the development towards a market system was limited, however, because over the long term many peasant farms remained intact. After all, the urban poor constituted the only mass market, and they probably spent as much on bread as on wine and olive oil together. This weakness in the aggregate purchasing power of the urban sector helped insulate a sizable sector of the Italian peasantry from the agrarian revolution which transformed working practices on larger farms. 10 The bulk of the Empire’s labour force was primarily concerned with subsistence, and hence ‘an extemely large proportion of all that was produced in Italy and in the provinces was never traded; it stood outside the market, solid and inflexible, almost untouched by the forces of money. Analysis of the Roman economy has always to take that solid unmarketed core into account.’ 11 Hopkins goes on to argue that taxation and the payment of rents in kind became far more important than market exchange as a means of wealth accumulation as Rome’s economy expanded. He cites Rome’s reliance on wheat from Sicily and Africa (extracted as a tithe: a tax of one-tenth of the crop) to illustrate the importance of non-market processes. Yet Hopkins seems uncertain about the relative strengths of the market and non-market sectors. Speaking about the basis of upper-class wealth, he says that ‘agricultural rents and the income from farms worked by slaves and administered by agents constituted the largest source of income’. 12 But the question remains as to how such rents and income could have been accumulated outside market processes. Consider, for instance, the situation with regard to rents. Only some of these could be collected in kind (which Hopkins acknowledges to be the case); but most (including those paid in kind to large landowners) must have been transformed into a monetary form at some stage in order for their value as income to be realized for their recipients. There seems no way the bulk of the income derived directly from slave-worked latifundia could be valorized under the conditions obtaining in Roman times apart from market exchange—at least Hopkins does not show us any alternative, 13 and, indeed, at another point he acknowledges that ‘in so far as the rich owned surplus-producing farms distant from Rome, they must have sold the surplus, whatever the transport cost’. 14 Hopkins’s position therefore remains equivocal: on the one hand he insists on ‘the preponderance of tax plus rent over market exchange’; 15 on the other hand he maintains that considerable markets did exist, such as that for urban produce, a consequence of the ‘aggregate demands of fifty million peasants’. 16


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Some archaeological evidence concerning the villae rusticae But can we be more precise in estimating the extent of market-oriented activities? One of the richest sources for information on latifundist agriculture has been the archaeological evidence of the villae rusticae which have been excavated particularly in the Pompeii area. Some idea of the kind of material provided by this research can be gained from this overview by Yeo: Out of a total of forty-three fully or partially excavated villas near Pompeii and Stabiae, facilities were found in thirty-one for the making of wine or oil or both. A typical example is the villa of Boscoreale…whose facilities for storing wine are in such an excellent state of preservation that the size of the vineyard and the amount of production can be accurately estimated. The storage room contained eighty-four dolia with a capacity of about 275 gallons each, of which twelve were used for oil (3,300 gallons); in all seventy-two of the remainder held the season’s vintage, the vineyard must have produced each year 20,000 gallons, at least. 17 Investigating this and related evidence at some length, John Day tells us that the Boscoreale villa was not at all exceptional in size and productivity. 18 Indeed, several were larger, including one (‘No. 34’) which had quarters for possibly up to thirty slaves, and was ‘apparently the largest and most productive of the villas, a veritable factory [sic].’ 19 In an attempt to reconstruct the Pompeian economy, Day suggests there was considerable interdependence between estates and the urban economy of Pompeii itself: ‘The villas were not entirely self-sufficing units. It was necessary to buy clothing at Pompeii. Furthermore, architects, painters and plumbers were brought out from the city to decorate the houses and to supply the conveniences.’ 20 Also, ‘in the harvest season, for the vines and perhaps for certain other products, extra labour was needed, and there seems good reason to think that labourers, enfranchised residents of Pompeii, were brought out from the city for the occasion’. 21 The wine from the region was probably exported to Rome, as the major activity of Pompeii itself seems to have been the shipment of wine and oil. Finally, Day proposes a model of the social structure of Pompeii as comprised of ‘a “proletariat” and a group of wealthy Pompeians who were large wine merchants’. 22 It is probable that many of the economic features just described were also present in other provinces of the Roman Empire. 23 Of course, precise estimates of the actual output of a district for any period of Roman history are not possible, but we can gain a rough idea of the scale of production from odd pieces of evidence scattered here and there. For example, it has been estimated (by T. Frank), primarily on the basis of archaeological evidence, that Rome’s annual consumption of wine must have been of the order of 25 million gallons, most of which came from Italian vineyards. 24 The same author also estimates that over one and a half million gallons of oil were consumed each year in Rome as food. 25 Even if these figures are only very approximately correct, they nonetheless show that the scale of production of certain goods was considerable indeed, and that latifundist agriculture was capable of generating sizeable surpluses.


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The agricultural estates that produced wine, oil and other goods for urban consumption seem to have varied considerably in size. We know that frequently a single individual owned a number of estates, and sometimes his holdings could be very extensive. Such a person was the wealthy freedman Isidorus, who in the time of Augustus apparently owned 3,600 iugera (240,000 acres approx.) upon which he claimed to have some 257,000 animals (pigs, sheep, goats etc.). There are other examples of huge holdings, such as a man of great note mentioned by Cicero ‘who had acquired possession of a whole “region”’. 26 As we shall discuss later in detail, Cato and the other Roman agricultural authors assume as a matter of course that the estate owners to whom their works were addressed would own at least several moderate-sized estates. On the other hand, many smaller concerns are also attested. Here production may have been only slightly beyond subsistence level. There is an increasing body of evidence which suggests that small tenancies and various forms of share farming were very important in the overall structure of the rural economy. How these should be classified is a difficult problem, however, because we possess less knowledge about them than for the larger estates that were the subject of literary treatises. Leaving the problem of the various peasant tenancies and semi-feudal agricultural forms to one side for the moment, in what follows we shall focus on the nature of the larger latifundia in an attempt to provide a more adequate account of them than has hitherto been available. 27 We shall first look once again at Weber.

WEBER’S EARLY ACCOUNT OF THE AGRICULTURAL ESTATE AND THE IDEA OF AGRARIAN CAPITALISM Weber’s views are of interest in the light of the above survey because in his thinking we can discern elements of both the primitivist and the modernist position; indeed, as we have already shown, much of Weber’s early writing on the subject can be explained as an attempt to reconcile aspects of the two contradictory viewpoints. Under the influence of Mommsen, Weber initially adopts a fairly uncritical modernist stance; he then moves in the direction of primitivism as he encounters the work of Johann Rodbertus and Karl Bücher. But, contrary to some readings (such as those of Hasebroek and Moses Finley), he does not finally endorse the primitivist position. We shall argue that this is because he eventually develops a third, alternative view of the matter through a critical engagement with the works just mentioned and those of Eduard Meyer, Julius Beloch, Werner Sombart and others. As our concern here is only to use Weber’s insights to enhance our understanding of a specific issue, the economic status of the ancient estate, we shall refrain from an exhaustive analysis of his writings and focus our attention on the second edition of The Agrarian Sociology (1909), which is the culmination of his early researches in this area. 28 In the Introduction of The Agrarian Sociology, as already suggested, Weber starts out by stating the latifundia can be considered capitalist (a) if they are primarily oriented to the production of goods destined for sale in the market, and (b) if estate owners acquire their means of production (slaves, land, raw materials) there also. However, as he was only beginning to realize at the time, the matter is not quite so simple. For whilst the


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existence of a certain minimal level of what we might call commodity production and the acquisition of some means of production via the market are fairly easily established, we really wish to know to what precise extent the owners of ancient estates were oriented to profits earned in this way. Did they pursue business interests in a systematic, calculating manner akin to modern capitalists? Or was the management of the estate conducted along quite different lines, say autarkically in the interests of maintaining an existing style of life? Indeed, can we even speak of ‘management’ as such? Weber begins by telling us how the latifundia were a development borrowed from the Egyptian pharaonic domains, and that they had spread to the western Mediterranean (Roman Italy) via the Phoenecians. Under the general conditions prevailing at the time, there were two forms of enterprise suited to production for the market, share cropping and slave plantations. 29 But, as long as it was ‘economically feasible’ to wage war for new lands and slaves, wealthy landowners came to prefer the latter arrangement. Thus, ‘from Cato the elder until Augustus, enterprises based on slave labour grew steadily larger and in fact became the dominant form of economic activity’. 30 Significantly, Weber interprets this preponderance of unfree labour over free labour as the victory of a capitalist, or bourgeois stratum over a traditional free yeomanry. The peasant-yeoman type had been all but decimated in the two Romano-Punic wars: ‘qualitatively taking into account his social and economic importance—the yeoman [now] counted for nothing as compared to the slaveowners’. 31 In characterizing the economic operations set up by the emerging capitalists, Weber tells us that generally only valuable products such as olive oil, wine, fattened cattle and gourmet foods could be produced in inland areas for sale on the market. This determined the kind of organization which developed on Roman estates. Large ranches with transmigratory herds were dominant in Apulia and along the passes in mountainous areas; elsewhere they were unusual. Everywhere capitalist enterprise turned away from raising grain. 32 Of major importance here is the suggestion that only a very limited range of goods was amenable to capitalist methods of production owing to the high capital investment involved in the purchase and maintenance of slaves and the high cost of overland transport. In the production of ordinary staple goods such as grain, slaves were usually replaced by free labourers or coloni who leased parcels of land on which they paid fixed rents. 33 From these remarks it seems Weber is somewhat equivocal as to the actual extent that capitalism penetrated agricultural life. On the one hand, he alleges capitalists emerged as an absolutely dominant stratum using slave labour more and more on their estates, which had become in essence profit-making enterprises. On the other hand, he implies that capitalist development was rather meagre as such enterprises were unsuited to the largescale production of staples; for the supply of basic goods small concerns utilizing free labour apparently remained more important (hardly what we expect from a capitalist system). Weber is also ambiguous as regards the exact fashion in which the latifundia are to be


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deemed capitalist. At times he implies the ancient latifundists operated their estates more or less along business lines: for example, on the basis of a sound knowledge of the returns to be had from the production of various cash crops, they employed the best methods and appropriate forms of labour (using slave labour for the less intensive forms of agriculture and free labour for those requiring greater responsibility). But how systematic were their deliberations to determine which methods to use, what forms of labour were most suitable, which crops to plant? Were they conscientiously concerned to ensure the maximum return on their investments? And what means—economic, scientific, technical, etc.—were at their disposal for these purposes? Thus, when he explicitly considers such questions in The Agrarian Sociology, Weber is forced to admit there were numerous difficulties. For example, he concedes that the rational exploitation of slave labour faced considerable limitations because it was not possible to accurately and promptly adjust both the quality and the amount of labour to suit the varying conditions of production. A problem arises here from the fact that it is not merely the worker’s labour that is appropriated, as under modern capitalist conditions, but his whole person. It means, as Weber cryptically put it, that on many occasions ‘in antiquity slave capital (instrumentum vocale) literally ate up the plantation’s profits’. 34 Of course, insofar as both the initial expense of acquiring slaves and the costs of their maintenance remained low, their exploitation could still be profitable despite the presence of major irrationalities—estate owners merely needed to show some concern that their slaves possessed approximately the requisite skill that experience showed was necessary. Elements of a more rational approach are perhaps evidenced by the more flexible system of augmenting the unfree labour force with various forms of free labour, or with contract labour which was employed at harvest time. But the allocation of labour tasks in this fashion was in all probability the result of pragmatic expedience rather than a consequence of any systematic procedure of adjustment based on rational calculation. How could it have been otherwise without a rigorous accounting and the techniques of modern management? Clearly under Roman conditions the quantity and quality of labour employed could not easily have been modified in accordance with fluctuations in the costs of slaves and the various forms of free labour, or in the light of changes in the prices obtainable for the goods being produced (demand). According to Weber’s later sociology, the crucial basis of rationality in economics concerns the extent to which the various facets of the production process can and are thoroughly adapted to what he calls ‘the market situation’. 35 It is one thing for an excess of produce to be sold off for a profit when and if it arises; or even for the cultivation of additional parcels of land to be occasionally undertaken in order to increase the likelihood of a surplus: it is quite another to deliberately plan the cultivation of a certain acreage, to decide upon a mode of land use and so forth in the expectation of an increase in the level of output at a definite point in the future. If this latter outcome (i.e., profit) is to be sought and the likelihood of success maximized, attention must be given to the market prices of the goods earmarked for sale and the known or estimated costs of their production; and rigorous efforts must be made to compare and evaluate various business strategies and technical alternatives of production for the sake of choosing which course of action is most likely to increase the volume of returns. The process of economic rationalization is focused in particular on estimating and comparing the costs of


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alternative techniques of making a product, or alternative techniques of producing the various components of a good. A further and related stage can be said to have been reached when even the type of end good to be produced is determined by such calculations. In attempting to determine where the ancient estate stood with respect to these considerations, a further problem must be confronted, for complications arise from the fact that different economic activities embodying differing degrees of rationality are frequently found within one and the same institution. For example, on the ancient estate many productive activities, such as weaving or carpentry, were directed primarily towards the estate’s self-sufficiency; whereas some (presumably more rationalized) processes such as the production of cash crops—winemaking, olive oil, wool, stock raising, and, sometimes on the larger estates, activities like brick-making and pottery 36 —were oriented to the market and undertaken, at least in part, with commerce in mind. Nonetheless, when the issue of rational management is brought directly into focus and comparisons are made with the modern situation, the backwardness of the ancient practices becomes apparent. For it is evident that, even when profit making approached being a conscious, primary goal, severe limitations remained on the degree to which a systematic and methodological approach was possible. Thus, Weber concludes estates were poorly managed in Republican times, mainly because landlords lived in the city, were involved in the political life of the city, and therefore, were necessarily absentee. Generally the landlord appeared only occasionally, to receive reports from his overseer, and how little he knew of estate management—and each generation it grew less—is indicated by the simple rules of thumb suggested by the agrarian handbooks. Careful accounts were usually kept only for valuable cash crops, oil and wine in particular. Monetary income was what the owner wanted, nothing else; this explains the lack of interest in any extensive improvements for which in fa fact no credit was available. 37 All this meant the effective manager of the typical estate was the bailiff (vilicus). But, the vilicus was usually a slave, and thus had little power or inclination to initiate business undertakings in the manner of a genuine entrepreneur; nor would he have possessed the kinds of administrative skills—business, accounting, technical—typical of rational management. 38 Now, this assessment, which implies a very low level of economic rationality, seems at odds with other themes in The Agrarian Sociology. Indeed, Weber comes very close to contradicting himself because, despite his qualification of the alleged capitalist character of the ancient estate, on some occasions, as we have seen, he insists on referring to the latifundists as genuine capitalists: in zealously pursuing profits they managed their estates more or less on business lines and as a group constituted a veritable bourgeois class; at one point, when speaking of business activities in antiquity—admittedly it is with specific reference to the equestrians—Weber speaks of a ‘class of capitalists who participated directly in capitalist enterprise’, whose economic power had constantly increased throughout the classical era, who had a ‘business training’ and were responsible


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for ‘the development of commerce in slaves and the exploitation of slaves on a colossal scale’. 39 The confusion here arises because Weber unfortunately conflates the idea of the equestrians, understood as a kind of commercial class, with the notion of the senatorial elite, usually described as a traditional landowning aristocracy. This is surprising because on other occasions, when he expressly considers the equestrian class and its rise to prominence in relation to the established patrician nobility, this confusion is scrupulously avoided; that is, Weber seems fully aware of important differences between the older landowning nobility and the parvenu equestrians (for instance, in describing the equestrians at one point Weber speaks of a pure commercial class: ‘the class which owned slaves and capital but did not belong to the aristocracy of office, the bourgeoisie solely concerned with making money’). 40 But Weber is not consistent, and his characterization of the equestrians is often used for the landowning aristocracy as well. He sometimes overlooks the fact that the landowning aristocracy must to some extent have constituted a separate grouping with a distinct economic character of its own. We know, for instance, that the elite of this class could not be involved in those contracting activities in which the equestrians were heavily engaged owing to laws which forbade the former from entering into commercial deals with the state. We also know, as Weber did, that the senators were preoccupied with politics and related affairs, and that for status reasons they regarded ordinary business activity as beneath them. Of course, the social character of the equestrians, and the legal and political significance of the so-called ordo equester, are the subject of continuing controversy, and owing to the complexity of these matters, we can only touch on a few aspects. 41 For the moment we shall simply note that the weakness of Weber’s early view of the latifundia lies in his tendency to use the economic character of the equestrian publicani as evidence for the capitalist, and even ‘bourgeois’, ethos of plantation owners and wealthy magnates generally.

THE ROMAN WRITERS ON AGRICULTURE The most important sources to have come down to us on these issues are the writings of the great Roman authors who are known for their celebrated manuals on agriculture. In what follows we shall discuss in turn the relevant writings of three major figures: Cato (234–149 BC), Varro (116–27 BC) and Columella (60s AD). Each was responsible for a large-scale work in which the problems of latifundist agriculture were discussed at some length. Of course, these writings are not only an excellent source on the agricultural practices of the Romans; they also provide a mine of information on rural life and social conditions generally. 42 Cato’s De agri cultura : the nature and extent of production for profit Cato’s De agri cultura is the most well-known and important literary source dealing with agricultural conditions in Republican times. And while on a first reading the meaning and ostensible purpose of the work seems easily understood, as in the treatment of many texts


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emanating from cultures at some remove from our own, on a close reading the matter is by no means so straightforward. To be sure, the De agri cultura is not a work of economic or social history in the modern sense, and therefore it does not attempt to describe the range of agricultural practices found in a comprehensive and objective way. Rather, Cato writes largely from the point of view of the self-interest of an owner of agricultural land, and is primarily concerned with a single type of cash-crop farm the working of which he describes in great detail. Unfortunately, we are not told how many actual farms of this type existed; nor does Cato give much information about other forms of land tenure and their significance. In the De agri cultura Cato is not simply describing existing practices but is offering an account of how agriculture ought to be practised, especially in the light of new circumstances which were evidently emerging at the time. The background situation is well explained by E.Brehaut, who tells us: the work has something of the aspect of a manual of farm management for an absentee owner. The elements in the management, well adjusted to one another, are the owner’s visits, the routine work done by slaves and the harvesting operations done by free labour under contract. This system apparently should be interpreted with reference to the conflict that had long existed, especially for the Romans of the ruling class, between the claims of farming (the Roman’s traditional economic occupation), and the demands of the State for military and other service. With the expansion of Roman power in Cato’s lifetime and the introduction at the same time of the new agriculture the intensity of this conflict was increased, and it may well be that the system of management found in the book represents the equilibrium finally established. Both the new agriculture and the new management necessitated a manual. 43 As already noted, Cato’s focus is one particular kind of large-scale agriculture which it can be fairly safely assumed had already become reasonably widespread: namely, a farm of 100–240 iugera (60–150 acres) on which wine and olive oil is produced, apparently for market sale. Additional ‘profits’ come from the sale of excess grain and osiers, as well as from sheep and pigs and products deriving from them (wool, cheese, skins etc.). Cato takes it for granted that the predominant source of labour power to work the farm is a band of slaves: depending on the average establishment he envisages a dozen or more, including the bailiff (vilicus), his wife and some specialized workers such as a teamster, herdsmen, wine tenders and a number of general hands, the last possibly being shackled (operati). This much can be gleaned from Cato’s text quite readily. But difficulties arise, as already suggested, when we try to classify more precisely the type of agriculture advocated. One section of the manual which has often been the basis of interpretations of Cato is the opening passage or so-called Preface. Let us consider this in detail. The issue of Cato’s motivation In the past many commentators have taken the Preface more or less at face value as a


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straightforward declaration of Cato’s concerns, and largely on this basis they have advanced general interpretations of the role of the large estate. But while it is true the Preface lends itself to the idea that in Roman agriculture the simple rustic values of the peasant were always a major factor, the true significance of the work as a whole is probably otherwise. Let us consider a key passage: It is true that to obtain money by trade is sometimes more profitable, were it not so hazardous; and like-wise money-lending, if it were honourable…[But when the ancients] would praise a worthy man their praise took this form: ‘Good husbandman’, ‘good farmer’. One so praised was thought to have received the greatest commendation…[for] it is from the farming class that the bravest men and the sturdiest soldiers come, their calling is most highly respected, their livelihood is most assured and is looked on with the least hostility, and those who are engaged in that pursuit are the least inclined to be disaffected. 44 On the basis of this alone a judgement such as Marx’s, that the ancients had no real interest in profit making and that their scientific enquiries only sought to know what made good citizens, looks perfectly unobjectionable. But the question must be put whether this view can be sustained if we undertake an analysis of Cato’s text as a whole; for more than one recent commentator has called attention to the fact that the sense of the Preface is significantly at odds with that of the body of the work. A.J.Toynbee, for example, points out that while the Preface recalls and endorses the traditional regard for the farmer in contrast to the pernicious moneylender and only partly respectable businessman, in the remainder of the work the idealized yeoman-warrior is all but absent and of no real consequence. 45 And K.D.White is in substantial agreement when he says that Cato’s De agri cultura testifies ‘that the post-Hannibalic economic and social revolution in Roman Italy is already an accomplished fact’. This is evident because the book was obviously written ‘for the very businessmen from whom the author affects, in his introduction, to be dissociating himself, 46 So let us turn without further ado to the body of Cato’s text. It is noteworthy that in general the De agri cultura contains little that is overtly directed towards the commercial or entrepreneurial aspects of estate management; most of the work comprises practical agricultural information and advice evidently for the benefit of the interested owner. Nonetheless, there are a few occasions where businesslike strategies and managerial procedures are explicitly taken up, and these deserve close scrutiny. In one oft-discussed passage Cato presents some recommendations on how to go about the purchase of an estate, and what he says there is probably indicative of the general approach to management which would actually have prevailed. We read: When you are thinking of acquiring a farm, keep in mind these points: that you are not over-eager in buying nor spare your pains in examining, and that you consider it not sufficient to go over it once…. Notice how the neighbours keep up their places; if the district is good, they should be well kept…. It should have a good climate, not subject to storms; the soil should be good, and naturally strong…the situation should be healthful, and there should be a good supply of labourers, it should be well watered, and near it there should be a flourishing


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town, or the sea, or a navigable stream, or a good and much travelled road. It should lie among those farms which do not often change owners…. When you reach the steading, observe whether there are numerous oil presses, and wine vats; and if there are not you may infer that the amount of yield is in proportion. The farm should be one of no great equipment…see that it be equipped as economically as possible, and that the land be not extravagant. Remember that the farm is like a man—however great the income, if there is extravagance but little is left. If you ask me what is the best kind of farm, I should say a hundred iugera of land, comprising all sorts of soils, and in a good situation; a vineyard comes first if it produces bountifully wine of a good quality; second, a waterbed [i.e., irrigated] garden; third an osier-bed; fourth, an olive yard; fifth, a meadow; sixth, grain land; seventh, a wood lot; eighth, an arbustum [a vineyard trained on trees]; ninth, a mast grove [acorns]. 47 Quite a lot can be deduced from these remarks. To begin with they indicate that the buying and selling of land was a normal and accepted practice, and we can even deduce the existence of a market for land and estates (though actual prices are not discussed). In this connection Weber notes that Roman law generally disallowed feudal-type encumbrances, largely in the interest of private parties: [It] did not recognize the emphyteusis [perpetual rights to land] except as ager vectigalis on public lands…[this] was a product of the concern of the bourgeois landed interests for legal marketability of land and for the prevention of the development of seigneurial rights or similar obligations tied to the land. 48 Of course, the important question arising here is whether the prices at which estates were exchanged reflected their profitability as enterprises; for we cannot take it for granted that the market was such that commercial attributes alone were the decisive determinants of price formation. It is clear that Cato does not view the desirability of owning an estate single-mindedly from the point of view of business considerations. The latter certainly seem present, but equally there are also other interests of a decidedly uncommercial kind (e.g., a ‘healthful location’). Cato’s discussion of the criteria of a ‘good’ farm throws some light on this question of the degree of market orientation or commercialization. In arriving at his ranking he itemizes a range of economic or quasi-economic criteria for the selection of the ideal estate: a desirable establishment ought to possess definite substantive qualities such as good soil, climate, location, water and so on. But in specifying these criteria he does not lead us to believe that profitability in our modern sense is the key consideration; all that Cato expressly emphasizes is the physical output of particular crops or techniques (indicated by the number of presses, vats etc.); which is not to say considerations of efficiency are irrelevant, nor does it follow that the idea of increasing profitability is altogether lacking. The ideal estate should be close to sources of labour (presumably to augment the full-time slave force), and proximity to navigable rivers and towns is also advised, we can assume to lessen transport costs, to facilitate the sale of produce, and hence to increase returns.


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Mickwitz’s critique of the rationality of ancient estates The ambiguous relation of the ancient estate to profitability is the subject of an important analysis by G.Mickwitz who acknowledges the practical value of much of Cato’s advice for increasing output, but notes how from the point of view of modern business management there are crucial oversights. For instance, there is ‘no indication of the idea, so familiar to us, that lack of prosperity in a certain region might simply be the result of bad farming, and that an energetic farmer might be able to make money by buying a cheap farm in just such a district’. 49 Mickwitz goes on to suggest the reason for this was that a modern approach would only have been possible on the basis of accounting methods of which the Romans were ignorant. In other words, attention to what we nowadays term the ‘opportunity costs’ (of buying different farms or of different potential strategies of economic development on one and the same farm) is nowhere in evidence. What is more, Cato fails to demonstrate an adequate understanding of the relation between invested capital (machinery, slaves and land) and the return on capital (allowing for current prices and operating costs)—at least by modern standards. 50 Mickwitz’s critique is particularly to the point if we consider Cato’s recommendations concerning the optimum quantity of equipment to be employed on the estate. Unlike a modern capitalist, he does not advocate that the type and quantity of productive equipment should be adjusted in accord with detailed estimates of the marginal utility of potential improvements and extensions, that is, in terms of costs (and thus prospective returns). Rather, he opts for a pragmatic, rule-of-thumb ‘solution’ to the economic problem of optimizing resource allocation: he sets as his ideal a level of equipment somewhere between the point of having a large quantity of technical apparatuses of various kinds (which may be wasteful) and a situation where there is very little equipment (which indicates low output). This is obviously an imperfect means of establishing the efficiency of the production activities involved—though, we shall argue below, by no means a totally irrational one given the circumstances. Further, Cato recommends the yield (and hence the ‘profitability’) of an estate be estimated by such indirect indices as the number of oil presses and wine vats. Evidently, the would-be farm buyer did not ask to see the accounts—the production and sales figures—as a guide to evaluating the estate’s viability; which at first sight seems surprising since elsewhere Cato specifically mentions accounts of various kinds (money, grain, oil and wine accounts), which he urges a master to always inspect when visiting his estates (once acquired). 51 Cato simply advises the buyer to take note of what modern capitalists would regard as utterly superficial indicators, such as the prosperity of neighbours, the ‘success’ of previous occupants etc. For Mickwitz, the reason for this comes down to the nature of the accounts concerned: in antiquity, in an era before the advent of scientific/experimental farming and the development of double-entry bookkeeping, there was simply no technically adequate instrument for arriving at the most profitable way of orienting one’s agricultural pursuits. Ancient accounts were simply inventories of stocks in hand, and in their separated form could not be used as the basis for systematic planning. Thus, the inputs of one section of an agricultural concern, say the grain paid to the slave vine-dressers, was not registered as a loss to the grain production section, which


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prevented it being taken into account in estimating the most efficient allocation of resources within the enterprise. Rather, the only expressed concern is that inventories in all sections should as far as possible increase over the course of each year, an impossible and counterproductive requirement for a modern business where some departments are set up with the express purpose of providing inputs to others that are the decisive sectors in terms of which sales output is measured. In the light of the above analysis, then, the question arises whether the estate described by Cato can legitimately be classified as a profit-making concern, as capitalistic, in some sense of the term. We have seen that in many respects the estate of Cato’s day falls far short of the typical modern enterprise, a fact which has all too often been insufficiently recognized (in this regard, as already suggested, writers such as Rostovtzeff, Toynbee and White risk giving a wrong impression in their all-too-ready usage of terms like ‘businessman’ and ‘rancher’ to describe Roman estate owners). However, we must also avoid reacting in an opposite direction, and should ask whether it may still be admissible to designate the estate of the classical era as at least a primitive capitalist enterprise. For there are parts of Cato’s work where a concern with increasing profit and lowering costs which is akin to modern notions does seem manifest. Indeed, from certain remarks in the text, we can be certain that a modicum of attention to cost saving, efficiency and the high output of certain goods was quite typical. Furthermore, it is evident that a significant quantity of the goods produced on the typical estate—what precise proportion is anyone’s guess—were genuine commodities produced expressly for market sale in the light of known prices. Some idea of the extent to which a concern for cost saving is manifest can be gleaned from a discussion of various avenues to obtain a wine press for a prospective estate. In listing three alternative ways of acquiring a second-hand press, Cato proceeds to give itemized costs (which include details of transport and assembly expenses), and he finishes the discussion giving total costs as well. The section as a whole provides strong evidence that attention to cost saving in this fashion was a normal part of astute management. What is more, prices evidently existed for various means of production as well as for ordinary commodities, and these must have been the basis for some management decisions of a rational kind. But it is well to remember that cost saving can operate in the context of budgetary management as well as in relation to profit making (though price formation as such depends on the existence of a sphere of market activity), so we again need to be cautious in assuming any modern parallels. To sum up thus far, we can say that, despite the fact that a variety of economic and non-economic interests were involved, Cato’s ideal of a good farm is connected in some measure with considerations of profitability. But where profit is pursued it is assessed primarily on the basis of experience, and is not rigorously estimated by systematic means of calculation (such as those of double-entry accounting). Even so, according to Mickwitz, the rudimentary estimates which estate owners like Cato probably made would have been adequate to establish a rough idea of the average profits to be gained from the various estate types: ‘these rates of profit could be compared with the profits made from other investments, and on the basis of this comparison the value of land rose or fell according to variations in the current rate of interest’. 52 Thus, Mickwitz concludes that the ancient estate, while not managed entirely ‘scientifically’ (his term to designate


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modern methods of management), was nonetheless a genuine profit-making enterprise. (We shall explore the implications of these considerations further in an excursus on the work of Moses Finley which comes towards the end of this chapter.) Market production and the oikos in Varro’s De re rustica Varro’s De re rustica and Columella’s book of the same title are perhaps even more pertinent to our present concerns. This is because they were written at a later period when in all likelihood a greater degree of economic progress had been achieved (Varro’s book was first published in 37 BC and Columella’s in the middle of the first century AD). Thus, if we concede that Cato is somewhat backward as far as rational economic management is concerned, perhaps with Varro and Columella things are different. First let us consider Varro. The profit motive in Varro From the outset it should be noted that in Varro’s De re rustica there are many statements which suggest that ‘profit’ or ‘gain’ is a primary concern. But, importantly, again such interests are not usually advanced as the sole motive of farming activity, as the following passage shows: The Italian seems to have had two things particularly in view in his farming: whether the land would yield a fair return [fructus=fruits of the earth] for the investment in money [impensa] and labour, and whether the situation was healthful or not…. For no sane man should be willing to undergo the expense and outlay of cultivation if he sees that it cannot be recoupte [sic]…. 53 From our modern point of view this coupling of economic prudence with non-economic considerations is unusual, and as with Cato we cannot assume we know the significance of considerations like ‘health’. Equally, we must acknowledge that it is not immediately clear what is meant by the notions of ‘investment’ and ‘fair return’ [fructus] in Varro’s work. From another passage we can gain a better idea of the importance of the idea of profit vis-à-vis other considerations: The farmer should aim at two goals, profit [utilitatum] and pleasure [voluptatum]; the object of the first is material return [fructus], and the second enjoyment. The profitable [utile] plays a more important role than the pleasurable; and yet for the most part the methods of cultivation which improve the aspect of the land, such as the planting of fruit and olive trees in rows, make it not only more profitable [fructuosiorem] but also more saleable [vendibiliorem], and add to the value [pretium] of the estate…. 54 It is interesting how, when the same idea of the dual purpose of agriculture is mentioned again, the term utilitatum is employed, not fructus. If, indeed, the two terms are thus interchangeable, this suggests that the idea of profit in our modern sense cannot be what


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Varro has in mind. Rather, it seems he is indicating a very general notion of usefulness, advantage or gain. When properly used in business today, the term ‘profit’ denotes ‘the surplus of industry after deducting wages, costs of raw material, rent and charges’ (Oxford English Dictionary), a meaning which is a product of modern political economy and dates from the seventeenth century. Perhaps the closest Varro comes to this usage is with the term fructusiorem, which refers generally to the idea of fertility, fruitfulness, and especially the notion of the produce of the land. But to translate this as ‘profit’, as Hopper does in the Loeb edition, is potentially very misleading. It needs emphasizing in this regard that aesthetic pleasure is cited by Varro as being almost as important as utilitatum, or fructus; it contributes just as much to the saleability and ‘value’ of the estate, which would be inconceivable had the modern notion of profit been operative then. But if the term profit is not strictly applicable, something of a businesslike consideration does seem at work nonetheless. So how systematic and single-minded is Varro’s approach to the pursuit of profit or gain? Are his methods of management founded on any better knowledge of the relevant economic data (costs etc.) than is the case with Cato? Is it possible that Varro displays greater rationalism in the service of economic interests than his predecessors? Varro’s discussion of the ‘economics’ of villa husbandry An indication of Varro’s general approach to estate management is found in a section written in dialogue where the author and his colleagues are portrayed as engaged in a debate over the merits of various kinds of husbandry to be found on a typical estate. The comment is made by one of the participants that a ‘bookkeeper’ (scriba librarius) of Varro has claimed that through ‘villa husbandry’ (farming that takes place around the farmstead instead of in the main paddocks, and includes the raising of chickens, pigeons, bees and the like) one particular villa had received 50,000 sesterces for the year. When someone expresses surprise at this figure, Varro embarks on a lengthy reply to justify the claim, and a discussion arises as regards what returns can be regarded as normal in this domain. The passage is worth reproducing in full. We shall begin with Varro’s response: ‘Well from the aviary alone which is in that villa, I happen to know that there were sold 5,000 fieldfares, for three denarii a piece, so that that department of the villa in that year brought in sixty thousand sesterces—twice as much as your farm [that of Axius] of 200 iugera at Reate brings in.’ ‘What? Sixty?’, exclaimed Axius, ‘Sixty? Sixty? You are joking!’ ‘Sixty’, I repeated. ‘But to reach such a haul as that you will need a public banquet or somebody’s triumph, such as that of Metellus Scipio at the time, or the club dinners which are now so countless that they make the prices of provisions go soaring. If you can’t look for this sum in all other years, your aviary, I hope, will not go bankrupt on you; and if fashions continue as they now are, it will happen only rarely that you miss your reckoning. For how rarely is there a year in which you do not see a banquet or a triumph or when the clubs do not feast?’ ‘Why’, said he, ‘in this time of luxury it may fairly be said that there is a banquet every day within the


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gates of Rome. Was it not Lucius Abuccius, who is, as you know, an unusually learned man,…who used to remark likewise that his estate near Alba was always beaten in feeding by his steading? For his land brought in less than 10,000, and his steading more than 20,000 sesterces. He also had claimed that if he had got a villa near the sea, where he wanted one, he would take in more than 100,000 from the villa. Come, did not Marcus Cato, when he took over the guardianship of Lucullus recently, sell the fish from his ponds for 40,000 sesterces?’ 55 This passage clearly reveals a great deal about economic conditions at the time, and throws light on aspects not treated in Cato. To begin with reference is made to a kind of bookkeeping that is not mentioned elsewhere. It seems Varro’s accounts, and evidently those of other producers as well, are able to show the returns (both in physical units and in money) for a single ‘department’ of the estate over a year’s operation. But appearances here may be deceptive, for the figures are unlikely to be the actual profits strictly calculated (these, after all, could only be established by the stricter methods of doubleentry capital accounting), and are probably merely the value of gross sales for the year, without the deduction of costs. On this interpretation, a larger nominal profit figure results than that which would occur with modern calculations. Clearly, in emphasizing the volume of returns, Varro’s concern is not the exact measure of profit in the modern sense (where with competition the rates of profit between industries tend to equalize so that high turnover figures are not necessarily indicative of real economic performance); rather, he seeks to show the reader by use of a rough gauge of profitability that one particular area, villa husbandry, has been neglected as a potential source of high returns, presumably because producers have become fixed to their traditional pursuits, and have failed to capitalize on new opportunities (it is as if a modern writer were trying to persuade his readers that, say, the steel industry is a potentially lucrative manufacturing sector because it annually produces products to the value of hundreds of millions of dollars, even though actual profits may only be slightly better than average). Furthermore, it is instructive that in the above-quoted passage Varro discusses costs only marginally, if at all. 56 Such an omission may mean that costs were not in fact computed for each department; or perhaps Varro is assuming the enterprise would not bother producing such large quantities of goods unless normal conditions of production applied, in which case costs are allowed for (the latter would correspond to the modern situation as referred to in the above example where a large turnover is taken as suggestive of sizeable actual profits). What does Varro tell us about the nature of production and marketing? A first thing worth noting is that his counsel concerns the marketability of various types of luxury produce; the argument is that villa husbandry directed to this market has been insufficiently appreciated as a source of profit. It is a characteristic of this market, however, that demand is relatively unstable; for the goods being exchanged, which are all luxuries and not the everyday consumer goods typical of today’s mass markets, are mainly produced for the irregularly occurring banquets and festivals referred to. This is the case even though Varro makes the point that so many banquets and the like are now taking place in Rome that the producer can virtually count on a steady demand—but not quite. Thus, there seem to be very definite limits on the extent to which an estate owner


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could have adopted a business strategy of ‘forward planning’. The degree of instability is further indicated by the remark about the impact of the many club dinners on prices: apparently, the prices of luxury goods rose dramatically with increase in demand. This, of course, is an effect which can be found under certain circumstances in any modern economy; however, what is not indicative of a modern situation is the idea of developing a long-term business strategy on the basis of such speculative opportunities. For under today’s conditions, whilst in the short term an increase in demand brings with it an increase in prices, everybody knows that this merely attracts more competition, which in the longer term lowers prices and reduces the rate of profit (eventually) to average levels. In the ancient situation, the system of production apparently did not have this adaptive capacity which is integral to the market of modern capitalism (at least as far as this example illustrates). Indeed, it is precisely the ‘inelasticity of supply’, as a modern economist would term it, which accounts for why Varro recommends villa husbandry as being so profitable. For, if estates were completely oriented to the market situation in the fashion of modern enterprises, prices would tend towards equilibrium across the various agricultural departments, and there would therefore be no point in recommending one branch over another; to recommend villa husbandry over, say, viticulture or grazing would thus be as absurd as it would be for a modern economist to advocate one type of agriculture as being generally more profitable (say wheat farming as against wool growing). Of course, Varro’s account provides an instance of only a single price fluctuation, so the extent to which it is indicative of the normal situation cannot be judged with any certainty. But, in the emphasis on opportunities for this kind of ‘windfall’ profit, Varro’s recommendations suggest a low level of market orientation (by modern standards)—and, hence, a low degree of economic rationality in general. The oikos and its relation to the market While instability in the market clearly places constraints on the degree to which a hypothetical profit-making enterprise with large investments in fixed capital can operate successfully, there is also evidence in Varro of more stable conditions. In one interesting passage we find a description of an economic environment in which a more reliable market for a wide range of basic goods seems attested. We even find a distinction between local markets, which he implies function to integrate the specialized economic units by interchanging various ‘producer goods’, and the urban or village markets, which supply a large range of consumer perishables. The passage is also noteworthy in that it suggests a more modern, analytic style of thinking in regard to economic matters: Farms which have nearby a means of transporting their products to market and convenient means of transporting thence those things needed on the farm, are for that reason profitable [fructuosa]. For many have among their holdings some into which grain or wine or the like which they lack must be brought, and on the other hand not a few have those from which a surplus must be sent away. And so it is profitable [expedit] near a city to have gardens on a large scale; for instance of violets and roses and many other products for which there is a demand in the city; while it would not be profitable to raise the same products


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on a distant farm where there is no market [venale] to which these products can be carried. Again, if there are towns or villages in the neighbourhood, or even well-furnished lands and farmsteads of rich owners, from which you can purchase at a reasonable price what you need for the farm, and to which you can sell your surplus, such as props, or poles, or reeds, the farm will be more profitable [fructuosior] than if they must be fetched from a distance; sometimes, in fact, more so than if you can supply them yourself by raising them on your own place. 57 The picture of economic life given here is obviously at some remove from the ideal of autarky: the general underlying principle—the desirability and good sense of economic interdependence—goes directly against Cato’s maxim about always being a seller, not a buyer, and seems to run counter to the whole primitivist standpoint. 58 But, as we have said on several occasions, great caution must be exercised in fostering parallels with modern situations. To be sure, the above passage is noteworthy for its recommendation that farming be in some measure oriented to the market, and it also gives an indication of the extensiveness of the division of labour between establishments and shows Varro’s awareness of the advantages which may thereby arise. But, when the passage is scrutinized and its full implications considered, what we must also register about the economy as described is the quite limited degree of market orientation that is actually indicated. While Varro advises the reader to consider the advantages which may accrue from the exploitation of various markets (local, village, urban), it is surely odd that he thinks it necessary to mention at all what for a modern entrepreneur would be obvious economic prudence. It is as if the advantages of providing produce for the city on a regular basis, of integrating a large agricultural undertaking thoroughly into the market system, has only just been recognized—though we must admit the precise meaning of Varro’s remarks here is not easily gauged. But, is it possible to determine more precisely what Varro is actually advocating in the above passage and in his text generally? Let us look further. Consider the fact that Varro distinguishes farms that are close to the market from those that are not, and tells us that the former are more profitable. This seems a reasonable comment; except that it is unlikely that we would discriminate between present-day farms along such lines. Clearly the cost of land transport in ancient times was prohibitive; whereas today for most products such costs represent only a minor proportion of overall costs and as such they are often compensated for by other factors. The ensuing remarks of Varro, however, are a little more difficult. Varro points out that in the economy generally there are those with shortages and those with a surfeit (indeed the same unit may experience each of these conditions for different products), and for this reason nearness to a system of market exchange is desirable: both for the dispersal of surpluses, and to supply easily things needed which cannot be provided autarkically. Thus far it all looks rather familiar and we could be forgiven for assuming a fairly developed market system. However, I think such a view is misleading, for if we ask what precisely the economic agents involved in the above transactions really are, we must draw a different conclusion. This is because on closer inspection the units Varro describes as buying and selling in the market have the character of households (oikoi) at least as much as of enterprises. This is indicated when


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Varro speaks of those who ‘have among their holdings some into which grain or wine or the like which they lack must be brought’. Such products are in all probability destined for the consumption of all those living on the estate and not just those working there in a productive fashion: the master and his family (when in residence) as well as the agricultural slave force, but also, probably, guests, visiting soldiers and officials, domestic slaves, clients, hired free labourers, and others. In other words, these items are not necessarily acquired as business inputs—raw materials or means of production—to be employed exclusively in the estate’s profit-making ventures; nor can they be explained as a subsidization or wage fund for that portion of the estate’s labour force devoted to producing goods for market sale; they are just as much destined for the collective consumption of the familia rustica as a whole. Thus, the kind of exchange being described ought not to be taken simply as an illustration of the exchange of producer goods or as exchange oriented to a capitalist enterprise’s own consumption needs as under modern conditions; there is some of this, but equally important is the requirement to satisfy the pure consumption needs of a series of extended households. The exchange taking place is thus in part a kind of interchange between oikoi—that is, an exchange between organizations whose primary focus is not profit making but which can satisfy their needs autarkically only up to a point. Varro welcomes this partial loss of selfsufficiency on the simple pragmatic grounds that it enables a more efficient general system to emerge based on a measure of specialization between estates—some of the needs of one estate can be supplied more easily from the output of another and vice versa. It is instructive in this regard that he does not emphasize proximity to the urban market primarily so the farm can obtain there various expert services and means of production, or so cash crops can more readily be sold. Rather, the function of the urban market he chooses to highlight is its role as a medium between the various oikoi, each of which has become a specialized producer of one or more useful products and therefore stands in need of a system of interchange to cater for those requirements not satisfied independently. But even though it is clear we are dealing with institutions in part with the character of oikoi, it is also undeniable, as we have already said, that these estates are implicated to varying degrees in profit making. We can summarize that the extent of this involvement corresponds to the degree to which the estate is oriented to the provision of urban needs, and this probably depends in large part upon proximity to a city and suitable means of transport (by river or sea). Thus, Varro notes: ‘And so it is profitable near a city to have gardens on a large scale; for instance, of violets and roses and many other products for which there is a demand in the city’—the villa husbandry discussed earlier is obviously relevant here. Thus at a certain point the market transcends the function of facilitating exchange between oikoi, and we see the development of exchange between those dwelling in the city and rural-based suppliers who have begun to specialize in the production of agricultural produce for the urban market. Insofar as this proceeds beyond the seizing of occasional opportunities as and when they arise (for instance, with viticulture during the classical era), and profit making begins to shape the character of estate management in general, then we can say the estate definitely approaches the profit-making enterprise proper. However, in antiquity the trend in this direction was not generalized. It is


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revealing in this regard that some of the items Varro mentions as products in demand in the urban market are violets and roses, hardly the sort of agricultural produce that could form the basis of a genuine mass market capable of sustaining full-scale capitalist enterprises. Columella’s case for the superiority of viticulture Possibly the single most important piece of evidence suggestive of the existence of capitalism in Roman agriculture is an oft-discussed section in Columella’s De re rustica, Book 3, Section 3, where the profitability of viticulture is discussed in some detail. There are several features that are immediately worth remarking upon. On the rationality of Columella’s accounting equation First, there is no doubt that in this section Columella seeks to evaluate the practice of farming purely in commercial terms—in contrast to Cato and Varro where, as we have seen, non-economic considerations are invariably present alongside the profit motive. Columella’s focus is an hypothetical farm unit specializing in the production of what can only be described as a ‘cash crop’, namely grapes for wine. But what is most interesting about his discussion from our point of view is the way he recommends that labour and other costs be related directly to output and profits—but more on this shortly. Columella’s hypothetical vineyard has been the subject of a number of detailed analyses usually with a view to investigating its profit ratio so as to establish a ratio for ancient agriculture in general. 59 At first sight this seems an understandable use of the data provided by Columella, but a number of problems arise in the interpretation of his figures. Let us look briefly at his specimen calculation. In his discussion of the capital costs involved in setting up and running a vineyard of seven iugera, Columella specifies the following items of expense: Cost of 7 iugera of land

7,000 sestercii

Cost of 1 vine dresser

8,000

Cost of planting stakes, props and willows at 2,000 sestercii per iugerum

14,000

6% interest until vines produce (2 years)

3,480

Total

32,480 sestercii

Now Columella argues that, even with the poorest of vineyards (such as those producing only one culeus per iugerum), the income each year once production has begun would be at the very least 2,100 sestercii, a figure arrived at on the basis of assumed sales at the lowest prices (300 sestercii per culeus), and representing a percentage profit of 6.46 percent. However, this calculation constitutes only a worst-case scenario, because Columella immediately dismisses such a vineyard as being so unproductive as to be not worth persisting with; only those yielding three times as much profit (6,300 sestercii (19.30 percent) or more) are truly viable and ought to be kept. Now, though these computations seem remarkably sophisticated from a technical point


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of view—we shall leave to one side for the moment the question of the calculating manner and acquisitive spirit that seem displayed—Columella’s accounting has nonetheless been criticized for being an inadequate method of measuring actual profits. The usual objection concerns alleged oversights that modern calculations would not fail to include. It is argued by Finley, for example, that important overheads are absent from the equation: ‘he forgets the farm buildings, equipment, ancillary land (for cereal grains for example), the maintenance costs of his slaves, depreciation and amortization. His implied 34% annual return is nonsense’. 60 In defence of the rationality of Columella’s thinking, however, it should be borne in mind that in the specimen calculation the seven iugera do not seem to be thought of as a self-supporting unit but rather a parcel to be added to an existing concern. Hence, in considering the addition of this increment, Columella may have judged (correctly) that there would be no significant increase to most of the expenses allegedly omitted (farm buildings and other equipment); the augmentation of a further seven iugera merely extended an area already under cultivation. As regards the fact that the cost of keeping the vine dresser and other slave labourers is omitted, we can reply in defence of Columella that such items are not included because they are assumed ‘given’, because the estate supplied these in kind and would have had no ready way of measuring their monetary value. 61 In other words, we must begin to see the ancient estate as comprising two basic types of economic activity— the production of cash crops for market sale, and the management of an oikos oriented to want satisfaction in kind—and that there were complex interactions between the two. If this is recognized most of the so-called lacunae in Columella’s accounts turn out not to be omissions at all as there is little rationality in treating items as costs if they cannot be registered as debits in one’s monetary transactions. Thus, on the strength of Columella’s treatise one can criticize the ancients for not separating business from domestic affairs as systematically as we do, but this does not entitle us to thoroughly impugn the rationality of their business activities as such. In interpreting these passages it should also be kept in mind that Columella’s intention is merely to show that viticulture is more profitable than the normal rate of interest on capital (which was 5 or 6 percent); 62 we must not imagine that he was attempting to offer a full demonstration of the best methods of calculating profits in the running of an estate—say, for some kind of didactic purpose. Thus, even if a few expenses (such as amortization, some labour costs and equipment etc.) are overlooked, the calculated margin arrived at remains so large that a worthwhile profit would still have resulted in actual practice. Thus, Columella easily manages to establish his main point about the profitability of a certain kind of viticulture, because his figures when computed give an annual return after the first three years on a six year cycle of 33.8 percent; 63 allowance for the missing overheads could only reduce this margin to a slightly lower level. In a somewhat artificial attempt to reconstruct the ‘real’ conditions of Columella’s vineyard, R.Duncan-Jones arrives at a minimum figure of 10.7 percent after compensation for the omitted overheads, or 15.3 percent if the selling of nursery plants is included. 64 Besides, as the same author concludes, an ‘owner who like Columella had vines which yielded as much as 3 culei to the iugerum could expect profits well above the usual agricultural dividend in good years, especially if his wine was of good enough quality to fetch one of the higher attested selling prices’. 65


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On the meaning of investment in Columella Columella’s discussion of the economics of viticulture offers valuable insights as regards the general attitude towards business and money making in early imperial times. His work is most illuminating on the question of the extent to which estate owners were oriented to monetary profits. Consider, for example, the way Columella sets up his ‘accounting equation’, for that is what he really presents. 66 After quite systematically listing those items of capital investment that represent the outlay of the latifundist, he then adds interest for the two years the vineyard is not producing. That he does this, seemingly as a matter of course, strongly suggests that it was a routine matter to treat savings as capital, that is, as an investment fund always potentially capable of bearing a monetary yield (interest or profit); at least this seems true for the more wealthy estate owners. 67 What is more, Columella presents his specimen equation as if it constitutes a fairly familiar procedure that his readers will readily understand; and, similarly, he assumes they will appreciate the general business significance of his overall argument. 68 His discussion is also of interest because it implies that it was an accepted practice to make reasonably long-term investments involving a degree of forward planning, for at least two years are set aside before returns come in. A final feature of Columella’s discussion which deserves comment concerns the manner in which he evaluates the desirability of a prospective investment. It is noteworthy that, in speaking of his ideal vineyard of seven iugera, Columella conceives of the long-term return on invested capital seemingly in a most sophisticated fashion. As already noted, he compares various hypothetical rates of return on invested capital (i.e., the differing rates of profit) with the typical interest rate of moneylending, and concludes noting the clear advantage of agriculture over ordinary usury. But what is particularly interesting is the precise way the reader is invited to picture the process whereby the profits of the proposed investment are to be generated: The sum total of principal and interest comes to 32,480 sesterces. And if the husband-man would enter this amount as a debt against his vineyards just as a moneylender does with a debtor, so that the owner may realize the aforementioned six percent interest on that total as a perpetual annuity, he should take in 1,950 sesterces every year. By this reckoning the return from seven iugera exceeds the interest on 32,480 sesterces. 69 Now the form of reckoning alluded to here at first sight looks a little like an accounting equation of the double-entry type: for the idea that the owner of an enterprise should view his capital outlay as a‘debt entered against his vineyard’ implies an understanding of the accounting notion that a proprietor’s investment is to be represented in the firm’s books as the enterprise’s ‘liability’. But it is unlikely that a form of accounting was actually in use which enabled some kind of ‘balance’ to be reached on a regular and systematic basis. For it is nowhere indicated that Columella’s ‘account’ was the same as that of an autonomous business enterprise of the modern type. 70 If we consider the case more closely it is clear the account has the form rather of that of a moneylender; in this regard it is significant that Columella urges the reader to view the outlay as a debt owed to a


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lender for which interest is payable. There is no awareness of the modern idea of ‘working capital’, where the amount invested is regarded as the firm’s ‘proprietorship’ on which dividends are paid. Here Marx’s insight about the ancient slave-owner’s conceiving of the profit-making investment in slaves as a form of advancing money capital at interest, and not as the return on working capital, is most apposite.

CRITIQUE OF SOME ASPECTS OF MOSES FINLEY’S THE ANCIENT ECONOMY Apart from its obvious general relevance, the work of Moses Finley is of interest to us here because in The Ancient Economy he discusses Cato and the latifundia in some detail. At first glance Finley seems in agreement with the general thrust of the analysis presented thus far: he too claims to reject both the extreme modernizing as well as the primitivist view of the Roman estate. Referring to the suggestion that the ancients were regular investors of capital, and that land was the preferred investment, he says such phrasing contains some truth but it is neither the whole truth nor nothing but the truth, because it fails to convey to a modern reader the very large non-economic element in the preference. To begin with there is the complete absence of the concept of amortization…. Investment in land in short was never in antiquity a matter of systematic, calculated policy, of what Weber called economic rationality. 71 But, at the same time, Finley does not think the objective of the ancient estate was mere self-sufficiency; for estates ‘were farmed for their cash incomes not for subsistence. Hence, the stress on taking steps to avoid cash outlays for [various procurements]…must be explained within a framework of profit-making’. 72 Thus far we are in agreement, but the real problem is surely to determine more precisely where between the two extremes of profit making and primitive autarky the ancient estate should be located. So what is Finley’s exact position? Taking Cato as typical, Finley at the outset concedes that on such evidence the estate owner in antiquity was unquestionably interested in profit making; he cites the former’s advice on the sale of worn-out cattle and old slaves and affirms that this shows a real concern for cost saving and increased returns. In line with this he also suggests the famous statement of Cato that ‘a pater familias should be a seller, not a buyer…was less a moral judgement than an economic one (in our language), though I doubt if Cato would have drawn the distinction so finely’. 73 But these remarks must not be taken as indicating Finley’s leaning towards the modernizing pole of our controversy. For the thrust of his argument is to the contrary: the Roman estate had little to do with capitalism, despite a certain measure of acquisitiveness on the part of the ancients; it was extremely remote from anything like a modern enterprise operating for profit, and cannot be understood as a more or less scaled down version of the corresponding modern institution. To prove his case Finley sets out to demonstrate that, contrary to appearances, the operation of the ancient estate was very primitive indeed. We have already quoted his


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view that a ‘peasant-like passion for self-sufficiency’ underlay the mentality of the ancients in economic matters. Central to Finley’s argument, however, is his view that individuals like Cato were completely unaware of the techniques of rational calculation such as are commonplace today: rather, ‘relishing independence from the market as buyers, from reliance on others for their own necessities, the landowners of antiquity operated by tradition, habit and rule-of-thumb’. 74 Finley pushes his primitivist reading furthest in commenting on that section of Cato’s manual (already quoted above) where he lists in order the most profitable types of farms: this section of Cato’s work ought to be quoted as proof of the absurdity of what passes for economic analysis in the ancient sources. I need hardly enumerate the weaknesses: no consideration of the location of the farm with respect to available markets or to export possibilities; nothing about the nature of the soil beyond the single phrase, ‘if the wine is good and the yield is great’, no cost accounting of even a rudimentary nature. 75 But in highlighting the limitations of ancient economics in this way Finley surely overstates the case. Undoubtedly, by modern standards Cato’s ranking of investments is not entirely satisfactory; and the weaknesses given by Finley are rightly emphasized. 76 But even if one accepts this description of economic thinking in antiquity as ‘backward’, and even if it is valid to claim that the ancients had no ‘economic science’ to speak of, Cato’s methods are still more rational than Finley allows. It is Finley’s ‘sophisticated modern standpoint’, as Martin Frederiksen has aptly put it, which prevents adequate understanding here, for the only level of rationality Finley recognizes is that based on the standard of the most developed forms of capitalism known today. 77 Finley’s belated qualification of his initial dismissal of Cato’s efforts at systematizing the various aspects of estate management—to the effect that he does not believe Cato was ‘wholly witless’— is a glib and unsatisfactory acknowledgement of what were surely significant rationalizing tendencies. It is true Cato does not exhaustively compare relative costs, and his calculations lack rigour by modern standards. The decisive point against Finley, however, is that, even though Cato’s methods of cost accounting are rudimentary, his general approach is by no means lacking rationality from an economic point of view. Again, Martin Frederiksen makes some timely correctives in commenting on Finley’s broad dismissal of Cato’s ‘economics’: ‘we must make allowance for the facts which we are not given, and are presupposed. Calculations may have been rough-and-ready…but they had a basis in real experience. Local labour-costs are often mentioned as an operational factor to be calculated…[i.e.] facts easily known, but local, and incapable of system.’ 78 Finley’s arguments on these matters are clearly influenced by his estimate of the extent and significance of self-sufficiency. He seems, on the one hand, to regard self-sufficiency as the only alternative to complete market-oriented capitalism; yet, at other times, he acknowledges that self-sufficiency and a concern with profit making might up to a point go hand in hand. 79 In fact, Finley’s general theoretical strategy culminates in the attempt to weld these two seemingly opposite orientations—self-sufficiency and profit making— into a single typological formulation: the typical estate owner (e.g., Cato) somehow


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possessed peasant-like virtues (the estate was ideally self-sufficient) as well as their antithesis (the estate owner was greatly interested in cash income). But can such a contradictory combination exist? In arguing for this mixture of opposites, Finley at one point resorts to an analogy. He refers to a Russian novelist’s description of the attitude to estate management of a petty Russian noble of the nineteenth century, and comments: ‘They [the petty Russian nobility] were, generally speaking, impervious to economic truths about the desirability of a quick turnover of capital, increased production, and exchange of goods.’ 80 With Cato, according to Finley, it was not a question of being impervious to such truths, but of not having heard them in the first place. 81 Now what is wrong with the view implied here is that the significance of Cato’s expressed concern to cut costs and improve the general performance of his ideal estate is not adequately acknowledged. Even Finley himself says, as we have seen already, that the avoidance of cash outlays by the self-sufficient production of necessaries is a feature which ‘must be explained within the framework of profit-making’: so if the idea of profit making is to be taken seriously, Finley’s Russian analogy is plainly inappropriate. The root cause of Finley’s weakness is thus that he has not fully thought through the implications of the idea of profit making as such. 82 Rather, he emphasizes the decisive importance of what he terms ‘non-economic considerations’: ‘Ancient writers…did not describe land as the best investment in maximization of income language; it was profitable, to be sure, if held on a large enough scale, but they ranked it first at least as much on grounds of “nature” and morality.’ 83 In ancient society the concerns of morality and those of economics were kept completely apart; alluding to Weber’s Protestant ethic thesis, he claims the ancients ‘had not yet learned to draw a simple one-for-one equation between morality and profits’. 84 Finley tells us there were two motives which might affect a man involved in agricultural pursuits: he might be motivated out of greed, or his interest in the land might be an essentially ‘non-productive one’, having its roots in an attachment to ‘nature’ or in ‘morality’. As evidence for the latter, Finley cites a passage from the pseudo-Aristotelian Oeconomicus where agriculture is praised because it is regarded as being just and close to nature (earth). 85 He further illustrates the point with reference to the example of Pericles, who apparently disposed of his crops in bulk (by contract) so as to unburden himself for political activities. Finley summarizes his views on these questions with the cryptic formulation that the mentality of the ancients ‘may have been a non-productive one; it was in no way a non-acquisitive one’. 86 Finley’s general account of the mentality of the ancients in terms of these relationships between morality, economics, acquisitiveness, nature etc. is confused and poorly argued. A key weakness concerns the fact that most of the illustrations demonstrating the irrational, backward character of ancient agricultural pursuits are derived from Greek history, so any conclusions about antiquity as a whole, and Rome in particular, are surely questionable from the start. Here we shall not question the validity of Finley’s account as regards the specifics of the Greek situation, but in our view it cannot be assumed that these were the same as at Rome. Even Finley himself admits that Pericles and Cimon (two of his examples) are not like Cato; yet he proceeds to generalize from such cases regardless. On the rare occasions when he actually takes up a Roman source, like Cato, it is revealing that he immediately assimilates the Roman outlook to the typical Greek


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standpoint: at one point, speaking of the prominence of themes of nature in ancient Greek literature dealing with agriculture, Finley makes the wild and unsupported claim that such notions (justice, closeness to nature etc.) are also ‘good Cato and good Cicero’. 87 It is also telling that Finley has virtually nothing to say about Varro or Columella, writers who are surely crucial sources for our understanding of the practice of Roman agriculture, as already demonstrated above. A counter-view on the motivating factors at work is well put in a study by A.Astin who argues more convincingly than Finley that for Cato the profit motive was almost certainly decisive: There is no question but that when Cato decided to write about agriculture he thought automatically in terms of agriculture as a source of income, and therefore that the dominant consideration in the advice he gave was to make the farm yield as much and as secure an income as possible. 88 Insofar as other motives and considerations are involved in Cato’s deliberations—such as those concerning nature and politics—most of them are reducible in Astin’s view to the ideological function of legitimizing the kind of large-scale agricultural undertakings emerging at the time. Astin does not quite put it in these terms, but speaks of Cato’s concern (especially in the Preface) to make this new form of agriculture ‘respectable’: income from farming is socially desirable, but not because the actual farming which produced the income [is respectable]…. [Respectability] is associated in his thought not with investment farming but with agriculture in a general sense. For Cato, part of what makes investment farming respectable is that it is a form of agriculture, and agriculture in general is respectable. 89 Astin, however, mistakenly thinks Cato’s argument justifying large-scale agriculture by eulogizing its opposite, peasant farming, rests on an ‘illogical association of ideas’; besides, whether Cato was fully aware that the kind of agriculture that he was advocating had little to do with peasant virtues (i.e., the question of the authenticity of his consciousness) is not really the issue. The important thing is surely that, in speaking of the yeoman-warrior in the fashion of the Preface, a powerful rhetorical trope is kindled in the service of justifying the social and economic power of the large estate owners. For these emerging forms of agriculture, especially when contrasted with the traditional, more communal practices hitherto prevailing, must have been questionable from a political and ethical point of view and thus in need of legitimation. 90 Hence, it is highly understandable that in his Preface Cato should attempt, consciously or otherwise, to distort/camouflage/mystify the true significance of the novel landowning arrangements, and to imply that they were nothing other than a continuation of traditionally esteemed forms of rural life. While Astin is a valuable corrective to Finley on some points, he unfortunately remains ambiguous on the crucial question we are concerned to resolve here. In particular, his use of the concept ‘investment farming’ to describe the economic character of plantation agriculture is equivocal and misleading; by using such an unclarified notion he avoids having to make a serious classification. To resolve these issues we must turn again to


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Weber, and in particular his later sociological work.

WEBER ON CATO AND THE ECONOMIC MENTALITY OF THE ROMANS Throughout Weber’s work there are a number of occasions where he compares the economic mentality typical of modern capitalism with that found in previous times, but on one such occasion (in the Notes to The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism), when making direct reference not only to antiquity but to Cato as well, he engages in a most insightful discussion which illuminates much that is relevant for our analysis here. To understand this work, however, it will be necessary first to recapitulate some aspects of Weber’s views on the historical origins of modern capitalism. On the spirit of capitalism In the body of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, as is well known, Weber seeks to show how the attitude to work characteristic of the early Puritans played a decisive role in the emergence of modern capitalism. At the heart of the Puritans’ passionate devotion to work Weber finds the religiously inspired notion of the ‘calling’. This was so constructed as to place very strong ethical and psychological sanctions upon the individual to believe his salvation was bound up with his activity in the world; especially relevant was his conduct in the realm of work and business. But having embraced the world, paradoxically, the individual was somehow expected to keep it at a distance, to remain uncorrupted by material prosperity, and to maintain a pious and sober bearing in all dimensions of his conduct; he was expressly admonished to eschew worldly pleasure and the fruits of success—hence the descritive category: ‘inner-worldly asceticism’. This attitude fostered a personality-type characterized by methodical and passionate devotion to work. But work was viewed not as a means to an end (riches) but as an end in itself; that is, the possession and enjoyment of wealth was not regarded as the direct goal of business or work activities. Nevertheless, success in making money and the pursuit of one’s career with zeal and purpose was hardly disparaged—indeed, it was strongly encouraged: Wealth is thus bad ethically only in so far as it is a temptation to idleness and sinful enjoyment of life, and its acquisition is bad only when it is with the purpose of later living merrily and without care. But as a performance of duty in a calling, it is not only morally permissible, but actually enjoined. 91 Of course, as is known, Weber concludes his analysis in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by arguing that an ‘elective affinity’ obtains between the Puritan conception of work and the functional needs of modern capitalism. Puritanism is of consequence both to the outlook of the capitalist and to the situation of the modern specialized worker: The emphasis on the ascetic importance of a fixed calling provided an ethical justification of the modern specialized division of labour. In a similar way the


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providential interpretation of profit-making justified the activities of the business man…. [Asceticism] has the highest ethical appreciation of the sober, middle-class, self-made man. 92 Cato and the work ethic Now in considering antiquity the question arises whether a similar economic mentality to that just described can be said to have existed at any stage then. 93 It should be borne in mind that Cato’s work along with that of other ancient authors, with their praise of hard work, diligence, frugality etc., have frequently been taken as indicating just such a mentality. So the question arises: Were Cato and those of his kind really akin to modern Puritans? If so, we must then ask, in the light of the Weber thesis, why capitalism of the modern kind did not arise in antiquity. Weber begins his discussion on the apparent similarity between ancient and modern attitudes to work by agreeing ‘there is no doubt that…in ancient times with Cato, Varro and Columella…and others of the same type, especially in the doctrine of industria, a sort of economic rationality is highly developed’. 94 However, there are important differences as well. Most important of all is the fact that in antiquity, despite its development up to a point, the notion of industria did not give rise to a genuine ethos (in contrast to what occurred in the early modern era). At the time just prior to the emergence of modern capitalism, the notion of industria, which had been present all along in monastic Christianity, was developed by Protestant theology and practice into a doctrine suitable for ordinary men and women and thus asceticism was brought down from the monastery and introduced into the workaday world. The essential point of difference between this situation and that of the ancients, then, is that with the former one is dealing with an ‘ethic’ which, because it derives from religion, ‘places certain psychological sanctions (not of an economic kind) on the maintenance of the attitude prescribed by it, sanctions which, so long as the religious belief remains alive, are highly effective, and which mere worldly wisdom does not have at its disposal’. With the latter, on the other hand, such an ethic is lacking altogether. 95 Weber takes Sombart to task for his failure not to see this crucial difference. The latter had all too readily equated the acquisitive spirit of individuals like Cato with that of modern capitalists, arguing that ancient Stoicism provided acquisitiveness with an ethical backing corresponding to that given in modern times by Protestantism. But, according to Weber, Sombart has failed to understand the difference between the straightforward acquisitiveness of Cato and the more involved outlook of Puritan worldly asceticism; this difference holds even though in the outlook of Cato and Varro ‘acquisition as such stands in the foreground’, and even though it is correct up to a point to say that in such early cases economic rationalism is highly developed. 96 But for Weber the issue finally comes down to this: in the case of an individual like Cato one is dealing with that ‘sort of economic rationalism which really existed as a reflection of economic conditions, in the work of authors interested purely in “the thing for its own sake”’. 97 In other words, this kind of rationalism is merely an outgrowth of a pragmatic attitude, which as such lacks the backing of strong ethical sanctions. By contrast, it was the unique achievement of Puritan ethics to fashion a kind of economic rationalism that was also animated by


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powerful ‘inner’, psychic dispositions. As Weber puts it: ‘In Cato…this [Puritan-like] ethos is lacking;…it is a matter of worldly wisdom, not of ethic.’ 98 Alberti and industria The specific character of Cato’s economic outlook, and in particular the significance of rationalism in such a case, is made more comprehensible if we compare his situation with other ‘transitional’ or ‘borderline’ examples. In the same section where Weber contrasts the economic ethics of the ancients with those of Puritanism, he also examines the outlook on economic affairs of the great Renaissance humanist Leon Batista Alberti. Alberti is relevant because one of his many creations was a four-volume work on household management, a work comparable in many respects to those of the ancient writers we have discussed above. But he was of special interest for Weber because he represents a special type-case falling somewhere between the ancient and the modern outlook, and for that reason is worth studying. According to Weber, with Alberti it is true to say that private business activity has up to a point been rationalized; yet, on the other hand, the ethic and manner of life have remained in significant respects under the spell of tradition and therefore differ from Protestantism (which has not always been appreciated by scholars). Weber again takes Sombart to task for wrongly attributing to Alberti a fully bourgeois perspective: It is true that the recommendation of large enterprises as alone worthy of a nobile è onesta famiglia and a libero è nobile animo, and as costing less labour is characteristic of Alberti…. Hence the best thing is a putting-out business for wool and silk. Also an ordered and painstaking regulation of his household, i.e., the limiting of expenditure to income. This is the santa masserizia, which is thus primarily a principle of maintenance, [of] a given standard of life, and not of acquisition (as no one should have understood better than Sombart). Similarly, in the discussion of the nature of money, his concern is with the management of consumption funds (money or possessioni), not with that of capital…. [Alberti] recommends, as protection against the uncertainty of fortuna, early habituation to continuous activity…and avoidance of laziness, which always endangers one’s position in the world. Hence a careful study of a trade in case of a change in fortune, but every opera mercenaria is unsuitable… the ideal of life in a country villa…. Note, further, the very high opinion of literary things (for industria is applied principally to literary and scientific work), which is really most worthy of man’s efforts. 99 Thus for both Alberti and Cato, the prime consideration in the management of financial affairs is not to increase profit for profit’s sake, but rather to ensure the maintenance or extension of a specific lifestyle and material standard of living. Just as with Alberti so too with Cato it is characteristic ‘that a landed estate is valued and judged as an object for the investment of consumption funds’; 100 which is not to say that the pursuit of riches ceases to be an important motive—after all, sustaining the lifestyle of these aristocrats requires a great deal. But, in Weber’s view, the nature of the acquisitive impulse in these cases is nonetheless somewhat tempered and never so pure an end as under capitalism.


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The accumulation of wealth or capital According to Weber, there is essentially a question of the difference between the accumulation of ‘wealth’ and that of ‘capital’. Wherever funds are primarily sought to satisfy given consumption needs the modus operandi of the economic unit is what he terms ‘budgetary management’, not capital accounting (of course such units may also be partly involved in elements of pure profit making—which may even (as in the case of Cato and Alberti) be pursued up to a point in a quite rational fashion). With Alberti we have a classic instance of the transitional case which Weber calls ‘capitalistic wealth investment’; whereas with Cato this category is not entirely adequate. The case of Cato must be distinguished from the pure type of wealth investment because, as Weber puts it, with him ‘acquisition as such stands in the foreground in a different way from that to be found in Alberti’; that is, in Cato the acquisitive impulse as such is stronger and, indeed, seems to be unbounded. Paradoxically, in this respect Cato is closer to the modern acquisitive mentality than to Alberti. 101 On the other hand, Alberti is closer to the Protestant concept of the calling than is Cato, because the conception of industria found in the former is connected historically with that found earlier in monastic Christianity (which is of course the same conception eventually taken over by Puritanism); but nothing corresponding to this kind of valuation of work can be found in the Romans for whom work was consistently devalued. Weber further clarifies this in discussing the characteristic status etiquette of the ancient patriciate, which he claims always stood in the way of a thorough-going bourgeoisification; in particular, it meant the exclusion of entrepreneurship more or less as a matter of course. It is not that the nobility of Rome or that of the Middle Ages cannot be described as capitalist in any sense whatsoever; what must always be remembered is that it was the role of the entrepreneur that the status etiquette, occasionally and with varying flexibility backed up by law, forbade the truly patrician families of both Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The objects in which the typical patriciate of the different ages invested its wealth of course varied considerably. Nevertheless, the distinction remained the same: whoever too noticeably crossed the line between the two forms of economic activity represented by the investment of wealth on the one hand, and by profits from capital on the other, was considered a banausos in Antiquity and a man ‘not of the knightly kind’ in the Middle Ages…. It was not greed for gain that was tabooed; in practical life the Roman office nobility was just as possessed of the auri sacra fames as any other class in history. Rather, it was any rational, continuously organized, and in this sense specifically ‘bourgeois’ form of acquisitive operation, any systematic activity, that was looked upon with disdain. 102

TWO DEVELOPMENTAL COURSES OUT OF THE HOUSEHOLD In Economy and Society Weber has provided the basis for a summary to our discussion


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thus far by outlining two hypothetical sequences of historical development both of which are relevant to the interpretation of the ancient estate: (i) the disintegration of the household by the enterprise, and (ii) the evolution of the household into an oikos. We shall first consider (i) the developmental tendency whereby the oikos undergoes a process of ‘internal differentiation’ which if carried far enough results in the disintegration of the original large household and the establishment of a capitalist enterprise. The transition from household to enterprise As this is not the place to embark on an extended discussion of the history of the family, we shall begin by simply noting that, while the household unit is by no means the fixed basis upon which all other social institutions have been built up, it has been nonetheless most typical of early societies. Speaking very generally, a long-term historical trend can be observed in which the original communistic household grouping is gradually broken down, and its functions of protection and juridical administration are taken over by political authorities. This tendency towards the disintegration of the household is partly attenuated, however, wherever the size of the property holdings is large. This is because the greater the economic assets of the family, the greater the pressure to keep the unit intact. Not only are there difficulties in partitioning large holdings arising from the loss of technical integration; in addition, large property holdings are commonly valued as a means of maintaining social position and prestige. Thus, we find in the typical patrician families a close association between the large scale of property holdings (extensive and numerous estates, or manors) and the aristocratic lifestyle of the seigneurial household (a castle or villa with numerous apartments, large rooms, extensive grounds, domestic servants, entertainments etc.). On the other hand, a tendency to splitting and towards the establishment of an enterprise makes itself felt especially wherever urban development and monetarization of the economy have advanced. Weber takes as a classic instance of this process of differentiation the case of the early capitalistic households of Florence in the mediaeval period. At the stage when the first signs of this transformation were appearing, every person in the household had his own account. He has pocket money at his disposal. Specific limits are set to certain expenditures—for example, if he invites a visitor for a stay. The member must settle his account in the same way as do partners in any modern trading company. He has capital shares ‘in’ the house and [separate ‘outside’] wealth which the house controls and for which it pays him interest, but which is not regarded as working capital proper and therefore does not share in the profit. Thus a rational association takes the place of the ‘natural’ participation in the household’s social action with its advantages and obligations. The individual is born into the household, but even as a child he is already a potential business partner of the rationally managed enterprise. 103 Weber goes on to explain how, from arrangements of this kind, continuous capitalistic acquisition gradually arises as a full-time profession carried on in operations and premises increasingly separated from the household:


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An autonomous rational association emerged out of the social action of the household, in such a way that the old identity of the household, workshop and office fell apart, which had been taken for granted in the undifferentiated household as well as the ancient oikos…. First, the household ceased to exist as a necessary basis of rational business association. Henceforth, the partner was not necessarily—or typically—a house member. Consequently, business assets had to be separated from the private property of partners. Similarly a distinction began to be made between the business employees and the domestic servants. Above all, the commercial debts had to be distinguished from the private debts of the partners, and joint responsibility had to be limited to the former, which were identified as such by being contracted under the ‘firm’, the business name. 104

It is clear that the process of internal transformation did not proceed this far in antiquity, though some elements of it are certainly attested. We have seen above the extent to which the patrician household of Roman times became engaged in business undertakings, despite status conventions to the contrary. Not only were accounts of various kinds routinely kept by estates and other business organizations, it was common for upper-class individuals to maintain personal accounts as well. But a number of factors prevented the full transformation of the household into a ‘rational association’ as the basis of continuous capitalist enterprise. Factors inhibiting the full separation of the household from the enterprise The nature of urban development in antiquity, for one thing, was in marked contrast to that of the Middle Ages in that the ancient city always remained closely linked to the countryside via the rural property interests of the urban patriciate. 105 Estate-seated and ensconced in the country, the original Latin nobles had taken up residence in the city in part to exploit the opportunities for trade and ‘occasional business’ that were offered there. 106 This meant, as Bücher explained, that the Roman patrician invariably maintained both an urban and a country residence. Insofar as these remained closely integrated, the one supplying the other, and with the units together oriented primarily to the master’s want satisfaction, there was little prospect that the rural estates could be transformed into a pure business enterprise, let alone the urban establishment. Even so, estates were partially transformed in this direction as a result of the growing commercialization of life. Especially when the property holdings of the Roman patriciate were extended to vast proportions at the beginning of the classical era, it became common for estate owners to be absentee landlords and for estates to be separated from households; it was then that the problems of ‘management’ that we find first articulated in Cato arose in consequence. A partial separation of the enterprise from the household is attested in Cato and Columella when they discuss the buying and selling of estates: it is noteworthy that they assume any property being considered for purchase will be an economically viable unit—a ‘going concern’ as it were—which can be freely traded in the market, at least in part on the basis of sheer profit-worthiness. However, as Cato and Varro also both demonstrate by insisting in addition on aesthetic criteria, a healthful


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location etc., any new estate was simultaneously valued as an alternative or supplementary rural residence for the personal enjoyment of the aristocratic owner and his entourage; it was, in other words, always a place to dispose of further consumption funds. M.Jaczynowska offers confirmation of the above analysis in an account of economic differentiation amongst the nobility of the late Republic where she points out that the wealthier nobles, the group Cicero had mischievously defined as the piscinarii—i.e., those ‘fond of fish ponds’—who had largely become rich after the Sullan reaction from war booty and extortion in the provinces, were chiefly interested in the luxury of their possessions. I don’t think that the piscinarii had no profitable estates, like villas yielding produce for the market. It seems to me, however, that their interest in the piscinae, avaria etc. was greater than in those profitable possessions. Cicero, a man who was just gaining a fortune, desirous of equalling the nobiles, cared above all for the elegant arrangement of his villas and thought less about the income. He felt in all intensity an economic and social difference between himself and the powerful piscinarii. In contrast to that richest group the majority of the senators cared for the profits from the land, because it was for them the unique and comparatively safe and stable income indispensable to maintain their social position. 107 The separation of the household from the economic unit and the transformation of the latter into an enterprise was also made difficult under Roman conditions as a consequence of the patriarchal power of the father (patria potestas). As a general rule, according to Weber, ‘household authority is typically stable wherever ownership of livestock, and property in general, forms the prime economic basis’. 108 Under such conditions there is usually strong family and lineage cohesion. This was especially the case during Roman times where the preservation of the patrician household and its transmission intact to the heirs had been an abiding concern. What is more, the household in conjunction with the lineage group had been a factor functionally coordinated with Roman military and political arrangements: for kinship was for a long time the basis of recruitment into the army. A final factor mentioned by Weber as strengthening the position of the household and the patria potestas was the father’s position as house priest. The intensive and extensive development of the oikos The case of the disintegration of the household through exchange with the outside is contrasted by Weber with the reverse transition: the household’s internal evolution into an oikos. Here the original autarkic household develops both intensively and extensively and is transformed into a large authoritarian household. What distinguishes this from an ordinary household is the patriarchal or patrimonial power of the household head who by virtue of his position can command the loyalty and obedience of those under him whom he sets to work in various ways: the oikos is not simply any large household or one which produces on its own various products, agricultural or industrial; rather it is an authoritarian household of a


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prince, manorial lord or patrician. Its dominant motive is not capitalistic acquisition but the lord’s organized want satisfaction in kind. 109 The orientation to want satisfaction does not necessarily mean the absence of exchange, or that a natural economy exists without the use of money. Involvement of the oikos in trade, and even in limited profit making, is in fact quite frequent. The crucial disitinguishing feature of the oikos, however, is the focus on the rent-producing utilization of property (as against its deployment as capital). All this means, of course, that numerous transitional types between a pure oikos and a capitalist enterprise are possible, and, indeed, certain in-between forms have been historically very common. Weber expressly mentions the case where the oikos has various market-oriented enterprises attached to it; provided these remain secondary, ancillary activities, the essential feature of the oikos (the utilization of property for the satisfaction of the master’s wants) is not contradicted. If profit making becomes more extensive, however, a transition to capitalism proper may occur: under certain circumstances ‘the owner of an oikos may become almost indistinguishable, or wholly identical, with a capitalist entrepreneur, if he establishes large industrial undertakings with his own unfree labour or rented unfree or even free workers’. 110 As just suggested, the oikos rarely occurs purely in the form of a natural economy because then all exchange must be eliminated. But, where this condition is approached, a system of house-dependent labour can arise, which produces all the goods and services of whatever kind needed by the master. Such a regime may give rise to considerable specialization of labour: in the purest case the lord’s own land provides raw materials and his workshops all manufactured goods; other services are provided by various dependent workers, soldiers, religious officials and so on. In such a situation exchange occurs only out of absolute necessity, when certain goods cannot be acquired in any other way, or if a surplus is to be off-loaded: this state of affairs was approximated to a considerable extent by the royal economies of the Orient, especially of Egypt; and to a lesser degree by the households of the Homeric aristocrats and princes…. In the Roman empire the landed estates moved increasingly in this direction as they grew in size, the slave supply fell off and capitalist acquisition was curbed by bureaucracy and liturgy. 111

In the times of Republican and early imperial Rome it is clear the oikos was at some remove from this level of ‘purity’; the large estates we have seen were at times routinely and quite deeply implicated in market-oriented activities of various kinds. While the situation of the capitalist enterprise as we know it today was never reached or even approached, the estates of the Roman economy to a degree did practise profit making as a continuous activity which provided cash income. Weber points out that such profit making commonly involved the use of slaves who, even though attached to the household, were employed exclusively for the production of goods for market sale: ‘the Carthaginian, Sicilian and Roman plantation owners employed their barrack slaves in this fashion, as did the father of Demosthenes with the slaves in his two ergasteria …these are the cases of the capitalistic utilization of unfree labour’. 112


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But the crucial feature of this capitalism which must always be kept in mind is that in the last analysis it was dependent upon the traditional oikos oriented in essence to consumption, and thus its development was limited in scope. Rather than the emergence of a capitalist system (or mode of production to use Marx’s concept), developments had the opposite effect, of extending the realm of the oikos and maintaining traditional forms of economic activity on the basis of a decentralized patrimonial rule. In the Empire the attempt was eventually made to treat the institutions of government as well like a huge oikos belonging to the state and organized semi-bureaucratically. When this eventually failed in the west, there emerged the patrimonial structures of the Carolingian period in which the oikos-styled manor became central—this was the economic basis of feudalism.

3 ‘lndustrial production’ and the economic use of slave labour The reason why slave labour could play such an enormous role in ancient societies and why its usefulness and productivity were not discovered is that the ancient city-state was primarily a‘consumption centre’, unlike mediaeval cities which were chiefly production centres. The price for the elimination of life’s burdens from the shoulders of all citizens was enormous, and by no means consisted only in the violent injustice of forcing one part of humanity into the darkness and pain of necessity…. That the life of the rich loses in vitality, in closeness to the ‘good things’ of nature, what it gains in refinement, in sensitivity to the beautiful things in the world, has often been noted. The fact is that the human capacity for life in the world always implies an ability to transcend and to be alienated from the processes of life itself, while vitality and liveliness can be conserved only to the extent that men are willing to take the burden, the toil and trouble of life, upon themselves. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition

A similar set of questions to those discussed in the previous chapter concerning the possibility of capitalist agriculture can be raised concerning Roman industry. How developed was ancient production? Did the Romans significantly advance the rational use of technology in industrial settings? Was there capitalism in industry? For our purposes, however, these issues will be condensed into the basic question of whether factories, or something resembling such institutions, existed in antiquity. From the outset it is apparent that a crucial institution requiring detailed consideration is the ergasterion, because, at least superficially, it has some features in common with the factory of modern times. But also important and in need of assessment are the various arrangements in which slaves were set to work as craftsmen, shopkeepers and small dealers from whom rents were drawn. Furthermore, as with the estate where the role of the oikos is crucial, so too with industry we shall need to consider the issue of the separateness of the enterprise from the household. But first let us explore the existing literature on the topic.


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THE LITERATURE CONCERNING THE POSSIBLE EXISTENCE OF FACTORIES The ‘modernizing’ views of Oertel, Rostovtzeff and Frank On this question again we find a debate between modernizers and primitivists. The most extreme protagonists of the modernizing viewpoint, writers like Meyer, Oertel, Frank and Heichelheim, have drawn direct parallels between ancient and modern industry, as they did with agriculture. The ancients, they allege, were fully conversant with capitalist enterprise and the factory—not to mention the market system, consumer demand and even laissez-faire—the only differences being the scale of production, the level of technological development, and other factors of a purely quantitative nature. By contrast, the main alternative view insists nothing even remotely deserving the name ‘industry’ arose in antiquity. One of the most important protagonists of this view has undoubtedly been Johannes Hasebroek, who interestingly credits Weber with having been the first to develop a sound, i.e., anti-modernizing, perspective on ancient industry; but Marx, Finley, Hopkins, Ste Croix and others, despite significant differences between them, can also be said to belong in this camp. Let us first consider in detail the modernizing picture presented by Friedrich Oertel in the authoritative Cambridge Ancient History. In a section dealing with industry, trade and commerce during the Augustan era, Oertel characterizes economic life in these terms: Producers and exporters alike were thus able to base their calculations on a margin of profit, and could contemplate the mass production of certain articles. We find large-scale capitalistic concerns in the most varied branches: in the production alike of raw supplies and finished goods—in the pottery, metal, glass and paper industries, and perhaps also to some extent in textiles (though here we must also think of a domestic system with manufacturers), and in the provision trade; we find them engaged in the supply of articles for mass export, but also in mass production to satisfy local demand. A man of sufficient initiative living in a large town might even find the position of miller and baker, tanner and brickmaker a useful start toward the building up of an intensive wholesale business. The dimensions attained, on occasion, are very notable: we are told of works of many hundreds of employees; and the great farms producing oil, wine and fruit are, in the last instance, nothing but agricultural manufactories. 1 This, we suggest, is most instructive of the problems of anachronization, and a number of points call immediately for critical comment. First, the assumption that there were ‘largescale capitalistic concerns’ involved in such industries as pottery, metal works and so on is highly questionable, to say the least (we shall see shortly how the evidence on pottery works is by no means so straightforward). The problem with such activities is to place them in the proper theoretical perspective, and not simply to take it for granted that, if a large physical establishment is attested, this means factory-style production, capitalism and all the accompanying features. As regards other areas of production, in our view the

'Industrial production' and the economic use of the slave labour

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evidence is even more scanty and certainly does not warrant the claim of Oertel that capitalist production took place ‘in the most varied branches’. Besides, even if we concede that some sort of private enterprise existed, Oertel’s account of the characteristic economic arrangements is still misleading: especially questionable is his description of the ethos and tempo of economic life which suffers very badly from the effects of anachronization. It needs to be pointed out yet again that here utterly modern assumptions about free enterprise, mass production, the business firm, profit maximization, a consumer-goods market etc. have been uncritically projected back onto Roman conditions, and thus Oertel renders entirely unproblematic many of the very issues which ought to be the focus of research. A further issue which requires comment is Oertel’s distinction between a ‘domestic system of manufacturers’ and ‘manufactory’: by the first concept he means what is usually referred to as the putting-out system or domestic industry (where a capitalist ‘finances and controls the production of outworkers and disposes of their products’); 2 while the term manufactory is used more or less as Marx used it to refer to an institution less developed than the modern factory (‘a workshop in which division and re-assembling of work is much less advanced, where skilled craftsmanship is much more markedly preserved and often only grouped together’). 3 According to Oertel, not only did antiquity know the domestic system, but the most advanced sections of industry even reached the stage of manufactory, though not full capitalism; thus, in the pottery industry, for instance, ‘the concentration of many workers under one management naturally brought together with it a certain degree of specialization of labour…the process of modelling, throwing, firing, and painting were assigned to different craftsmen’; 4 so the ancients were allegedly capable of producing ‘genuine articles of mass consumption’. 5 Apart from the proviso that the mechanized factory stage was never reached, Oertel assumes a system of production oriented to consumer demand more or less along the lines of the modern market; he even speaks, without qualification, of the ‘bourgeoisie’ and the principles of ‘laissez-faire’. In the final analysis the ancient economy is to be distinguished from modern capitalism only as regards the scale and sophistication of production. Similar perspectives can be found advanced in the works of other commentators. Consider the picture presented by Tenny Frank, the editor and an author of the large collective work An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome. He too is quite certain that actual factories existed, though he concedes they were not as significant then as they are today, being confined to a few areas of production: It may be said at once that in general the Roman producer was much nearer the consumer than he is today, that the handicraftsman who sold in his small artisan-shop the product of his own labour was the typical maker and merchant and that a full-fledged factory system of production emerged only in certain favorable circumstances. 6 The usual illustration of large-scale enterprise cited by advocates of the view that something equivalent to or approaching the factory came into being is the production of the famous red-glazed pottery ‘Arretine ware’, so named because of the main city of its


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manufacture Arretium. As is known, Rostovtzeff made much of this, speaking of ‘big industrial concerns’ and ‘large-scale production in big factories’. 7 On the basis of assessments of the archaeological remains of these pottery works and taking into account the distribution of pottery fragments scattered throughout the Mediterranean region, he constructs an account of the pattern of Roman industrial growth in general, going on to develop a theory of the rise and fall of Roman civilization in which the fate of the industrial economy plays a central role. From a period of industrial progress and general economic prosperity in the high Republic (typified by the mass production of highquality Arretine ware), an era of stagnation and decline is alleged to have set in coinciding with the spread of Roman culture to the provinces. The origin of this decline is traced to developments occurring outside Italy, specifically to what Rostovtzeff refers to as the ‘industrialization of the provinces’ which caused production in Italy to stagnate, as the Arretine establishments could no longer compete with cheaper local (i.e., provincial) production. 8 Paradoxically, the process of degeneration was a consequence of the trend towards ‘capitalistic mass production’ (in the provinces)—by contrast with the modern situation where the spread of capitalist methods strengthens the viability of the market system on a world-wide scale. Rostovtzeff does not really explain why, once established, capitalist industry did not continue to develop and expand; nor can he explain why it did not even go beyond the scale and efficiency achieved by the corresponding enterprises known from earlier Hellenistic times. He merely tells us that an insurmountable problem arose because of the inability of the bourgeoisie to survive the process of economic decentralization which occurred as a consequence of industrial growth and imperial expansion. The trends in the pottery industry are thus symptomatic of a general cultural crisis that beset Roman affairs during the middle period of the Empire: at the same time as industrial activity was becoming decentralized, the goods produced were gradually simplified and standardized, whether they were produced in large factories or in small shops. The sense of beauty which had been dominant in the industry of the Hellenistic period, and still prevailed in the first century AD, gradually died out. No new forms were created, no new mental principles were introduced. The same sterility reigned in the domain of technique…. The beautiful Arretine bowls and jugs are full of charm, the terra sigillata [intricately adorned earthenware] of the first century is a marvel of technical skill and is still pretty, while the similar pottery of the second century is flat and dull and repeats the same motives. 9 As Rostovtzeff’s general outlook on the fate of Roman civilization has already been extensively criticized,10 here we shall only refer briefly to the response of Moses Finley who describes Rostovtzeff’s theory as ‘an anachronistic burlesque of the affluent society’. Contrary to Rostovtzeff, the real significance of the Arretine pottery industries was merely that a few minor trades over-reached the market, some hundreds of craftsmen in the western Empire in a few cities were displaced by some hundreds in a few other cities, and nothing else. There was no bourgeoisie to begin with, and the


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imperial society was oblivious to, and unharmed by, the displacements.11 Tenny Frank’s account of the pottery industry in the main develops ideas also put forward by Rostovtzeff, but adds some interesting evidence. From the size of some of the industrial works that have been uncovered by archaeologists, Frank insists that the factory form of production must have existed at least in a few instances.12 The scale of production is further indicated by the number of workers evidently employed in some establishments (forty names are associated with an enterprise owned by one Cornelius), as well as by archaeological finds such as a mixing vat at one pottery with a capacity of 10,000 gallons. In addition, Frank alleges the ware of some ‘firms’ was to be found throughout the Mediterranean basin (the ‘world market’ of the time); he claims a group of firms from just three districts (including Arretium) was so geared up that it satisfied almost all the ‘demand’ for moderately good table ware during one key period. He even posits the existence of ‘branch factories’ (in Gaul and elsewhere) as a consequence of the expansion of the industry (now operating with the techniques of ‘mass production’) and the subsequent requirement to cut freight costs. Despite its superficial plausibility, however, this account rests on a largely speculative basis. Unfortunately, Frank, like Rostovtzeff, does not recognize that his ‘evidence’ is perfectly consistent with economic arrangements of a much less sophisticated kind: for example, the forty workers associated with the ‘factory’ of Cornelius are not known to have been contemporaneous, so it is quite possible that this ‘large enterprise of forty men’ was at any one time manned by as little as ten or even fewer workers. As for the organization of the enterprise, virtually nothing is known about it directly: there is no hard evidence as to the extent of the division of labour, about who owned or controlled the tools, raw materials, plant etc., nor is there any sure indication as regards the commercial side (management procedure, marketing, sales, transport and the like). Thus, in conclusion we must reply that there is plainly insufficient justification for a claim such as the following: ‘In this industry, then, we find the machinery of an extensive factory production of articles intended for wide distribution.’13 Of course, the idea of factory production is potentially misleading because it has connotations that lead us to assume much more than has been actually established by empirical research. With such a notion we are led to assume the presence of phenomena such as a developed market system with production responsive to consumer demand, large permanent establishments solely concerned with such production, the deployment of machines in combination with a specialized work force, and a driving concern on the part of enterprise owners to increase productivity, to lower costs and to maximize profits— but, it is precisely these accompanying features of a factory system for which there is virtually no direct evidence whatever. Frank mentions some other ‘commodities’ that in his view provide further testimony for the existence of large-scale production and therefore of an industrial-type system: the production of clay lamps (‘millions of which must have been manufactured every year and sold for a very few cents a piece’),14 the glass industry (‘lt is likely that there were very large factories in Egypt’),15 and brick-making (‘another which tended toward factory and monopolistic methods at home’).16 As proof of a genuine factory system, however, these examples are even less convincing than the corresponding case concerning pottery


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(though we concede the question of the scale of production Frank alludes to needs to be addressed by any theory which purports to explain the known facts). The ‘primitivist’ position of Hasebroek Turning to the opposite, ‘primitivist’ standpoint, we shall begin with what is probably the most developed account, that of the German scholar Johannes Hasebroek. It is frustrating from the point of view of our present concerns, however, that this writer is fundamentally concerned with the Greek economy, and thus the relevance of his work to the Roman situation is necessarily limited. There is a considerable body of ancient literary evidence about Greek conditions, whereas, unfortunately, much less is known directly of the corresponding Roman institutions. But let us briefly survey the evidence assembled by Hasebroek. An establishment about which there is good evidence is an ergasterion belonging to one Cephalus, an Athenian metic. While this has been described in a recent work as a ‘shield factory’ involving 120 slaves and containing at one stage of its operation some 700 shields as ‘stock in hand’,17 Hasebroek’s earlier characterization is in our view still to be preferred because it is based on a more critical analysis of the literary evidence. Hasebroek writes: In the speech against Eratosthenes Lysias at one point says that the commissioners of the Thirty Tyrants ‘broke into the workshop and commandeered the slaves’; and later on he mentions among his and his brother’s possessions which were confiscated by the Thirty, ‘seven hundred shields and a hundred and twenty slaves’. From these two passages it is commonly argued that the workshop of Lysias and Polemarchus [the sons of Cephalus who eventually took over the workshop] must have given employment to a hundred and twenty people. But Bücher has rightly resisted this conclusion. As he points out, we are nowhere told that the slaves who are confiscated were all employed in the workshop; and it is on the face of it far more likely that they included (for instance) the domestic staff and personal servants of Lysias himself, his brother, and his wife.18 Despite his refusal of the idea that genuine factories existed, according to Hasebroek the speech of Lysias nonetheless testifies to the existence of a ‘genuine workshop for the production of shields’; and besides, there is ample additional evidence for the existence of medium-sized establishments oriented to industrial production of various kinds. For example, there were two institutions owned by the father of Demosthenes: one was an establishment for making bedsteads which apparently employed twenty men, the other was a sword (knife) workshop with thirty-two men. It is probable, however, that these were atypical, for Demosthenes speaks of them as though they were unusually large. Thus, Hasebroek concludes, ‘the ordinary manufacturing establishment…contained no more than perhaps ten or fifteen workers’;19 it did not employ capitalistic methods, production always remaining essentially craftlike and hardly even deserving the description ‘industry’. The underlying rationale of these enterprises, it would seem, was really only the desire to capitalize on a stock of articles acquired through trade. For an


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importer of raw materials like Demosthenes was primarily concerned with selling goods on consignment; only a small proportion of the items handled in his workshop was actually worked on by his own craftsmen. It is therefore likely that the fortune left by Demosthenes senior was composed of precious metals and other things of value, more a hoard than a fund of capital assets.20 But were all such ergasteria owned by merchants and operated in this way? Or is it possible there were workshops more fully oriented to market production and run by entrepreneurs along quasi-capitalist lines? In Hasebroek’s view there is no evidence for the second of these propositions: ‘Rich manufacturers like Pasion, Comon, or Lysias might take no personal part in the running of their establishments’;21 or, if the owner of a workshop was occasionally involved in the day-to-day activities of business, it was merely as a craftsman working alongside others who were slaves, the latter either working at the same tasks as the master or assisting him in various ways. There is no question, in his view, that a wealthy man owning a large number of slaves could have deployed them in a factory-style division of labour. In the case of ancient Greece there were really only two possibilities: either one’s slaves were rented out as hired labourers (for example, for work in mines), or they worked at crafts more or less independently and paid the master a fixed proportion of their earnings: We hear of wealthy men owning several hundred slaves—Philemonides owned three hundred, Hipponicus six hundred, Nicias, and Mnason of Phocis each a thousand—but there is not the slightest suggestion in our sources that they were employed in the large scale production of manufactured goods. On the contrary, we know that Philemonides, Hipponicus and Nicias hired their slaves out to various private people for work in the silver mines, and lived as rentiers on the income thus yielded them.22 In the case of the second possibility (where slaves worked independently paying a proportion of their earnings to their owner as rent), the amount the individual (hegemon) paid his master was termed apophora. Importantly, however, this arrangement between a rent-paying slave and his master did not lead to the establishment of a master-journeyman relationship: the evidence of one case, work on fluting the columns of the Erechtheion, indicates that even foremen could be slaves and that some of the ordinary workers were free, so clearly these arrangements had nothing to do with any ‘feudalizing’ tendency.

FURTHER EVIDENCE CONCERNING SCALE OF PRODUCTION, DIVISION OF LABOUR AND THE NATURE OF MANUFACTURING ESTABLISHMENTS In returning to Roman industry we shall now ask whether Hasebroek’s account of the Greek ergasterion is valid as a characterization of Roman industry. One of the most detailed analyses of ancient industry which pays close attention to the empirical evidence is H.Loane’s survey of Roman industry between 50 BC and 200 AD. This writer is very cautious on the issue of the scale and sophistication of ancient production, and adopts


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what can only be described as a moderate view. Loane’s arguments for the small scale of ancient production Loane is particularly concerned to take issue with Rostovtzeff on the question of mass production and the idea of a consumer society. As a plank in his general theory of the progressive development of industry and the pivotal role of the ancient bourgeoisie, Rostovtzeff had claimed that changes in domestic architecture typified by the large tenement houses found in Ostia or just appearing in Pompeii at the time of its destruction indicate that significant developments were also occurring in the mode of industrial life.23 Whereas the earlier atrium house typical of old Pompeii was suited only to the development of the small artisan and his retail-sales shop, the large high-rise insulae of Rome and Ostia imply ‘large group manufactories’. But for Loane all this is rather fanciful, and she argues Rostovtzeff’s theory really amounts to no more than an architectural classification; the real connection between different dwellings and the methods of work remains utterly unexplained. Besides, there are more reliable indicators of the scale and organization of industry. In Loane’s view, it is virtually certain that the inhabitants of Rome and large cities like Pompeii acquired most of their goods ‘made to order’ from local artisans. These would have worked from small booths or shop stalls rather than in large factory-like establishments. As evidence for this she points to the archaeological remains of marketplaces where small shops were the norm; and in addition there is the very large number of independent craftsmen whose names are preserved on tombstones. Loane admits that the evidence of tombstones alone does not conclusively disprove the existence of factories employing slaves, for the names of slaves rarely survive. But had such factories existed, she maintains, the competition would surely have ruined the independent artisans in those trades; yet artisans thrived in virtually every field of industry. Furthermore, the records of over forty ‘guilds’ (collegia) of professional craftsmen have been discovered (and these are likely to be only a fraction of the total). Finally, Loane notes the large number of streets and districts in Rome bearing the name of a craft (for example: Glass Street, Harness-Maker’s Street etc.). She thus concludes: ‘the small shop system existed and probably prevailed at Rome’.24 Despite these general conclusions, in Loane’s view a few large-scale enterprises are nonetheless attested. The remains of a very large bakery (950 square metres in area) has been found at Ostia, and calculations suggest an output of approximately 1,800 loaves a day; and there is literary evidence which suggests bakeries three times as large. In addition, a relief exists in Rome which shows the various stages of work in the bakery of one Eurysaces. According to Loane, the relief depicts the following processes: the cleaning and sieving of grain, grinding by horses, rolling, baking and delivery. Interestingly, in the portrayal of the kneading process, eight men are shown working under an overseer, and a ‘kneading machine’ turned by a donkey is illustrated. While this seems to testify to operations of a more complex type than those of a single craftsman merely aided by an assistant or two, the question remains as to whether such enterprises were owned and operated by individuals we would want to call capitalists.25 Eurysaces seems to have been the proprietor of the bakery proudly depicted on this monument;


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however, it is noteworthy that the relief shows the loaves being delivered to magistrates, a fact which implies the close connection of the establishment with the state. Loane suggests that production in this case was probably oriented to the poor (plebs), state slaves or the army; whereas, paradoxically, the ordinary middle-class citizens would probably have been ‘self-sufficient’, baking in their own households. The enterprise of Eurysaces therefore was not geared to a mass market of the modern type, and Eurysaces was probably not a fully independent entrepreneur. Loane also discusses two occurrences of the term officina which she translates variously as ‘factory’ or ‘workshop’. The first instance occurs in a text of Vitruvius where there is a description of the workshops (officinae) at Rome responsible for the production of ‘Pompeian red’, a pigment (minium) used in painting and dyeing. The process apparently involved several stages: first, quicksilver was extracted from the ore (imported from Spain) by a drying process, then the dried ore was crushed and washed for the vermilion colour. But even if this enterprise can be classified as a large-scale factory, it is worthy of note that the whole operation, including mining, shipping and manufacture, was apparently controlled by a ‘publican society’ operating as a monopoly. According to Loane, this was a consequence of the mineral’s scarcity and the fact that it was used in ritualistic state worship and public celebrations; it is also likely that the product’s price was regulated by law. Loane’s other literary example is an establishment (officina) of a certain Fannius who according to Pliny produced high-quality paper by reprocessing low-grade Egyptian papyrus ‘by a very careful process of insertion, of rendering it much finer’.26 Nothing is known of the precise size of the establishment, but Loane suggests Pliny’s interest in it shows that, though important, it was probably atypical. Thus, again, we find no confirmation of privately owned factories operating in the context of a free market; in other words, there is no confirmation of capitalism as the normal mode of organization of the production of goods. Jones’s account of clothing manufacture In considering the scale and sophistication of industrial production, the manufacture of clothing is worth close consideration because this may be taken as a rough but sound indication of the extensiveness of the market for mass-produced goods. This is a reasonable presumption because, economically speaking, clothing constitutes a staple or ‘basic good’, possessing distinct advantages from the point of view of its being transformed into a genuine commodity, that is, a good capable of mass production; clothing is always in demand because everyone is a potential consumer, and thus largescale manufacture does not face the limitations that may exist for many luxury products. (Of course, as is well known, this industry, or certain sectors of it, played an absolutely crucial role in the early development of modern capitalism both in the Flemish and Florentine economies—wool and silk—as well as during the Industrial Revolution in England where mechanized textile production, especially of cotton-based materials, was very important.) According to A.H.M.Jones, in late Roman society a sizeable market for the production of clothes is attested by evidence such as the prices for a wide range of apparel set in the


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Edict of Diocletian. It included not only clothing for the well-to-do but also that ‘for the use of common people and slaves’ (it is likely, Jones suggests, that ‘even a poor man normally bought ready-made clothes’).27 The Edict implies the existence of a developed market for garments graded according to prices. Prices existed for tunics of many different qualities and types: first grade Scythopolitan sold at 7,000 denarii, whereas third-grade Alexandrian was 2,000 denarii, and military tunics were between 1,500 and 1,000 denarii. At the bottom of the scale were tunics of rough linen for commoners and slaves for around half the price of military tunics. On the production side, Jones surmises that a degree of concentration occurred because a number of cities became well-known for the quality of their garments. But only luxury garments were exported any distance owing to the high cost of transport. The location of the major weaving towns was probably determined by their proximity to sources of raw materials, though some high-grade wool may have been exported to distant weaving centres. The overall structure of the industry was, however, a decentralized one in which small-scale units producing exclusively to satisfy local demand predominated.28 One area in which something approaching factory-type production did arise was in the provisioning of the army in the time of Diocletian. By the late Empire, state-run establishments producing woollen garments (gynaecia) and linens (linyphia) were well established (a full list of them is known for the western Empire in the early fifth century). They not only produced clothing but most of the arms required by the imperial forces as well (the latter establishments, of which there were about forty, were called fabricae). Jones tells us the gynaecia and linyphia were managed by procuratores and manned by state slaves. During the Great Persecution we hear of Christians being made slaves of the treasury and enrolled in the linyphia and gynaecia, but by the middle of the fourth century the workers in the state factories had become hereditary groups. They are still called slaves (mancipia); the workers in each factory are styled familiae, the word used for slave households…. These factories were like the fabricae quite considerable establishments: the weavers both at Cyzicus and Caesarea were an important element in the population of the fourth century. We know very little of the way in which they were run, except that each weaving factory was expected to produce a fixed number of garments per year. The workers presumably received rations like the public slaves of the cursus publicus [the imperial post]. How they were provided with their raw materials is not clear. Flax and wool were levied in kind from Egyptian villages in the fourth century, and were presumably forwarded to the factories…[certain] laws suggest that in some towns the guilds of private weavers had to deliver to the local factory either yarn or fabrics for finishing. 29 Similar arrangements existed in the fabricae, only there the workers and workshops were completely integrated into the command structure of the army; that is, the workers were effectively regarded as soldiers, each factory being equated with a regiment and commanded by a tribune (praepositus). In determining the relationship of such enterprises to modern forms of industrial


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organization, it must first be noted that these so-called ‘factories’ were not oriented to profit making but concerned exclusively with satisfying the needs of the military forces in kind. Hence, workers in the fabricae were held jointly responsible for any financial default, the system of monetary accounting being used merely to prevent losses through theft or embezzlement and not to estimate profits.30 Apparently, each factory, and sometimes each worker, had to produce a specified number of items per month; for example, the barbaricarii (makers of bronze armour) had to make six helmets and decorate eight every thirty days. As regards questions of efficiency and productivity, it is of interest that Jones mentions how the rate of production at Constantinople was at one point ordered by the emperor to be speeded up to match that of Antioch, so presumably the idea of regulating productivity was not unknown. But equally certain is that there were severe limitations on economic rationality. First, we know that workers were remunerated in kind as part of a system of rationing, and were predominantly unfree. As was shown earlier, as a general rule the use of unfree labour severely restricts the level of economic rationality attainable, especially if the level of remuneration does not go beyond basic subsistence and if physical coercion is the mainstay of the incentive structure. This does not mean that skilled labour, even reaching quite high levels of proficiency, can never arise. But if this is the case the enterprise must still incur additional costs: for example, the training of workers must be undertaken at the expense of the enterprise (there being no labour market to supply them). Further costs arise inevitably in the selection of new workers because lazy or inefficient slaves cannot be dismissed for incompetence. In the clothing factories described above the slave-workers (mancipia) were arranged in slave households (familiae), which meant the enterprise in effect supported the family of the slave (a more expensive arrangement than if the slaves were unmarried and barracked); indeed, it would have been difficult not to employ all those who were the product of slave unions and were capable of work regardless of their competence, diligence, fitness, strength etc., in order to recoup at least part of the expense of their upkeep. A few adult slaves and probably some slave children may have been sold off if they were judged to be hopelessly unsuited, or if they had become redundant and alternative avenues of employment did not exist (e.g., leasing). But the hereditary basis of recruitment clearly reduced rational discretion and flexibility here as elsewhere. As we have already noted, the most significant general limitation on these enterprises, especially when compared to their modern counterparts, was that many of the costs of production were not capable of numerical expression in money terms and hence were not amenable to methodical accounting. On the possibility of the domestic system in antiquity If factories are thus ruled out, perhaps something resembling the putting-out system was at times approached. The woollen industry, for example, has been put forward as just such an instance. Tenny Frank claims that during the early Empire at Pompeii skilled fullers bought rough homespun fabric and turned it into a higher grade product for distribution to a wider market. For this purpose, ‘much skilled labour in carding, washing and dyeing would be needed’,31 and from the extent of the fulleries it must have been the


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fullers ‘who bought the rough homespun from the households, prepared the goods for a more exacting market, and organized the trade in the finished product’.32 Even if this description is approximately correct, however, it does not follow that the concept of the putting-out system is justified; for we need to know whether the stages of production were subsumed under a plan conceived and coordinated by some kind of entrepreneur, and whether the raw materials or partially worked-up goods were actually ‘put-out’ by this person—but none of this is established by the evidence.33 Besides, there is the additional objection which Loane has raised: while acknowledging that there is some indication of the fuller as clothier in Pompeii, she tells us that the evidence from Rome is definitely not corroborative of a putting-out system; though the fullers at Rome seem to have been of some significance, as evidenced by the fuller’s guild (conlegium aquae), they were ‘concerned chiefly with cleaning ab usu, or possibly with the finishing of cloth that had just left the loom; there is certainly no evidence that they were engaged in the distribution of the finished product’.34 Finally, in our survey of the evidence concerning the character of urban production in antiquity we shall briefly consider some more recent studies of particular ‘industries’ which are interesting for the indication they give of the scale of production that may have been reached. First, we shall consider the production of terracotta lamps. We shall be relying on the investigations of W.Harris in which the results of a large number of archaeological researches are brought together and an overview presented. Archaeological evidence concerning the production of terracotta lamps Study of the production of lamps is most useful for our purposes not only because like the production of clothing discussed above these items represent basic goods of everyday consumption but also because of the very large number of surviving lamps which have been collected and catalogued. The main interest of archaeological study has been the socalled ‘signed lamps’, that is, those lamps which bear markings on their bases like ‘Fortis’ which is one of the most common. These appear to have been mass produced with the use of moulds, and have come to be known as ‘Firmalampen’ because, as with the terra sigillata discussed above, they are thought to have been ‘factory produced’. Harris points out, however, that the term ‘Firmalampen’ is possibly confusing as many non-‘Firmalampen’, i.e., figured lamps or ‘Bildlampen’, also have marks. Nonetheless, the question which arises in either case is the same, namely, what can we learn from the archaeological evidence concerning the organization of this industry. According to Harris, the specific point at issue is this: Whereas one might expect that all simple terracotta lamps were made by small local enterprises which seldom exported them beyond the local town or village (and this was indeed part of the system), the enormous diffusion of certain makers’ names suggests strongly that something more complex was going on.35 The key problem in discovering what took place in lamp-making is thus to determine what the evidence in relation to distribution really tells us. The first Latin signed lamps date from the 20s BC, but it is not till the late first century AD that they become geographically widespread. Whilst around 40 percent of all lamps in most finds are


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signed, according to studies only 20 to 25 percent of these travelled any distance from their presumed place of manufacture. And whilst approximately 1,700 different names are recorded, a few names are very common, suggesting an oligopolistic concentration of producers. Harris outlines four different kinds of distribution, ranging from local only, through regional to interregional and international. What is most interesting, of course, is the extent of non-localized trade: for some names are distributed on both sides of the Mediterranean, including north and south Italy and Africa Proconsularis; others are found as widely dispersed as Mauritania, Spain, southern France, Sardinia and Germany. Interestingly, Harris’s account seems at first sight consistent with Rostovtzeff’s theory about the decline of the Italian economy in the second century AD: ‘the factory (or the shops) of Fortis in North Italy…at first almost monopolized the market in the second century, its products being [subsequently] replaced in the various provinces by local lamps of the same shape, which sometimes even reproduced the same trademark’.36 But Harris points out that the evidence no longer confirms Rostovtzeff’s theory: Italian production was not superior to that of other provinces (e.g., Pannonia). Besides, there is a difficulty in interpreting the evidence on this matter because it is by no means easy to determine where many of the lamps were originally manufactured, so we cannot tell the true scale of export and import for any given area. The likelihood is, however, that most lamps were produced close to their place of sale. The raw material and skill involved were so readily available that most parts of the Empire would have been relatively selfsufficient, and the high cost of land transport no doubt made trade uneconomical beyond short distances (a hundred miles is outside the limit in Harris’s view). But this leaves some possibilities still unexplored. For example, there is the evidence of a shipwreck in the Balearics which contained a hundred Bildlampen under the mark of C.Clodius; this implies a serious commercial consignment, such a number being unlikely to have been mere personal baggage. Another issue concerns the organization of the industry, especially the question of ‘branch factories’. Given that some of the signed lamps are clearly copies reproduced in places far from the original centre of manufacture, the possibility emerges that a branch of the original enterprise was set up to produce locally to minimize transport costs, though it is also very possible that illicit copies of well-regarded ‘brands’ were also made. The fact that some marks involve the addition of a letter—for example, ‘Fortis/I’, ‘Fortis/N’, ‘Fortis/A’—is suggestive of a branch network; however, the archaeological evidence cannot confirm this, and, according to Harris, we need to turn to our general sociological and legal knowledge of Roman society to ascertain the probable state of affairs: ‘In reality it was a common practice to set up branch businesses, mainly under the management of slaves and freedmen.’37 Harris goes on to sketch a picture of industrial decentralization in which institores were set up in charge of enterprises at centres far removed from the principal’s home base: ‘A branch business in the hands of an institor, unlike one which actually belonged to a freedman, had the advantage (from the proprietor’s point of view) that it did not pass by stages out of the owner’s hands with the progressive stages of economic emancipation that followed manumission.’38 And such a development fits well with the existence of the form of the ‘Firmalampen’ because these lamps were made in simple standard designs that semi-skilled craftsmen could easily produce.


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Carandini’s view of the significance of North African pottery A second recent study we shall consider is that by Andreas Carandini of the pottery industry of North Africa. Carandini’s work in many respects is complementary with that of Harris because the focus is the same (namely the archaeological evidence relating to items of everyday use), and similar conclusions are drawn. In general he argues that the evidence concerning Africa is strongly suggestive of a quite high level of commercialization of trade; at one point he even uses the expression ‘economic miracle’ (admittedly with inverted commas) to describe the scale of the changes which he believes are attested for the Flavian period. The Terra Sigillata Africa which is Carandini’s main concern was a pottery produced in workshops in Africa Proconsularis and Mauritania (though production was centred on Tunisia) between the first and seventh centuries AD. It was a ware of mainly fine quality covered with a reddish-orange glaze and decorated in various ways. Its distribution became very widespread in the Mediterranean basin and elsewhere largely as a result of sea trade. What is most interesting, however, is the fact that the production of oil—‘the coal of the classic period’—and other foodstuffs and their containers (amphorae) as well as the production of cooking wares became items of everyday consumption in places at some remove from where they were manufactured; in other words, the economy of Roman Africa was much more oriented to the market than has often been presumed—on this point Carandini makes the rhetorical remark, no doubt with Finley and the other primitivists in mind, that ‘there are still historians of the ancient economy who maintain that overseas trade in the Roman world was solely of luxury goods’.39 According to Carandini, the African products’ high quality enabled them to be established in local markets from whence they moved into the interprovincial market. Eventually, through standardization, these products gained ‘undisputed dominance of the western markets: in the first place the gigantic one of Rome, and so also of the other great urban centres, villas and farms’.40 Thus, Africa turned the tables on Italy, which means the so-called golden age of the Antonines was really a crisis for the heart of the Empire. Carandini paints a glowing picture of the Maghreb at this time, a tree-clad garden with olive trees to the horizon. Africa became the crucial supplier for much of the Empire, the great harbour at Carthage testifying to the fact that Africa had now become the focus of Mediterranean trade. All this means a radical break had occurred in the evolution of the ancient economy: from now on African culture and African individuals loomed much larger in the affairs of the Empire while the traditional Roman areas of the Italian peninsula declined in importance. The high point of African economic dominance was reached at the end of the third century when African works achieved their greatest diffusion through the Mediterranean. Not unlike Rostovtzeff, Carandini describes the assimilation and transcendence of imported knowledge and culture: now the decorations on African pottery ‘show for the first time a crude realism in their content and a fresh naturalism in their style…. To find a realism of comparable intensity within the European context, we have to await the art of the Renaissance.’41 Of the methods involved in producing the pottery under discussion, Carandini does not have a great deal to say. But he does suggest slavery was less important in Africa than


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elsewhere. Free peasants and craftsmen were likely to have been the main labour force, though slaves probably played a supporting role. What is clear, however, is that not only the slave-based system of classical Italy but also the non-slave system of Africa were capable of producing commodities on a large scale for export. While he cannot prove that methods changed radically to enable the African ‘boom’ to occur, Carandini nonetheless thinks there is good circumstantial evidence suggesting major changes such as better labour cooperation, more efficient administration, advances in technology, irrigation and urbanization.

WEBER ON THE ECONOMIC CHARACTER OF ANCIENT WORKSHOPS Throughout his work on ancient society Weber always insists that at no stage did antiquity achieve a level of industrial development in which the factory, or even any institution close to it, played a significant role. In The Agrarian Sociology, for example, he says there is ‘no evidence whatsoever for the existence in antiquity of factories even in the purely technical or operational sense of the term’.42 Indeed, Weber specifically lampoons the modernizing views of those who believe factories must have existed, say because of the scale of trade: the following footnote was probably aimed at Meyer: The remarkable thing about these ancient “factories” is that they could be “confiscated” (aphobos) or lost through dissipation (timerikos) to such a degree that they disappeared without leaving any physical trace. No modern factory could do that!’43 There were not even ‘centres of production deserving the name “factory” because of the size, continuity of operation, and technological sophistication (involving concentration of production in workshops, division and organization of labour, and use of fixed capital)’.44 Even on the very rare occasions when something approaching the factory might be said to have come into being, say in the state monopolies of Egypt or the later Roman Empire, this never became the normal form of production and was of only marginal economic significance. The nearest thing to a factory was the relatively small, unfree workshop of a patrician or merchant, the ergasterion (in what follows we shall follow Weber in using this Greek term, instead of the Roman expressions ergastulum and fabrica, as the generic concept). Weber tells us how ‘it was found on the estates of private owners or lords, in the Orient, in Greece (Demosthenes shops in Athens), in the Roman estate workshops’.45 In dealing with such cases, however, it is almost always a question of ‘subsidiary industries’ which are merely attached to institutions which are not themselves oriented to industrial production (for instance, the brick-making concerns often found on the latifundia). Such activities must be understood in the context of their appearance: for ‘all these concerns were dependent on plantations or tax administrations or an oikos; they were not genuine “factories”’.46 Probably the most difficult cases to consider are the ergasteria of some merchants (like that of Demosthenes mentioned earlier). Whilst such workshops may superficially have resembled the factory form of production, according to Weber they must be distinguished from it because of a crucial lacuna: they did not utilize a differentiated labour force but rather an undifferentiated group of slaves who worked


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under an overseer (such as Demosthenes’ slaves who simply worked on that part of his raw material, ivory, that was not sold to free artisans). In a similar fashion to that of Marx in Capital, Weber explains that the characteristic form of industry in antiquity meant that, from an economic point of view, the slaveowner was never really an entrepreneur but rather a rentier. This was because the work force and other resources were not used capitalistically for the sake of generating profits in a continuous market-oriented enterprise, but were instead a form of ‘wealth investment’ from which regular payments of rent were drawn. The former was all but impossible owing to the limitations placed on economic calculation resulting from variations in the market price of slaves and the high costs of maintaining them. Another factor limiting the orientation of slave-owners to profit making was the low level of consumer demand which meant an expanding market for industrially-produced goods could not emerge. As a general rule, the slaveowner of Antiquity was interested in rents from his property, not profits from business; he was a rentier not an entrepreneur…[for] the easiest way to achieve profits in Antiquity was not the creation of new methods to divide the production process in order to have larger, more disciplined, and better organized units of production. Slave labour was not suited for such a development either technically or ‘ethically’.47 The rational options of the slave-owner were thus restricted: for the sake of security, he generally chose to retain the possibility of dividing his property into the smallest possible units (individual craftsmen or hired labourers), thus avoiding the risk involved in single profit-making ventures of a large kind (such as those of the modern entrepreneur with his large investments in fixed capital).48 But even if the ergasterion must be radically distinguished from the factory, the question remains as to its precise relation to capitalism. In his later work, Weber usually considers the ergasterion as one among a number of historically common means of providing for the wants of individuals or organizations on a budgetary basis. In antiquity it was the oikos and the state which typically set up such institutions, the provisioning of needs often taking place directly in kind; and to man them obligations were frequently imposed on slaves, artisans and tradesmen to provide labour services. But in certain periods of antiquity the increased availability, and thus the cheapness, of slaves considerably broadened the scope for exploitation; it was no longer necessary to restrict the use of slaves to the satisfaction of budgetary needs in kind or to the generation of rent revenue. So, if the employment of slaves went beyond these activities, the question arises whether the ergasterion then reached the point at which it can be classified as genuinely capitalist. Though Weber notes that as a rule in antiquity ‘the tendency was to confine market sale to occasional instances’,49 on several occasions he refers to the use of unfree labour for ‘business purposes’.50 Furthermore, Weber also makes a distinction between a‘profitmaking establishment with bound labour’ and a ‘capitalist economic establishment’, a distinction which on the one hand is designed to emphasize that as a rule capitalism requires free labour, but which clearly allows the possibility of enterprises operating in


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industry with unfree labour (i.e., where the labour force is not freely alienable and transferable, where the lord too is bound (to the worker)). In the pure case this situation can hardly be considered capitalism, even if profit is the predominant goal of the lord, because, as Weber puts it, ‘capital accounting—and above all, estimates of cost—are lacking in principle, not merely practice’.51 But Weber goes on to argue that where unfree labour is readily exchangeable (as in the case where the use of slaves is widespread and organized slave markets exist), labour costs become calculable, at least in principle; and therefore under certain circumstances it may be admissible to speak of capitalist establishments. Thus, it is theoretically possible that the ancient ergasterion using slave labour and oriented to profit making may on occasion have approached the capitalist economic enterprise, though unquestionably only in a very rudimentary sense. Of course, if this were to have been the case, it would follow that the ancient ergasterion should be classified as a marginal or borderline case within a typology of possible capitalist economic forms. This conclusion is reinforced by Weber’s discussion of the possibility of commercial orientation on the part of the oikos where the interest in producing rent is pursued so vigorously that ‘in terms of the owner’s primary interest [the meaning of his activity] may become practically indistinguishable from, or outright identical with, entrepreneurial capitalism proper’.52 As an illustration of this phenomenon Weber again discusses the ergasterion: The father of Demosthenes, who descended from a family of Attic merchants, was an importer of ivory which he sold [to anyone desiring it, to any comer] and which was used as an inlay for knife handles, and, in addition, had to take over the ergasterion, that means, mostly the slaves, of a bankrupt cabinet-maker. He combined these holdings into both a cutlery and furniture ergasterion.53 Here it would seem we have a kind of incipient capitalism—but still nothing like the factory proper; nor, of course, anything like a fully developed ‘capitalist system’. It is instructive that Weber did not include the ancient ergasterion in his survey of premodern capitalism in the Introduction to The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism; though he did concede that the organization of unfree labour in antiquity underwent some rationalization.54 In his later work he is generally content to distinguish two types of ergasterion in antiquity, neither of which he regards as really capitalist: either the ergasterion was a part of a budgetary unit (which we have noted several times already was very common): or ‘the workshop might be used as a source of rent, part of the holdings of a private individual or of an organization, which latter might be a town, as was true of the ergasteria of the Pireaus’;55 but both are ‘fundamentally different from the modern factory or even its predecessors’.56 Summing up, Weber says the ergasteria known from Greece and Rome were less advanced than the various manufactories of premodern times, or the Russian workshops operating with slave labour, and in their economic ambiguity are ‘most closely comparable to the various types of mills found in the middle ages’.57


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SLAVERY AND THE PECULIUM IN THE ECONOMIC LIFE OF ROME No analysis of Roman economic history would be complete without some consideration of what we shall call, following Weber’s usage, the apophora system; closely related to this, we shall argue, were the arrangements associated with the so-called peculium. We shall argue in what follows that the importance of these phenomena has been in general much underrated, and that a full understanding of their economic function helps explain much about the nature of the ancient economy and about the institution of slavery in general.58 The apophora system The apophora system generally meant the involvement of a slave in a craft or trade which he conducted in a semi-independent fashion and to a certain degree along business lines even though, of course, he ultimately remained a servant of his master.59 While it is not confirmed by much direct evidence, it is likely that a very large proportion of slaves were employed under such arrangements. There is to start with the fact that such a system fits well with the craft nature of ancient production and the fact that a large number of slaves are known to have been trained in crafts. Furthermore, it is consistent with our findings above concerning the non-existence of the factory-style employment of slaves and the corresponding capitalist division of labour. The apophora system also explains much about the possible sources of wealth of the slave-owning classes, and in addition, as we shall see presently, it strongly suggests the vicarious involvement of the aristocracy in commercial dealings of various kinds. Finally, there is the fact that in Roman law we find an inordinate number of terms and a great variety of legal procedures specifically designed to facilitate quasi-commercial dealings of slaves with non-slaves and even of slaves with other slaves (generally, though not always, on behalf of their masters), and this can only mean such arrangements were extensive in scope and of considerable economic importance. Thus Weber says: ‘though by no means without exception, [the apophora system] tended to be the rule for Greek slaves; and in Rome this type of independent economic activity with a peculium or merx peculiaris and, naturally, payments to the owner, found reflection in the various legal institutions’.60 The legal and social structure of the peculium In order to understand how the apophora system worked in the social world of Roman times, we need first to discuss the institution known as the peculium. Essentially, the peculium was a fund which slave-owners permitted their slaves to hold, and, within certain limits, to deal with as if it were their own property. Arrangements involving the peculium arose between masters and their slaves in part as a consequence of the common practice of emancipation; for it was assumed that out of this fund and on the basis of a prior, though legally unenforceable, agreement with the master, a slave could save sufficient funds to eventually purchase his freedom. It is not, however, the multifaceted social function of the peculium that concerns us here; our interest is its possible economic


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functions. According to one of the greatest authorities on the Roman law of slavery, W.Buckland, so central was the institution of the peculium that any slave engaged in commerce had one ‘almost as a matter of course’.61 Although strictly in law the peculium remained the property of the master (patrimonium), it was nonetheless always kept separate from the latter and treated as if it belonged to the slave. As Buckland explains, a peculium is an aggregate of res peculiares, which belong to the master, and of which the slave is administrator…it might be of great value and of any form. It might include other slaves [vicarii], and the peculia of vicarii (even vicarii vicariorum), land, inheritances, obligations and so forth. The vicarius might indeed be more valuable than the principal slave. It might thus reach a very large amount.62 At first sight the peculium appears to be something of a contradiction, for it in some ways has the status of property yet this was strictly speaking an impossibility owing to the fact that in Roman law a slave could not enjoy possession because he was not a legal subject (slaves were technically pro nullis, i.e., nonentities).63 But the contradiction was overcome in practice by an intricate web of social procedures in combination with legal devices of various kinds. In the beginning the peculium was in all likelihood nothing other than an allowance for the slave’s own immediate needs plus a few savings, and a typical slave probably worked at a craft under the direct supervision of a master or his agent in arrangements basically patriarchal in character. By the time of the Empire, however, the peculium had become very different and much more sophisticated. Through it slaves were often able to take charge of considerable amounts of property and even capital, and were permitted to utilize such resources in businesslike activities enjoying a large measure of autonomy: a common form such practices took was that whereby a slave operated a small business more or less in his own right but from which rents were extracted by the master. The practice of allowing slaves to conduct business activities in this way obviously required the development of novel legal arrangements. For despite their unfreedom, it was gradually acknowledged that slaves possessed a limited kind of legal personality. Speaking of the imperial period, Buckland observes how ‘commercially the slave appears as quite distinct from his master, with whom he frequently enters into legal relations. We hear of a slave owning a slave in common with his master’.64 With time the peculium underwent modification. It ceased to refer solely to the slave’s immediate possessions and savings, and became a collective category, including not only physical things but obligations of various kinds. In its later form, the peculium meant ‘the whole “property” (de facto) of the slave, and thus has the character of a universitas…. [In some cases] the possibility of peculium in what may be called an ideal, or potential form, is material.’65 As already indicated, the arrangements between masters and slaves centring on the peculium initially arose in connection with manumission. Though it was granted ultimately at the master’s pleasure, manumission was normal if a certain term of service had been rendered, if an agreed sum of money had been paid, or some combination of


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both. Where manumission was connected with payment, clearly the slave had to be in a position to earn the required sums of money, so the peculium partly developed into a fund from which it was anticipated the slave would buy his freedom. What is more, at a certain stage it seems to have become understood that a slave could use a portion of these resources as personal savings to be spent in his own interests both while still a slave and to set himself up once freed. Thus, unless expressly reserved, upon manumission a slave took with him whatever remained of his peculium after the purchase of his freedom: normally, all that which had clearly been set aside by the master, all that which had been understood to be ‘for the use of the slave’. Everything else, such as those items used by the slave in his work (tools, clothing etc.), or money and assets managed by the slave (under an authority vested in him called administratio), reverted to the master. The economic functions of the peculium But all this leaves unclear the precise fate of any gains (profits?) made by the slave from his trading or craft activities. On the one hand, the master had the legal right to claim everything produced or earned by the slave by virtue of his ownership of the slave. On the other hand, it seems to have been the common practice for this right not to be exercised in full. This was probably not the result of humanitarian scruples, however, but stemmed from direct economic interest: to maximize the value of the slave as a source of revenue, the more prudent course was to take advantage of the slave’s own incentive: by encouraging him to work hard and conduct his business activities conscientiously, by offering him the opportunity of accumulating wealth in his own right, the slave could be induced to become a much more productive member of the household. As Keith Hopkins explains, ‘the slave’s desire to buy his freedom was the master’s protection against laziness and shoddy work…the master held out the carrot as well as the stick; the stick by itself, as the American experience showed, was ineffectual’.66 Thus, for those with skill, chattel slavery could in effect function as a kind of ‘medium-term labour contract’. It is pertinent to consider that probably over three-fifths of slaves were freed before they were thirty. Though there were numerous reasons why an individual slave could be freed (out of bonds of affection, contracts etc.), Hopkins seems correct in our view when he says: ‘in the final analysis, the liberation of so many slaves was acceptable to masters because it was profitable’.67 All this meant that some kind of ownership or quasi-ownership was needed for use by slaves, and so the peculium was adapted for the purpose. As Buckland explains, in its developed form the contents of the peculium could cover ‘not only what the master had given expressly, but also savings out of allowances, trading acquisitions, and the peculium of a vicarius, which itself may come from many sources.’68 These arrangements imply a passive role on the part of the slave-owner who is depicted as handing over much of the responsibility and initiative to the slave. Such an impression may be misleading, however, because we know it was common practice for a master to make express provision to increase the peculium of his slaves, again not from humanitarian concerns or motives of liberality but as a quasi-commercial kind of ‘investment’ in the slave as a source of revenue. There were two ways in which such an investment might have been recouped. An addition to the peculium might have been made on the understanding that it represented an increase in the ‘capital assets’ at the


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disposal of a slave operating a small business (say, as a craftsman or trader); this would have been contributed in the direct interest of increasing business profits and thus the returns to the master. Or, an increase in the peculium might have been offered as a general inducement to the slave to work harder and more diligently in his master’s service. In the first option the slave and his peculium are treated as if they constitute a kind of independent business enterprise, with the master as principal shareholder and the slave as manager (institor). In the second case, the arrangement between the master and the slave tends towards a patriarchal relationship where ties of loyalty are more important.69 The economic functions of the peculium can be imagined more clearly by further considering the relevant legal aspects. As already noted, legal arrangements existed which enabled slaves to participate with a considerable measure of autonomy in commercial activities, even though the legal fiction was maintained that a slave always acted on behalf of his master. For example, a slave was often expressly given authority (administratio) to take possessions on behalf of the master, even without the latter’s knowledge; in law this gave the master the same rights as if possession had been taken in person. The law was similar in the case of alienation. But it is of considerable interest that, when the slave was acting with property on behalf of his master, he was often regarded in law as acting with res peculiares and not with the patrimonium of the master. The existence of a peculium did not increase the slave’s power formally, for the voluntas of the dominus was still in principle always necessary; but as Buckland explains, ‘the expression of this voluntas might take the form of a grant of plena or libra administratio, which did away with the need for special authorization in each case’.70 What is more, ‘the gift of administratio might be expressly enlarged beyond its ordinary limits, or it might be expressly limited, and its extent, in any case, was a question of fact. Apart from such variations the general rule was that administratio was necessary for any alienation or pledge of property’.71 Buckland explains how the granting of administratio enabled the slave to assume the duties of his master on a very wide range of matters: for example, ‘it authorized payment of a debt of the peculium, with the effect of transferring the property, discharging the debt and so releasing any surety. Any alienation without, or in excess of, authority was void’.72 It is clear that such arrangements as these, if they were indeed widespread, would have greatly facilitated the practice of slaves conducting business dealings on behalf of, or in place of, their masters. The peculium and business arrangements between slaves and masters But the peculium had an economic significance beyond the mere convenience of the slave being able to act in these ways on behalf of his master. This is suggested by a legal action called the actio de peculio. Without going into the legal technicalities too far, we can say this meant that, if a suit were bought against a citizen with respect to the business transactions (negotia) of his slave, the plaintiff could claim only an amount up to the total value of the peculium and no more. In fact, as Buckland points out, the liability is in a sense not of the master but of the peculium. Though…the term peculium must have already had a legal meaning, there can be no doubt


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that the introduction of this action gave precision to the conception, since the liability is based on the existence and independence of the peculium.73 The degree of independence of the peculium and its importance in commercial dealings is further demonstrated by the actio tributoria which differed from the actio de peculio in that, unlike the latter, the master could not first deduct what was owing to himself before other creditors were paid.74 Buckland’s analysis is worth considering at some length: if a slave trades with the peculium or part of it to the knowledge of his dominus (though not necessarily with his consent), the dominus is liable so far as that part of the peculium will go, its proceeds and profits being included, the master having no right to deduct what is due to himself, but ranking as an ordinary creditor, the fund being distributed among the creditors pro rata…. [There is] a rule that any creditor…can call on the dominus to distribute the merces, according to the above-mentioned principle. The distribution is done by the master unless he prefers to hand over the fund as a whole, in which case the Praetor will appoint an arbiter to carry out the distribution…. It is essential that the slave have been engaged in trade. Though the word merx is used, the edict covers all kinds of business, handicrafts as well as dealings. But it must be a negotiatio, i.e., a continuous course of trading, something more than an isolated negotium. The trading must have been with the peculium or part of it; and the master must have known of the matter, though not necessarily of the individual transaction.75 There is a further aspect that warrants considering. In The Institutes of Justinian the two actions peculium and tributoria are directly compared, and, while the latter has the advantage from the plaintiff s point of view that the master has no priority in the payment of debts, there is also this disadvantage: the advantage of the action in respect of peculium is that in it the slave’s whole peculium is liable to his creditors, whereas in the action called tributoria only so much of it is liable as is invested in the trade or business; and this may only be a third, a fourth, or even a less fraction [sic] because the slave may have the rest invested in land or slaves or out on loan.76 Obviously the plaintiff had to choose the action which best suited his ends, though the liability of the master may have been difficult to establish in particular cases where the activity of a slave could be described as being actually on behalf of the master himself, primarily for his uses, or strictly under his instructions (if the latter, the plaintiff may have used the action called institoria or sued the master directly). From such an account of the legal constraints it is now possible to construct a more adequate picture of certain kinds of economic activity that must have been common under ancient conditions. A few points of background need to be restated. We have already seen how slavery was quite unsuited to a factory-style division of labour; and besides we know of the predominance of crafts and small-scale trading in ancient Rome and elsewhere. Furthermore, the direct involvement of the urban patriciate in commerce, or, more


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precisely, in entrepreneurial activities, was generally discouraged; yet we also know that various forms of commerce flourished in the city marketplaces, the forums and elsewhere. Finally, we know that slave-owning was a lucrative source of income not only for the latifundists and those engaged in mining and shipping but also in the urban industrial context. What we shall now suggest is that all these elements point to the importance of semi-autonomous business activities conducted on a wide scale by slaves, activities in which the peculium functions as a kind of investment fund. From the scope of the law relating to the economic applications of slavery and the degree of the systemization—a few elements are all we could present here—it must be assumed that the commercial significance of the peculium was considerable indeed. The apophora system was in all probability most extensive and an integral part of the Roman urban economy.77 One of the most significant features of this system from the economic point of view was that it enabled a master to engage in business activities yet he could do so vicariously. We have already indicated how the status etiquette of the urban patriciate made entrepreneurship unsavoury, but there are also structural reasons why it was not open to them. In classical Roman law it is noteworthy how the early jurists had been most reluctant to admit that an agent could serve as a means of producing direct contractual relations between a principal and a third party. To enable such arrangements, a contract of mandate was usually required which in effect gave rise to a sequence of intermediary contracts, a most awkward procedure compared to more recent contract law. The conseqences of this for business organization were many, but we shall mention only one here. The early limitation on the scope of purposive contracts made it extremely difficult to establish formal arrangements between individuals with the object of doing business or carrying out economic tasks; for a person simply could not be bound by legal obligations to perform specified services. Instead, the only way to gain some such reliability was to entrust the discharging of duties to loyal kinfolk or to one’s dependents, clients etc. But the law of manumission offered an alternative mechanism, and in some ways we can see that it formed the basis of a primitive kind of partnership and business administration. For by creating a series of relationships, based on the peculium, between oneself and one’s various client freedmen and slaves, an hierarchically controlled network of cooperation could be forged, and, unlike the oikos in its usual form, this organization could be oriented exclusively to business purposes. F.H.Lawson has reconstructed at some length an hypothetical case in which a Roman senator, Lucius Titius, entrusts a peculium of 5,000 denarii to his slave Stichus from Capua, and other amounts to other freedmen and slaves. He imagines the following arrangements for Stichus: Stichus (a) invested 2,000 in his home farm and stocked it with slaves, animals, implements and seeds: the slaves of course became fellow slaves with Stichus himself of Titius, but Titius would compel them to obey the orders of Stichus, so that they were for practical purposes Stichus’s slaves [i.e., vicarii]; (b) he placed his vicarius Antipholus in charge of a shop, to serve as a trading outlet for the farm; (c) he entrusted his vicarius with 2,000 with which to establish an inn in the neighbourhood: the 2,000 would constitute a sub-peculium, part of


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Stichus’s head peculium.78 Lawson goes on to outline a series of contractual arrangements into which Stichus might enter and explains that the consequences in law were suits made against any of those involved. He concludes by saying ‘the most remarkable feature of the system is that it shows the Romans able and willing to let a single person [i.e., free citizen with full rights] have a multiplicity of accounts; each responsible for its own debts.’79 A further feature suggested above was that the peculium allowed the master to operate his business to some degree with ‘limited liability’. H.Jolowicz explains how often a man would appoint his slave manager of a business, in which case he acquired the profits but became liable in full on contracts made in connection with the business. Otherwise, apart from authorization, he could not be sued on his slave’s contract for an amount greater than the peculium, i.e., the property which, though it remained legally the master’s, a slave was permitted to administer himself. As the master could appropriate any gains that accrued, he stood to profit without restriction, though his liability was limited.80 The use of the peculium type of slave employment can thus be said to have functioned in an analogous way to the protection afforded by the legal forms of incorporation typical of the modern company. To reduce the risks of commerce, the master’s private wealth was separated off from the working capital of the business concern, thus safeguarding the former from the irresponsibility or maliciousness of an unkind slave, or simply from the misfortune of business failure.81 Buckland points out that it was precisely this business function of the peculium which made it so important. ‘How’, he asks, ‘was a rich Roman to reconcile his desire to invest his money in commerce with his dislike himself to engage in trade?’ For, the Limited Liability Company did not yet exist. Large partnerships, e.g., for contracts with the state, did exist, and it is quite clear that many partners in such concerns contributed nothing but capital. But these covered only part of the ground. The free procurator was a later development. Agency was hardly developed at all, and there were dangers in the unlimited liability involved in the appointment of an Institor, and even in becoming a sleeping partner in an ordinary firm. The fact that acquisitions by slaves went to their masters was a beginning for practical agency by slaves. On the other hand, the traditional untrustworthiness of slaves…made it impossible to enable them to bind their masters…. The institution of the peculium and the actio de peculio exactly met the need. It was an agency with limited liability, since the master would not be liable beyond the peculium, even if he knew of the trading.82 From the above it follows that any agreement for the master to share profits with his slave or to promise an early manumission would have given the slave every incentive to work diligently and to pursue commercial success with ardour. And the slave was not restricted in the practice of industrial and mercantile activity by status conventions in the same way as his master. There were two main possibilities of commercial employment. If a slave


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was skilled and capable of self-employment in a trade or craft, the master may have been content to set him up and collect a fixed rent, and the slave pocketed what was left over; here the master would have taken little or no direct interest in particular business dealings and the technical details of production. The other possibility was where a slave was placed in a situation in which the master kept a closer control on day-to-day business operations; such a slave was more akin to a manager (institor), so here the authority of administratio with delimited responsibility discussed earlier would have been relevant. An in-between case might be a profit-bearing venture such as that described by Plutarch between Cato and some of his slaves to acquire, train, and sell other slaves. Plutarch tells us how Cato ‘lent money to those of his slaves who wished to borrow, with which they bought also other young ones, whom, when they had taught and bred up as his charges, they would sell again at the year’s end; but some of them Cato would keep for himself, giving just as much for them as another had offered.’83 It appears that Cato increased the peculium of some of his slaves in the knowledge that they would invest the money in the purchase of other slaves whom they would then train and eventually sell at a profit. The profits must have been kept by the slave traders as part of their peculia, for otherwise, when Cato wished to keep some of the newly trained slaves for himself, he would not have had to pay for them. The precise rationale of Cato’s entering into these deals with his slaves remains unclear, however; he may have charged interest on the loans, or perhaps he extracted higher rents to be paid by the slave owners from their profits.84 It is unlikely that he felt sufficiently rewarded merely by the supply of trained slaves afforded by the arrangement. On the organization of workshops using slave labour Finally, the above analysis of the economic significance of the peculium may help illuminate some aspects of the ergasterion of Roman times. Let us return to some production establishments already discussed above, the pottery works of Arretium. By Roman standards these were of a large scale, and for this reason, as was noted earlier, it is often claimed that something like a factory system must have prevailed. But if, as we have insisted, such a form of production is out of the question, is it nonetheless conceivable that a method of production based on the apophora system was in operation there (and, of course, in like institutions throughout the Roman economy)? In a discussion of the Arretine works W.L.Westermann tells us: Highly important for the management methods of these potteries and for the socio-economic situation of the slave artists is the discovery of Dragondorff that the slaves, in a number of instances, changed their masters as the potteries were sold by one owner to another. This is best seen in the case of the slave Pantagathus, whose signature is ligatured into an unmistakable monogram. He appears first as the slave Pantagathus, slave of the shop owner Rasinius. Later when Rasinius combined with G.Memmias in the ownership of the pottery works, the slave appears as Pantagathus Rasini Memmi, presumably being under the divided slave ownership of these two proprietors.85 From this and what we know of the peculium we can hypothesize the structure of these


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pottery enterprises as follows: either the slaves operated more or less as individual craftsmen (even though grouped together under the one roof), and were quite separate from their masters to whom they paid rent; or, if they were organized in workshops, there was a purely traditional division of tasks, the leading hand or overseer being himself a slave and possibly owning some of those working beneath him as part of his peculium. Even in the second case the payments to the master would more accurately be described as rent revenue rather than profit, though here the distinction between rents and profit is fluid; depending on the degree of entrepreneurial involvement of the master, especially as regards any interest in improving returns by increasing the level of investment or by altering its composition, it may be admissible to say that profit making was approached. It is particularly revealing to learn that the ownership of slaves was transferred whenever the potteries were exchanged. This suggests that the slaves themselves were the effective fixed capital of the enterprise. Elsewhere, Westermann tells us how the skill of some slaves was highly developed, in a fashion to be expected where craft-type methods of production prevail, and some slaves were apparently in such high demand that they passed through the hands of several owners or were even jointly owned.86 One might even speak of a market for skilled potters who, because of their ability and reputation, could command prices higher than normal (Columella seems to refer to just such a market for skilled slave labour when he discusses the desirability, and the expense, of a good vine-dresser). The above outline is consistent, what is more, with the fact that slaves very frequently went into business in their own right when freed. Of course, in most cases they would have continued in the same line of work, possibly employing other slaves, even those vicarii previously belonging to their peculia.87 Undoubtedly, the semi-independent employment of slaves in the apophora system would have prepared them remarkably well for economic survival in the period of their freedom, and the society of freedmen immortalized in Petronius’s classic description of the ex-slave Trimalchio supports such a view. There was clearly a very intimate connection between the economic system in which slavery played a central role and the later imperial conditions in which the freedman emerged as a significant social type, often possessing considerable wealth and, like the metics in Athens and elsewhere, playing a dominant role in trade and urban industry.88 Garnsey has pointed out how freedmen commonly appear as partners (socii), often with their previous masters, so legal arrangements adapted to business activity had evidently evolved which continued the earlier cooperative arrangements of the peculium (which is all the more remarkable because partnership had originally only been possible between social equals). Garnsey even notes how a rule was eventually established such ‘that a partner might contribute operae [daily labour] rather than pecunia and nonetheless share profits (and sometimes not even losses). This reform must have given fresh encouragement to the formation of patron-freedman partnerships.’89 In Latin there exist many names for independent craftsmen, and the evidence confirms the existence of a considerable number of discrete occupations—according to Keith Hopkins there are 85 known occupations from Pompeii, 110 from Coryceus and 264 from Rome.90 Of course, the skills and work duties indicated ought not to be confused with our modern work specializations where the division of labour is rationally structured in accord with the functional requirements of capitalist industry (the modern situation gives


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rise to a vastly greater number of work specializations: according to Robert Dorfman, the present ‘U.S. government recognizes more than 15,000 trades, occupations and specialities and over 400 different manufacturing industries’91). Rather, ancient occupations were specialized in terms of the product, not the function; which is not to say that division and coordination of labour within the process of producing a single good (e.g., in pottery) was lacking altogether. A simple division probably existed between a master craftsman and his helpers, the latter being assigned menial tasks such as mixing or assisting in various ways.92 What is not conceivable, however, is a situation where some workers specialized, say, in throwing, others in baking, still others in painting, selling and so on—there is no evidence whatever for this kind of rationalized division.93 It is possible that a small degree of occupational specialization arose as a result of the arrangements for the ownership and operation of ovens. But this would hardly constitute even an elementary capitalist division of labour; it would be if anything the opposite, a specialization resulting from the communal (and perhaps monopolistic) ownership of a technical apparatus whose cost was beyond the means of individual producers. The above should not be taken as implying that the Arretine works and those at other centres were incapable of producing in relatively large quantities. Giuseppe Pucci says that ‘from La Giantesenque graffiti we learn that the average batch of vases from a South Gallic oven was 30,000. One text lists 166,000 items of the same shape.’94 That the scale of the pottery trade was impressive is also confirmed by marine-archaeological finds: in the shipwreck of Riou I, pottery seems to have been not the secondary but the main cargo. It is usually assumed that only decorated pottery was exported; but in some shipwrecks the main cargo apart from amphorae, was common ware…. [Thus] the statement that ancient long distance trade concerned only luxury goods is quite simply untrue.95 Nor should we assume that concentrations of workers in a single workshop or set of workshops did not occur (there were up to thirty in some according to Garnsey),96 or that large returns were not to be had. We have suggested already that workshops were routinely set up with the express purpose of augmenting the income of the wealthy classes. T.P.Wiseman tells us how two of the potteries at Arretium belonged to C.Vibienus and T.Rufrenus, who were of landowning senatorial families, and had been set up after the time of Caesar’s rise to power. Wiseman is in no doubt that these were quasi-business investments which show men of wealth involved in industrial activities of some scale; however, he confirms the establishments were basically ‘rent-producing investments’ when he says, ‘the expense of buying skilled potters meant that ownership of a pottery could only be the result of wealth, not the means of acquiring it’.97 These enterprises were therefore again merely an outlet for surplus consumption funds, in the manner of a shareholder today who merely looks for a reliable return on his savings, and were not genuine capitalist enterprises. Workshops were also probably owned by wealthy men of lesser standing, even freedmen. According to one recent study, the freedman N.Naevius Hilarus owned some sixteen slave potters at Puteoli.98 Garnsey suggests we need not assume patrons behind every wealthy freedman but connections were very frequent.


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EXCURSUS ON THE RATIONALITY OF ANCIENT TECHNOLOGY The issue of technological development in antiquity has been the subject of a number of recent studies.99 Here we can only touch on a few aspects of immediate relevance to the present argument. Our focus will be the relation of mechanically rational technology to economic calculation. With this in mind we shall first briefly discuss the general connections of the growth of science and technological innovation with market capitalism. One of the prerequisites for the spate of technical inventions occurring at the time of the Industrial Revolution and a precondition of technical innovation as a more or less regular feature of economic life is undoubtedly the existence of large-scale markets for everyday consumption goods. For only on the basis of a relatively assured demand for large quantities of standardized goods can a business enterprise afford to risk the sizeable outlays in fixed capital that are involved with the use of machines. Obviously, with competition the survival of each individual company comes to depend largely on its ability to keep its costs lower than those of immediate rivals, so there is a constant incentive to develop innovations in technique; because it becomes the conventional wisdom that the most efficacious means of reducing component costs is to substitute machinery and non-human forms of energy for (relatively) expensive labour. Such developments in the industrializing countries of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were intimately associated with the growth of science and liberal discourse, and these currents helped to bring forth a utilitarian, pragmatic outlook unfettered by mysticism and the fixity of traditional ways.100 Most important was the increasing tendency to apply the results of scientific research directly in industrial production, which not only led to the creation of new products but also evoked new needs. All this meant science itself was partly shaped, in its ideology, its methodology and experimental orientation, by its relation to the economy.101 But the decisive importance of rational technology for capitalism from the point of view of our present concerns lies in the opportunities it creates for increasing the calculability of the material production process. This is enhanced either through the actual displacement of the worker and the substitution of rationally designed and systematically controlled apparatuses, or by the routinization of the activity of labouring as such through mechanization (i.e., the development of disciplined routines, methodical application and functional competence). It follows that it is virtually impossible for a rational industrial system to emerge if the requisite technology is lacking. As regards the place and development of technology in the ancient world, it is obvious first that in antiquity the sphere of technical/scientific discourse was not as advanced as it has subsequently become.102 Hence, we shall not expect to see the ‘results’ of science being taken up and utilized by industry in the modern fashion. But we should not assume that certain technical knowledges did not undergo some rationalization in such a way as to enhance their practical application. There were notable advances in military technique, for example where developments in the theory of ballistics went hand in hand with the deployment of war machines like the catapult. Of course, the fact of progress in the military sphere is characteristic of the Roman situation; when we turn to industry proper


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we shall see the achievements were meagre indeed. One realm in which rational technique does appear to have been relatively developed was in building construction. Let us consider the extensive and extremely innovative use of the Roman arch which can be found in everything from doorways, triumphal monuments and aqueducts to the ceilings of basilicas. According to Henry Hodges, it ‘was essentially a brick arch reinforced with a heavy infill of concrete. The arch, once the concrete was set, was essentially a vast lintel and thus it exerted very little lateral pressure’.103 Vitruvius’s writings show the extent to which such principles of building design were capable of theoretical elaboration. Related to this was the general use of concrete, scaffolding etc.; many of the great monumental constructions of the classical era would not have been possible without them. For example, in the building of the Colosseum it has been shown by Giuseppe Cozzo that an extremely sophisticated process of construction was used. First the foundation piers were laid (on a former lake bed chosen because of its closeness to base rock) and then earth was filled in around them. After this the main structural piers in travertine blocks were laid creating an enormous weight owing to the fact that it reached 50 metres at the highest point. Contrary to the popular misconception that this structure was raised along earthen ramps which were only removed afterwards, Cozzo shows that a series of corbels protruding from the third tier must have been placed there to support a massive scaffolding which at the top was cantilevered above the structure below to allow work to proceed at different levels simultaneously (the vaulting, walling and finishing work involved the use of tufa blocks, brick concrete and stucco, as can still be seen in the ruin’s cross-sections), enabling the whole building to be constructed in a relatively short time: perhaps as little as six years for the main structure.104 At about this time new techniques in building using primarily concrete and cement facings had begun to emerge, some of which were used in the Colosseum. The passage from the use of what was known as opus incertum to opus reticulatum is the subject of a penetrating analysis by Filippo Coarelli, some details of which we shall cite at length: the development in technique was certainly not the result, as is often asserted, of aesthetic considerations,…nor can one think in terms of a technical improvement in the direction of greater strength…. A satisfactory explanation emerges if we bear in mind the important observation that the new technique is a Roman development…the change of technique is the result of needs which manifested themselves at Rome in the second half of the second century BC…. This is a period of population growth [which gave rise to] particularly intensive building activity in these years…the change of technique is to be explained in terms of a sort of ‘industrialization’ of building techniques…an industrialization perhaps more related to the upsurge in private building…. The introduction of cement work at the beginning of the second century or earlier and its progressive improvement during the years which followed were a functional reaction to the transformation [of Roman society and economy], in the sense that the pressure for quantity created by the new demands of society led to a qualitative change, to the use of more economical and expeditious techniques and at the same time to the use of a larger and less skilled work-force, which in


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turn made necessary technical modifications in methods of building. The use of opus reticulatum…can thus be explained in terms of the need to use more regular and standardized components, perhaps produced in the quarries, and by a work-force different from that which employed them on a building-project. With the change in the method of production goes a certain division of labour, which is in turn linked to the increase in the labour force, with the introduc tion of large numbers of slaves. 105 When we turn to the field of technology that relates directly to industrial production, the situation is far less impressive. As an illustration characteristic of the ancient situation, the ‘inventions’ of Hero of Alexandria are frequently cited. It is sometimes claimed Hero created a device that can be described as a primitive kind of ‘steam engine’. But a number of commentators have pointed out that this is rather misleading. To begin with, he can be credited strictly only with developing a very simple apparatus based on the idea of steam pressure and its conversion for producing mechanical movement; that is, the devices he constructed have virtually nothing in common with machines like those which Watt, Newcomen and others created in the modern era. It is therefore not surprising that the potential of such ‘inventions’ for displacing labour, improving productivity and so on— possibilities that we today would hardly fail to see—was not recognized. Besides, to speak of creating something like a steam engine in antiquity from these simple beginnings overlooks the enormous complexity of the real process of technical development even under modern conditions. For the so-called ‘invention’ of the steam engine by Watt and others depended on many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of separate advances that antiquity did not know—for example, the capacity to make steel of high quality from which cylinders could be honed capable of taking the continuous piston action of a pressure pump etc.106 Hero’s contraptions, or like apparatuses based on similar principles, were never made use of in industry for the very good reason that this would have been quite impossible under the circumstances. As G.Lloyd suggests, a more meaningful case to consider is the diffusion of the water wheel as a source of mechanical power. The Romans certainly knew of this machine and its possible applications because Vitruvius provides a brief description showing how a wheel’s movement can be harnessed to drive a grinding mill. What is of interest from our point of view, however, is that this device was for a long time not in common use. It was not until the mid-third century AD that there were signs of systematic exploitation: a mill at Barbegal near Arles apparently had a series of sixteen wheels, and calculations suggest an impressive capacity of twenty-eight tons per hour. One reason often suggested for the failure of the ancients to take advantage of such technical advances was the lack of suitable water supplies in the Mediterranean, but this is not very convincing for a city such as Rome with its many aqueducts and the Tiber. Lloyd compares the slowness with which the water mill was taken up with the relative speed with which the animal-driven Pompeian-type mill was adopted, but does not offer any specific explanation for the difference.107 But the following is suggested by our present thesis: it is clear that a water mill, being more complicated, requires the deployment of greater capital and expertise, and thus a longer time is needed for costs to be recouped; whereas the opposite is true of the


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Pompeian mill. Given that baking was a craft primarily in the hands of slaves or freedmen, we should expect their customary level of capitalization to mean that only relatively cheap innovations could be adopted. By contrast, those with capital, the patrician nobility, were not only not directly involved in industrial production but, as we have seen, generally disdained an interest in such practical matters for status reasons. The paucity of clear-cut inventions should not lead us to the conclusion that Rome’s contribution to productive technique was completely insignificant. A number of commentators have drawn perhaps too much on the analogy with the spectacular advances of the Industrial Revolution, concentrating their arguments on the issue of singular inventions and their immediate economic applications. But the economic impact of technological inventions often follows not as a direct result of dramatic breakthroughs but as a consequence of applications and adaptations which may come long after. G.Gunderson, in our view rightly, insists ‘the number of new inventions is an imperfect index of aggregate productivity increase, the most appropriate index of technological advance. Recent work …indicates that most gains in productivity occur within techniques in use rather than at the time of their introduction.’108 This is surely true in the field of agriculture where advances of this kind undoubtedly did occur. The writings of Cato, Varro, Columella and others testify to the considerable quantity of specialized knowledge that had been gained. Admittedly, much of this was compiled in a somewhat ad hoc fashion; some writers often provide little more than a catalogue or primitive taxonomy of traditional practices and ways which they believe have produced good results—Pliny’s writings are largely of this kind and he often merely lists methods actually in use, providing no explanation as to why they should be effective and little or no analysis of the principles involved.109 But compared to the simple traditional methods of ordinary peasant farming, the methods of Cato, Varro and Columella in our view represent a clear advance in the rationalization of technique. These writers are frequently concerned to justify the practices they recommend—such as field rotation, the growing of legumes, choice of crops, methods of viticulture etc.—through rational arguments. They even show some understanding of the experimental method, if only in a fairly pragmatic, rudimentary sense (consider Varro’s discussion of the optimal techniques for growing vines discussed above). Such ‘technological progress’ as we see here does not not depend upon technical inventions of a spectacular, mechanical kind, but shows what can result merely from the adoption of a novel approach: by systematically comparing the efficacy of a range of existing practices and selecting that which is optimal. There is one apparently unambiguous technical advance of a mechanical kind which is well attested and deserves scrutiny. From Pliny we know of a kind of ‘reaping machine’ which was actually in use in northern Gaul during the late imperial period.110 But while there seems to be no question that the machine was a genuine labour-saving device, there is uncertainty concerning the extent of its use, and therefore doubt as to its real economic meaning. Finley, for example, refuses to be impressed by the reaper, first because it appears to be the only invention of this type of any significance, and second because its use apparently took centuries to spread and even then it only appeared in a few places. Why, he asks, was it not employed much earlier in Italy or Africa, and why were other similar labour-saving machines not in evidence?111 But against Finley it needs to be said that, whilst this invention and its deployment may well have been of limited significance


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(especially when compared, say, to the more spectacular technical advances in farming in England in the eighteenth century), the fact is that the machine was invented and actually put to work. Besides, if comparisons are to be made, it is well to consider that it took until the mid-nineteenth century for a similar contraption to be reinvented—this time in Australia as the ‘Ridley’s stripper’.112 As to the complaint that other such machines are not in evidence, this is again not quite true. The flour mills discussed above were genuine labour-saving devices, as were the screw presses used for wine crushing, and the socalled Archimedian screw used for pumping out mines. It is misleading to speak of inherent barriers to technical progress in antiquity, for otherwise there would not have been those very real advances which we have just noted. While the development of the formal sciences was only in its infancy, thinking on technical matters was often quite systematic and not incapable of real breakthroughs. When the incentives were sufficient, as they were for military hardware and in building construction, the Romans were more than capable of substantial technical progress. The limited character of technical innovation in agriculture and the lesser achievements in industry can be understood partly as a result of inadequate scientific knowledge, but ultimately must be explained in terms of the wider economic conditions. Given the low penetration of the ancient economy by a mechanically rational technology, it follows that the possibility of developing genuine capitalistic enterprises was considerably reduced. In industry where the major variable affecting output was a craftsman’s skill and inclination to work, or in agriculture where the corresponding factor was the slave’s physical capacity for hard work, few opportunities existed for rationalizing the production process. Under such cireumstances it was all but impossible to separate the tasks of workers from those of management, to divide the tasks carried out by ordinary labour to achieve a functional specialization, and then to substitute mechanical contrivances.

4 The economic significance of ancient trade Aristotle contrasts economics with ‘chrematistics’. He starts with economics. So far as it is the art of acquisition, it is limited to procuring the articles necessary to existence and useful either to a household or to the state. ‘True wealth… consists of such use-values; for the amount which is needed for a good life is not unlimited…. There is, however, a second mode of acquiring things, to which we may by preference and with correctness give the name of chrematistics, and in this case there appear to be no limits to riches and property. Trade …does not in its nature belong to chrematistics, for here the exchange only has reference for (the buyer or the seller) themselves.’ Therefore, the original form of trade was barter, but with the extension of the latter there arose the necessity for money. With the discovery of money, barter of necessity developed into…trading in commodities, and this again, in contradiction with its original tendency, grew into chrematistics, the art of making money…riches, such as chrematistics strive for, are unlimited…. Economics, unlike chrematistics, has a limit…for the object of the former is something different from money, of the latter the augmentation of money. Karl Marx, Capital

In this section we shall complement our analysis of agriculture and industry by considering the character of trade. To a large extent this means we shall be discussing maritime trade, for in ancient Roman society a great proportion of trade was conducted by sea because of the high costs and technical difficulties of overland transport. Indeed, the maritime orientation of commerce was such a feature that the coastal character of the classic Mediterranean civilizations—especially the Greeks, the Carthaginians, the Etruscans, the Minoans and, of course, the Romans—can in large part be attributed to the importance of sea trade (of course, by no means all ancient civilizations were so affected: for instance, the ancient civilizations of Assyria, Egypt and Persia were not coastal, though as is well known with these transport and communication by river played a formative role). Our decision to focus on sea trade should not be taken to imply that land transport was of utterly no significance. As is well known, Roman roads were impressive structures, and though their rationale was primarily political and administrative (for military transport and postal communications), they were also used for general traffic. An important limitation here, however, was the Romans’ failure to develop the horse


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harness, so that paired oxen remained the main means of drawing carts, obviously a slow and cumbersome means by comparison with later developments. Keith Hopkins has provided price ratios of the different forms of transport which suggest that land costs were about sixty times more expensive per tonne/ kilometre than the corresponding sea costs.1 Obviously, this meant that sea and river trade were always preferred where possible. Nonetheless, as just suggested, road transport was of consequence economically. Hopkins points out how Arezzo is 100 kilometres from the sea and is not located on a navigable river; yet it exported a very large amount of pottery all over the Mediterranean.

BRIEF SURVEY OF THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF ROMAN SEA TRADE It has been conjectured that in the earliest period of Roman history it was common for wealthy landowners to use their own ships for the transport of their agricultural surpluses to urban markets.2 At this initial stage, however, as we shall argue in more detail shortly, it is perhaps misleading to speak of ‘trade’ as such, for we are really dealing merely with a form of transportation for economic purposes. The individuals involved in such trafficking, whether the shipowners or the operators of the ships, are strictly speaking not autonomous traders engaged in buying and selling activities for their own profit. Of course, eventually this traffic on the part of landowners transporting their produce developed beyond the function of surplus disposal. At some stage the larger landowners probably began to manipulate stocks of grain under their control, seeking to increase their returns either by delaying sale or by shipping to places where there were higher prices. Such a development is suggested by the fact of the Lex Claudia (218 BC) the ostensible intention of which was to prohibit members of the senatorial aristocracy from owning seagoing vessels of more than 300 amphorae capacity (225 bushels).3 The existence of such a law implies that senators were by this time already heavily engaged in trade as a form of profiteering;4 the speculative nature of their activities must have offended those sections of the population who were dependent on supplies from these sources (for similar reasons about the same time, it would seem, senators were also forbidden by law to bid for state contracts).5 Evidently, conflicts over the supply of staples like grain had become a major source of strife, and the state sought to limit the power of those in control of large stocks.6 In spite of such developments we should not overestimate the scale of shipping operations which became normal during the classical era. Our understanding of ancient sea trade is made difficult by the variety of economic roles commonly involved. According to Jones, it is always useful to distinguish between the shipper (navicularius), the captain (magister), and the merchant (mercator, negotiator), even though these roles were sometimes filled by the same individual. While some shipowners were large operators and would have owned numerous ships which they did not themselves captain, in general the small-scale merchant shipper who hawked his wares from port to port was the rule. Even in these cases, however, the shipper ‘rarely depended on his own capital exclusively, preferring to raise nautical loans, which would partially cover him against

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loss by storm’.7 On the basis of a wide survey of the evidence of the later Roman period, Jones concludes that, although operations were sometimes quite large, the scale of trade in general was not extensive, especially in comparison to income from land: ‘an ordinary merchant who owned a ship usually operated on credit, borrowing sums in the order of 51b of gold (360 solidi) to finance a voyage, and putting in the equivalent sum of his own. Others had a large reserve, and might still have 500 solidi in hand after loading a ship’8 (these sums are relatively small when the typical size of land-based fortunes is considered). (As an indication of the scale of Greek trade P.Millet has pointed to the fact that there is virtually no evidence of anyone owning more than one ship: There seems to have been no concept of ploughing back profits in order to increase the scale of operations. This explains the appearance of traders as lenders in maritime loans…they preferred to lend their spare cash on another trader’s voyage, rather than to use it to expand their own business.’)9

ON THE SOCIAL POSITION OF TRADERS In spite of the attempts at state regulation discussed above, the prohibition on sea trade was probably only partially effective—otherwise we must imagine the quite improbable scenario that the powerful political elite of Roman society, the senatorial patriciate, simply abandoned forever the lucrative opportunities offered by this form of trade. In this regard it is worth noting that a number of commentators seem to have taken the laws forbidding senatorial sea trade, along with the status conventions eschewing commercial activity by the nobility, too much at face value. Finley, for example, claims that for most of antiquity commercial activities, especially those of traders, were concentrated ‘in the hands of either men of low status or men like the wealthy metics of Athens, who were more respectable socially but outsiders politically’.10 Contrary to this primitivist view, however, there is a good deal of evidence to support the conclusion that senators were actively engaged in sea trade throughout Roman times, and through that avenue made sizeable profits. John D’Arms has argued that ‘it would seem implausible on general grounds that senators remained uninterested in exploiting the greatly expanded economic opportunities in the decades which followed the defeat of Hannibal’.11 D’Arms claims that during the early Principate a shift of economic focus away from the hinterland and towards sea ports like Puteoli, Ostia and Aquileia is attested: There is contemporary construction in Rome, attesting to the rapid growth of seaborne commerce, and to sophisticated arrangements for the hauling, storing and distribution of imports up the Tiber: a new complex consisting of a rebuilt port (emporium) and an immense connected storage place (porticus Aemilia) was begun in 192, systematically developed, and completed by 174 in the region south of the Aventine.12 Furthermore, there is evidence to show that various freedmen known to have been engaged in shipping became economically and politically powerful in these cities. Noting the fact that freedmen generally remained associated with their masters after


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manumission, D’Arms refers to cases where freedmen were actively pursuing seaborne commerce precisely at the time that their ‘patrons’ were acting as consuls in Rome, and thus ‘there is no escaping the inference that the money-making activities of the Roman elite were more extensive than a few members of that elite, our upper class authors, might lead us to believe’.13 The upper-class authors D’Arms has in mind here include writers such as Cicero who on occasion disparaged activities like sea trade (mercatura). But most tellingly, such ventures were expressly exempted from reprobation if they were conducted on sufficiently grand a scale. In his description of Cato’s business dealings Plutarch gives an idea of the kind of arrangements that were probably typical. In one passage he depicts Cato as quite brazenly engaged in that form of usury, which is considered most odious, in traffic by sea; and that thus:he desired that those whom he put out his money to should have many partners; when the number of them and their ships came to fifty, he himself took one share through Quintio his freedman, who therefore was to sail with the adventurers, and take a part in all their proceedings, so that thus there was no danger of losing his whole stock, but only a little part, and that with a prospect of great profit.14 This is especially interesting because it implies the existence of a maritime loan (the details of which will be discussed presently), though it is not clear from the text how the shares were to be divided, or what Cato’s actual investment came to; also, it seems a peculium-type arrangement may have been involved, for Plutarch says Cato took a share ‘through his freedmen’.15 W.Buckland informs us that the person receiving the profits of a ship (whether the owner or not), the exercitor, could either be free or a slave.16 In the actio exercitia a person could bring an action against the exercitor: if he was merely an agent (insistor), the master was completely liable; but, if a slave acting on the basis of a peculium was to be sued, liability was set by the amount of the latter. Such legal arrangements again show how readily men of property could participate in commerce vicariously through slaves or dependent agents. Thus, from Plutarch’s account above we can surmise that Quintio perhaps began his trading activities as a slave (with peculium), and when freed went into some kind of partnership or agency agreement with Cato; as it was common for manumitted slaves to become clients of their former masters, many would obviously have opted to maintain business arrangements along lines already established. For the sake of clarity, according to D’Arms, the role of mercator must be distinguished from that of negotiator, for while the activity of mercatura was routinely reproved and appears inconsistent with the possession of dignitas, the negotiator was, if not extolled, certainly compatible with high status. Thus, ‘the essential point is that negotiatores must normally have had multiple interests, and in port cities shipping and commercial commitments would have assumed an important place among them’.17 D’Arms goes on to suggest that the apparently contradictory attitude of some of the ancients to the respectability of sea trade can be explained as follows: those who had newly acquired wealth by means of trade, the equestrian businessmen or so-called ‘new


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men’, sought to ingratiate themselves with the established elite by espousing the traditional, non-commercial values of the patriciate, dissociating themselves from the very methods by which they had just risen. D’Arms has in mind a better known example of this stratagem, that of the modern era when the rising bourgeois classes (nouveaux riches) became the most zealous champions of the values of the established nobility, clearly in order to gain status and thus membership of the upper circles. But in our view D’Arms somewhat overstates the case. For we can agree that the negotiatores were a business group actively involved in a range of commercial ventures, without assuming they were always front men for the aristocracy; that is, they may have been an inherently bourgeois group. Peter Garnsey has pointed to evidence that confirms such a view: Firstly, the legal texts which relate to the use of slaves, freedmen, and kin relations by masters almost always leave the precise social status of the latter unclear. Secondly, most of the references in the epigraphical evidence to freedmen in business do not mention patrons at all. Thus, Garnsey suggests, many, perhaps most, negotiatores may have been independent. Besides, he goes on, if we must look for patrons and masters behind freedmen and slaves in business, there is no better place to start than with a middle-class of investors and commerçants consisting of relatively successful and well-off freedmen and their freeborn descendants, and aliens, and (an overlapping group) arriviste politicians and civic leaders from port cities where trade played a significant role in economic life.18 A somewhat different conclusion is suggested by H.W.Pleket with regard to Greek trade. He points out that there are hardly any instances known where a shipper (naukleros) reached the higher ranks of status and power. Common though it was for aristocrats to lend out money for nautical loans, it was only the lenders who got rich through it, and they always remained at a distance from direct involvement.19

THE ROLE OF FREEDMEN IN ROMAN TRADE: THE CASE OF TRIMALCHIO At this point it may be useful to discuss in detail some of the most interesting evidence concerning the nature of ancient trade, namely, Petronius’s Satyricon. In what follows we shall have to enter the controversy over the interpretation of this difficult text, but the text is so instructive of many aspects of social history that we cannot ignore what it might be able to tell us. Let us without further ado consider some relevant sections. One of the most famous passages is clearly paragraph 76 from the ‘Dinner with Trimalchio’ where we read the following account of how the ex-slave made his fortune: Well, as heaven will have it, I became boss of the house, and the old boy, you see, couldn’t think of anything but me. That’s about it—he made me co-heir with the Emperor and I got a senator’s fortune. But nobody gets enough never. I wanted to go into business. Not to make a long story of it, I built five ships, I loaded them with wine—it was absolute gold at the time—and I sent them to


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Rome. You’d have thought I ordered it—every single ship was wrecked. That’s fact not fable! In one single day Neptune swallowed up thirty million. Do you think I gave up? This loss honestly wasn’t more than a flea-bite to me—it was as if nothing had happened. I built more boats, bigger and better and luckier, so nobody could say I wasn’t a man of courage. You know, the greater the ship, the greater the confidence. I loaded them again—with wine, bacon, beans, perfume and slaves. At this point Fortunata did the decent thing, because she sold off all her gold trinkets, all her clothes, and put ten thousand in gold pieces in my hand. This was the yeast my fortune needed to rise. What heaven wants soon happens. In one voyage I carved out around ten million. I immediately bought back my master’s estates. I built a house, I invested in slaves, and I bought up the horse trade. Whatever I touched grew like honeycomb. Once I had more than the whole country, then down tools! I retired from business and began advancing loans through freedmen.20 As is known, this seemingly straightforward passage, not to mention Petronius’s text as a whole, presents a number of difficulties. The question of the ‘typicality’ of Trimalchio is merely one aspect, though an important one, of the text’s problematic nature. As John D’Arms has pointed out, virtually every major interpreter of the ancient economy has presumed Trimalchio is indicative of crucial features in the ancient scene: he is seen by Rostovtzeff as ‘a typical representative’ of the commercial bourgeoisie; whereas Finley and Paul Veyne emphasize his preoccupation with status and his turn from the world of business to the style of an aristocratic landowner with a pride in self-sufficiency.21 D’Arms is likewise interested in the ‘typicality’ of Trimalchio. He wants to consider Trimalchio’s activities in the light of his thesis that commerce in antiquity was much more developed than Finley and others would have us believe. He is especially concerned to show that an aristocratic involvement in business, often conducted indirectly through freedmen, was very much the Roman style, and that seaport cities like Ostia and Puteoli were places in which wealth was gained by skilfully combining activities like trade, moneylending and agriculture. Thus, the character of Trimalchio is again enlisted as evidence that a particular picture of ancient economic life is valid. From the description of commercial enterprise quoted above, we are told that on inheriting a fortune from his master Trimalchio went into business shipping wine. D’Arms points out we are not told the precise form of his inheritance, where the wine that he traded came from, nor how the ships he constructed were financed. And similar uncertainties attend the source of the produce and ships involved in his second, successful venture. Nonetheless, D’Arms is primarily concerned to show the compatibility of landowning with commerce, in other words to demonstrate that commerce alone was not necessarily Trimalchio’s first occupation from which he had gone on to land acquisition and the lending of money to freedmen. Rather, Trimalchio ‘focused on multiple and diversified economic pursuits—predominantly commercial and financial, in which he for years participated directly, then through the employment of freedmen intermediaries’.22 We have already suggested that an interest in business on the part of the ancient aristocracy was quite normal, though in our view D’Arms overstates the case somewhat and is unwarranted in the extent of modernistic parallels. Our concern here, however, is


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not with further criticism of such anachronism. Rather we wish to know what The Satyricon tells us specifically about the compatibility of freedmen and market capitalism. But first another complication. From the point of view of historical interpretation, one difficulty with The Satyricon is that, being a satire which uses exaggeration as a key comic device, we can never be certain how much it depicts actual conditions of the day or, alternatively, how much these are hopelessly distorted. For example, when Trimalchio’s ‘Gazette’ is read out we hear of 70 births for a single estate, 500,000 pecks of wheat stored, 500 oxen broken in and so on. These figures are all obviously huge exaggerations, completely over the top as if Petronius wants to indicate an unimaginable amount of wealth for a single individual. Likewise the accountant’s claim that on the day of the banquet 10 million sesterces were deposited in the strong box because all avenues of potential investment had been exhausted is sheer hyperbole.23 To arrive at the real situation from literary inventions such as these, should we divide the descriptions of opulence by two, ten or what? Can we even assume that freedmen remotely like Trimalchio and his circle actually existed? Clearly, the work under discussion is in no way a straightforward depiction of the real socio-economic conditions of the time of Nero. But more than that, in what follows we shall argue that it is unwarranted to assume that the overt descriptions of the wealth and lifestyle of the most successful freedmen might be approximately accurate with only some exaggeration here and there. If this were the case, we suggest, the satire would not have worked for the people for whom it was written, namely, the Roman aristocracy. This is because, if freedmen approaching the wealth of a Trimalchio had been a regular feature of the social landscape of ancient Roman society, then they would have directly rivalled the aristocracy for power and status, and would not have been likely objects of satiric scorn. From which it follows that it is not the very wealthy freedman that is the butt of Petronius’s satire (even if such a creature actually existed on occasion), but rather the small, in all probability much more common, petty-bourgeois freedman who, owing to his eagerness for social advancement (having been recently manumitted), would have been prone to a certain optimism and bullishness, perhaps grandiosity, as to his future prospects, and thus would on occasion have acquired the pretentions and affectations described so graphically by Petronius. Thus, we submit, the larger-than-life descriptions of the satire are constructed by a dual process: first, by simple extrapolation of the wishfulness of the ambitious independent freedman; and, second, by providing a plausible scenario of a newly arrived aristocratic lifestyle which only existing members of the real aristocracy (i.e., Petronius and his audience) could provide. Hence, the dinner scene is organized around two thematic elements, from whence it derives its charm and humour. On the one hand, there is the crassness, vulgarity and excess of the various happenings which contradict conventional upper-class standards of good taste and propriety: the uninhibited familiarity with the slaves and others of low status; the over-indulgence in food and wine; the failure to demonstrate cultivated good taste in conversation; the inability to conduct oneself in a dignified fashion, with courtly manners; and the focus of the events on acts of ostentatious consumption which are somewhat pathetic efforts at demonstrating social prowess (i.e., there is simplistic concern for the sheer number of courses, servants, estates, possessions, honours etc.); finally, there is Trimalchio’s exaggerated


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sentimentality about his past and where he has come from, and his amateurish preoccupation with etiquette. On the other hand, many of the customary real attributes of high status are absent, especially the concern to close off access to the elite group by strategies of cultural practice designed to maintain social distance. Yet, other marks of high status are alluded to throughout the text: the idea of the banquet as an occasion where one displays oneself to one’s peers to prove qualification for group membership; the various references to acquired taste (the connoisseurship of fine food, rare wine, cultured entertainment); the preoccupation with social distinction, fame and immortality; the mannered ease with which power and a high material standard of living is enjoyed. But what then does The Satyricon reliably tell us about the independent freedman? First, the book testifies to the importance of a particular type of economic individual with an unfree background; he was clearly a recognizable social figure to feature so centrally in Petronius’s work. Second, these individuals were unquestionably involved in commerce and trading activities on some scale, though we need not assume it was common for them to become extremely wealthy. This would have been unlikely for several reasons: for one thing, unlike Trimalchio, very few freedmen would have inherited a fortune; and most would have been in the mature part of their lives before they were freed and could begin to advance themselves economically. Besides, many would still have owed operae to their masters. Another factor is that for status reasons some important avenues of making money (state contracting) would have remained closed— though in some areas (the crafts) this may have worked to their advantage. A third feature worthy of note is the relatively high degree of social mobility associated with business success that is attested. Not only Trimalchio but several others as well (Phileros the solicitor, Chrysanthus the businessman, Niceros) are depicted as having made good through commerce or business activities of various kinds. Fourth, Petronius’s work clearly reflects a society in which market phenomena and money dealings are common everyday features. It is apparently nothing out of the ordinary to assess a person’s social standing in terms of how much they are worth, as the saying goes, and the lifestyle one leads seems to depend very much on one’s monetary wealth. These features suggest a general state of society where social relations are in flux, as Erich Auerbach points out in comparing Petronius with Homer: Whereas Homer evokes the illusion of an unchanging, a basically stable social order…[the narrative voice of Petronius] has in mind actual historical change, the ups and downs of fortune. For him the world is in ceaseless motion, nothing is certain, and wealth and social position are highly unstable. His sense of historical reality is one-sided, since it is centred entirely on the possession of wealth, but it is genuine…. The acquisition and loss of worldly goods is what interests him in life, and is what has taught him and his fellows to distrust all stability. Yesterday you were still a slave, a porter, a catamite—yesterday you could still be whipped, sold, deported—today you are suddenly a rich landowner, a speculator, enjoying prodigious luxury—and tomorrow it may be all over.24 What can be concluded from all this regarding the extent and nature of market capitalism


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in ancient Rome? It seems undeniable that private profit making oriented to the market was a regular feature of the classical era. But we shall immediately qualify this by saying that such capitalism was small-scale and fundamentally a plebeian phenomenon. Against D’Arms, we shall maintain that the closer the association with the aristocracy the more activities were likely to have been focused away from the market towards wealth investment and the pursuit of rent revenue. Thus, there was no continuity between the small-scale production and trading activities of the freedmen and the wealth-getting activities of the high aristocracy (in contrast with bourgeois societies where the ‘selfmade man’ begins at the bottom and makes it all the way to the top). We are therefore partly in agreement with Paul Veyne that Trimalchio’s ‘metamorphosis’ from an ‘homme économique’ into a landowner and moneylender is indeed suggestive—though, contrary to Veyne, we believe it is not symptomatic—of typical changes experienced by individuals. When the text speaks of the final phase of Trimalchio’s career and implies a new stage has been reached which puts him above the workaday market struggle, in our view this alludes instead to a real cleavage in the socio-economic system (between the plebs and the patriciate), and does not represent a common biographical outcome.

WEBER’S ANALYSIS OF THE IDEA OF CAPITALISTIC TRADE AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE COMMENDA In Economy and Society Weber discusses trade in the context of a general discussion of types of transportation and their economic functions. He classifies trade as merely one of a number of possible forms of ‘mediation in the process of disposing of a producer’s own control over goods or acquiring such control from others’.25 Importantly, not all these warrant the designation ‘trade’. Consider, for instance, the activities of a shipper who enters an agreement such that he receives a fee for his services or a commission on the sale of goods which remain strictly the property of another party. According to Weber, such activities ought not to be automatically classified as trade because they may only involve the disposal of surpluses, say of an oikos or political body; that is, we may not be dealing with exchange for profit, but only with an arrangement for the carrying out of the transport function on behalf of what is essentially a budgetary unit—in other words, budgetary exchange. It may happen, however, that a specialized occupational group arises for the purpose just described, a development which occurs quite frequently in historical situations. The members of such a group work for their own profit and remuneration by fees or commission without actually acquiring control of the goods they handle.26 This is the typical situation of brokers, commission agents, forwarding agents, insurance salesmen and others, but Weber considers their activity to be trade in only a weak sense of the term because the extent to which it is oriented to the market situation is limited. Weber reserves the concept of trade for capitalistic exchange: strictly speaking, the term refers to that form of mediation between production and consumption which occurs when a specialized occupational group engages in exchange for the express purpose of profit making through that process—what Weber calls ‘trade on one’s own account’. Persons must be involved in the purchase of goods primarily to resell them at a later time


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at a profit (or they sell the goods for delivery in the future with the express intention of being able to cover their obligations before a specified date).27 This kind of activity is paradigmatically exemplified by the free-market transactions of modern capitalistic trade, and Weber therefore defines the pure type as ‘free trade’. Free trade must be conducted by profit-making enterprises (never budgetary administrations), and must involve the pursuit of money profits through the negotiation of contracts for the purchase and sale of commodities. Weber notes the close relation that exists between free trade and capitalist production in general, owing to the requirement of the profit-making enterprise to concern itself with selling. Indeed, so much is this the case with modern enterprises that a section is frequently created expressly with this function in mind (i.e., the sales or marketing department); alternatively, this function may be taken over by an entirely separate type of enterprise which specializes, say, in wholesale trade. Either way, trade comes to constitute an essential part of the process whereby goods are brought from their place of manufacture to some point of local consumption. In the analysis of trade we can always distinguish the transportation function from the economic concern with earning profits by buying and selling; and the relative weighting of these two functions determines the different varieties of trade. The transportation function is uppermost in cases such as peddlers and small merchants who travel with their goods: these are able to sell their merchandise at a profit primarily because they have provided an economically valuable service in transporting actual goods from their place of production to a point of consumption. At the opposite extreme is the present-day case of trading on commodity exchanges where the actual goods are not usually present and their ‘transport’ takes place only figuratively (for example, as transfers of share vouchers); here it is clear that the primary function of trade is profit making.28 Of course, there are all manner of transitional types between these extremes, but in general it can be said that trade rests on the exploitation for profit of the need to transport economic goods. The trader must always situate himself in such a way as to take advantage of his access to and to and possession of the means of procuring goods. Trade on the individual’s own account is always carried on on the basis of the appropriation of the means of procurement, even though his control may be made possible only by borrowing. It is always the trader who bears the capital risk on his own account; and, correspondingly, it is he who, by virtue of the appropriation of the means of procurement, enjoys the opportunity for profit.29 Now an important transitional type between the two forms distinguished above is the travelling commenda trader.30 (Note that in what follows we shall follow Weber in using the mediaeval term commenda as the generic concept.) The commenda trader is in part akin to an agent by virtue of the fact that he does not strictly own or control the goods transported. On the other hand, he differs from an agent because he does not merely receive a fee or commission, but participates directly in the business as a partner in such a way that his remuneration depends directly on the profits from buying and selling. Therefore, in Weber’s view, the commenda is a form of profit making which warrants comparison with capitalist enterprise. This is because of the use, at least in part, of the technique of capital accounting. (One of the essential features of rational capitalism,


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according to Weber’s well-known theory, is that calculations in terms of capital must underlie all phases of the operation of an enterprise: from the beginning (an initial balance); from day to day (a periodic balance); as well as, finally, in order to estimate how much profit has been made at completion (a final balance).) However, with the commenda, only the goods to be carried are valued as capital and thus subject to capital accounting; other aspects of the operation (the running of the ship etc.) do not appear in the accounts, and are thus not organized capitalistically. In the case of the commenda an initial balance would determine an agreed money value of the assets put into it (so far as they were not in money form already), and a final balance would form the estimate on which to base the distribution of profit and loss at the end. So far as the transactions are rational, calculation underlies every single action of the partners. That a really accurate calculation or estimate may not exist, that the procedure is pure guess-work, or simply traditional and conventional…[affects] only the degree of rationality of capitalist acquisition.31

EVIDENCE FROM GREECE CONCERNING THE OPERATION OF MARITIME LOANS By considering the details of a maritime loan on which we have some detailed information of a literary kind, we can gain some idea of the extent of capitalist rationality typically involved in ancient trading. In what follows we shall consider some of the evidence from classical Greece which indicates what was probably the situation for the eastern Mediterranean region even after Roman conquest. The following is an extract from one Greek contract which has been preserved in literary form: Androcles of Sphettus and Nausicrates of Carystus lent to Artemon and Apollodorus of Phaselis three thousand drachmas of silver on a voyage from Athens to Mende or Scione and thence to Bosporus…and back to Athens, at an interest of 225 drachmas on the thousand [i.e., 22.5 percent] or [an alternative route and timing are mentioned] at interest of 300 drachmas on the thousand [i.e., 30 percent], on 3,000 jars of wine of Mende, to be shipped from Mende to Scione in the twenty-oared vessel of which Hyblesius is master…. And they will bring back the return cargo of goods from Pontus to Athens in the same ship without exception; if the goods reach Athens safely the borrowers shall repay to the lenders the money due under the contract.32 G.Calhoun has analysed this contract at some length and notes that the document specifies: (i) the lenders; (ii) the borrowers; (iii) the loan amount; (iv) the route to be followed, including alternatives; (v) the rate of interest, with a contingent rate; (vi) the security for outward and return journeys; (vii) the vessel; (viii) the extent of liability of the borrowers; (ix) the period allowed for repayment and the consequences in case of default; and (x) the status of the contract itself as totally binding.33 Concerning the


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relation to capitalism, we can say the acquisition of the lenders is clearly capitalistic because it is estimated in monetary form, and is to be achieved through the procurement and sale of commodities in the market. Androcles and Nausicrates took a direct interest in some aspects of the shipping arrangements involved: the contract specifies the commodities, the ship, the route, the captain and the time, all in advance so as to gain greater control over the outcome of the venture; the lenders evidently sought to improve their chances of profit by selecting particular commodities known to be in demand, as well as specifying places where the market situation (for both procurement and sale) was best. But they differ from today’s capitalist traders because a modern trading company takes direct managerial responsibility with regard to the operation of ships, and its employees control the handling of goods; whereas the ancient lender did not have any direct control of the ships involved in trading (these managerial functions were the responsibility of either the magister navis or the navicularius). The role of the lender would appear to have more in common with that of the modern mercantile banker who is concerned in the details of the business in which he invests his capital only so far as this is needed to secure his interest; all day-to-day matters, the technical, commercial and operational arrangements, are left to the entrepreneur. Given this characterization of the relative strength of lenders and traders, it is perhaps not surprising, as Weber observes, that over the long term sea loans resulted in affording to the lenders the possibility of getting sea commerce in their power to a large extent. They prescribed to the ship owner the course and duration of the voyage and where he should market the goods. The extensive dependence of the sea merchants upon the capitalists which finds expression in this arrangement leads us to infer that the former were weak in capital.34 Rather than the sea loan giving rise to large-scale forms of continuous capitalistic trade, such as emerged, say, with the East India companies of a much later period, as already suggested shipowners by and large remained small-scale operators. The volume of profits was evidently so small that a common result, as we shall see shortly, was the adoption of one form or another of fraud or subterfuge. Judging by the number of law suits that have come down to us—hence our evidence for maritime loans—shippers periodically felt their chances of profit were greater if they scuttled their ships (which meant the loan was not repayable), or they deceived their partners in various other ways. In Demosthenes there is an interesting account of a legal action brought by two moneylenders to recover some money they had invested in a sea loan but had not been able to recoup.35 The contract had been between two lenders and two shipowners for a voyage from Athens to Egypt and back, 3,000 drachmas being the amount involved on the security of the ship. In the suit the lenders sought the return of the full amount of the loan because, although they took the ship to Egypt, the shipowners on the return voyage went only as far as Rhodes where the cargo was unloaded. According to the defendants, this was because of the urgent requirement that ship repairs be undertaken: but according to the plaintiffs, the true reason behind the unscheduled stopover lay in the fact that the price of grain had fallen in Athens, and the shippers sought to capitalize on the favourable


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market conditions then prevailing at Rhodes. Of course, we cannot establish with any certainty the true facts of the case but it is most likely that the prices at Rhodes were not known in advance, nor were they anticipated by either party. Rather, they were probably discovered by chance to have been favourable, and an on-the-spot decision was made to ‘cash in’. The shippers evidently had no contractual authority to take advantage of prices in this way, and so it is hard not to conclude that they acted in breach of the contract. It was apparently normal practice for goods to be shipped under specific instructions such as we find in the above commenda-type agreement, shippers being expressly forbidden to take advantage of the most favourable prices found at ports along the way. The problem here was clearly again one of control: how could the lenders know for certain the fate of cargoes and the prices actually obtained unless they accompanied the vessels themselves? Hence, the need for security and the stipulation that specified quantities of goods be landed in the home port. It is tempting to surmise that ports existed (like Rhodes) where the wholesale exchange of cargoes took place under market conditions that were comparatively unfettered. But the crucial issue from our point of view is whether traders were routinely oriented to such markets, thus transforming what would have been occasional, predominantly speculative ventures into continuous, rational capitalist enterprise. In the case described above, it seems the selling of cargo at Rhodes was a decision made on the spur of the moment rather than the result of a pre-existing plan or strategy (hence the outrage of the plaintiffs). But this is not to say there were no traders who regularly sold wares at markets in the Mediterranean region. Speaking about corn-dealers at one point, Xenophon says, Wherever they hear that corn is most plentiful [and therefore the lowest price], they sail thither, crossing the Aegean, the Euxine or Sicilian sea, and take as much as they can on their ships for cargo. And when they have need of converting it into money they do not part with it wherever they may chance to be, but carry it to those places where they hear it is most highly prized and most eagerly demanded, and there they dispose of it.36 Such accounts ought not to be taken as indicating the presence of capitalist trade in the full sense, however; they only suggest the small-scale operations of shipowners who travelled with their wares (as described by Jones) as against commenda trading where larger sums of capital were involved. So Hasebroek is probably correct, at least as regards Greek trade, when he insists on its small scale and simplicity. This was a consequence in no small part of the inherent dangers and uncertainty of trade by sea under ancient conditions: not only was sea voyaging strictly limited by weather conditions (from October to March); it was also extremely hazardous as a consequence of piracy and other kinds of molestation. This meant that where maritime loans were involved the rate of interest was extremely high and large mortgages were demanded of the shippers as security.37 Adding to the difficulties were problems deriving from the impossibility of easy and rapid communications: when merchants put to sea they did not know precisely where they would make their exchanges.


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‘FREE ENTERPRISE’ AND THE ROLE OF THE STATE A different situation to that in ancient Greece seems to have prevailed in the classical era of Rome where, as already suggested, much of the trade in mass commodities like grain was in the hands of various middlemen who were often publicani or well-to-do negotiatores. In a fashion reminiscent of H.Hill (in The Roman Middle Class in the Republican Era), Garnsey speaks of ‘businessmen’ whom he describes in these terms: Some were equestrians and municipal aristocrats, and they had close links with members of the senatorial aristocracy. They included, on the one hand, taxcollectors and cultivators (notably in North Africa, Sicily and Campania) who secured grain in large quantity, and on the other hand, investors, shippers and traders who were involved in disposing of it profitably. (But these two broad categories were not mutually exclusive.)38 In the light of this it is probable that the state to some degree supported the development of trade, especially in those areas of consequence to Rome. Even though Garnsey believes that in the republican era and early Principate the negotiatores who supplied Rome and her armies were predominantly free agents and not mere government functionaries, it also has to be borne in mind that most of their business involved government contracts. Garnsey’s view of the grain trade is largely confirmed by G. Rickman who says ‘that for much of the Republic and even for the Principate, many of the shippers were also merchants in their own right, negotiatores or mercatores rather than just navicularii’.39 As regards regulation, L.Casson points out there is virtually no solid evidence of strict state control of the grain trade: the state had only intervened in a haphazard fashion in various emergencies until the time of Claudius who introduced incentives for merchants to maintain supply on an all-year-round basis.40 There seems to be general agreement as to the fate of free trade under later imperial conditions where the collegia were important in organizing the diverse shippers and merchants into a body that could be more regimented by the state whose interest in the regularity of supply led increasingly to avoidance of the market. By this time a conscious effort was being made by the state to minimize serious disruption in the supply of grain by increasing the numbers of shippers and by requiring longer-term (six-year) contracts. Privileges were offered in the form of tax exemptions for those providing ships of around 70 tons capacity. What is more, the grain traders (mercatores frumentarii), according to Garnsey, became organized as corpora and were registered with the state. Rickman even suggests that ‘in practice registration with the authorities must have been a necessary condition for actually securing these privileges’.41 Thus, the role of the private merchant was more and more circumscribed as that of the state official, especially the praefectus annonae, was extended. The increasing use of imperial estates and the decline of the publicani meant that the state had begun to usurp the function of the private merchant, but owing to the lack of a rational bureaucracy it was impossible to totally displace the private shipper who continued well into the third century.


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Some idea of the considerable role the state must have played in regulating sea trade throughout the classical period is provided by Meiggs in his detailed study of Ostia, Rome’s port city. On the one hand there is plenty of evidence of independent traders of various kinds (the middlemen in the corn trade were mercatores frumentarii),42 and Meiggs even surmises that bankers were involved in the building of many of the warehouses and granaries.43 But it is also indicative of conditions that the state invested heavily in facilities, constantly developing the harbour and enlarging storages (horrea), eventually it seems to quite extraordinary capacities. Probably because of the importance of grain supplies to Rome itself, Meiggs tells us that the shipping of corn was regulated by the measurers (mensores frumentarii), who formed one of the most important guilds. This control became greater as the scale and importance of the port increased over time. As Meiggs explains, Supervision from Rome continued through the Republic; it was considerably extended as the imperial system developed. In the late Republic Rome’s interests were safeguarded by a quaestor stationed at Ostia, whose primary function was to supervise the reception, storage, and reshipment of corn from the provinces. He had a tribunal in the forum at Ostia and perhaps his authority was backed by judicial powers greater than those normally associated with the quaestorship.44

5 The role of state contracting and the societates publicanorum Where a polis had such possessions [of conquered populations paying tribute,] they were primarily objects of purely economic exploitation by the changing cliques surrounding prominent political leaders, above all their financiers. Consequently city states, especially Rome, subjected their possessions to brutal exploitation by private capital through usurious tax-farming, the most important form of capital investment in Antiquity. In Republican communities it was so central that it always tended to make the state an enterprise based on tax loans and tax contracts, like mediaeval Genoa. Max Weber, The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations

In this chapter we shall begin by considering a range of activities which in some respects resemble private enterprise more closely than any of those discussed in the previous chapters—the economic activities of the Roman state contractors, or publicani (who were so termed because they dealt with the public property, publica, of the Roman people).1 As we shall see in detail shortly, the publicani were an extremely wealthy group who acquired their riches through organizations which in certain respects have the character of businesses. Yet any attempt to identify such a group, along with the equestrian order to which they generally belonged, as an ‘ancient bourgeoisie’ is most questionable owing to the absence of a genuinely productive orientation and the commercial and industrial ethos normally associated with the idea of the bourgeoisie. Nonetheless, we shall argue in what follows that an understanding of the role of the publicani reveals a great deal about the socio-economic development of Roman antiquity. Especially important is the close association of profit making with the exploitation of political power—while this is not unique to antiquity, we shall maintain that the forms of enterprise involved in this type of capitalism were developed to a particularly high degree in antiquity, greatly enhancing its distinctive plutocratic character. It is something of a paradox that the publicani can be said to have performed a similar role to that of the administrative bureaucracy in a modern state: for functions which today are regarded as the ‘natural’ province of government, such as tax collection, were in the heyday of the Roman Republic contracted out to associations of private contractors—the so-called societates publicanorum. As P. Brunt explains, ancient states had not the statistical skill or information available to modern Ministries of Finance for assessing the yield of taxes. It was because the

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publicans contracted to pay fixed sums at fixed times and gave security for payment that the government could calculate in advance the revenue on which it could count.2 There were also contracts for a wide range of public works—for the construction of roads, temples, aqueducts, bridges etc.—and these were let at public auction. The same was true of contracts for the supply of equipment such as clothing, weaponry, armour, naval supplies, food etc. for the military forces. But how did this system come into being?

THE ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE SYSTEM OF STATE CONTRACTING Despite its later significance, in the early period of the Republic (second century BC), taxation had been of minor importance as a source of profit for the publicani.3 Far more significant at this stage were contracts for the construction and repair of public buildings, roads and bridges, and for the supply of the army (i.e., ultro tributa). These contracts were financed out of revenues such as tributum (a property tax of one-tenth of 1 percent paid by the citizens in times of need and thus regarded more as a loan than a tax); the tributum itself, however, was collected by state officials (probably tribuni aerarii), not by publicans. The more formal taxes at this time, such as the portoria (customs and harbour dues) or the tax on manumissions, were not all that considerable, and thus, even had they been farmed out, they would not have produced large profits. As an indication of the general scale of profit making involved, E. Badian offers some rough orders of magnitude for the value of military contracts during a single year of the Second Punic War (215–214 BC). He estimates the cost of clothing a single legion to be in the vicinity of 400,000 denarii (the cost of clothing a single soldier—toga, tunic, shoes etc.—might be around 100 denarii), and given that each year during the war there were four new legions put into the field in addition to those already under arms, he concludes the total value of clothing required each year would have been around one and a half million denarii.4 If one adds the cost of rations, supplies for the fleet and other equipment, it becomes clear that the amounts involved were considerable indeed. To give some idea of the value of a typical single case, Badian discusses a contract let in 169 BC which is mentioned in Livy. Apparently, an emergency arose which led to a contract for the supply of 6,000 togas, 30,000 tunics and 200 Numidian horses, and included their transport to Macedonia. Making rough approximations of the values involved, Badian estimates that the 6,000 togas would cost 300,000 denarii and the 30,000 tunics 750,000 denarii…. So the total for the clothing alone comes to over a million denarii. For horses we have no reliable information: only the official cavalry allowance of 500 denarii, in the third century. Of course the rare Numidian horses here specified are bound to have cost a good deal more: they may well have had to be actually imported from Numidia. An estimate of 100,000 denarii (i.e. the value of a third-century allowance) is likely to be ridiculously low. However, the total estimate for this ‘small’ emergency contract comes to 1,150,000 denarii on our


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computation. When we recall that at this time the soldier’s pay was perhaps 120 denarii per year (minus deductions), we see that the contract was equivalent to the annual pay for 10,000 men. Or again to put it in terms of class qualifications…it was equivalent to the property (not income) qualification of about a dozen Roman knights!5 Thus, the publicani who took such contracts must have made large profits, though precisely how large is not known; nor do we know the number of individuals typically involved in each contract. The emergence of tax farming The system of state contracting developed considerably during the era in which largescale annexations to Roman territory took place. The fiscal needs of the state were gradually expanding, so various taxes requiring regular collection were imposed upon the peoples under Roman hegemony. But even though the publicani were from early on most eager to increase their sphere of operations, especially by entering the potentially lucrative field of tax collection, large-scale private tax farming was a relatively late development.6 After acquiring her first major colonies, Rome had adopted the policy of imposing tribute as a means of defraying the cost of military occupation. In Tacitus the basic rationale was succinctly expressed as follows: ‘Peace cannot be secured without armies: armies cannot exist without pay: and payment cannot be provided without taxation.’7 In the case of Sardinia, for example, the vectigal stipendium was imposed for this purpose. But at this stage collection was always a local matter; the Roman governor and his assistants were concerned only to ensure payments were made regularly—no publicani were involved. In Sicily Rome retained existing arrangements for the collection of tribute which had long been in operation (under the Carthaginian or previous Royal domination). V. Scramuzza reconstructs the following account of how the agreements with Rome (pactiones) were probably administered: According to Hiero’s system, the officials of each city-state drew up yearly a list of all who actually raised a crop under their jurisdiction, whether owners or renters, taking account of three things: first the extent of the property involved; second, the area of each crop under cultivation; third, the amount of seed planted. These records were then inspected by the prospective contractors (decumani). This information, together with a study of the weather, the quality of the soil, and the competence of each cultivator, made a safe basis for their bids. The collection of the tithes was put at auction before the governor. Having secured the contract, the successful bidder made the round of this district to obtain a contract from each farmer as to the amount each ought to contribute. This agreement was made in triplicate and signed by both parties…. The decumanus who took more than was lawful could be sued in the governor’s circuit court and, if found guilty, was bound to an eightfold restitution. A cultivator who delivered less than his due was sentenced by a similar process of law to four times the original amount.8


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While initially local tax farmers gathered the tithes on behalf of Rome, apparently there were soon representatives of a Roman company collecting smaller revenues such as the portoria and the scriptura (pasture tax for the use of public land). But the end of the Second Punic War saw the annexation of Spain, and this gave rise to new arrangements for the gathering of colonial spoils. Whilst stipendium was paid directly to the provincial governor as had been the practice till now, the revenue from the massive silver mines located at New Carthage (now Rio Tinto) was in all probability collected by publicani. Given the scale of the mines, this meant the latter were handed a golden opportunity and were thus able to increase their level of wealth substantially. From information supplied by Strabo and Polybius, Badian claims: The silver mines…were fifty Roman miles in circumference [i.e., perhaps one hundred square miles (Badian’s estimate)]. In Polybius’ time they bought the Roman people 25,000 denarii in revenue per day and employed 40,000 workers. That is an enormous enterprise, by any standards, ancient or modern; and it was just one complex of mines out of many we know of.9 Badian computes the total value of this complex per year at 9 million denarii, which indicates the scale of the associated tax operations must have been considerable indeed. (A recent archaeological study by G.Jones points to the existence of a considerable town at the site extending over three-quarters of a mile, and measurements at the site indicate around 16 million tons of slag remain from the ancient operations.10 Once again, however, there are no details as regards precise economic organization.)11 In addition to these lucrative ventures, mention should be made of the colossal quantities of booty acquired during this period as a result of successful wars. In the case of war with Hannibal, for instance, the total value of public booty seized in one series of engagements was in the order of 3,500,000 denarii.12 Badian explains how in Spain, after New Carthage was taken by Scipio, the soldiers systematically looted the city and then apparently had the option to sell their share on the spot. As a result it became a practice for professional buyers to regularly follow the trail of the armies in order to buy up the booty as it was taken.13 These buyers may have been mere traders or small businessmen, but a connection with the publicani is possible and even likely given the large quantities often involved and the need for large amounts of capital. But the situation in Spain has special significance in the context of our present discussion: for, as J.S.Richardson points out, the importance of Spain for administrative history lies in the fact that ‘for the first time Rome had to evolve financial institutions and methods whereby an overseas province of substantial wealth might be taxed’.14 It was at this point that the publicani began the farming of taxes in earnest, even though initial arrangements may have been ad hoc. As a consequence of these new and lucrative opportunities, they were able to advance their interests significantly, and with the continuing expansion of Roman hegemony throughout the Mediterranean, especially in the east, the wealth and power position of the publicani went from strength to strength. While, according to H.Hill, the senate had showed a marked reluctance to annex territories down to the first half of the second century, with the conquests of Africa and Macedonia this policy was overturned, and new procedures for taxation were adopted.


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From this time onwards, a commission of ten senators was sent out to each province which determined their boundaries and decided the terms on which their inhabitants were to be subject to Rome, in particular the amount of tribute and the method of collection. The decisions of each commission were examined by the Senate and then embodied in a law (lex provinciae) which was binding on governors.15 To begin with these commissions usually adopted a policy whereby stipendium was to be collected directly, while other revenues such as the rents on ager publicus and the portoria were to be farmed out. As already noted the method of collecting stipendium up until this point had entailed merely modifying the methods employed by the previous occupying power. But this procedure was changed in the late second century BC with farreaching consequences. According to A.J.Toynbee, ‘it was a revolutionary new departure when, in 123 or 122 BC, C.Gracchus secured the enactment of a law providing that the collection of tithes of the province of Asia should in future be auctioned in Rome—that is to say handed over to the Roman Publicani’16 (this was the system known as censoria locatio). In other words, the rich spoils of provincial taxation—Asia provided 15 million denarii, while Bythnia, Cilicia and Syria contributed 35 million—were now opened up to full-scale exploitation by private tax-collecting companies, and in this way publican predominance in the economic and political life at Rome reached its high point. We can only briefly allude to the complex and still controversial background history of how this took place, but some discussion is necessary. Early conflicts between the Senate and the equestrians The equestrians had for some time been at odds with the Senate because the latter was the body which controlled the issuing of public contracts and also provided most of the judges which decided cases in which publicani were involved. The decisive innovation of Gaius Gracchus had been to respond to this divergence of interests not only by giving the publicani the opportunity to make huge profits in Asia but by granting them a monopoly of seats in the repetundae court, where even senators could be judged. According to P.Brunt, ‘Gracchus went further still; he gave Equites a share in other criminal jurisdiction and extended their share in hearing civil suits, thus relieving them of that dependence on senatorial courts which Polybius had stressed. These new rights guaranteed the material interests of the Equites.’17 A crucial question which arises here concerns the precise role-political, economic and social—played in the late Republic by the so-called equestrian class (or ordo equester) to whom the publicani belonged. To what extent did the publican contractors—who were necessarily equestrians because by law they could not be senators and only equestrians had sufficient capital to win contracts-constitute an economic class in their own right? It has been conjectured, by H.Hill and others, that they were separate from the socially higher and more privileged senatorial elite, and possessed a social character akin to that of a ‘middle class’ (not unlike that of the bourgeoisie vis-à-vis the nobility in the period of early modern capitalism). Clearly a full answer to these questions involves coming to terms with the highly complex history of the Gracchan period and its aftermath, a study


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beyond our present scope. But it is worth commenting briefly on Hill’s ‘middle class thesis’. Hill had claimed that the peculiar position of the Equites, placed as they were between the exclusive senatorial aristocracy which few of them could hope to enter and the mass of people whom they despised, united them and directed their wealth and very considerable ability mainly towards those commercial and financial activities which are the usual sphere of any Middle Class.18 Undoubtedly, to a degree the senatorial class represents landed property whereas the equestrian class stands for disposable capital, commerce and finance, and thus we might imagine a parallel with modern conditions. However, all this is potentially very misleading because it overlooks crucial differences between the ancient and modern situations. For one thing, the conflicts between the Equites and the Senate gradually abate as we reach the end of the first century BC. But, as Emilio Gabba has explained, it is most important to recognize that the Equites were ‘middle’ only really with respect to dignitas: ‘therefore the difference is not based on economic or social factors, and the “middle” position of the equestrian class mentioned by the ancient sources has nothing in common with what we think of or understand as “middle class”’.19 P.Brunt also warns against a too economic view of the equestrian group: On general grounds we must assume that [equestrian] wealth was mainly in land, and that most Equites were, like senators, landowners. To say nothing of individuals, this can be demonstrated for the publicans as a class. They had to find security in land for the sums they owed the treasury. For the Asian taxes alone after 123 years they were liable for probably 15 millions [denarii] a year; to cover this sum, if not five times as much (for a five year contract), they had to pledge enormous estates. Gnaeus Pancius, the most eminent publican of Cicero’s time, owned land in the fertile inland district of Atina. Most other Equites were probably, like Cicero’s father, simply country gentlemen. Overseas ‘business’ could be landowning—Atticus, Cicero’s friend, has vast estates in Epirus, and there are many other instances. Others were moneylenders.20 A final point worth noting here is that, as the equestrians had no effective form of group representation, it was the societates publicanorum which in practice expressed the common interests of the order, and this perhaps distorts the image we have of the group.21 So let us now turn to these organizations and discuss their role in Roman economic and political affairs.

THE SOCIETATES PUBLICANORUM By way of introducing our discussion of the societates publicanorum, it is worth noting that publican companies have often been taken as the equivalent of modern business firms because of the importance of formal partnership in both. Indeed, it is from this very


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feature that the ancient institution draws its name, for the ancient ‘company’ was formed by an association of partners (socii) who provided the capital basis for carrying out contracts. But can the societates publicanorum be justifiably classed as a form of capitalist enterprise? Structural parallels with the modern business company Some features of the tax-farming companies of Rome clearly warrant comparison with the modern joint-stock company. Weber at one point notes how ‘the capitalistic type of association which corresponds to our joint-stock company and is completely detached, at least formally, from kinship and personal ties has its antecedents in Antiquity only in the area of politically oriented capitalism, i.e., in companies of tax farmers’.22 Just as today shareholders maintain their ownership of a company through holdings of stock, so the ownership of shares (partes) was the form in which the socii held their stake in ancient companies. The socii, although meeting from time to time, apparently had little voice in the day-to-day management of the company, rather like modern shareholders. Control was effectively in the hands of officials called magistri who together constituted a kind of board; the exception was the most powerful individual, the manceps already referred to (in one case for which there is evidence the person in charge was a distinguished eques who would probably have been a major ‘shareholder’ as well). The remaining magistri were not necessarily socii, and may have been even less distinguished scribae. In the provinces the actual collection of the tax was in the hands of officers called pro magistro who were responsible for keeping special accounts called tabulae (which were public documents). In the typical publican company it was the head member (manceps) who formally made the bid for a contract. Any successful bidder was obliged to provide a surety (praes) in case of default, landed property being the usual form of security. Often more than one praes would be involved owing to the enormous size of some contracts. To illustrate the scale that might be involved, Badian considers the contracts for the building of the Marcian aqueduct in the second century: apparently it had cost in the vicinity of 48 million denarii, a vast sum by the standards of the day (as a comparative costing, twenty miles of Apennine highway would have cost 37,500 denarii).23 The legal status of the societates publicanorum While the individual socii of the company had to be registered on the contract, in some cases it would seem the societas developed beyond the stage of an elementary partnership; for the notion of a quasi-formal institution existing in its own right apart from its members seems implied by some practices, especially by the granting of the status of corpus. Thus, a societas may have been entitled to contract business on its own behalf, continuing in existence despite changes in the socii—which means it may have possessed legal personality. Badian suggests that companies may even have had the right to own property, which would have made it possible for them to offer their own land as praedia when bidding for contracts; there is no direct evidence to confirm this, however, so he surmises that corpus was only granted at the completion of the letting of the


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contract. Thus, in Badian’s view publican companies as a rule probably did not have continuous legal existence.24 Brunt, on the other hand, observes that companies frequently remained in business over long periods, so there were in all likelihood enduring arrangements of some kind: though these companies were not permanent in law but subsisted only to fulfill contracts let every five years, much the same group of socii may usually have obtained renewals of the right to farm the taxes; how could rivals have carried on the work without the services of the large and experienced staff of freedmen and slaves which the old company had employed. The companies then probably endured more or less continuously.25 But regardless of modern parallels and the extent to which the societates publicanorum persisted as a formal organization, there is one very fundamental difference of a legal nature. Otto Gierke has explained with great perspicacity how Roman law consistently worked against the development of a proper legal conception of association. This was because of an extreme individualizing tendency: for according to its dominant idea and in its fully articulated structure, Roman law was predominantly a law that pertained to the advantage of the individual and it did not recognize ‘organic unities’. Accordingly, individuals were fully isolated autonomous subjects of specific spheres of law…. The interlocking ties and bonds of the individual will in its legal existence produced a jurisprudence that, with admirable art, dissected and construed all relationships of private law. These relationships led back to the abstract content of power as a right, free of obligations and in harmony with the strictly individualistic understanding of the concept of person.26 Hence, in Rome all associative ties in law were reduced to the rights and duties of isolated individuals; Roman private law could never accept any notion which conceived of a multiplicity of individuals as an associated body or community possessing a ‘common hand’, and thus no ‘society’ could be endowed with its own rights and duties. Of course, at first sight the case of the societates publicanorum appears to be an exception to this. But, as Gierke rightly points out, that these societies gained recognition as having an existence independent of their members was due to the fact that they had come under the aegis of the Roman state’s financial administration. As such they were under the jurisdiction of the ius publicum. They may be considered as vocational corporations but not as bodies derived from private law. Rather they appeared as political bodies that included the social relationships of private law. Despite the greater permanence of the publicani and a certain type of organization permitted to their societies, they belonged to the category of a purely obligatory societas. At the same time, the corpus permitted to the associates was a college of vocationally linked members, as legal agents entirely divorced from their societal contracts.27


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Gierke goes on to note that, in line with this limited notion of association and with the irrelevance of corpus for the private contractual side of publican activity, was the fact, already noted, that the censor entered into contracts not with the societas but with the individual head contractor or manceps, and it was he alone who was the bearer of rights and duties.

THE SCALE OF TAX FARMING AND THE INCREASING POWER OF THE PUBLICANI The importance of the publicani in Roman economic and political affairs is first registered in some evidence relating to events as early as the Second Punic War. In Livy we find a most interesting description of a crisis which arose at Rome in 213 BC. Apparently, the army in Spain had sent dispatches to Rome reporting the exhaustion of supplies and money, and requesting help. But the treasury was unfortunately bare, and the exploitation of existing revenue sources had reached the limit: It was decided therefore that the praetor Fulvius should go before the assembly with a public statement of the country’s difficulties, and urge all those who had increased their property by government contracts to allow the government— which was the source of their wealth—time for payment, and in their contracts for the supply of what was needed to the army in Spain to admit a clause to the effect that, when there was money in the treasury, they should be the first to be paid.28 Consideration of the complete saga of these contracts shows the extensive power that state contractors already possessed at this early stage. Badian gives the following account of the episode which ensued: Two years later [after new contracts had been set] it was discovered that two of the nineteen gentlemen concerned [nineteen men belonging to three companies had held the original contracts] had defrauded the exchequer by putting worthless goods on board unseaworthy ships and claiming the insurance sum for army supplies when the ships sank…. The Senate, interestingly enough, refused to act against them, when the matter came to its notice, since it realized the State’s dependence on the contractors and wanted to avoid offending them at a time of crisis. So, at least, we are told. Two tribunes tried to act through the popular assembly but the meeting was broken up by a mob led by the contractors. Thereupon the Senate took firm action, which led to the punishment of all evil doers.29 But Badian warns against taking all this too literally and suggests Livy is probably guilty of anachronism; in particular, he rejects the idea that the Senate’s pusillanimity in the face of the outrageous conduct of the publicani meant the existence already of an ordo publicanorum with the power and status it had in Cicero’s day. In fact, Badian doubts whether in the circumstances a riot organized by the publicani actually took place at all,


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because the supremacy of the Senate in general cannot be doubted. Nevertheless, contracts had to continue and did, and he suggests that the state was after all dependent on the publicani to a significant degree, as Livy’s account clearly implies.30 Thus, at this early period the publicani were at the very least a force to be reckoned with. It is evident that the position of the publicani constantly improved as their realm of activities extended, and the height of their power was undoubtedly reached in the late Republic when the revenues from tax farming had become quite vast. According to Garnsey, the scale of the profits made in Asia and in other provinces in the region may be inferred from Caesar’s substitution of a fixed payment for the tithe, and his reduction of the total tax liability of the Asian province by one-third, presumably without loss to the state.31 We should not assume, however, that such increases came via legitimate means. For, as G.Stephenson explains, right from the earliest days of publican taxing, abuses were the rule: it was in the interests of the government to accept the highest offer, and although in strict law the farmer was not bound to hand over more than a tithe of his crop together with 6 percent, which represented the legitimate profit of the collector, it was almost inevitable that more should be demanded if the latter found that he had made a bad bargain. It is indeed probable that he was entitled to ask for an accessio in cash in addition to the tithe, and under the rule of Verres these accessiones amounted to enormous sums.32 But the precise nature of publican power must be explored because the fact that tax farming and related activities were open to such abuse implies they were very destructive of the productive base of the subject communities. In this regard Cicero’s account of the situation in Asia in the middle of the first century BC, the heyday of private tax farming, is worth considering. There can be little doubt from what Cicero tells us that the system of private tax gathering was lucrative for the publicani, and that over-exploitation was not only common but probably the rule; though what was legitimate and what not was by no means a clear distinction even to the Romans themselves—it is as well to remember that the exploitation of subject peoples was viewed as a right falling naturally to the conquerers. During a stint in his official capacity as a governor in the Asian province of Cicilia, Cicero came face to face with the kind of extortion that was in all probability very common, seeing for himself the unhappy social and political consequences. In this letter to Atticus we find a vivid portrayal of the repression and he gives a good indication of the level of exploitation: I want you to know that on July 31st I reached this wretched province which has simply been ruined for good…on my arrival…all I heard about was per capita taxes that had been demanded, and could not be paid, how the investments of every man jack of them had been sold, how the cities were moaning and


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groaning at the atrocious behaviour of a creature that is not even human [i.e., the tax collector].33 Cicero proceeded to interpret his own role as governor as that of a kind of peacemaker or arbiter, and he apparently succeeded in stabilizing the situation which had threatened to bankrupt the provincials and cause a general economic collapse. In his own inimitable style he tells us how he took measures designed to reach a compromise between public and private interests. However, despite the fact that the account given us is Cicero’s own, it is probable that as a governor Cicero was exceptional; most were probably quite corrupt, and, what is more, in league with the tax collectors.34 Even Cicero himself, it seems, at one point intervened on behalf of a friend C.Avianius Flaccus who was a grain exporter and quite possibly a publican. According to Garnsey, he asked the Sicilian governor to give favours to Flaccus regarding port facilities. As a general rule Garnsey observes: ‘the connivance of the governor, who was often under obligation to the publicani if not actually in league with them, must have enabled them frequently to take more of the harvest than was permitted them by the law.’35 Further evidence of the extent of the power of the publicani is provided by Cicero in a remarkable series of references to them in his political speeches dealing with the crisis in Asia which accompanied the rebellion of Mithridates. From these writings it is apparent that the capitalist farming of taxes had gone so far as to place the state in a highly dependent position vis-à-vis its supposed servants, the publicani; for political policy had clearly become subject to the sway of their vested financial interests to a very considerable extent. Firstly, Cicero attributes enormous importance to Asia as a source of revenue: it is Rome’s largest and most reliable source of revenue whose loss will cost you the adornments of peace and the sinews of war; … Asia is so wealthy and so fertile that she easily excels all other countries in richness of soil, variety of produce, extent of grazing lands, and volume of exports. This province, in fact, finances our wars and makes our peace worthwhile.36 And so it is absolutely vital that Mithridates be overcome without delay, so damaging is his effect in the region. Even if he remains outside the threatened provinces, he must be sought out and annihilated, for when an enemy of his calibre is in the vicinity, pastures are abandoned, fields deserted and merchants quit the seas. And so taxes on imports and exports are lost, and so are the agricultural tithes and the poll-tax on beasts…one threat of war can often cost a country a whole year’s revenue…. How do you think [the tax contractors] feel when one cavalry raid can cost them a whole year’s revenue; when they think the large staffs they have in the salt-works, on farms, in harbour offices and posts in the outback are in danger.37 For Cicero the interests of the publicani must be defended just as ‘our forefathers often went to war if the rights of merchants or ship-owners were infringed’.38 In contrast to his remarks elsewhere (such as those on the corruption of tax farmers in Asia quoted earlier),


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here Cicero goes out of his way to make the publicani and tax farming appear respectable, and he strongly advocates that full military support be given them in the service of their interests. Even though he hastens to add that all sorts of citizens have investments needing protection, it is the tax contractors whom he singles out as the focal object of concern: ‘For we have always regarded our revenues as the sinews of the state, and so we would certainly be right to call the class who collect these revenues the backbone of our society.’39 And there is more, for it is not only because of their role in public finance that the publicani ought to be granted support; they ought also to be protected because of their pivotal significance for the general state of economic prosperity, because ‘financial confldence and the whole monetary system based on the forum here at Rome is bound up with and depends upon these Asian investments’.40 Badian explains how Pompey’s command had been in large part made possible by the publicani who offered him support in the expectation of repayment by certain favours. His conquest of the east was in effect at the behest of the publicani, the result being ‘the greatest increase in [their] opportunities since Gracchus’ reorganization of Asia’.41 Until 70 BC only the taxes of Asia were publicly auctioned at Rome: Pompey added Syria, improved on Bythnia, Pontus, Cilicia and probably Cyrene. A final example from Cicero which highlights the power of the publicani concerns an extraordinary defence he made on behalf of a group of them in the Senate in 61 BC. The immediate result he had sought was for the group to be released from a series of obligations arising from a state contract. But while he found the business of getting the contractors off the hook most repugnant (‘their demand was a disgrace and admission of their recklessness’),42 he nonetheless argued they should not be held to their commitments for fear of alienating them from the Senate. Good government and the very existence of the res publica, according to Cicero, depend on the cooperation of the Senate and the Equites—this was the so-called Concordia Ordinum.

THE STRUGGLE OVER THE SPOILS OF CONQUEST IN THE LATE REPUBLIC According to Badian, at around this time there were further developments which had farreaching implications. The civil strife of the 70s and 60s BC is in part to be explained by the growing interest of the senators themselves in public contracts, obviously in contradiction of the traditional legal situation which forbade their involvement. In fact, so far had this tendency with its destructive consequences advanced that ‘the actual government and state business was breaking down’.43 This is for Badian the significance of Cicero’s denunciation of Verres’s involvement with the publicani which had allegedly netted him around 40 million sesterces. Verres, he alleges, ‘had practically (never officially) been a socius of the public companies under his control: “the most serious charge that men can remember since the establishment of the extortion court”’.44 Increasing senatorial involvement in political profiteering Badian admits in general the evidence for direct senatorial involvement in contracts is


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scanty, and the record is fairly consistent that no senator was ever actually a socius of a tax-farming company. But in Cicero’s attack against Vatinius in 59 BC another kind of financial involvement in public companies is attested. Apparently, shares (partes) existed for which there was a kind of market value; such shares could be acquired either directly from the company or from one who already owned them, and there was even a kind of stock exchange jargon in use. What is more, it seems to have been a matter of course for senators, including such eminent individuals as Caesar and Cassius, to trade in this unregistered ‘stock’ without their ever becoming actual socii: an obvious means of evasion, of a thoroughly Roman sort, if senators were to be interested in public companies; and also, of course, technically very convenient (as in certain modern analogues) where the maximum freedom of trading is wanted both by the company itself and by those buying a financial interest in it…ownership of such shares was by then taken for granted, with no stigma attached.45 In reconstructing the history of senatorial involvement in state contracting, Badian dates its beginning either at the time of the Gracchi and the Asian law when probably much larger amounts of capital were required to win contracts, or during Sulla’s rule when a large number of new senators were admitted from the ranks of the equestrians, and these would have been most reluctant to forgo this form of income given their now higher level of expenses. By the time of Caesar, Badian argues, senatorial involvement had become a normal and accepted practice. Even with non-voting stock, senators like Crassus could control a great deal of a company’s activities, being especially well placed to connive with governors and others in high places to exploit profit opportunities to the full. Another aspect here was the fact that many senators were also moneylenders for the provincials and commonly used equestrians as their agents. At around this period of the late Republic, Badian believes a decisive change occurred in the struggle for tax revenues. After the overbid for the Asian taxes of 61 BC just discussed where Crassus had used his power to get the contractors off the hook, the contractors had apparently formed themselves into a huge single company or ‘cartel’. Obviously, from the point of view of senators this was potentially a most threatening new concentration of wealth. So Badian claims that they decided that the best tactic to counter the equestrians and avoid missing out on the spoils altogether was to get involved in the taxing business more directly themselves. The publicani had shown the enormous wealth that was there to be had; and Verres had shown how unscrupulous practices could enable senators to get their share. Thus, in Cilicia it was Cicero’s predecessor, Appius Claudius, who had brought about the mess that Cicero found when he arrived. Appius had apparently received over a million denarii from certain cities connected to the province for agreeing not to billet the military, and other exactions would have been likely. On top of this, moneylenders like Crassus had made hugh loans that were probably repayable at interest above normal. All this meant that by the time Cicero arrived there was precious little left for the publicani to collect, because the governor and his associates had already taken the lion’s share. Indeed, in some cases the former hadn’t been paid for five years. Cicero’s solution was to


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investigate the accounts, where he found that the magistrates had embezzled large amounts in league with the governor, and he then somehow persuaded them to repay what they had taken. He also managed to get the cities to pay their arrears, but helped them by fixing the interest rate at 12 percent (as against the usual exorbitant rate: as high as 48 percent). Thus, it was not the recklessness of the publicani alone which was the scourge of the provinces in Badian’s view, for the interests of senators and equites (including, most prominently, publicani) in the post-Sullan Republic had become very similar, promoting a natural concordia, which was disturbed only by the behaviour of a few old-fashioned aristocrats [e.g., Cato]…we do not (as in Asia in the nineties) have a fairly simple picture of equestrian exploitation, with the Senate trying to keep it under control. The political code of the late Republic had made the publicani more reasonable and less dangerous. What had begun (after Sulla) as a partnership in exploitation was inevitably producing a new difference between the partners. The real exploiters were the governing elite, armed with power that had itself now become irresponsible. The equites, in the field of public contracts as in other areas of business, had consolidated their power and organization, only to find they had to be content with leavings. They cannot fairly be blamed for the disintegration of political morality in Rome or in the provinces.46 The kind of profiteering we have been describing is, we submit, a classic instance of Weber’s category of political capitalism discussed above. If this conception is kept in mind, we shall not think of tax farming and the other forms of profit making discussed here as mere abuses of a system that was in principle honest and functional—as if something like a rational administration of the modern type had been undermined by organized criminals or corrupt officials. Rather, profit making by political means, that is profit making by the exploitation of political power in its various guises, was perfectly normal, a routine and accepted practice in Roman public affairs. Any theory of Roman civilization has to account for the fact that, as Jones puts it, as a result of conquest ‘very large sums flowed into private hands in Italy from abroad…. The great bulk of the money…went to men of the upper and middle classes, senators and equites.’47 In other words, a crucial feature of the Roman socio-economic scene was the large-scale exploitation of subject peoples for economic ends. Thus, the conclusion is inescapable that senators profited greatly from various forms of corruption and exploitation. They received bribes from foreign potentates and communities for political services…. The sums involved were sometimes huge; Ptolemy Auletes in 59 B.C. paid 36 million denarii to the triumvirs for his recognition as king of Egypt.48 Caesar and the capitalistic conquest of political power It is worth exploring the nature of this kind of political dealing in the Roman context a


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little further. To do so we shall take the case of Julius Caesar and begin by considering a revealing discussion of him and his affairs in Plutarch’s Lives. At one point in the biography of Caesar, where the great general’s military prowess is being described, we read how Caesar, by his unsparing distribution of money and honours, showed [his soldiers] that he did not heap up wealth from the wars for his own luxury, or the gratifying of his private pleasures, but that all he received was but a public fund laid by for the reward and encouragement of valour, and that he booked up all he gave to deserving soldiers as so much increase to his own riches.49 What is the significance of such practices? What is their function in the context of Roman society generally? For some assistance in answering these questions we shall turn to the work of Mathias Gelzer. In his great work on The Roman Nobility, Gelzer has brilliantly explained how much a master Caesar was at the above kind of political investment.50 Beginning early in his career, during his year as aedile (i.e., temple warden), we learn that Caesar had apparently financed public buildings, gladiatorial games, and wild-beast shows that were so spectacular that his colleague Bibulus had gone utterly unnoticed. Indeed, so extravagant were his outlays around this period that at one point he was said to owe some 25 million sesterces. In 63 he had won the pontifex maximus through massive bribes for which he had had to borrow very heavily. To win the consulship in 59 Caesar allied himself with the very wealthy L. Lucceius who systematically bought votes for them both. Caesar is also renowned for having accepted moneys in large quantities from a variety of questionable sources, such as foreign princes for whom he negotiated treaties: he allegedly shared 6,000 talents with Pompey for achieving the recognition of Ptolemy XII. (Interestingly, Ptolemy had had to borrow from the Roman financier C. Rabirius Postumus, who, to collect his money, had even been made the Egyptian treasurer. But Caesar then took over Postumus’s obligations in person, and went to Alexandria in 48 to collect the 17,500,000 denarii that was still owed.) In proportion as his power increased Caesar became richer, and because of greater wealth he was able to strengthen his position still further by loans to friends, senators and their wives at moderate or no interest: for example, he at one point lent Cicero 800,000 sesterces. In exploring the wider ramifications of this kind of lending, Martin Fredriksen notes that such dealing had become so extensive that it was partly responsible for the generalized debt crisis which occurred in 49 BC. It was a fact of life, he tells us, ‘that the political bosses of the late Republic could play a deliberate financial game for political ends’.51 Clearly, the lending and borrowing of money had become a crucial method of solidifying alliances. A further illustration concerns Cicero who had apparently been caught out by Caesar on several occasions for dealing in ways of which the latter disapproved. Related to this was the fact that Faberius, Caesar’s secretary, had borrowed a large sum around 47–46 BC, and Cicero had had great difficulty getting it repaid. In the end, apparently, Faberius did not pay up in cash, but handed over the notices on a number of debts owed to Caesar. As Frederiksen remarks, ‘It is hard to escape the suspicion that Cicero’s loan was in some


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sense a pledge for his loyalty…the story illustrates the traffic not merely of the primary relation of the debtor and creditor, but in the second level of the buying and selling of the credit of others [delagatio debitoris].’52 The tremendous extent of the power Caesar was able to gain in these ways is shown by some incidents which took place in 56 BC. According to Gelzer’s reconstruction of the events, Caesar had established agreements with Pompeius and Crassus that on their election as consuls they would arrange the prorogation of Caesar’s command for five years; and he had also managed to manipulate the magistracies to his advantage, even while absent from Rome.53 Caesar bought support in many other political and military campaigns as well. Gelzer tells us that his election maxim was: Two things establish, maintain and increase a man’s predominance—soldiers and money—and each multiplies the other.’54 From these and other accounts of the conduct of the Roman magnates, it is hard not to conclude that in terms of its motivational bases the cultivation of military prowess was all but indistinguishable from the pursuit of wealth. We need not take seriously the implied altruism of Caesar’s generosity to his troops; the point is that he must have understood full well that lust for booty enhanced their fighting spirit, that his munificence would help to create an extremely effective fighting machine which might even rival that of Alexander the Great and potentially make him just as wealthy. Of course, here the meaning of wealth undergoes a change—at a certain point changes in quantity give rise to a change in quality—and the desire for riches becomes indistinguishable from an interest in obtaining an exalted power position. Then public and private realms begin to merge, a feature that is symbolically expressed later in the notion of the divinity of the emperor. As Weber has explained, these profits are returns which directly depend on the application of violence, unlike modern capitalism where profit is gained in a formally peaceful fashion through the market. The extent of the violence used to extract wealth of course varied depending on the relative power of the exploiters and their victims, but the Romans were in general quite ruthless when their immediate interests were at stake. Hence, as Ramsey MacMullen notes, tax revolts often occurred which required the action of provincial garrison armies to be quelled. He quotes an Egyptian observer of the day who relates an incident that must have occurred very frequently wherever routinized submission had not been achieved: when the tax collectors arrived in a certain district, some of the debtors took off because of their inability to pay. In retaliation the tax collector took by force their women, children, parents, and other kin, and beat them and abused them and inflicted every kind of outrage on them to reveal where the fugitive had gone or to pay what he owed…. He did not give up until he had wrung their bodies with the rack and scourge and ended their lives with unheard of afflictions…. When there were no kin left, the outrage was extended to their neighbours and at times to whole villages and towns.55 Thus, to sum up we note again that the predominance of the equestrians was relatively short-lived, for the struggles of the period culminated in the triumph of the nobility (though they were in turn eclipsed in the Principate). However, in our view, Weber has


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correctly interpreted the rise of the equestrians and the expansion of tax-farming activities as the zenith of ancient capitalism. It is not to the new agricultural economy based on slave-worked plantations or livestock ranching that we should look for the decisive locus of capitalism (as Toynbee and others have done), nor to developments in trade and industry (Rostovtzeff)—even though some connections between contracting and other forms of enterprise may have existed—but to the activities of the publicani.

THE IMPERIAL BUREAUCRACY AND THE SELLING OF OFFICES Here we shall not pursue the history of Roman financial administration through the Empire in all its complexities, though later we shall address some aspects concerning the decline of the Empire. For the moment we merely wish to focus on the immediate fate of the equestrians and the administration of tax collection. As a consequence of the revolutionary transformation brought by Caesar and the emergence of the Principate under Augustus, many of the institutions of the Republic were severely shaken if not destroyed. The conflict of the orders just discussed faded into the background as the emperor and the army now took centre stage. The equestrians lost much of their power and were reorganized by Augustus into a mere body from which he could draw officials for posts that were less auspicious than those reserved for the senators. The great private companies had already suffered severely from the exactions of Pompey during the Civil War, and then from Caesar’s depriving them of the privilege of collecting the decumae of Asia.56 Even so, the publicani could not be dispensed with altogether; they continued to play a role for a long time in the collection of the indirect taxes. In the new Augustan system the old taxes, the stipendium and the tithe, were replaced by a poll tax (tributum capitis) paid by all adults or male adults and a land tax (tributum soli) which also included other capital assets (houses, ships etc.). These were administered on the basis of regular censuses in which the population and their property were registered, and collection was the responsibility not of contractors but of city authorities.57 It is commonly asserted that the emergence of the imperial civil service was a great improvement, especially as it saw an end to the wanton exploitation of the provinces at the hands of the greedy publicans and corrupt governors. Besides, the emperors had ambitious projects they were eager to pursue which required a more efficient administration of public finance, so they reformed the taxation system and placed it on a more equitable and stable foundation. As Jones writes: it was probably Augustus who introduced the uniform and more rational system of taxation which is attested later in the Empire…. The great advantage of the new system was that the publicani could now be dispensed with. Regular censuses were now required in all provinces to register property and to count the population…the whole basis of taxation [was altered] from a proportional levy, where yield was unpredictable, to a fixed levy based on assessed property.58 But true as this may have been, we should not assume the Roman Civil Service was


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anything like a modern rational bureaucracy—with its salaried, full-time, dutiful officers administering set jurisdictions in the fashion sine ira et studio, and participating in a rationally coordinated division of labour (where formal qualifications and technical competence determine remuneration, responsibility and place in the hierarchy). The Roman official was known by the term scriba, and he belonged to the ordo scribarum which was divided into separate panels (decuriae) for the carrying out of the different tasks. The decuriae were apparently regarded as labour pools out of which magistrates peopled their administrations. This is not the place for a detailed discussion, but a few aspects are worth noting. A most interesting feature of the system was that places on the scribae panels were apparently obtainable by purchase. According to Jones, scribae were usually nominated by the magistrates of the college where they were to serve, and once in office could not be removed unless for misconduct. A scriba thus had a virtual freehold ownership of his office and could even deputize others to carry out the duties of the office. Purchase was not operative at all stages of appointment, however: as Jones explains, ‘Roman magistrates did not sell the original nominations, but the original nominees sold their practices to vicarii. The growth of the system of purchase implies that the service was lucrative, and if so the official salary, which Cicero says was small, must have been regularly supplemented by perquisites in some form.’59 The same conclusions are advanced by MacMullen in his discussion of the role of corruption in the decline of Rome. He notes the growth of information about decuriae in the Empire as a consequence of epigraphic evidence associated with the practice of bestowing municipal honours in return for civic benefactions, and argues this is of more than passing significance. This is connected, in MacMullen’s view, with the fact that, despite the low nominal salaries, candidates for quite menial offices were apparently prepared to buy their posts whenever they became available because by becoming decuriae they could gain considerable wealth, even achieving equestrian rank which required property to the value of 400,000 sesterces. Needless to say, wealth of that order could never be attained by no matter how many years of further scrimping and saving on one’s salary alone. How then? The answer can only lie with the commoda [i.e., perquisites]. For Verres’s clerk, 4 percent withholding from a single account under his oversight produced 1,300,000 sesterces.60 The reason we have raised the question of the selling of offices is to indicate the continuity between governmental/profit-making practices before and during the Empire. In both situations a clearcut division was lacking between the exercise of public authority and the private pursuit of wealth, a feature taken for granted in modern democracies of course. The extent to which the spheres of politics and economics were unseparated in this fashion varied, but a greater differentiation arose under the Principate as the role of the imperial slaves and freedmen and the military clerks expanded. But even here practices existed which have long since been banished from modern bureaucracies. For example, substantial fees were required to enrol for a post in the palatine ministries or the praetorian prefecture—Jones explains how the competition for some places was so great


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that vacancies were bought from retiring officials: eventually, in the sixth century some postings had become officially saleable. Of course, the reason why offices were so sought after was connected with the fact that salaries were not the sole source of income. Byzantine officials lived not on pay, but on fees (sportulae)—collected in part from each other, but in the main from the general public. Fees were payable for every transaction—for letters of appointment to every post from the highest down to the defensor of a city, for all judicial processes, and for the collection of the taxes; for by general practice of antiquity the taxpayer paid a gratuity to the collector for his trouble in collecting the money from him—the sum was fixed by Majorian at 2½ solidi for each iugerum, divisible between the officials of the various finance departments.61 In one of his constitutions Constantine had attempted to eradicate the sportulae, which he alleged had become so out of hand that the judges, governors and other officers were all on the take and promoting a general ethos of greed. By Julian’s reign, however, the government had accepted these practices, and merely set out a regulated scale of fees that were openly charged. A final aspect of civil service under later imperial conditions concerns the role of decuriones or curiales, the annually elected city magistrates who were increasingly entrusted with tax collection as the imperial system evolved. Initially, the responsibility of public office had been eagerly sought, and the civic opulence of many Roman cities of this period bears witness to the energetic efforts of decuriones to achieve distinction through public duty. However, as the crisis of the third century unfolded, the responsibility of tax collection in particular became more and more onerous, a complete reversal to the previous era where it had been a financial boon. Owing to a shortage of candidates, those wealthy enough to possess sufficient land to be pledged as surety were increasingly obliged to accept office, even when this threatened to bankrupt them. All kinds of evasion were tried, and eventually the wealthiest magnates retreated to the countryside in the attempt to avoid civic duties altogether. Diocletian responded to this by systematically lowering the social qualifications for enrolment in the decurionate, and by making municipal service compulsory. This was the first step towards the establishment of a liturgy state on the model of Egypt which was to advance further in later eras.62 We shall return to these problems again in chapter six.

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF PATRON-CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS We have already noted the significance of patronage in Roman society on a number of occasions, but we have not yet dealt with it in specific detail, nor have we shown its specific connections with political capitalism. The kind of political dealing that we have just been describing clearly required on-going alliances of a robust kind, so it is appropriate that we should consider the forms of social allegiance that were most commonly practised in Rome. In what follows we shall utilize some perspectives of S.N.Eisenstadt and L. Roniger who have recently explored what they term the ‘structuring of trust through interpersonal relations’ in a number of societies including


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ancient Rome. By way of introducing their theme, Eisenstadt and Roniger have drawn attention to the common occurrence of various interpersonal relations (especially friendship, ritualized personal relations and patron-client relations) which are established outside the major institutions of society for the purpose of constructing a realm of intimacy, trust or spirituality which is not adequately catered for by those institutions.63 These solidary relations are usually non-ascriptive and arise through mechanisms of ‘generalized exchange’ which are institutionalized and function to extend trust. In this regard it is pertinent to note that clientage in Rome arose at a time when increasing numbers of individuals began to find themselves with no share in land or participation rights in the military association.64 Thus, relations of dependence gradually arose and eventually became hereditary, with the client being largely in the hands of the patron. With the development of hoplite warfare technology, however, the position of the clients improved; they gained the vote in the military assembly and thereafter freer forms of clientage emerged. But more on this shortly. According to Eisenstadt and Roniger, the basic characteristics of patron-client relations are as follows: such relations are paternalistic and diffuse; they involve exchanges of different types of resources (unlike market exchange), such as instrumental, economic and political support with promises of reciprocity, solidarity and loyalty; there is an element of unconditionality and long-range credit; strong personal obligation is a key factor; relations are thus not legal or contractual, but formally voluntary; finally, patronage relationships are usually asymmetrical and take place between individuals, not groups.65 Forms of patronage in Roman society Now in ancient Rome Eisenstadt and Roniger argue there were at least three kinds of patron-client formations denoted by the terms patrocinium and clientelae.66 First, there was the patronus-libertus relation between masters and their former slaves created through manumission. Second, there were relationships between associates and those of lower social standing such as the urban plebs: (a) one type of clientela was entered into via the arrangement known as applicatio; (b) another variation of free clientage was that which involved a patron and municipia or coloniae in the provinces; this was based on deditio and usually meant that the clients were represented by their patron in the Senate at Rome; (c) and another kind was that between wealthy individuals in the provinces and a patron at Rome—this was the tie of hospitium. Third, there was amicitia, the patronclient relationship between members of the ruling elite and others of high standing: (a) sometimes a person seeking advancement would attach himself to a leading political or military figure, thereby becoming an amicus;67 (b) a patron could commend a client to another patron and thus the latter became attached to two patrons;68 (c) patrons also acted in the courts on behalf of their clients;69 (d) finally, the Roman state had foreign clientelae which were relations it maintained with civitates liberae.70 Now our purpose in detailing these forms of patron-client relations is to consider them in connection with the kinds of economic arrangements we have been discussing in this chapter. We shall begin with the following observation: to a degree patronage in antiquity


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can be said to have fulfilled a function which corresponds to that of contract today. For the bonds between masters and their freedmen were only partly protected by formal contract, because an important source of obligation came from the fides which permeated the interpersonal relationship. But how did patronage come to play such a role? We have already discussed the political contests that took place in the late Republic between the various factions of the aristocracy. The older established nobles, the socalled optimates, had wished to maintain a stranglehold on high office in order to preserve for themselves the spoils of Roman power. In opposition to them were a determined group of disgruntled ‘newmen’, the so-called popularii, who had increasingly turned to patronage in order to enlist the support of the urban plebs via the comitia tributa in enacting laws more in keeping with their own interests. Similar relations of patronage had evolved in the military sphere, when, for example, Marius recruited the proletarians of Rome into the army; the latter was thereby transformed from a citizen militia into a full-time professional body. Now in both these areas patronage played a crucial role in galvanizing the interests of leaders and their followers into a powerful force pushing for further military expansion and an increased level of economic exploitation of Roman power. Successful generals like Caesar became in effect leaders of large bands of booty hunters whom they led into battle with as much discipline as was necessary to remain an effective fighting force. Such relations were generalized through the Roman social system, and even developed an hereditary dimension. As Weber explains, on the expanding estates of the Roman nobility an ever growing number of small tenant farmers (coloni) was settled, outfitted by the lord and closely supervised in their economic management, who after each crisis found themselves more deeply in debt until their position on the land and the complete dependency on the lord had de facto become hereditary. In the Civil Wars they were levied by the leaders to provide military support—just as the clients of the army leader had been called up in the Numantian war [a century earlier].71 Thus, it was the system of patronage which bound these otherwise divergent classes together, and this played no small part in helping Rome to expand in a concerted and relentless fashion. Eisenstadt and Roniger have analysed the strategic function of clientage in some detail: clients hoped to derive some advantage from submission in a society in which low-standing social strata had no lands and no protection before the courts. As for nobles, when contest for office became bitter and acquired violent features, family blood, affinity or adoption relations came to be insufficient to master this situation and they opted to add the popular support of clients, adherents and amici in Rome and elsewhere, and/or of their soldiers and veterans of war.72 Thus, when a general was victorious in war he rewarded his troops with land and booty; in return he expected their support in his subsequent political career in which power contests with other nobles were a normal feature. Clients would be expected to generally promote the virtue and prowess of their man, and might under some circumstances be called upon to exercise violence on his behalf. A successful patron offered in return


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protection and support for legislation that promoted his clients’ interests. Clientage and Roman hegemony over foreign states When Rome had established its permanent occupancy of conquered territories, other forms of patronage arose, in particular those involving distinguished Roman citizens and the elites of allied cities. The communities that had been brought under Roman rule quickly recognized that their best chance of reducing exploitation was to establish links with powerful Roman senators who could be induced, at a price, to champion their interests at the power centre in Rome. They could apply to the Senate for defence of their interests against the abuses of tax farmers, governors and generals; the costs in being so represented were no doubt perceived as the lesser of two evils.73 On the extraordinary extent of such patronage Weber at one point remarks on the unprecedented situation whereby ‘the Claudians held Sparta and Pergamon in clientage, and other families had other cities under their patronage, receiving their ambassadors and representing their wishes in the Senate’.74 The patron of a client community thus aided its diplomatic representation, providing hospitium to envoys while in Rome, introducing them to senators, and supporting their pleas where possible. He was also often asked to arbitrate in local conflicts, and saw it as his role to keep the city informed about decrees and the law. Through patronage the colonies of Roman and, later, Latin and Italian citizens played an important role in Rome’s political affairs, owing to the fact that they had the vote; local leaders could sometimes be quite influential and swing support in the rural tribes behind one or another noble and his amici. This brings us finally to the solidary links between individual Roman nobles known by the term amicitia. Basically, amicitia was a highly unstructured way of bringing social equals together in alliances for political purposes. An amicus was thus a close adherent or political supporter, who was especially useful in marshalling the voting groups, or tribules, through the maintenance of contact, pressures of various kinds and through bribery and vote buying (divisores were responsible for distributing gifts). An amicus (dectores) often accompanied his patron to the Forum to help the latter in the general conduct of his affairs. Such amici were also indispensable in representing a noble’s interests when he was absent from Rome.75 A graphic illustration of the way patronage might combine with political capitalism is provided by Mathias Gelzer in his excellent discussion of ‘political friendship’ in The Roman Nobility. He relates how in 134 BC the younger Africanus had gone to Numantia with 500 friends (amici) and clients, and had formed these into an elite military unit (cohors amicorum) which intervened whenever the need arose.76 Of course, from such relationships a client or friend would expect direct material benefits. Gelzer tells of how when governors went abroad their entourage of clients expected to be able to share in the booty that might be won—C.Gracchus had noted that wine jars invariably returned full of gold and silver; and Cicero apparently put Brutus’s agent at the head of a cavalry unit in order that he could extort usurious interest from cities in Cyprus.77 Thus patronage was an essential accompaniment of political capitalism owing to the low level of formal institutionalization of the latter. In order to stabilize the interest constellations that drove Roman expansion, to maintain some order and reliability in the


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absence of bureaucracy, patronage was resorted to. Laying out money, time and effort for this kind of political support would have paid more handsomely in many instances than economic investments of a directly commercial nature.

EXCURSUS ON ROMAN IMPERIALISM Undoubtedly the most important recent exploration of Roman expansionism is the work of William Harris already referred to, but also important is E.Badian’s Roman Imperialism in the Late Republic; so it is to these two works that we shall now turn. We have already described the ethos of militarism that pervaded Roman society. The question we must now ask is what other causes were involved which led Rome so routinely to war: especially important here is the crucial question of the weight to be accorded to direct economic motives. Of the two works under consideration, Badian’s thesis is probably the most controversial because he maintains, contrary to what is commonly believed, that in its early expansion ‘Rome sought no economic benefits’.78 According to Badian, the usual evidence for economic motives does not stand up to critical analysis, and therefore such a view is a ‘figment of modern anachronism’.79 The classic examples of commercial interest, the free harbours at Ambracia and Delos, will not do because Roman aristocrats were not beneficiaries. And Rome’s tribute-gathering practices suggest they merely retained arrangements already in place, primarily either because of inertia or owing to the absence of alternatives. (Why any alternatives were inconceivable, however, does not seem clear from this analysis, and similarly unexplained is Badian’s claim that the occupation of new provinces cost more than was gained.) Indeed, in Macedonia the royal mines were closed, apparently to prevent their economic exploitation such was the indifference to economic gain. Finally, Badian claims to quash another argument of the economic determinists concerning markets: the view that the Romans forbade the growing of vines and olives by Transalpine tribes to improve their own agricultural profitability makes no sense if similar measures were not taken against other places rich in vines and olives (like Spain and Sicily). As they were not, economic interests were simply not a factor. But Badian makes a concession at one point which is most damaging to his case. He says that whilst exploitation of the provinces was not economically motivated, ‘the wars themselves, as is well known, were highly profitable…. Money, slaves and works of art poured into the city. This of course was the ancient law of war.’80 The obvious weakness here is the assumption of a meaningful distinction between the act of conquest (war) and the enjoyment of subjugation (rule). For surely these merge into each other, as do the differing motives of the individuals concerned: soldiers in the front line seek spoils, booty and glory, but following closely in their wake are inevitably speculators, dealers in booty, tax farmers, latifundists and others. Of course, Badian knows this all too well—as he says: ‘The profits, when they came, were welcome and were taken as a matter of course.’81 But, incredibly to us, Badian can see no economically relevant motivation for war in all this—he would have us believe that the Romans, though undoubtedly appreciative of riches once gained, did not actively seek them from the outset through


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their military actions. This is so unconvincing as to hardly need further discussion. What has confused Badian, however, does warrant attention. The source of the difficulty, in our view, lies in a too narrow conception of economic interest. Thus, in discussing the destruction of Carthage and Corinth, Badian notes that the Romans declined to take over these lucrative economic sites but instead laid them waste: ‘their motives were purely strategic and political: to strike at strongly fortified centres of traditional anti-Roman leadership’.82 But what this fails to consider is the possibility that Rome’s economic interest might indeed be best served by placing military/ strategic considerations uppermost. As the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has taught us, economic motives often lie concealed in cultural, political and other superficially non-economic practices. And, if the mainspring of Rome’s expansion was political capitalism, as we have argued, we should not expect Roman interests to have pursued a political policy designed to foster market capitalism (as modern states have done in the era of colonialism). Rather, we should expect outright military competition in the interests of securing the field of exploitation that depends on the exercise of power prerogatives; and with this the destruction of Corinth and Carthage is utterly consistent. Thus, when Badian invokes Tenny Frank’s discussion of this matter, he looks only to the expression of the immediate rationale of Roman policy: Polybius, according to Frank, ‘lays the whole blame on the Senate’s fear of the growing political power of Carthage’.83 But Badian ignores the fact that Frank, after noting how the Romans allowed others to inherit the commerce of the region, had gone on to say that ‘the native Libyans became Roman tributaries, while the land that had belonged to Carthaginian citizens became Roman public land to be sold or rented out as the censors saw fit. A large part was sold to Roman investors to pay for costs of the war.’84 So economic motives were very much involved—which, incidentally, is consistent with Weber’s view on the matter which had insisted that the destruction of cities such as Carthage, Corinth and Rhodes was basically a consequence of the power of Roman tax farmers and domain lease holders.85 Our argument here is also supported by Harris, who rightly notes the issue partly hangs on how one defines ‘economic’: the accumulation of wealth for its own sake seems to present no great difficulties of interpretation, ‘but what if [an aristocrat] sought to enrich himself for the sake of prestige, to be gained by judicious distribution of the profits of war? Or if he did so in order to strengthen his political position?’86 But whatever one decides about this, the following facts are incontrovertible: ‘Economic gain was to the Romans (and generally in the ancient world) an integral part of successful warfare and the expansion of power. Land, plunder, slaves, revenues were regular and natural results of success.’87 The argument from silence—that as their economic motives are seldom spoken of they did not exist—is unconvincing: it was simply assumed that success in war brought wealth. Whether wealth pure and simple was behind every war is, of course, another matter; but it would hardly have been unimportant in the majority of cases, especially when the issue of whether to go to war hung in the balance in the Senate and the assemblies. Harris has traced the history of Roman economic interests in expansion from the fourth century BC on. In the early Republic many wars frequently had the character of plundering expeditions: in Livy, for example, we again and again hear of the capture of large numbers of slaves, most of whom were subsequently employed for the benefit of


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Roman citizens.88 Similarly, huge areas of land were taken and settled by Romans. As regards Italy, Harris argues economic exploitation was not so brutal as with foreign peoples; but ‘nothing impedes the supposition that Rome took as much from the Italians as it was able to without the blessings of a standing army and a bureaucracy’.89 In the period of the Punic Wars economic motives again featured: ‘Polybius testifies that the First Punic War was advertised to the people as a source of profit, as well a war against Carthage in Sicily might be’;90 the known richness of the Carthaginian empire, and of Sicily in particular, could hardly have been overlooked. Indeed, according to Harris, acquisitiveness is the only likely motive to explain the peculiar policy pursued by the Romans when they continued the war even after the fall of Agrigentum.91 Even mercantile interests eventually make their presence felt, though these were probably not overriding: ‘the Senate was not indifferent to those who were involved in foreign trade, as is shown by the embassy sent on behalf of some 500 traders who had “sailed from Italy” and had been imprisoned by Carthage’.92 Direct economic motives can be documented throughout the middle and late Republican era. The senators in charge of the fiscal resources of the state must have been only too aware that war and expansion were highly profitable. This would have been especially brought out when repayments of war loans (amounting to the equivalent of twenty-five years of the tributum simplex) were made possible by the booty bought back from Asia by Cn. Manlius Vulso. Then, as a result of the conquest of Macedonia, additional huge amounts (120 million sesterces) flowed into the public purse, so much so that taxation of Roman citizens could cease. This was the era in which building works on a massive scale were undertaken: the Aqua Marcia (180 million sesterces), the Pons Aemilius, many roads throughout Italy, the temple of Jupiter Stator, the gilded ceiling in the Capitolium.93 In addition, grain subsidies were begun, becoming a regular feature of support for the urban plebs. All this could hardly have been merely a convenient by-product of a number of successful wars initiated for non-economic reasons. At an individual level also it is clear that the pursuit of booty was a normal goal of war. According to Harris, this was true of both aristocrats and ordinary legionaries. Plautus provides ample illustration of the lower-class attitude which invariably viewed warfare as a way of making money.94 And Polybius gives an idea of upper-class attitudes. He describes how systematic the plundering of captured cities was; though sometimes undisciplined, there were nonetheless procedures for distributing according to rank— shares were known as munubiae.95 Some of this money was spent by generals on public works, but they also kept a sizeable amount for themselves. Whilst there were a few instances of restraint on the part of victorious generals (Scipio Aemilianus apparently took nothing for himself at Carthage), such cases were at this stage not typical. They may, however, have marked the beginning of a transition from the crude exploitation of the immediate fruits of violent conquest to an interest in the regular returns of long-term occupation. For in the course of time, the adventurous type of booty capitalism was displaced by a more routinized structure of political capitalism (we resist the notion of ‘system’ here) as the focus of acquisition became tax collection and the profits of provincial administration. This was relatively more rational from an economic point of view because the proceeds of long-term colonial exploitation would greatly have exceeded those derivable from the immediate sacking of conquered cities. As evidence of


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such a trend we cite the fact of certain restraints that were placed on senators in particular, no doubt as a result of the potentially ruinous general effects of unchecked exploitation. We have already referred to the law forbidding senators from participating in state contracts, but another example is also worth mentioning: apparently, whilst they were acting as governors, senators were forbidden to purchase slaves because, as Harris explains, it was thought ‘robbery, not purchase, if the seller did not have a free choice’.96 A final aspect to be considered concerns the extent to which the interest of commercial classes (publicani, negotiatores) can be said to have influenced Roman foreign policy. According to Harris, it was the publicani who were the most obvious beneficiaries of expansion. We have already discussed their activities and involvement with politics at some length; here we need only mention the direct political consequences of their activities. While war was probably never instigated at their behest alone, Roman expansion was almost always to their advantage and Roman power was often used explicitly to ensure their interests: while Cicero had refused to allow tax collectors to command his troops, it is symptomatic that he allowed troops to support M.Brutus’s agents in exacting interest in Cappadocia.97 In the late second century BC when the publicani and other sub-equestrian businessmen came to have more influence, however, there was undoubtedly more direct influence over Roman policy. This is particularly true of the response to the crisis in Asia in 88 BC when many Romans lost their lives and Cicero argued that the interests of the publicani had to be defended by Roman arms.

Part III Capitalism and the fate of Roman civilization

6 The nature of the market and the significance of capitalism in Roman antiquity It was, of course, the desire for profit that made people compete to be appointed governor in the first place; but beyond that, they might also have to satisfy creditors from whom they had had to borrow the initial price of their office. Ammianus once again proves a useful reporter. He speaks generally of judges, that is, governors, ‘who have purchased public positions at a high price and, like burdensome creditors, rummage around for money in every level of wealth to shake out booty from other men’s bosoms’. Ramsay MacMullen, Corruption and the Decline of Rome

ON THE EXTENT OF MARKET CAPITALISM IN ANTIQUITY In the descriptive discussions above we have generally avoided raising the issue of what might be termed ‘the ancient economy as a whole’, and have focused instead on particular aspects and sectors. We adopted this approach not merely for organizational convenience, however, but partly as a response to a fundamental problem, namely, that by no means is it an obvious fact that there was such an holistic thing as ‘the ancient economy’. By an economy some kind of discrete domain or unified system is usually implied, and in today’s world this is obviously connected with the sphere of industrial production and the institution of the market as well as the activities of the so-called service sector. But with antiquity it is by no means clear that we can speak of the ‘Roman market’ or, say, the ‘Mediterranean economy’, if by these something like a ‘capitalist market system’ is meant.1 On the other hand, various phenomena which are associated with markets—such as long-distance trade, the existence of sectors with production oriented to the market, the establishment of market places in key urban locations, a widely circulating coinage, regular mechanisms of price formation, large-scale port facilities developed for trade purposes, consumption taxes—are clearly attested. The difficult question, of course, is to gauge the significance of these elements in the context of socio-economic life in general. We would like to know the degree of market integration achieved, the extent of market orientation on the part of average producers, and the importance of market-produced commodities in the context of everyday life—questions the answers for which depend upon quantitative data which every historian of antiquity knows are nowhere adequate. Any judgement concerning the existence and/or extent of market capitalism in antiquity clearly requires an assessment of the nature and significance of the market. Let us briefly

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summarize the current state of debate on this issue. The debate on the role of the market in antiquity The Jones/Finley model Undoubtedly, the most accepted account of the significance of the market in antiquity in recent times is that developed by A.H.M. Jones, M.I.Finley and their Cambridge followers. Indeed, so established has the model become that it has been termed by Keith Hopkins the ‘new orthodoxy’, it having largely succeeded in breaking down the old orthodoxy of Rostovtzeff and others (those we have termed modernizers). How does this model view the market and related phenomena? According to Hopkins, the new orthodoxy is basically primitivist in character in that it emphasizes the low level of market orientation, the backwardness of technological development, and the absence of rationality in the economic realm generally. Alternatively, it makes much of the place and significance of agriculture which, according to Jones, was far and away the most crucial industry of antiquity: ‘the vast majority of inhabitants were peasants, the wealth of the upper classes was in the main derived from rent’.2 Thus, in a fashion which recalls Bücher, Hasebroek and aspects of Marx’s work, the assumption is made that economic units in antiquity were not integrated into a complex interregional division of labour, which enabled a diversity of commodities to be produced in large quantities, but were largely self-sufficient and preoccupied with the satisfaction of basic needs. There were of course a few exceptions, but these only serve to prove the rule that non-market forces were dominant most of the time. The small towns that did exist were only ‘consumer cities’, of importance primarily for political and religious purposes, not for economics. It is true urban markets arose to interchange a few urbanproduced goods with the produce of the countryside, not all of them luxuries, but even then most products were produced locally for immediate consumption. Long-distance interregional trade carried only very expensive, luxury items, in part because of the high cost of overland transport and the fact that economies of scale were never achieved that could reduce costs to a level to make exchange economic. Besides, the uniformity of climate and geographical conditions in the Mediterranean basin generally meant that most areas could produce any goods needed from nearby. The new orthodoxy backs up its economic analysis with a complementary social history. First, it argues that the status of trade and traders was invariably low; merchants were typically small men without even citizenship rights. Similarly, craftsmen were at the bottom of the social scale; commonly they were slaves or at best freedmen. Though a few aristocrats dabbled in commerce and manufacture, the bulk of their wealth was gained from landowning—admittedly, they could only realize the value of their estates by selling the produce which came from that source. In sum it was the ownership of the two key means of production, land and labour, which bought wealth in antiquity; it was not control over commercial resources such as manufacturing facilities, capital, technological know-how etc. As Hopkins says, ‘that was why the ownership of land supplemented by the ownership of slaves or by the control over tenants, bought such high status’.3


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To all this Finley adds a further twist, for he introduces the concept of status here in a radical way, and at the same time plays down the concept of class. According to Finley, as we have already seen, the ancients were not so much interested in the creation of wealth as they were in achieving status; and the latter was not to be attained by the means of modern economic man (success at profit maximization through productive investment, hard work etc.) but rather through the quite different means of ostentatious consumption and by the cultivation of military prowess. Hopkins’s revision of the ‘new orthodoxy’ While Hopkins at one point describes Finley’s theory of the ancient economy as the ‘best model available’, he nonetheless believes the new orthodoxy is in certain respects deficient and sets out to modify it. He does this in a somewhat contradictory way, however, for he wants to argue, against the thrust of Finley, that a modest degree of economic growth did actually occur—but this was strictly limited, and so in broad outline Finley’s model can still be retained. Thus, he argues, ‘the size of the surplus produced in the Mediterranean basin during the last millennium BC and the first two centuries AD gradually increased. The upward trend was gradual, not very large but significant, and with many oscillations either way.’4 The difficulty with this, of course, is that by allowing significant economic growth Hopkins is clearly departing from the gist of the orthodox model, and can be accused of trying to have it both ways. Hopkins believes two factors made some economic growth certain. First, as Rome expanded and became an empire, she imposed new taxes on her conquered territories and this forced the local producers to increase their output. Secondly, there were important innovations: among narrowly technical aids to improved production, I include iron tools, iron knives, screw presses, rotary mills, even water mills. But social innovations probably had even more impact: silver and bronze coins, money taxes, chattel slavery, writing, schools, written contracts, commercial loans, technical handbooks, large sailing ships, shared risk investment, absentee landlordship.5 On the surface this looks an impressive list, and Hopkins says it is by no means exhaustive. The obvious question, however, is whether Finley’s model can still be invoked without contradiction. Hopkins believes it can presumably because he thinks the alternative is too modernizing. But is that necessarily the case? Surely we can envisage yet another model, one which describes an in-between case of some sort—not primitive, but not modern either. Indeed, Hopkins goes on to sketch just such a model the characteristics of which are worth considering in some detail. First, Hopkins says that the evidence (such as settlement patterns, pollen counts etc.) shows total agricultural output increased considerably during the classical era. Second, total population was greater than for the same area both before and after this period. Third, the proportion of those in non-agricultural trades, those working in towns and villages, increased markedly (this is evidenced by expansion in the built-up area of settlements). Fourth, total non-agricultural production clearly rose because, for one thing,


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the number of Roman artefacts (coins, pots, lamps, iron tools, carved stones, ornaments) found at archaeological sites is far greater than for pre- or post-Roman levels. Fifth, average productivity per capita rose, though quite modestly; this is a necessary corollary of the third point above. In a fashion rather like Ste Croix, Hopkins says that ‘agricultural productivity increased above all because of the increased pressure of exploitation’,6 of which there were two types: (a) that of slaves who were forced to work harder than freemen; and (b) that of freemen who had to produce more to pay taxes. As regards nonagricultural productivity, Hopkins says this is much more problematic and in all likelihood the increase was only modest. Human muscle was aided by levers, pulleys and ratchets, by fire, water and wind, and by technical know-how, but the Romans did little more than diffuse techniques already in use (with the exceptions of genuine achievements in engineering and perhaps ship building). More important than technical innovations, however, were the social ones of peace and slavery. The fact that slaves were assembled and put to work in such a fashion as to produce large profits means they must have been more productive than alternative means. And Roman peace contributed to productivity by suppressing piracy, by enabling reliable transportation, and by making the tax burden predictable and bearable. At this point Hopkins adds an element to the argument that is perhaps his most original contribution: he argues that both the absolute and the relative amount that the state and the rich landowners extracted from primary producers via taxes and rents must have increased appreciably during the classical era. This tightening of the ‘screws of exploitation’ is connected with a further proposition: the state spent large amounts of taxation revenue at places at some distance from where it had been raised (e.g., frontier settlements), and in so doing it stimulated long-distance trade. This occurred because tax payers had to convert some of their output into commodities in order to pay their taxes; so they were forced to turn to market exchange to acquire funds. Hopkins says that ‘towns played a vital role, as centres in which local craftsmen converted the locally produced surplus into higher value, lower volume goods for transport and sale to distant markets’.7 Finally, these developments were clearly connected with the increasing use of money, which reached a high point in the first and second centuries AD. Now the problem with all this is that, despite the plausibility of some aspects, the crucial question concerning the nature and role of the market remains confused. For it is not consistent for Hopkins to maintain that a quite palpable economic growth occurred— with some large-scale market production, significant regular interregional trade, growing urbanization, a regular money economy etc.—at the same time as essentially holding to the primitivist model of Finley. It simply will not do to say, as does Hopkins, that the model is ‘sufficiently flexible to incorporate this modest dynamic’, because this makes a mockery of the idea of the model in the first place. In our view, both Hopkins and Finley fail to resolve the contradiction here because in the final analysis their ideal-types are too simple: for the primitivist/modernist dichotomy is just not adequate to cope with the historical complexity of the phenomena we wish to understand. In particular, Hopkins’s theory cannot explain why economic growth occurred to the degree described, but no more; Finley is at least more consistent in denying any real progress (but then he cannot cope with those economic achievements that most now agree are attested). In order to take the debate a stage further, in what follows we shall avail ourselves of some recent


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sociological contributions of a highly theoretical nature. Niklas Luhmann and the idea of the economy as a sub-system of society From theoretical insights that emanate primarily from the sociological classics of Emile Durkheim and Talcott Parsons, Luhmann has explored the idea of the ‘differentiation of society’ in combination with perspectives from ‘systems theory and the theory of evolution’. A direct legacy of Durkheim is the notion that primitive societies are constituted by combining like elements which are integrated ‘mechanically’, that such societies are therefore segmentally differentiated; whereas, by contrast, modern societies have evolved a more complex functional differentiation (and are thus integrated ‘organically’ in Durkheim’s terminology). But it is what Luhmann says about the economy as a functionally specialized subsystem that concerns us here. According to Luhmann, the specialized sphere of the economy has not existed for all time, as if it were an invariant feature of nature, but is a comparatively recent innovation that has been achieved as a result of societal evolution. From his perspective one cannot explain the appearance of the economy as a separate sphere if one merely focuses on the social means of satisfying naturally given needs (consumption): ‘economic development therefore cannot be driven, as theoreticians of the nineteenth century assumed, by a kind of human insatiability. Its motor lies rather in the structures of the economy as a social system.’8 We cannot discuss at any length the wider implications of such a view, but crucial from our point of view is this: by artificially stimulating consumption, society creates the conditions in which ‘respect for money’ arises, and this enables a specific attitude to the future to be manifest as routine. Hence, for Luhmann the economy obeys not an immanent logic of needs, but instead the need for an immanent logic; that to the extent that the economy specializes in the function of deferring decisions, it is itself dependent upon a multiplicity of social processes and thus draws behind it highly complex presuppositions (if this paradoxical formulation is permitted); and that in this whole context there is expressed a primacy of the problematic of time in human existence which the social processes obey.9 The question which must now be raised concerns precisely how a sub-system of society such as the economy is functionally differentiated from the rest of society in order for it to specialize in the fashion indicated. Luhmann notes how in archaic societies, by contrast, ‘economic functions’ are fulfilled by multi-purpose institutions which combine familial, political, religious, and military functions; needs are satisfied simply, on a ‘small-scale’, by either stock-piling or mutual assistance. But for the economy to arise as a specialized sub-system, it does not merely separate itself off from the other institutions: it is not a matter of the economy’s seceding from the society, but rather of a restructuring of the interdependence whereby functional realms no longer depend on one another in all their individual accomplishments, but instead only through system/ environment relations.10


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The role of the market is crucial here. Luhmann explains its most important attribute as being its ability to establish exchanges in terms of quantities: the market always makes available two points of comparison— namely, the comparison of one thing with another and the comparison of one person, who wants to have something or to give it away under specific conditions, with other persons, who want to have or give away something under other conditions.11 In order for parties to settle on exchanges (by agreeing to prices), the market must be kept structurally neutral; that is, ‘the equivalences and nonequivalences in the market can no longer be those of religion, of the family or of politics’.12 Of course, here Luhmann alludes to the so-called impersonality of the market, a feature that has often been a focus in earlier discussions. (Weber’s characterization of the ethos of the market is worth noting here: ‘the market community as such is the most impersonal relationship into which humans can enter with one another…[because] of its matter-of-factness, its orientation to the commodity and only to that’.)13 Luhmann points out that markets, and thus the differentiation of the economy, can arise under only very special, evolutionarily improbable, conditions. This is primarily because of the great ‘insecurities’ which attend all market-oriented activity and arise from the individual’s withdrawal of his customary reliance on familiar persons and routine social relations. The first stage in which the market developed did not entail an internal differentiation of the market itself: ‘the economy was experienced in terms of production and consumption as a household economy (oikonomia). Even an already significant level of trade did not appear to endanger the self-sufficiency of the village household or city.’14 But eventually the process of evolutionary development caused the market to become internally differentiated with the separation of the household from the enterprise. This eventually made possible the emergence of a whole series of markets—for labour, means of production, stocks and bonds, consumer goods, finance, technical and scientific information etc.—and all this led to the idea of the economy in the modern sense. It was only then that the economy came to ‘be understood no longer merely as an object of the princely and paternal accumulation of wealth or of police regulations, but instead as a system, with its own natural law, its own regulations, its own logic of decisionmaking’.15 Now the economy could develop a degree of autonomy from society at large (though never complete independence), and could fashion specific values, goals, norms, knowledges and modes of conduct of its own. Labour could be treated as a true commodity, wealth could be pursued without necessary implications for religion, politics, love or truth. To ensure its natural base, society needed only to maintain the conditions under which the economy as a system could flourish. On the basis of an autonomy that is thus heightened within limits, forms of experience and behaviour that are rich in presuppositions and, as it were, unnaturally one-sided are developed in the system of the economy. Actions that would otherwise have had to rely on wide-ranging considerations about all of society can thus be specialized for purely economic functions. We can train for and work at a highly specialized task; we can transfer our inheritance to make our assets more profitable; we can hire and fire people according to the quality of their labour.16


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Let us again turn to the ancient world and explore the implications of these perspectives of Luhmann. At first glance, it would seem, a society such as ancient Rome represents something of an in-between situation because the primitive segmental differentiation has been overcome yet the economy has not yet emerged as an autonomous subsystem within a functionally differentiated society. This corresponds to the stage Luhmann calls ‘stratification’: whereas with ‘segmentation’ society is differentiated into roughly equal subsystems, stratification involves unequal subsystems. In the latter one stratum of society (e.g., a free patriciate) successfully claims to represent all other strata, but while there is equality within the dominant stratum this necessarily presupposes inequality with respect to others. According to Luhmann, this situation is built upon the unequal distribution of wealth and power which has resulted from growth in the size and complexity of society. Importantly, however, the unequal distribution of wealth in stratified societies is not connected with functional differentiation (as is the system of differential wages and salaries of today’s division of labour) but is rather an ‘accidental’ outcome and is accompanied by symbolic discriminations of persons and groups in terms of social prestige. We must now consider the role of the economy in such stratified societies: To what degree did it exist as a separate subsystem within the ancient social system? Indeed, is it at all possible for an ‘economy’ in the modern sense of the term, as an autonomous specialized subsystem, to exist within a society that was not functionally differentiated? The answer from Luhmann’s point of view is clearly no; only the first stage of that internal differentiation of the economy itself could be achieved prior to the modern era— Luhmann, it will be recalled, had referred to the oikos and oikonomia in connection with the early evolution of the economy. But using his own criteria, I think we must now suggest the correct answer is not quite as Luhmann would have it. Consider Luhmann’s criteria for an autonomous economic domain, such as specific economic values, goals, norms, knowledges and modes of conduct; in a modern, functionally differentiated society these features are obviously associated with what we now call the market system and the institutionalization of the medium of money. If we consider the ancient world with regard to these elements, a case can easily be made that a distinct economic domain had begun to emerge, that by the beginning of the classical era a palpable degree of separation/differentiation had already been achieved. We have seen, for example, how problems of ‘management’ could arise (which led to the writing of handbooks such as those of Cato et al.), and in a way that was not concerned purely with autarkic want satisfaction in kind. We have seen how within certain limits the idea of profit, as a predominantly symbolic gain measured in money terms, became a common factor (if not always dominant); we have shown that price-forming markets existed, not just for luxury goods but also to some degree for ordinary consumer goods; we also know that money was in common use and a normal measure of value. But can we say the economy was therefore a fully differentiated, autonomous subsystem? Luhmann seems to allow something like this when at one point he suggests ‘the specific risks of a differentiated economy [were] already visible in the economic crises of the Roman Empire’.17 We shall discuss these crises again at some length shortly, but we note here the fact that a genuinely fiduciary money, implying a fuller internal differentiation of the economy, was never fully achieved and only approached


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with Aurelian in the late third century. It is true that a series of ‘inflations’ had occurred since the late second century when Marcus Aurelius began debasing the coinage to increase state revenue; but the point that needs to be emphasized here is that such inflation was largely the consequence of currency manipulation and did not arise from intrinsic economic forces, as do modern financial crises (however much politics may still play a role). One of the crucial features of a modern economic system, according to Luhmann, is that it enables ‘the possibility of deferring a decision about the satisfaction of needs and yet guaranteeing their satisfaction at the same time’.18 Money facilitates this by becoming generalized as a symbol—temporally it represents an ever-present utilizability (i.e., liquidity). Once it is completely integrated into the functioning of an economic system, the institutionalized abstractness of money facilitates a heightened and refined capacity to inform and motivate, because through its use minute differences can be reflected: ‘it can really make a difference whether we buy heating oil today or tomorrow, whether we buy vegetables at a farmer’s market or a supermarket…because money opens up possibilities for comparison’.19 This brings us back again to the ‘indifference’ of money which makes the discerning of these differences possible. According to Luhmann, money is the precondition for learning [i.e., adapting] in the economy—the condition for that restructuring of the style of expectation that we asserted…was a consequence of the differentiation of the economy. Money multiplies the opportunities and compulsions to learn that arise in the domain of the economy in a way that cannot be ratified at a central locus in the society (e.g., political authority).20 Luhmann goes on to explore further properties of money as a ‘generalized medium’, in particular its reflexive quality which means that with money we not only enter into exchanges but can exchange possibilities of exchange and even treat money itself as an object of exchange (i.e. by selling it to creditors in return for interest). Let us turn again to antiquity. Clearly money at that time was not as highly evolved a medium as Luhmann suggests is the case today; which is not to say its use was rare or that credit and moneylending were uncommon. But there were limitations on the monetary integration of the ancient economy, and these could not be overcome for a number of reasons. Not only was there the preponderance of the natural economy in some production sectors and certain geographical zones: the rationality of money production, its distribution, and its stability under often turbulent social conditions were all severely impaired in various ways. We need only consider again the policies pursued by the emperors in the late Empire. Even after the introduction of a fiduciary money by Aurelian, consistent efforts were made to return to purely metal currencies: Diocletian issued a new, very pure gold aureus in 286, and shortly after a new silver argentius was minted. Equally important was the fact that emperors like Diocletian regularly acted in such a way as to undermine the stability of the currency, by exploiting the prestige value of making donatives to troops while simultaneously paying for other services in kind and resorting to compulsory acquisitions (annona militaris).21


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Summary of findings concerning the place of capitalism in antiquity The question we must now ask follows from the previous discussions: To what extent can the restricted market system described above be said to have been capitalistic; in other words, with regard to ancient Rome can we speak of the existence of a genuine market capitalism to any degree at all given the limited extent and intensity of money-based exchange? While it is a clear conclusion of most commentators today that market capitalism on the scale of that of today was not achieved nor even approached, given our survey above, is it conceivable that there were elements, say, of a primitive, embryonic or prototypical form of capitalism? Of the several possibilities, we shall first consider those forms of enterprise which can in some respects be said to correspond very closely to market-type capitalism but which, relatively speaking, were underdeveloped, achieving only a low level of rationality: latifundist agriculture, and even perhaps some industrial establishments, can be classified here. As we have seen, a key limitation of such institutions was the typical mentality of the owner which differed in significant respects from that of a modern capitalist: besides, as we have seen, these institutions were usually associated with oikoi and were seldom specialized business enterprises. Only if we make our definition of market capitalism a very loose one does Cato’s ideal estate owner, for example, or a merchant owning and operating a slave workshop producing furniture or weapons belong under this heading. Of course, in looking at this period of antiquity as a whole, it must always be kept in mind that the ergasteria and the latifundia underwent numerous transformations: sometimes (during the Hellenistic period in Greece and Egypt) they were closer to the autarkic oikos; at other times (in late republican and early imperial times in Italy) they came nearer the profit-making enterprise. As well as this ‘incipient capitalism’, we can identify instances of what we shall call quasi-capitalism and proto-capitalism. The acquisition of large numbers of slaves and their commercial deployment in mining or building, or the hiring of slaves for these purposes, activities from which considerable profits were often gained, can only be described as quasi-capitalist, because these returns are more accurately described as rents accruing on the investment of wealth than as profits earned from enterprise. On many occasions the leasing of slaves was probably little more than the temporary and fortuitous extension of the activities of an oikos which by chance found itself with a surplus of labour. It is possible that the apophora system developed similarly, as a response to this situation of excess labour capacity. Even when the extended household or oikos sought to increase its level of want satisfaction, it typically did so by instituting a system of direct in-house production or by augmenting its sources of rent-producing income. Such practices did not necessarily involve the direct pursuit of profit; only for a brief period in the classical era, and probably only in certain parts of Italy, Africa and Gaul, did the rural estate go beyond this stage and pursue profit as a clear and deliberate goal; even then such efforts would often have been occasional and unplanned in character, and would not have led to significant further differentiation and rationalization. There were also business activities like commenda trading that we shall designate as proto-capitalist. These were in part directed towards the acquisition of profit, and were dependent for their success directly on market opportunities. But they were not


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continuous enterprises operating along the lines of modern trading companies which orient their activities to a world-wide commodity market. For the ancient shipper only took on the entrepreneurial function to a limited extent; otherwise, he acted in the role of a commission agent or broker. The contrast with, say, early Dutch or English trade capitalism is quite striking: at a certain stage the East India companies became permanent profit-making enterprises which began to trade continuously, a fact which is reflected in the scale of business undertakings, the structure of the companies, the regular connections with banking, the subsequent changes in consumption patterns etc. Finally, yet another area of possible market capitalism is that of enterprises run by freedmen such as those discussed previously in relation to ex-slaves like Trimalchio, but we shall not repeat those analyses here.

ON THE NATURE OF POLITICAL CAPITALISM There are a number of dimensions of political capitalism which we shall discuss in this section. Primarily, we shall be concerned to explore the nature of its social basis, and this means we must attempt to understand the peculiar nature of the ancient city. In particular, we shall show how the militarism of ancient burghers played a crucial role, ensuring that the dominant classes were the bearers of a capitalism that exploited warrior virtues and martial/ political competences rather than entrepreneurship, hard work, or technical inventiveness. In a later section, we shall discuss the implications of political capitalism for the long-term fate of Rome, thus broaching yet again the classic question of ‘the decline and fall’. Let us recall Weber’s general approach to the problem of capitalism in ancient society. We have explained above how Weber argues that irrational forms of capitalism were of considerable importance in the history of Roman antiquity. In addition, he argues that such capitalism had an important inhibiting effect on the development of market capitalism: just as Marx had argued the independent development of merchant’s capital generally tends to forestall the growth of industrial capitalism, so Weber argues political capitalism retards, is antithetical to, market capitalism. In what follows we shall go further in characterizing this contradictory relationship, and, concentrating on the former, we shall explain why in general terms political capitalism came to play such a decisive role at the expense of the latter. This will complement the analysis of the preceding chapter which showed why market capitalism was never able to go beyond a very restricted development under ancient conditions. Whereas we characterized market capitalism under ancient conditions as ‘plebeian’ because it was not carried by the dominant classes of the day, in this chapter we focus on the aristocracy with a view to establishing the nature of what was in effect a ‘patrician’ variant of capitalism. In Chapter 1 we discussed Weber’s view that the relationship between political capitalism and market oriented capitalism is one of contradiction, not mutual support. In the case of antiquity, rather than the uneasy coexistence of two discrete forms, political capitalism became the predominant force. As Weber puts it in summary at one point, ‘ancient capitalism was based on politics, on the exploitation for private profit of the political conquests of the imperialist city-state’.22 When this interacted with embryonic


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elements of market-oriented profit making, the effects on the latter were disastrous.23 But it will not suffice simply to note the incompatibility of political capitalism with the market variant to explain the predominance of the former; for political capitalism may be present without completely forestalling the development of market capitalism (as occurred, say, in early modern Europe, and is the case even today).24 That is, the ascendency of political capitalism cannot be attributed to an inherent ‘superiority’ it might be assumed to possess over market capitalism—we cannot, for example, postulate an intrinsic tendency of development in this direction. Rather, to explain the triumph of political capitalism, we must look to the character of ancient society as such, to the unique historical conditions of the period. The acquisitive ethos of political capitalism At an individual level, we shall argue, the kind of personal stereotype that has an inner association with political capitalism is exemplified by a figure like Crassus. Just as Trimalchio, with certain qualifications, can be regarded as illustrative of the plebeian mentality in regard to wealth getting, in our view, Crassus typifies the patrician outlook: for in such a case the two elements of politico-military power and acquisitiveness are graphically combined. This we know in part from the biographical sketch of Plutarch, and it is to this we shall now turn. Plutarch opens his account by relating a censorious tale about how Crassus had obtained a property in the suburbs from its beautiful owner, the vestal virgin Licinia, by means of seduction. His efforts had allegedly given rise to a scandal and legal proceedings, and, incredibly, Crassus was only acquitted because his reputation for avarice led those trying him to accept he had probably not been motivated by sex. From this symptomatic anecdote, Plutarch goes on to explain how avarice had characterized Crassus’s life throughout. Beginning with a modest fortune of 300 talents, he had eventually come to be worth more than 7,100 talents. But most interesting, from our point of view, is the fashion in which Crassus is said to have made his wealth. Vast estates are mentioned at the outset, a feature that was normal for the aristocracy; but, in combination with this, Plutarch catalogues a fascinating array of acquisitive pursuits in which Crassus was involved. Let us consider these in a little more detail. Firstly, taking advantage of the Sullan proscriptions, Crassus had apparently bought up (obviously at rock-bottom prices) whatever booty and spoils were available. Then, observing how extremely subject the city was to fire and falling down houses, and their standing so near together, he bought slaves that were builders and architects, and when he had collected these to the number of more than five hundred, he made it his practice to buy houses that were on fire, and those that were in the neighbourhood, which, in the immediate danger and uncertainty the proprietors were willing to part with for little or nothing, so that the greatest part of Rome, at one time or another, came into his hands…. And though he had many silver mines, and much valuable land, and labourers to work in it, yet all this was nothing in comparison to his slaves, such a number and variety did he possess of excellent readers, amanuenses, silversmiths, stewards and table-


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waiters, whose instruction he always attended to himself, superintending in person while they learned, and teaching them himself, accounting it the main duty of a master to look over the servants that are, indeed, the living tools of housekeeping.25 Thus far we have a picture of a man with a very strong acquisitive impulse, operating with large holdings of property, speculating with capital, operating in various ways with large numbers of slaves, and eagerly taking advantage of opportunities for windfall profits. Crassus is nowhere described as engaged in anything like a conventional marketoriented production enterprise, however; the nearest thing to it are the house-renovation activities, but even here the speculative element is high and slave labour is involved. Of course, all this is largely consistent with our analyses above concerning the typical attitude of the ancient aristocracy to profit making: the entrepreneurial role is undeveloped, though not entirely eschewed; business has not given rise to the specialized profit-making enterprise, nor has the division of labour been rationalized along functional lines; there is no interest in technological innovation in the interest of mass production; a patrimonial outlook orders relations between the master and his servants; and the maintenance of the household and its existing level of consumption are background motivating factors. But a militarist association is also attested, a feature which we have argued is very characteristic of political capitalism. At one point Plutarch mentions that Crassus’s standard of true wealth was when a man could afford to maintain a private army—and clearly Crassus had just such a capacity. This was a period of continual civil war, of course, when Pompey, Sulla, Caesar and others like them had used their private fortunes to arm clients, and had then employed such military forces to achieve political ends of various kinds. An indication of the use to which such power might be put (other than the direct achieving of political power) is given in the story of Crassus’s return from exile in Spain to which we shall turn briefly. On the news of Cinna’s death, Plutarch tells how Crassus had reappeared and ‘selected a body of two thousand five hundred,… visited many cities, and, as some write, sacked Malaca’.26 Further on we learn that he entered into the civil wars with Sulla and, seeking glory and fame, was spurred on to greater things. His passion for riches continued unabated, for when he had taken Tundertia, a town of the Umbrians, he converted, it was said, all the spoils to his own use, for which he was complained of to Sulla…. In this time…of the proscriptions and sequestrations, he lost his repute again, by making great purchases for little or nothing, and asking for grants. Nay, they say he proscribed one of the Bruttains without Sulla’s order, only for his own profit.27 Clearly, such activities were a source of enormous profit, and were probably far in excess of whatever gain Crassus made in real estate and house renovations. Indeed, these last mentioned quasi-commercial activities probably appear in Plutarch’s account not because they were on-going and show the wide scope of Crassus’s sources of profit, but because biographically they had once been important and testify to the persistence of the


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acquisitive drive throughout his career. So much for the typical personal characteristics of those engaged in political capitalism; others of obvious relevance include most of the great magnates of the late Republic like Caesar, Pompey, Lucullus, Brutus, or Antony. But what kind of social milieu created such individuals? In addressing this problem we shall consider the nature of the ancient city and its socio-economic character. The social basis of political capitalism: the contrast of the ancient polis with the city of the Middle Ages Absolutely fundamental to our general thesis is the fact that the city of the classical era possessed distinct political and military features that had arisen with the original polis and remained right down and into the imperial period. To understand this, in what follows we shall have occasion to compare the ancient city in detail with the mediaeval city which is particularly apposite because of the latter’s close association with the origins of modern market capitalism. We shall start by considering some aspects of Weber’s characterization of the ancient polis. One of the key social features of the ancient polis, according to Weber, is the enormous importance that was attached to maintaining military strength and battle preparedness. Typically, the citizens were divided into tribes, phratries, and, in Rome, classes ranked by wealth, but military factors were always implicated in such orderings. Indeed, in general it is fair to say that military service and citizenship were inextricably joined. It needs to be borne in mind that, as Weber explains, ‘trade monopolies, mortgage rates, and—above all—land ownership depended on military victories. Each city was in a state of war with all other states. The polis of the classical period was the most fully developed military organization produced by antiquity.’28 Unlike most mediaeval cities, which as we shall see were usually founded for economic reasons, everything about the ancient polis from its beginning onwards was conditioned by political and military considerations. Thus, because of the overriding importance of the military element, ancient capitalism was also a product of these forces: it was ‘only indirectly economic in character, for the critical factors were the political fortunes of the polis and the opportunities it provided for profits through contracts for tax farming and wars for human and (especially in Rome) territorial booty’.29 We should expect the social structure of the ancient city to reflect these features. As discussed above, in the early period of the ancient cities, the main social struggles had been waged between free peasants and patricians, the peasants having gained significant concessions of a political kind because they formed the basis of the hoplite army and were militarily indispensable. As a result the lower orders remained oriented to political and military concerns, which meant the main form of group organization for these strata was the village (demos in Greece), clan or tribe rather than the guild (as in the Middle Ages). Of course, whilst political and military considerations were the focus, struggles concerning the ownership of land were closely related: In the typical class conflict of Antiquity the line was drawn according to simple contrasts of property—landlords versus yeomen. Struggles centred round the


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issues of political equality and allocation of public burdens. When economic issues were also involved, then—apart from the question of public lands—the class struggle resolved itself into (1) creditors versus debtors, leading to another stage marked by the opposition of (2) landowners versus those who had lost their land and, therefore, their social standing.30 As we have seen already, these concerns were directly related to the problem of maintaining one’s status as a fully-equipped hoplite warrior, a capacity which marked full and meaningful participation in the political decision-making process. Thus, ancient democracy was politically, not economically, oriented; it was for this reason that it commonly pushed for the forcible acquisition of land for settlement purposes to ensure the economic base of the army. The major social struggles in the Middle Ages, by contrast, were between craftsmen and patricians, the typical outcome being the creation of the ‘guild-city’. Whereas in antiquity craftsmen were usually slaves or metics and were thus not organized as corporate bodies, or if these did emerge they had only a limited political role in elections (e.g., in Rome the centuriae or fabri may have played a role beside the equites in the early military class organization),31 in the Middle Ages craftsmen were invariably able to form guilds, and these became extremely effective in raising the political and social position of the economically active strata. The urban conflicts of the High Middle Ages (thirteenth and fourteenth centuries), which were basically struggles between the guilds and the great clans, are comparable with those of the polis in the ‘Middle Ages’ of antiquity only in that the great issues in both were deprivation of political rights, exploitation by fiscal authorities, and unequal access to common lands. But according to Weber, there is this great difference: the core of the opposition in the Middle Ages was not recruited from country peasants, as in Antiquity. Rather, the further conflicts of economic interest developed, the sharper was the opposition between merchant and artisan, an opposition which in Antiquity had been of little significance.32 Of course, both the ancient and mediaeval cities had been conditioned from the beginning by powerful patrician interests which always played a large role in political matters. But whereas in antiquity the old patrician families had joined the demoi or tribus, that is, territorial subdivisions, which meant that the democratic movement was essentially an attempt to secure the hegemony of rural strata (peasants) over the town-dwellers, in the Middle Ages the great patrician houses were forced to enrol in craft guilds, the new citizen constituencies. In the Middle Ages the democratic movement therefore increased the power of the specifically urban, commercial stratum—the populo-grosso, the grande bourgeoisie, smaller capitalists and the traders of the minuto—those who had virtually no power in ancient cities.33 In the Middle Ages the guild organizations, because they focused on the immediate economic interests of their members, had the very important additional consequence of contributing directly to the rational organization of free labour, and thus they made a major contribution to the development of modern capitalism. In marked contrast, ‘in Antiquity the position of industry—social as well as economic—did not improve as


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wealth increased, nor did it ever reach the commanding importance enjoyed in the mediaeval industrial cities’.34 Thus, although the ancient city developed through the differentiation of town and country and the routine exchange of agricultural products with non-agricultural products made and traded in the urban market, this kind of exchange was regulated by interests conditioned primarily by political and military concerns. And this meant that despite the existence of exchange, the economy functioned rather like the coordinated rural economy of the oikos. The personal customer relationships and lowcapital retail shops of the city were merely the exchange counterpart of the exchangeless oikos economy of the country which depended on systematically allocated services and goods deliveries from specialized units.35 The economic policy of the ancient city was thus preoccupied with satisfying the interests of consumers; an illustration of the characteristic regulation along such lines was the control exercised over the supply of grain discussed previously.36 A further limitation in the social development of the ancient city concerns the fact that it seldom achieved a level of political autonomy like that enjoyed by the great city-states in the High Middle Ages, the period during which their characteristic bourgeois features were born. The mediaeval city, though emerging in the context of large territorial states, had been able to achieve a significant measure of independence from what were basically non-urban authorities. The ancient city, it is true, had not been confronted at the time of its emergence by non-urban political and military structures like those of the mediaeval Ständestaat which had superior military technology. Indeed, the ancient patrician clan city was the bearer of the knightly phalanx and the disciplined hoplite formation, and thus it was militarily able to maintain hegemony over the countryside and exploit this power to extract rents.37 But unlike the city-republics of the Middle Ages, the ancient city gradually over the course of time lost autonomy, and the general process of cultural development went in the opposite direction, culminating in the emancipation of the countryside and its domination of the urban sphere. It then became typical for landed magnates to live in the cities which they in fact ruled. Whereas the mediaeval city did not directly participate in outside military and administrative structures because the relation of the city to the feudal and manorial powers was a very loose one, the ancient city was usually integrated into a wider political structure embracing an ever-larger territory owing to expansion through conquest. In this way ancient conditions fostered an institutional outcome in which militarism flourished. The trend in the mediaeval city was away from militarism, towards the pacification of the citizenry; the city’s independence was increasingly ‘bought’ by employing outside forces (mercenaries and condottieri). These contrasts, of course, are not intended to imply that the bourgeoisie of the mediaeval era were essentially pacific and never engaged in warfare. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nonetheless, in the Middle Ages the usual motives for war were more directly economic, and were typically connected with an interest in the expansion of local and inter-local markets in which goods produced in the city could be traded, ultimately in peace. The ancient city, on the other hand, was not normally motivated by such economic aims but fought wars in order to conquer territory on which to establish colonies (cleruchies), owing to the landless condition of the lower orders. In the Middle Ages most of the peasantry were already supplied with land and integrated into the manorial system. It is noteworthy that the territorial expansions occurring as a result of


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the mediaeval peasantry’s desire for more land were generally peaceful (like the clearing of virgin forests in eastern Europe). Indeed, the mediaeval peasantry becomes increasingly unwarlike as we approach the modern era. As a consequence of the technical superiority of cavalry warfare, military affairs had become the monopoly of a specialist elite, the feudal knighthood, which chose to distinguish itself by declining to have anything to do with peasant life (such as doing manual labour). This separation of the realm of the military from mundane affairs then rebounded on economics, for it had the effect of freeing the peasantry from the immediate burdens of war service, allowing them to focus on purely agricultural pursuits. In conjunction with the urban bourgeoisie, the mediaeval peasantry were then able to play an important role in the emergence of a more rational orientation in economic life generally. The late mediaeval peasant-farmers then began more and more to sell their agricultural surplus in exchange for the industrially produced goods from the city, of which they gradually became regular consumers; they also increasingly sought cash returns. Thus, Weber tells us, mediaeval trade organization, as it developed within the theocratic and feudal world of the time, was one of the elements which made possible a commodity system amenable to planned calculation, just as the classes of free peasants and petty bourgeoisie which were shaped by feudal organization provided that large, relatively stable consumer market which modern capitalism needs for its products.38 In antiquity the trend was in the opposite direction. Either the peasants were integrated into the hoplite army which formed the basis of the citizen polis, or they joined the imperial legions and for their service received allotments on which they later settled. The ancient polis continued to be essentially warlike and expansionist, seeking trade monopolies and tribute-paying subjects, as well as opportunities for its magnates to increase their rent revenue. These military and political features of the ancient city not only explain the absence of economic developments of the kind that took place in the Middle Ages, they also show why, when there was economic progress in antiquity, it was always skewed in the directions we have described. Thus, the route chosen for capitalistic profit making was invariably predatory in nature, and depended on the exploitation of political power rather than the opportunities of the market. The social ethos which supported this orientation to warfare has been analysed in detail by William Harris. Harris’s excellent analysis is based on evidence that indicates the extraordinary predilection the Romans had for war: for one thing, he tells us, ‘the Roman state made war every year except in the most abnormal circumstances’.39 A preoccupation with war was manifest in most areas of social life. First, no one could hold office in Rome, at least according to Polybius, unless he had served in at least ten war campaigns.40 Whether the rule applied absolutely throughout our period of focus is not important, for the key point is that the vast majority of candidates for office in the classical era had had military experience. Indeed, warfare was a ‘normal’ part of life for the average Roman noble.41 To pursue a political career, the usual path a young aristocrat would follow involved first seeking the office of military tribune, then a quaestorship,


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and, finally, if all went well, arriving at a consulship. Clearly, all these postings were intimately associated with the prosecution of war, and it is obvious that success in battle was not only advantageous to the state but of direct benefit individually. Military success enabled one to lay claim to either laus or, at a higher level, gloria.42 Related to this was the traditional practice of taking an extra name from the place of a great victory (thus, Scipio Africanus). There was also the institution of the triumph, when the successful army and its leaders paraded through the city displaying their booty and captives and receiving the accolades of the people. Of course, to achieve these successes a cardinal military quality was required—valour (virtus)—and Harris suggests that for a Roman aristocrat this was the hallmark of an honourable man. A corollary of all this was the complete lack of interest in the value of peace for its own sake; pax was regarded as simply that state which followed the successful completion of a war. Later, with the rise of jurisprudence and political philosophy, the association of peace with justice was made (in Cicero, for example), but this was of no practical significance in the early and middle Republic.

POLITICAL CAPITALISM AND THE DECLINE OF ANCIENT CIVILIZATION In what follows we shall briefly consider once again the great issue of the causes of the decline of ancient civilization. We shall not review the vast literature on this question,43 nor shall we explore the full range of issues involved. Our concerns will be only two: first, we shall briefly state somewhat more fully Weber’s view; second, we shall explore some of the implications of the theory of political capitalism for the question of decline. The question of the decline of the Roman Empire is a question which can no longer be pursued as if its meaning for us were self-evident, for its significance presupposes certain understandings and value concerns which are not necessarily a shared heritage—that is, we cannot assume that ideas associated with the ideals of ‘classical civilization’, the legacy of Roman culture, the greatness and grandeur of the Roman Empire, the special destiny of the west etc. resonate today for us as they once did for earlier generations. Today we want to ask a somewhat different set of questions about the meaning of late Roman history than did Gibbon, Niehbuhr and Mommsen; even the work of Dopsch, Rostovtzeff, Bury, Bloch, Jones, Baynes, Boak and others of this era has become somewhat dated. A new generation of historians has different perspectives and methods, and it is with this work in mind that we shall offer some comments concerning the topic of the ‘decline’. Weber’s account of the decline of Rome We have already discussed Weber’s early thesis in which he argues that it was a diminution of the supply of slaves that led to the great transformation known as the decline of Roman antiquity, so we shall not pursue it further here except to note that Weber does not expressly return to it in any of his later works. But it is worth noting that it is possible to subsume the argument about slavery, pacification and slave numbers


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within Weber’s later view which concerns the decline of the publicani. Hence, though he nowhere explicitly repudiates the earlier thesis, in his later writings Weber tends to emphasize a matrix of factors to do with the general fate of capitalism. As we have seen above, in these writings Weber focuses on the issue of political capitalism, which is seen as a fundamental determinant of the distinctive culture of ancient civilization. And, associated with this is an antithetical development, namely, the emergence of the liturgical bureaucratic state of late antiquity. In what follows we shall attempt to show how these two elements—political capitalism and bureaucratic statism—are interrelated. Above we have discussed Weber’s thesis that ancient capitalism was fundamentally political in orientation owing to the militaristic nature of the ancient polis. The implication of this argument is that the incipient market-oriented capitalism which had been emergent in the latifundia and which was embryonic in some urban production developments nonetheless lacked the impetus to expand beyond a certain point. The major arena for private capital formation became instead the sphere of political capitalism. Now because in Weber’s account political capitalism is such a crucial element in the economic life of antiquity, it follows that he regards whatever threatens its predominance as necessarily endangering the social structure that depended on it. Thus, the decisive historical events contributing to the eclipse of ancient civilization in his view must have been those that bought the transformation of the Republic and the emergence of the Empire; for these meant a fundamental reorientation of state and economy. From an association of capitalistic adventurers, Rome became a monarchical-bureaucratic state increasingly governed by interests different to those of before. All these developments necessarily meant the suffocation of political capitalism and thus the destruction of all that depended on it. In order to fully understand this thesis, in what follows we shall consider the impact of growing bureaucracy, a consequence of Rome’s imperial position, on the key phenomenon of political capitalism. But, first, what was the state of bureaucracy in republican times? In Economy and Society Weber notes that during its most expansive phase the Roman state—rather like the British Empire at the time of its ascendence—depended on bureaucratic foundations to only a minor degree. Indeed, as we have already explained, Rome’s political administration during the republican era constitutes a classic case of what Weber terms ‘rule by notables’, which conceptually is a polar opposite to the idealtype of bureaucratic administration. That a large power such as republican Rome could exist on such a basis is surprising, for as a state expands one expects administrative tasks to become more and more sophisticated, thus extending the scope and need for bureaucracy. So a large power can maintain a non-bureaucratic rule only if the authorities minimize the range of functions for which the state takes responsibility. In the case of Rome this was achieved largely because of the purely military focus of the power of the magistrates who were expert commanders and campaign strategists but carried few other responsibilities. As regards the problem of administrative continuity, this was in part solved by the hereditary recruitment of the Senate to which the magistrates as a group belonged. So what happened with the advent of the imperial system? Let us first try to estimate the effects of bureaucracy on tax farming. Weber notes how one of the first reforms of the Roman emperors was to restrict the


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sphere of private tax collection and to introduce a regularized tax system. The collection of taxes thus underwent a process of bureaucratization, which had the eventual effect that the tax farmer ceased to be a private capitalist, becoming instead a salaried official of the state. As A.H.M.Jones explains, it was probably Augustus who introduced the uniform and more rational system of taxation which is attested later in the Empire…. The great advantage of the new system was that the publicani could now be dispensed with. Regular censuses were required in all provinces both to register property and to count the population…the whole basis of taxation [was altered] from a proportional levy, where yield was unpredictable, to a fixed levy based on assessed property.44 Parallel changes took place in other areas, such as in the provisioning of military supplies; as we have already noted, the state had begun to manufacture clothing, weaponry etc. in its own workshops. According to Weber, a typical patrimonial ruler, as were the early Roman emperors, does not dare to destroy the autonomous local lords that hold power in the far provinces owing to the limited nature of his own power resources and the absence of an alternative means of maintaining control over an extensive area. But the later emperors, like Nero, were particularly bold in attacking private latifundists in Africa and elsewhere, a policy which made for a greater centralization of government for which a more bureaucratic administration was required. This was bound up with an administrative differentiation between civilian and military specialities in which the patrimonial regime’s need for a professional standing army to protect permanent frontiers gave rise to the incorporation of the economically and socially privileged strata by reserving for them the leading officer positions. At the same time this group ceased being self-equipped and was instead maintained by the ruler and used, if necessary, against the now disarmed peasantry, who were encouraged to focus on purely economic matters from which the rulers drew revenue.45 Thus, the original plutocratic capitalist ruling class of the Republic was slowly but surely displaced by a bureaucratically empowered status group.46 Weber summarizes the general economic impact of these developments as follows: by protecting subjects and by establishing peace the Roman Empire condemned ancient capitalism to death. The supply of slaves dwindled, and gone were all those opportunities for profit which the wars of polis with polis had created; gone too were the trade monopolies held by individual city-states, and above all, gone were the profits from plundering the public domains and the subject peoples. These changes together meant that ancient capitalism lost the sources from which it had drawn nourishment. In the liturgy state created by Diocletian capitalism found no anchorage for itself, no chance for profit. Bureaucracy destroyed economic as well as political initiative, for the opportunities for gain were gone. Whereas capitalism always strives to transform the ‘wealth’ of the possessing classes into investment ‘capital’, the tendency under the Empire was to exclude capital and to conserve wealth.47


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Of course, the creation of the liturgical-bureaucratic state of the later Roman Empire did not immediately spell the end of antiquity, though by the third century Rome’s civic grandeur and her literary and artistic culture had begun to wane.48 The classic accounts of Gibbon,49 Rostovtzeff50 and others have taken the era of the Antonines as the high point of ancient civilization, the period after which degeneration sets in. But more recently scholars have argued that decline was already apparent much earlier. Chester Starr, for example, believes the signs of decadence, the first marks of which ‘are archaism, erudition, repetitiousness, affected style, emphasis on collecting the wisdom of the past, and romanticism’, were already manifest as early as the second century.51 In literature, apart from Lucian and perhaps Apuleius, there were no pagan writers of consequence; and the situation with philosophy, rhetoric and science was no better. The same kind of impression is given by looking at achievements in architecture and sculpture, though these ‘hint more temptingly than any other media at the new stirrings of thought which led to the future’.52 In attempting to establish his claim that the final collapse of ancient civilization is to be explained as the consequence of a process of creeping bureaucratization, Weber also invokes a metahistorical thesis concerning the basis of civilization and the causes of cultural degeneration. On several occasions he posits the view that over the long term unlimited bureaucracy has the inevitable effect of stifling economic freedom (upon which it is implied political liberty and the flowering of culture depend). In advocating such ideas Weber occasionally resorts directly to modern parallels where his own value preferences are only slightly veiled. Thus we read: Bureaucracy stifled private enterprise in Antiquity. There is nothing unusual in this, nothing peculiar to Antiquity. Every bureaucracy tends to intervene in economic matters with the same result. This applies to the bureaucracy of modern Germany too…in all probability some day the bureaucratization of German society will encompass capitalism too, just as it did in Antiquity.53 The student of Weber’s political thought will be familiar with the perspective advanced here, Weber’s commitment to liberal ideas and the individual in opposition to what he called the ‘iron cage’ of the modern vocation with its ‘parcelization of the soul’ and so forth. When speaking of these dangers, Weber frequently alludes to the New Kingdom of ancient Egypt as well as the late imperial Roman state as examples of the kind of fate awaiting modern men if they fail to steadfastly resist such trends.54 This is not the place to criticize Weber’s position on contemporary social and political issues, or to consider to what extent his position reflects the nationalist and ideological trends of the day which had promoted an expansive economic imperialism as a vehicle of German cultural aspirations in the global context.55 We should, however, be wary of possible anachronism on Weber’s part here; for can we assume that ‘bureaucracy’ and ‘statism’ have the same meaning in ancient as they do in modern times? Whereas in modern societies, according to Weber, bureaucracy has meant the everincreasing stability of the state—indeed, his abiding nightmare is that modern social structures based on rational bureaucracy will prove to be all but indestructible, hence the potency of the ‘iron cage’ metaphor—there seems to be a paradox with regard to


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antiquity: namely, where ‘the disintegration of the ancient Roman Empire was partly conditioned by the very bureaucratization of its army and official apparatus’.56 Why in the one case is bureaucracy connected with the perpetuation and extension of existing structures whereas in the other it seems associated with stagnation and destruction? Although he does not explicitly point to such a contradiction, the contrast between the ancient and the modern situation for Weber clearly concerns the comparatively low degree of rationality of ancient bureaucracy which was therefore less of a genuinely stabilizing force (though an obvious exception to this is of course ancient Egypt). Related to this was the peculiar relationship of ancient administration to the economy: for in late antiquity ‘bureaucratization could be realized only by putting into effect at the same time a method of distribution of public burdens which was bound to lead to an increase of the relative importance of the natural economy’.57 In what follows we shall attempt to develop further this account of state and bureaucracy in late antiquity and to describe the manner in which they affected the fate of Roman civilization. On the crisis of late Roman society According to Aurelio Bernardi, who has produced one of the most thorough recent discussions of the problem of the causes of Rome’s ultimate demise, after the age of the Antonines there had been a definite slow-down in economic progress.58 This, he maintains, was in large part a direct consequence of pacification; Rome had ceased to expand and thus the influx of booty and slaves could no longer function as a stimulus to economic development. Expansion of consumption, on the other hand, went on unchecked, as the emperor, his court and the aristocracy tried to maintain and increase existing levels of expenditure on the inadequate basis of the old order of taxes (on inheritance, manumission, commercial transactions, rents, mines and customs). At this point the rate of tax might have been increased but, according to Bernardi, ‘this measure was not taken. The tax waivers granted by Hadrian clearly indicate that a greater pressure would have been unbearable.’59 The state’s initial response to the consequent fiscal crisis was instead to debase the currency. Reduction in the silver content of the denarius had been begun by Commodus and taken to its high point under Septimus Severus and Caracalla. But while momentarily this made life easier for the authorities, those receiving money from the state found their purchasing power diminishing each year. So there was resistance. In particular, the government was forced to placate the army with additional donatives and supplements in kind.60 At the same time, the social composition of the army began to change, the place of the traditional Roman warriors being taken by recruits from partially assimilated provinces and even barbarian tribes. The emperor increasingly found himself at the mercy of warring factions within the army, so much so that in one period of fifty years in the mid-third century there were thirty-seven emperors and twice that number of pretenders. The civic strife obviously brought great economic disruption as well, leading to the virtual bankruptcy of the state. An imminent disaster was averted by Diocletian, however, who endeavoured to reorganize the Empire as a liturgy-state along the lines of Ptolemaic Egypt.61 There were two areas of focus: the army and finance. The army was first enlarged and reorganized to improve efficiency. It was divided into border troops (limitanei) and more mobile troops


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(comitatenses) who protected the key central sources of power. This is the structure which Edward Luttwak has described as ‘defence-in-depth’. While initially it had strategic advantages insofar as it enabled a more economical use of available manpower, new problems arose which proved intractable. Particularly disruptive was the fact that the comitatenses grew faster than the limitanei (whose status and power declined in proportion) mainly as a result of the need to secure the political power of the emperor. According to Luttwak, ‘in the late stage of imperial devolution in the West, it is not unusual to find the frontiers stripped wholesale of their remaining garrisons to augment central field forces, as happened in 406 under Stilicho, who was engaging in internal warfare’.62 Besides, as Bernardi notes, the fighting spirit of the more professional comitatenses was weakened because, being mainly attached to the imperial household, they were pampered by the amenities of city life.63 In theory the comitatenses were mobile enough to counter incursions wherever they occurred, but all too often they were only effective after much of the damage of the enemy attacks had already been wrought. What is more, this damage was cumulative; Luttwak says ‘it relentlessly eroded the logistic base of the Empire and relentlessly diminished the worth of the imperial structure to its subjects’.64 As regards finance, the most notable change was that an elaborate system of taxation in kind replaced the old Augustan monetary arrangements. The Empire continued in this new form and even prospered in the East.65 Of course, the economy of the era of Diocletian was vastly changed from that of the classical west. Stephen Williams refers to a ‘command economy’ as having emerged under Diocletian (despite the failure of his famous edict on prices)—though this is something of an exaggeration if modern analogies are drawn. To be sure, the emperor intervened in economic matters on an increasing scale, issuing some 1,200 edicts—an ‘inflation of laws’66—though he did not go so far as to abolish private property. According to Williams, Diocletian ‘saw economic activity essentially in strategic terms…its function was to yield a large enough taxable margin to supply the state with soldiers to defend it and civil government to administer it’.67 If necessary the state would operate enterprises that were not developed by the private sector; if citizens would not administer their local affairs properly, then the state would compel the propertied to do their duty. The various occupations were more and more seen as having assigned positions within the system as a whole, rather on the model of the liturgy-state of Egypt with its system of compulsory services, an example Diocletian had apparently seen at first hand. The effect of all this was to produce a caste-like ordering of society in which the grid of liturgies and other obligations imposed on the various ranks and occupational groupings became to a significant extent hereditary. According to Jones, those affected by the reordering of society can be seen as falling into two categories: those whose personal service was required by the government, such as soldiers, agricultural labourers and workers in the mints and the state factories and the public post, and those like decurions, the shippers (navicularii) and the guilds of Rome, who, though they might perform certain personal services, were mainly required to make a financial contribution to various essential activities.68


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Weber notes that it has often been the case—‘as for instance in the Roman Principate and in some forms of absolutist state structures—that bureaucratization of the administration is deliberately connected with the formation of status groups…. The explicit reservation of offices for certain status groups is very frequent.’69 Thus, we can presume that a basic change in the principle of stratification—in the direction of status as against class—was occurring. This represents something of a reversal of the dominant trend up till the Principate which had been witness to what we might call a process of ‘bourgeoisification’. Williams explains how it was the unique role of the city as a focus for census registration and collective liability that enabled such an order to be imposed.70 The principle of compulsory service became the basis of a command economy as oncevoluntary associations (collegia, corpora) were now made compulsory. ‘Their property was recognized and to an extent protected, but only provided it was at the corporate service of the association, which underwrote its members’ public obligations.’71 Where the state’s essential needs were involved, a quasi-military regimentation of labour was put in place, as we have already seen in our description of the state-run fabricae. While a modest revival of the cities did occur, they did not reach their previous prosperity. The largest group affected by this caste-like ordering was the agricultural labourers or coloni. They were not only the victims of extremely onerous tax impositions. New laws were enacted which meant that all those who had been registered in an initial census as tenants along with their offspring (the so-called originates) were effectively bound in perpetuity to their land. Furthermore, their movement and personal freedom were severely restricted. They were prevented from selling property without the permission of their landlords and were denied the right to proceed legally against their masters. And when these restrictions and the pressures of compulsory liturgies gave rise to wholesale flight, often ending in the abandonment of the land (agri deserti), the state responded by doing all it could to block the avenues of escape (such as entering the churches or the army).72 Most levels of society, including the higher orders (decurions etc.), eventually became tied in various ways and were obliged to make burdensome contributions to the state which had in the meantime expanded considerably.73 Late imperial society was more and more transformed into an hereditary caste-like structure. According to Williams, the crisis of the third century had forced many city-dwellers to return to their estates, ‘as far away as possible from invaders, soldiers and tax collectors. Of necessity, they had fallen back on a rural self-sufficiency which by-passed the chaotic conditions of money and trade.’74 In this connection it is worth referring to Palladio’s treatise on agriculture (of the late fourth century) which recommends that estates use specialized artisans and prevent their movement to the cities. For Bernardi this is ‘an indication of a new economic system developing on the large estates, namely selfsufficiency, independence of the city’.75 Further anticipation of the manorial system of feudal times can be seen in Palladio’s recommendation that a rural residence be built on elevated ground including a tower as a dovecote.76 This analysis is supported by a more recent study of Whittaker who suggests the state attempted to accommodate the growing autarky of the estates and the slow-down in commercial activity by intervening in the economy in various ways and by allying itself with the richer landowners. For Whittaker it is illustrative of the trend that the


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distribution of oil through the Mediterranean was gradually taken over by the emperors in the third and fourth centuries, which explains how the annona supplies were made to Rome and the frontiers. While this did not displace private commerce and the prerogatives of the rich altogether, it was nonetheless a feature that ‘the distribution of surpluses fell increasingly within the orbit of the rich estate owners [including the emperor and the church], who dispatched goods in kind between private estates’.77 After the partial bureaucratization of the Principate and High Empire, this must be seen as constituting a kind of ‘privatization’ of administration: many rich magnates effectively became taxation officers who collected revenues on behalf of the state while keeping a portion for themselves. As Whittaker notes, ‘this was not yet feudalism as long as the rich possessores continued to hold political positions at the centralized court and state; but it laid the groundwork of mediaeval “seigneurie”.’78 The state used every resource at its disposal to increase the tax yield, but many of its measures were counter-productive. Constantine, for example, had responded to the tax evasion of landowners by decreeing that public lands be placed under the care of those closest to them to maintain or increase the tax base. Lands abandoned were added for taxation purposes to existing holdings to prevent heirs retaining only the cultivated sections of their inheritance. Of course the economic impact of this was irrational because it forced peasants and others to pay tax on submarginal land.79 These problems were evidently understood by some of those who suffered them, as a fascinating text of the day makes clear. Addressing an emperor (probably Valens II) with advice on how to reform the ailing state, an unknown reformer writes: Among the intolerable mischiefs from which the state suffers is the debasement of the solidus arising from the fraudulent practices of certain persons…. For the unscrupulous cunning of the purchaser of the solidus and the pernicious dilemma of the seller have combined to introduce considerable difficulty into the actual contracts so as to preclude the possibility of straight dealing in business transactions.80 State taxation and related problems with the currency have from time to time given rise to the view that a generalized fiscal crisis was the main cause of the collapse in the later Roman Empire,81 but the article by Whittaker referred to earlier offers a useful corrective to these theories. He points out that, while the number of those on the state payroll undoubtedly increased, their salaries must have declined in relative terms, so much so that overall outlays probably remained roughly constant. Thus, the impact of state revenue-raising activities on fiscal policy and the economy in general may not have been as great as often thought. Interestingly, he suggests, ‘the debasement and devaluation of the denarius were a means not of increasing taxation [absolutely] but of increasing the size of the army…there is no reason to suppose the larger army of the fourth century could not have been paid for by the [existing level of] surpluses off the land’.82 Whittaker rightly points to the difficulty of taking complaints against high taxes as evidence of a change in the rate of exaction, owing to the fact that complaints occur at virtually every period of Roman history. (Whittaker somewhat overstates his case, however, when he implies that the change towards a natural economy was not especially pronounced. When


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speaking of this change it should be emphasized that our discussion need not imply a return to moneyless exchange, barter and the complete disappearance of commerce— rather, it is a relative emphasis we are seeking to describe. Just as in the heyday of commercial activity, as we have continually pointed out, elements of autarky, taxation in kind and non-monetary exchange were always present, so the trend towards a natural economy only partially eliminated money-market forces etc. It is worth remembering in this regard that changes must have occurred in the direction of the feudal system because this was, after all, the historical outcome, at least in the west, and this clearly meant a change in the relative importance of the market.) Compounding the difficulties discussed above is the fact that tax evasion was becoming more and more of a problem. The state responded by offering immunities to certain groups of individuals in return for loyalty, but this meant it had to compensate for loss of revenue by extra taxation (superindicta) on the rest. The institution of the patrocinium was a factor here for under it small landowners could seek protection from more powerful lords (often military chiefs) against the odious tax collectors. As we have seen, these patrons had gradually begun to usurp state functions, such as judicial, financial and police responsibilities. The state made efforts to ban further patricinia but, according to Bernardi, it equally conceded many rights for the sake of short-term revenue gains.83 In response to the stepped-up barbarian pressure through the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries, the structure of society in the west had become increasingly ‘top-heavy’ as the state was less and less capable of supporting the many idle mouths and the huge numbers of soldiers with the tax revenue at its disposal (much of which was squandered anyway from the Severan period onwards). The later emperors Julian, Valentinian and Valens succeeded in stabilizing the situation for a time with reforms aimed at reducing levels of taxation and punishing tax evasion. But their measures again tended merely to promote the return to a natural economy, as when they demanded tax payments in kind to try and reduce abuses by collectors. They were apparently able to curb the number of state officials for a brief time, but as the Empire lost cohesion, imperial notarii sought to compensate by becoming more powerful again and were able to obtain higher, and thus more lucrative, official designations (e.g., clarissimi became spectabiles), all at the cost of the functional efficiency of the central state.84 Such developments, needless to say, had a negative general effect on economic progress; though of course it is impossible to put precise figures on the exact extent to which productivity declined. Although some commentators suggest productivity in agriculture was not necessarily impaired at this time, it is clear that the factors discussed above must have turned producers away from market opportunities and promoted rural autarky, thus furthering the disintegration of what was left of the exchange system. These economic and social trends had their political complement in the eventual breakdown of centralized authority85 which saw the gradual in-mixing of barbarians (first the Goths by semi-peaceful incorporation, then the Huns and Vandals by invasion) and even of slaves.86 The final collapse of Rome (in 476) has no particular economic importance and is a date of only symbolic political significance; it is likely that the economic and social level of the western half of the Empire was not significantly better or worse a century either side of this date.87 As Weber insisted in his early essay of 1896,


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the real decline of Rome had set in centuries before—Roman civilization was only Roman in name by the time of Alaric. Bernardi essentially concurs, saying that the effects of the barbarian invasions have generally been exaggerated: ‘actually, the political organization broke down, but not the framework of rural life, the forms of property and the method of exploitation’.88

7 Why rational capitalism was not established in antiquity The relative ease with which Roman law could dispense with any development of such a rich variety of legal forms [as those developed by mediaeval law] was connected with the peculiar character of ancient capitalism, which was both a slave capitalism and a predominantly political capitalism based on the state…. Of course, the fact remains that…the complete exclusion of all forms of joint hand from the law of the societas and the requirement of all solidary claims and obligations being created by express sponsio correalis, is one of the legal symptoms of that absence of stable capitalistic industrial enterprises with continuous credit needs which is characteristic of the Roman economic system. The significance of the essentially political basis of ancient capitalism is indicated by the fact that those very legal institutions which were lacking for private business were recognized already in the private law of the early Empire with respect to publicans (socii vectigalium publicanorum). Max Weber, Economy and Society

In this chapter we shall complement the analysis of Chapter 6 by asking why such market capitalism(s) as had begun to appear did not advance beyond the embryonic stages described. Our discussion will be based on the analysis Weber provides in Economy and Society which sets out the causal preconditions of the modern variant of capitalism. From this starting point we shall develop a counter-factual argument which is designed to bring out precisely why in the case of antiquity market capitalism could not progress beyond the limited level that was nonetheless achieved. We shall first briefly summarize the main elements of Weber’s analysis, which derives primarily from his discussion of the fundamental categories of economic sociology in Economy and Society, Chapter 2.1 On the basis of this model we shall proceed to construct an argument showing that rational capitalism did not occur in antiquity owing to the absence of the relevant historical prerequisites. If one or more of the key factors can be deemed to have been lacking, we can then conclude that for that reason the development of capitalism was either hindered or made impossible. The preconditions of rational capitalism Weber constructs his concept of market capitalism in such a way that the use of capital

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accounting is made a crucial defining property—for it is ultimately the calculability of modern economic enterprise which lends today’s capitalism its rationality. All of the other conditions of market capitalism acquire their theoretical importance by their contribution to this fundamental feature. The other conditions Weber lists are: (i) appropriation of the means of production; (ii) freedom of the market; (iii) free labour; (iv) the commercialization of economic life; (v) the separation of the enterprise from the household; (vi) rational technology; and finally (vii) calculable law. It should be pointed out once again, in case what we have said is taken as implying a rationalistic teleology, that for Weber there is no single royal road along which every economy must pass for capitalism to emerge (for example, via Protestantism, Puritanism etc.); nor is capitalism regarded as ‘higher’ or more advanced in some ethical or value sense owing to its rationality (which is anyway for Weber a very restricted, and purely formal, characteristic). All Weber is saying is that by close analysis of the way modern economic institutions work we can show that a specific constellation of factors must be present as a ground for capitalism. In other words, at the very least the factors (i) to (vi) just listed are required. But before we consider each of the six points listed, we must briefly explore the significance of capital accounting. The role of capital accounting in Roman antiquity The first question to resolve seems relatively straightforward: was there capital accounting in antiquity? But an adequate answer is rather more difficult than might be expected. On the one hand, it can readily be established that some forms of accounting existed: for instance, the accounts of Roman bankers (argentarii), which were used to record deposits and other transactions; and we have already referred to the forms of accounting in use on some large agricultural estates.2 But the issue is whether a sufficiently rational form of accounting existed, and whether this was a factor in the fate of ancient capitalism. The short answer offered by Weber is that the form of accounting which is a necessary precondition for rational capitalism of the modern type—namely, ‘double entry’—clearly did not exist in antiquity. One reason for this was the literal system of notation in use by the Romans, which meant business calculations were of necessity rudimentary in character. Indeed, arithmetic was in general unable to transcend the limitations set by the counting frame or abacus; not only were computations using such devices limited in accuracy, but the scope of such calculations was restricted owing to the absence of a numerical system based on position notation. The latter is especially efficacious for business accounting as tabulations of differing kinds (expenditure, receipts etc.) can be readily compared and balances struck.3 But if the proficiency of ancient accounting was somewhat limited, this was perhaps insufficient by itself to forestall the advance of rational capitalism because, given that other predisposing conditions had been present, the required advances in arithmetic might well have been made, as a response to necessity as it were. So, to what extent were these factors present? To answer this we must further consider the main preconditions listed above and try to arrive at an assessment of their pertinence in the world of antiquity.


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TO WHAT EXTENT WERE THE PRECONDITIONS OF RATIONAL CAPITALISM PRESENT IN ROMAN ANTIQUITY? In what follows we shall discuss the key elements of Weber’s structural model of rational capitalism one by one, considering in each case whether the situation in antiquity was conducive or otherwise. We shall omit any discussion of the question of rational technology as this was dealt with at length in the excursus at the end of Chapter 3. The appropriation of the means of production By this Weber means that for rational capitalism to exist the means of production must be concentrated in the hands of private entrepreneurs whose primary interest is to put them to commercial use. Two main structural features are implied: just as with Marx, there must be a class of capitalists who have achieved a monopoly of the means of production; and a class of workers must exist, able and economically compelled to carry out the directions of management in its orchestration of the production process (in a moment we shall consider the exact character of the labour force, whether free or unfree). In considering how such conditions were approximated in ancient times, we first note that, as early as the beginnings of the republican era, private property was a common feature.4 Furthermore, as we have seen above, legal arrangements and other conditions were such as to greatly facilitate concentration of the means of production (especially land). Indeed, Weber observes that property rights underwent considerable ‘bourgeoisification’ in law at this time because freedom of contract was expressly limited by prohibitions placed on feudal and other permanent encumbrances upon land: Roman law ‘did not recognize the emphyteusis except as ager vectigalis on public lands…. [This] was a product of the concern of the bourgeois landed interests for legal marketability of land and the prevention of seigneurial rights or similar obligations tied to the land.’5 As Marx along with others have noted, as regards the process of land appropriation in early Rome there are a number of parallels with the enclosure movement in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But ancient developments also differed from the modern situation in a number of ways. First, as regards the creation of a class of entrepreneurs, it must be remembered that, no matter how extensive their holdings, the landowning nobility only partially transformed their estates into profit-making concerns. As we have seen, this was partly because status etiquette forbade the adoption of entrepreneurship, at least as a full-time vocation. Besides, the estate owner to a considerable extent saw himself as the master of an extended oikos for which the maintenance of a small-scale patrimonial rulership was as important as the increasing of monetary wealth. Insofar as the vilicus can be said to have performed a managerial role, again it must be noted that he was never an entrepreneur in the modern sense but more a kind of overseer whose chief concern was to maintain existing levels of output rather than to maximize profit. All this meant the acceptance of tradition in a broad range of matters affecting the management of the estate—there were revered farming techniques which had been handed down by the great masters of the past (e.g., Mago), as well as traditional


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outlets for the surplus (the oikos, in-kind taxes, the local village); and the division of labour was stereotyped insofar as certain work roles were more or less fixed by status along with the corresponding tasks of labour (vilicus, teamster, vine dresser, herdsman etc.). Prices, rates of profit and interest rates were never formally fixed, but again these were not entirely rational, under the influence of the custom. Second, as regards the creation of a class of workers, it must be noted at the outset that in antiquity the expropriated peasants were not transformed into a working class of the modern type. Operating through various political institutions (the tribunate of the plebs, the military and tribal assemblies, clientage, the selling of votes etc.), the lower orders had been able to win some concessions; for example, they were often able to influence foreign policy and in particular the conduct of war in which they were active participants. Rather than being transformed into propertiless wage labourers, as was the general fate of the English peasantry, Rome’s dispossessed proletarii joined her conquering armies and fought for new land of their own: first in the form of allotments in the newly-won colonies, later as provincial land allocated as a kind of pension payment for veterans. Even in the larger cities where there were groups of citizens situated more closely to the lower classes of early modern society (i.e., the Roman plebs), but who were not under the same compulsion to enter the labour market and work for wages as were their modern counterparts (workhouses, the absence of welfare, no political representation, etc.). Besides, the expropriation of peasants in antiquity had not been as far-reaching as that brought about by the enclosure movement of England. In antiquity independent or semidependent yeomen owning small portions of land probably always existed in significant numbers, especially outside Italy, as the system of tenancy and the later significance of the colonate testify. Of course, the appropriation of the means of production is unlikely to stimulate the development of entrepreneurial activities if opportunities for profit in the market are formally appropriated. That is, if one can become more readily wealthy in other ways than peacefully through orientation to the chances for profit offered by the market, then the incentive to develop enterprises of this kind will obviously be considerably reduced. Thus, all those having access to gains which derive from taxes, booty, tribute, and perquisites of various kinds, or from impositions such as royalties, market levies, liturgies and so on are effectively exempted from the compulsion to enter the competitive market struggle. Antiquity provides numerous instances of formal appropriations of these kinds: the tax farming practised in the provinces, the booty extracted after victorious wars, the profits of administration, corruption etc., all with their well-known excesses. The liturgies and the various requisitions and distributions made by the state must also be counted here. Freedom of the market By this Weber means the absence of regulation of consumption, production and prices or any other type of regulation limiting freedom of contract or specifying conditions of exchange; any such regulation lessens what he terms the level of ‘market rationality’. During the period of the Republic and early Empire, it is evident there were some forms of market regulation. MacMullen tells us that, whilst it became a common practice for


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local markets to be established in large villas or in villages on specified market days (nundinae), ‘in the period of the Empire, permission…had to be sought from the appropriate authorities; in Italy, from the senate and consuls, elsewhere, and in the later Empire only from the Emperors’.6 The state was no doubt interested in capitalizing on a potentially lucrative source of income here. However, this may not have inhibited the orientation towards market exchange appreciably because, as we have seen, agriculture, industry, and trade continued to develop such an orientation throughout this period. Besides, as Jones notes, ‘internal trade conditions were in some ways very favourable. The Roman Empire formed a vast common market, with negligible internal tolls (of 2 or 2½ percent), and a common currency which was abundant and, so far as gold coins were concerned, stable and of excellent quality.’7 Nonetheless, as already discussed, the predominance of the oikos and the dependence on status advantages were obviously very real impediments to the fullest development of a market system. A common feature was a kind of dualism with regard to the market. The aristocracy typically ‘consumed’ a great many services outside the market, as these were provided by household slaves organized in a complex internal division of labour. Yet, significantly, items such as the food and clothing of the slaves and many other goods of an everyday kind, not to mention luxuries, were for the most part provided by the market.8 So it is by no means a simple question of the dominance of either the oikos or the market but rather a structured combination of the two. Weber’s summary remarks on the general situation are worth noting in full: in many Hellenistic cities during the ‘status era’ and also in Rome, the inherited estate (as shown by the old formula for placing spendthrifts under guardian) was monopolized…. The market is restricted, and the power of naked property per se, which gives its stamp to class formation, is pushed into the background…. Frequently [the effect of the action of status groups strengthens the contrasts in the economic situation], and in any case, where status permeates a community as strongly as was the case in all political communities of Antiquity and of the Middle Ages, one can never speak of a genuinely free-market competition as we understand it today.9 Concerning the regulation of production in Roman times, it is important to note the extent to which the various craft-occupations, trades and professions were controlled either by the state directly or by semi-official collegia. By the late imperial period, state intervention had increased still further; indeed, as we have seen in detail above, the state had by then begun to supply many of its needs directly in kind through liturgies and staterun officinae and fabricae. While moves in earnest towards a ‘command economy’ were comparatively late, there were tendencies in that direction beginning from the Principate onwards. Finally, regarding the regulation of prices, the discussions of Cato and other Latin authors suggest that in republican times in normal circumstances prices were not subject to any formal control. The major exception to this was the regulation of grain prices. According to Casson, in the crisis of AD 19 the emperor Tiberius had resorted to setting maximum prices. Other crises, however—AD 6 under Augustus, AD 32 under Tiberius


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again and a later crisis under Claudius—were dealt with either by rationing, repression or incentives.10 The main difference with the so-called modern ‘price mechanism’, however, is not the presence or absence of regulation but rather the role of tradition. For, when Cato gives the price for a wagon journey between two places or when he itemizes the cost of acquiring and assembling an olive press, he assumes these are amounts which remain constant, that they will not alter in the foreseeable future owing to the effects of competition, inflation, technological improvements or whatever (whereas the fluctuation of modern prices is assumed as a matter of course). But in later imperial times, conditions were somewhat different with the state occasionally attempting to regulate prices directly by decree, as in Diocletian’s famous edict on prices. Though the ostensible reason for the edict was the desire to restrain the uncontrolled inflation of the late third century, it should not be assumed that the state was intervening in the economy in order primarily to promote ‘economic stability’ (on the analogy with the modern states which commonly act out of such concerns). It must be remembered that the state had itself been a major and direct cause of the inflation, through its taxation, high expenditures and monetary policies; besides, at this time economic theories simply did not exist which could provide an adequate understanding of the price-creating mechanism, and upon which economic policies designed to promote growth as a function of stable prices could be based. The state had attempted to prevent the currency inflating primarily to maintain the value of fixed money payments owing to itself (i.e., rents and taxes). As MacMullen suggests, the motives of the state were entirely self-interested: apart from setting prices for a host of general commodities and services, the edict also set new values for the various coins of the realm, the state rigging the revaluation ‘in favour of creditors, among whom itself was of course the greatest; and the prices of frumenta fiscalia and transport charges generally were disproportionately depressed. In these too the state had a vital interest.’11 This is not to deny elements of rationality altogether. Williams convincingly argues that the edict was also probably a genuine effort to regulate the economy as a whole by imposing ‘fair’ prices. In the following remarks, however, we believe he overstates the ‘socialistic’ aims of the edict: It is not just an anti-inflation weapon but an attempt to legislate what are considered socially just ratios between wages and prices, necessities and luxuries…. [The] policy is a huge step away from tradition. It aims at generalized permanent control, and in forbidding merchants to withdraw their goods from sale at the stipulated price it has a distinct totalitarian ring, proclaiming in effect the state’s primary claim on the use and direction of the material resources of society, private ownership notwithstanding.12 But, insofar as Diocletian’s move was at all effective in stabilizing prices, it would appear it also had the quite counter-productive result of reducing productivity because it turned people away from the market. In the end, as Jones puts it, ‘the only result of the edict was that goods disappeared from the market. It soon became a dead letter and inflation resumed its course.’13


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Free labour Clearly, full market capitalism requires free labour which must be the general form of labour; otherwise, the effects of appropriation described above are lost. That is, if large numbers of persons are not economically compelled to offer themselves in the labour market as labourers—if they are not formally free yet propertiless—then, the capitallabour relation (to use Marx’s expression) will not form and come to dominate the economic sphere generally. Obviously, free workers as consumers also contribute significantly to the development of capitalism as a system because, by satisfying their needs through the market, they contribute to the enormous increase in demand that is a prerequisite of large-scale enterprise. Unfree labour, as we have already explained at some length, has the opposite effect. Not only are the needs of unfree workers strictly limited but such individuals are in addition not compelled to enter into exchange relations (i.e., labour contracts) with capitalist entrepreneurs in order to earn income: despite some variations (as with the apophora system), the slave’s well-being is ultimately his master’s responsibility; or, in the case of serfdom, the individual’s needs are satisfied on a largely autarkic basis and thus outside the market. Of course, in antiquity free labour was by no means without significance, for as we have noted several times previously it was never entirely marginal or secondary in relation to other forms. But the crucial point is that such free labour as did exist was never subject to division and organization in a thoroughly capitalistic fashion. We must also consider the impact of slavery on free labour. For when enterprises of a quasicapitalistic kind did arise, entrepreneurs invariably chose slaves for their labour force rather than free workers. This was partly because of their cheapness over the long term. But slaves were also chosen probably because the traditional modes of labour use from the earlier patriarchal household (i.e., slavery, clientage, indentured labour) were simply carried over to the expanded profit-making concern, even when the enterprise showed signs of autonomous development. Thus, the rational use of free labour was limited because in its more industrial applications it almost always appeared alongside slave labour and did not alter the traditional forms of division and coordination (hence in the building of the Erechtheion free labourers worked alongside slaves as craftsmen, the latter often taking the supervisory role). The dominance of slavery is also of importance because, as has often been noted, it meant the degradation of work in general.14 Improvement in the status of free labour did not take the form of an increased responsibility and competence within the enterprise leading to greater specialization and technical innovation, but autonomous, external development of separate crafts with the worker as a small-scale owner of the means of production (which may have included a few slave workers). This tendency was also at work in the whole process of mancipation where the peculium acted as a fund to establish the freed slave in a craft-business in his own right. (Under modern capitalist conditions the corresponding development is the promotion of the skilled worker from the shop floor to the executive domain with increased status and authority within the same enterprise).


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The commercialization of economic life Another precondition of capitalism Weber lists is ‘the general use of commercial instruments to represent share rights in enterprise, and also in property ownership’.15 Undoubtedly, in antiquity such phenomena were partly present, as in the societates publicanorum and in the maritime loan. However, the significance of such commercialization was again strictly limited: first, because the institutions concerned were not those central to production; and, second, because a system of symbolic representation of ownership rights did not evolve beyond an elementary stage. Symbolic forms of property having full legal recognition are crucial for the development of credit and other important financial devices like the bill of exchange and the stock certificate. As Weber explains, commercialization involves, in the first place, the appearance of paper representing shares in enterprise, and, in the second place, paper representing rights to income, especially in the form of state bonds and mortgage indebtedness. This development has taken place only in the modern western world. Forerunners are indeed found in antiquity in the share-commandite companies of the Roman publicani, who divided the gains through such share paper. But this is an isolated phenomenon and without importance for the provision for needs in Roman life; if it had been wanting entirely, the picture presented by the economic life of Rome would not have been changed. In modern economic life the issuing of credit is significant as a means for the rational assembly of capital. Without such instruments the stock company, and thus the modern corporation, would be impossible.16 The separation of the enterprise from the household A further precondition which is related to the previous one is the separation of the economic enterprise and its conditions of success and failure from the household or private budgetary unit. This is necessary because the rational operation of the business enterprise requires that working capital be kept strictly separate from the personal wealth of owners and managers. Weber points out that it is not the spatial separation of office or workshop from domicile that is decisive: what is crucial is the separation of the household and business for accounting purposes, and the development of a suitable body of laws, such as the commercial register, elimination of the dependence of the association and the firm on the family, separate property of the private firm or limited partnership, and appropriate laws of bankruptcy.17 As we have already analysed the extent to which the ancient agricultural estate was separated from the household, we shall not repeat that discussion here other than to note the general limitations on this process of differentiation. The furthest stage of pure


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enterprise was marked by the societas publicanorum where again there were limits bound up with legal aspects to which we shall now turn.

EXCURSUS ON THE NATURE OF LAW IN ANCIENT ROME AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR ECONOMIC PROGRESS Legal predictability and economic calculation For Weber, the reliability of the legal apparatus is one of the most decisive preconditions for capitalist enterprise of the market-oriented type. But, while a rational legal system which is highly formal is necessary to create a maximum of economic rationality, the sheer existence of market capitalism requires rather less. Thus, when market capitalism first appeared in England, the legal system was by no means as rationalized as it has become in the context of the advanced capitalism of today. The indispensability of rational law is connected with the fact that a certain minimum level of predictability is required even for a rudimentary market capitalism. As Weber puts it, in industry an enterprise with large investments in fixed capital is not only, as in agriculture, sensitive to cyclical fluctuations, but also in the highest degree to every form of irrationality—that is lack of calculability—in public administration and the administration of justice.18 Weber generalizes that a ‘formally rational’ system of lawmaking and lawfinding is conducive to capitalism because here legal decisions are either (a) a product of attending solely to legally relevant facts of a concrete nature (the utterance of certain words, or the execution of a signature etc.), or (b) are derived from general and abstract principles in such a fashion that a basically clear, internally coherent and theoretically exhaustive set of legal propositions comes into being.19 The special advantage this has for capitalism is that, if the law functions consistently in accordance with formally organized procedures (i.e., due process, the court system, an independent judiciary, the adversary system), it is possible for those potentially affected by legal decisions to ‘know’ the law in advance (unlike the situation where justice is formally or substantively irrational), and thus they can count on certain states of affairs remaining as they find them. More precisely, the kind of formal rationality most suited to capitalism is primarily of the first kind (a), what Weber calls elsewhere ‘formal, empirical case law’ (the classic illustration is the common law of England). The second-mentioned form (b) (i.e., systematic, logically gapless law) usually arises as a consequence of monarchical codifications in association with the bureaucratic desire for order, and capitalist interests may not be especially well served by this. As Weber explains, ‘the consequences of the purely logical construction often bear very irrational or even unforeseen relations to the expectations of the commercial interests’.20 The trend towards formally rational law is closely connected to the development of socalled positive law.21 Following Luhmann we can say that societies in which a high degree of social differentiation has occurred require of their legal system a special kind of adaptability in the interests of (economic) functionality.22 This adaptability requires in its


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turn the internal differentiation of the law itself and its relative autonomy from the other societal spheres, such as religion, politics, and the economy.23 What is more, the legal system must be capable of accommodating the very special organizational requirements of the business enterprise which Weber explains as follows: In an organization aiming at capitalistic profit, such as a business corporation, a mining or shipowner’s company, or a company for financing state needs or colonial enterprise, capital is of predominant significance for the efficiency of the whole, and the prospect of a share in the profits for the interests of the members. Such an organization thus requires that, at least as a general rule, membership be closed and that the purposes be fixed in a relatively stable way; also, that the membership rights be formally inviolable and transferable upon death and, at least usually, inter vivos; that the management be carried on bureaucratically; that the members participate either themselves or though proxies in an assembly that is de iure organized democratically but in fact plutocratically, and that adopts its resolutions, after discussion, by a vote proportionate to capital shares. The special aim of such an organization, furthermore, does not require personal liability of the members externally, since it is irrelevant for the credit standing of the enterprise.24 What Weber is drawing attention to in all this is the peculiar fragility of capitalist economic activity which depends on a very high level of predictability as regards the behaviour of those with which it deals. It is not sufficient that a capitalist believes it likely that certain agreed performances will be forthcoming from sub-contractors or suppliers or his banker at some time in the future; he must in addition be able to count on the relevant actions, on their precise timing, quality and costs. Thus, the type of coercion that supports law plays an indispensable role, in guaranteeing that agreements entered into will be honoured. (In this regard, Luhmann’s discussion of the role of physical violence is pertinent: he notes that in highly complex societies (i.e., capitalism), legal coercion helps to maintain a comparatively high level of calculability (what he calls the ‘expectability of expectations’), not by the direct realization of specific ends but by the general securing of legal order: ‘the congruence of legal mechanisms rests upon the expectation that others expect the law is secured by the use of physical violence’.)25 Speaking very generally of the situation prior to the modern era, Weber claims that even a minimum level of predictability was seldom, if ever, achieved: Neither in the age of the Greek city-states (polis) nor in the patrimonial state of Asia nor in western countries down to the Stuarts was this condition fulfilled. The royal ‘cheap justice’ with its remissions by royal grace introduced continual disturbances into the calculations of economic life.26 The law of Rome and the heritage of Roman law We now wish to ask how Roman law compares in the light of the above discussion? Surely, one might think, Roman antiquity was well placed as regards the legal requirements of commerce owing to its unique legal history. After all, Roman law is


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renowned not only for its creation of a good many commercial legal devices but above all for its rationality. Its rigour and systematic structure and its propensity to enhance order are all but legendary. In tackling this question, however, we must first consider precisely what is denoted by the term ‘Roman law’. A.H.M.Jones rightly corrects the common misconception that the Romans themselves had enjoyed the benefits of what we now imagine to be Roman law. For, the stately fabric of Roman law as we know it is the product of Justinian’s codification, and before that date the structure was somewhat ramshackle. The law was uncertain on a number of points, the authorities being divided, but above all it was obscure, being derived from a vast array of scattered sources.27 What is more, as de Ste Croix correctly points out, there was great geographical diversity and unevenness in the legal world of antiquity: ‘what we call “the rule of law”…was conspicuously lacking from large areas of the Roman legal system’.28 Reviewing the three main jurisdictions of law—criminal, constitutional, and civil—de Ste Croix claims that in the first two the rule of law was never properly established at any stage. Concerning criminal law, it needs to be remembered that there was a high degree of discrimination on grounds of wealth; court justice was too expensive for the poor, and the content and practice of law clearly favoured the rich. In the constitutional area, rule was seldom legitimated in any legal sense, especially under the authoritarianism of the military dictatorships. As regards civil law, there were also severe limitations. Most important was the fact that the ‘formulary system’ of the late Republic had been superseded by the ‘the cognitio system’. De Ste Croix explains that the latter was in essence ‘a legalized absence of the settled form’ which in effect gave the magistrate such discretion that civil law was all but assimilated into administrative or police action.29 Nonetheless, there had also been considerable advances in legal dogmatics, procedure and jurisprudence during the classical era, and this cannot be ignored if our discussion of the legal background of the ancient economy is to be fully accounted. Thus, in what follows we shall briefly survey the achievements of Roman law and estimate their wider significance. We shall first consider the customary law of the very earliest period where ritual and the power of quasi-religious officials (pontifices) were dominant. According to the legal historian de Zulueta, ‘like other ancient laws, Roman law was a system of rights of action, and only if the actiones were fixed was the law itself fixed’.30 Thus, when the Decemvirs regulated the old rituals and procedures and fixed the various legis actiones by producing a written code of law in the form of the Twelve Tables, it can be said that Rome entered a new stage of legal development. Gradually, the codification of ius civile, within which some jurisprudential development was able to take place (in the form of interpretatio), was supplemented by a growing body of praetorian law in the form of edicts. De Zulueta tells us that ‘by the end of the Republic the Edict had attained considerable size and fixity, and the body of new law resulting from it stood out as distinct from the ius civile’.31 This was primarily based on formula (as against legis actio), which meant written, not spoken, forms of pleading were gradually being substituted. Although new edicts were introduced by the praetors, as laymen they were


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dependent on jurists, and the latter had by then become highly trained professionals. The growing volume of statutes and the increasing complexity of legal formulas thus fostered the expansion in power of a body of professional jurists, leading to yet another stage of legal development. Eventually, the need for simplification of the complex array of legal devices in use made itself felt and prompted a further stage of rationalization. Codification began to have a serious impact with the rise to prominence of certain individual jurists in the late Republic and early imperial period. Most notable was the figure of Gaius whose Institutes were written at the beginning of the second century. There followed a series of juristic compilations (by Julian, Papinian, Pomponius, Paul, Ulpian, Modestinus and others). But by far the most ambitious effort was undertaken by Justinian—or rather his juristic servant Tribonian—in the sixth century, a codification both far-reaching in its implications and comprehensive in scope. This is related to the last phase of Roman law which brings us down to the present, namely, the transition to denationalized Roman law—that is, the Roman law of mediaeval Europe, which underwent a revival in the twelfth century by Irnerius at Bologna and was transformed into a kind of world law.32 From this time on Roman law in a formal sense, having no connection any longer with actual Roman societies, played a considerable role in continental legal history and continues to do so, as is well known. Roman law and capitalism Let us now turn to the question of the relation of Roman law to modern capitalism. Weber has commented at some length on this relation and we can use his analysis to aid our discussion of the ancient situation. Contrary to what is presumed by some commentators, Weber did not argue that Roman law was decisive for the emergence of the modern economy. Indeed, he argues to the contrary, that, had it in fact been dominant, its extreme formalism would actually have precluded the ‘invention’ in the early Middle Ages of a number of extremely useful legal devices of a commercial nature, such as the stock certificate, the bill of exchange, the legally recognized commercial company, and others. And, besides, in the country of capitalism’s greatest early flowering, England, it was common law that was supreme; Roman law played only a very minor role. Yet, this said, the corollary of Weber’s argument is not that Roman law was, or is, utterly inimical to capitalism, that capitalism cannot coexist with such a legal system; for, obviously, in many of the continental countries where capitalism also emerged in modern times, Roman law (or its derivatives) was dominant. According to Weber, the general impact of the Roman form of law was to strengthen the tendency towards abstractness, a process already begun in the changes from Roman ius civile to the law of the Empire.33 When Roman law was later taken up by the Italians, it was first purged of all national historical remnants in order that the purely logically derived categories such as ‘legal transaction’, ‘declaration of intention’, or ‘legal principle’ could be appropriated. Then, Roman law, or more correctly Roman legal education, was able to play a role in facilitating legal arrangements consistent with modern economic practices. Thus, we can provisionally conclude that, as regards antiquity, Roman law may not have been entirely inconsistent with the emergence of market capitalism, depending on the period and which aspects we focus upon.


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At this point we shall note that the suitability of Roman law for capitalism does not reside in the fact that Roman law recognizes private property (Quiritary ownership), as Perry Anderson and others have mistakenly argued.34 Of course, a question to be resolved here is whether it is the conception of classical or Renaissance Roman law that is being referred to. For as we have already noted, the character of much of the legal thought regarded as ‘Roman’ cannot always be traced back to antiquity.35 This is especially true of the concept of dominium (ownership) which only became an abstractly ordered and unitary concept as a result of Justinian’s codification. Originally, national Roman law knew property of various kinds (dominium ex iure Quiritium, dominium ex iure gentium, bonitary dominium), and as we have seen these were encumbered with various archaic procedural arrangements which meant the institution was by no means ideally suited to capitalism.36 The factors in Roman law that were favourable to an initial emergence of market capitalism were rather ones like these: it was secularized, managed by professional jurists, and used the adversarial form of trial procedure. These undoubtedly would have contributed to the calculability of the processes of lawmaking and lawfinding to some degree. But the precise degree of predictability for the various phases of Roman history is difficult to gauge. Thus, despite the extreme formalism of later times (especially after Justinian), early Roman law, as already suggested, was quite the reverse. Weber explains that during the time of the Republic, Roman law itself presented a unique mixture of rational and empirical elements, and even elements of kadi-justice. The appointment of the jury courts as such and the praetorian actiones in factum [conceptae], which at first undoubtedly were formulated ‘from case to case’, contained elements of Kadi-justice. The [early republican] so-called ‘cautelaejurisprudence’ and all that developed from it, including even a part of the practice of responsae of the classical jurists [in the imperial period], bore an ‘empirical’ character.37 This was in part because of the intervention in law of the imperium, i.e., the political authority of the day, which, as in the Roman ius honorarium of the praetorian edict, gave the official concerned a unique ‘magisterial power’ such that he could issue binding instructions to the judges.38 But the irrational element was very considerably tempered in the subsequent lawmaking of the praetors who were increasingly coming under the influence of expert jurists. The situation in Rome makes an interesting comparison with that in ancient Greece, as Weber explains: [classical Roman law] was to begin with a product of the Roman city-state, which never witnessed the dominion of democracy and its justice in the same form as the Greek city. A Greek heliast court administered a petty justice; the contestants worked upon the judges through pathos, tears, and abusing their opponents. This procedure was also known in Rome in political trials, as the orations of Cicero show, but not in civil trials where the praetor appointed an iudex to whom he gave strict instructions as to the conditions requiring a


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judgement against the accused or the throwing out of the case.39 To sum up thus far we can say that, whilst achieving real advances from the point of view of formalism, Roman law had still only developed such commercial instruments as were needed for simple contracts, loans and exchanges.40 However, the ius gentium of the late Republic proved to be more adaptable in contract law; it opened up informal methods of acquiring property, and thus the old magical formalism of civil law was partly overcome. This was largely a response to economic interests of a commercial nature: in particular there were moves to emancipate the courts from certain archaic formalisms of a verbal nature.41 In Weber’s view, changes in the meaning of legal propositions are highly likely wherever a professional body of rationally working lawyers representing business interests consistently adapts its counsel to the expected reaction of the judiciary. The Roman cautelary jurists were just such a group, being spurred by private incentives to innovate new legal forms with the object of improving the calculability of the coercive apparatus in their clients’ interests. Indeed, there is a very close relationship between the development of commercial law and the advance of the centralized state; for the capacity of interest groups to develop new forms of association for business purposes depends significantly on the availability of state power for the enforcement of contracts. On the other hand, from the point of view of the requirements of full market capitalism of the modern type, it must be said that, even if the limitations were relatively few, still there were no particular benefits in the system of Roman law. For, as already noted, the more ‘backward’ legal technique of mediaeval commercial law was far more suitable. (The latter, according to Weber, ‘enabled business to produce a far greater wealth of practically useful legal devices than had been available under the more logical and technically more highly developed Roman law’, and he adds, ‘legal rationalism may indeed imply an impairment of creative ability’.)42 Besides, when the highest level of rationalization was finally reached with Justinian’s codification, the question of its value for an emergent capitalism was already a non-issue: for ‘the rationalization of Roman law into a closed system of concepts to be scientifically handled was brought to perfection only during the period when the polity itself underwent bureaucratization’.43 In other words, the long-term trend towards the rationalization of law had nothing to do with the interests of a capitalist class; rather it was essentially a reflection of the monarchic interest in order combined with ‘the natural interest of the official in law which would be systematic and fixed and hence easier to learn’.44 The commercial effects of the Roman law of contract In order to estimate more precisely how efficacious Roman law was as regards the fostering of commerce, in what follows we shall briefly consider some specific provisions of commercial law focusing especially on contract. Obviously, one of the crucial prerequisites of a market system is that the law recognizes and facilitates the ready exchange of goods and services for money. As Henry Maine was the first to explore in depth, an impediment to this in many early societies is the fact that such societies are typically preoccupied with status as against contract.45


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Weber has modified this idea by arguing that the shift strictly takes place not from status to contract but from ‘status contracts’ to ‘purposive contracts’. For contracts are not absent from primitive societies, but the earliest instances are different from modern forms in that they tend to focus on the fact that the parties involved possess certain qualities of person. Under more advanced economic conditions, by contrast, contracts increasingly express indifference to the status of the parties, so that purely purposive contracts emerge oriented exclusively to functional contents. The earliest Roman contract of sale, the transaction per aes et libram discussed earlier, is an example of a contract largely conditioned by status because it was oriented to the total social position of the person concerned, especially his membership of a wider group. The preoccupation with status is also clearly apparent in the bilateral action vindicatio, which was essentially a conflict over the rights to sharing in the use of land as a consequence of belonging to a particular group. Rights were thus held in personum rather than in rem.46 But from quite early times the status contract had begun to undergo modification because there had also developed alongside it the economically conditioned purposive contract in which magical and sacral elements were progressively eliminated so that the focus could be monetary exchange regardless of the qualitative features of the parties. According to Weber, status had also been a fundamental fact of the division of Roman law into ius civile and ius gentium. Quiritarian law affected only those with Roman citizenship, and is in effect ‘special law’, of consequence for a person only in his capacity as a citizen (i.e., as a member of a particular status group). These forms of law clearly necessitated the development of other spheres of law to cover relations between citizens and non-citizens etc.: namely, ius gentium.47 But, under the influence of the jurists, praetorian law reformed the old ius civile, and, eventually in the Empire, with the universalization of the citizenship, the distinction disappeared. Roman public law and the creation of corporate bodies In the fullest stage of the development of the purposive contract, any contract whatever can establish law, provided there are no express limitations.48 Limitations may be of various kinds such as that common in modern society which forbids an individual from selling himself into slavery. In ancient Rome, one of the most important limitations was, as we have seen above, the inability to create corporations through the establishment of special law for that purpose. As Weber explains, classical Roman law ‘refused to admit that in the establishment of a partnership the general law could be modified through the creation of a special partnership or the assumption of a joint and several liability by the partners’.49 (This is partly explained by the absence of a need because, as Weber puts it, ‘ancient capitalism was essentially living off the state’. But, interestingly, Weber goes on to observe that need alone may not be sufficient for new legal forms to arise, for ‘like the technological methods of industry, the rational patterns of legal technique to which the law is to give its guarantee must first be “invented” before they can serve an existing economic interest’.)50 We have already referred to Gierke’s analysis of why the Romans found it impossible to envisage the idea of private partnership. The crucial issue concerns the way the law


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construed the notion of the legal subject. This was influenced to an overriding degree by the fact that the Romans always reduced commercial arrangements between private citizens to rights and duties of the citizenry considered as a totality. (This is the germ of truth in Marx’s insistence that, despite the emergence of private property, the early commune was never completely overcome.) As Gierke explains: The Roman community never surmounted the concept of the communio in which unequal parts agreed upon this one point: each participant was, within a specific sphere, individually endowed with rights and duties. Every formation of a society was subsumed under the form of societas which was viewed as a purely obligatory and extremely unbreakable contractual relationship but not as a voluntary contract based upon the content of the legal essence of the personality…. [Roman law] failed to view a ‘society’ as a group with its own unity that could be endowed with rights and duties.51 For the Romans, the idea of association was generally located within the realm of ius publicum which, strictly speaking, recognized only a single legal subject—the state. (The main exceptions to this were the early totemic clans, which were strictly cult fraternities (sodali), and the guild or trade associations which were similarly constituted (collegia cultorum). But, as Weber notes, the law of citizens played no role here and the property of the collegia was protected sacrally.)52 In general the state was conceived of as an allembracing association which encompassed and delimited all individual persons, though it was not itself viewed as having personality. The state as subject was considered synonymous with the populus Romanus, the body of citizens which through its various assemblies expressed its common, sovereign will.53 In the course of time, however, it became apparent that the sovereign power no longer rested with the totality of citizens, but only with their legally ordered unity, the sphere denoted by the concept of publicum. This was then contrasted with the sphere of privatum, the realm of individual rights. Thus, as a private citizen the individual had inalienable rights over which the state could not prevail; but as a citizen, an individual belonged to the populus as an essential link and was not entitled to play an independent legal role. As Gierke puts it: The remnants of the ancient clans and communities fitted themselves thoroughly into the legal order that recognized only the populus and the pater familias as the original centres of will. The Roman citizenry then viewed itself as essentially existing ‘of and for the state’.54 A most instructive comparison to all this is the corresponding situation in modern England. Weber points out how corporate rights there remained very limited in scope until the eighteenth century; and when it first arose, the English corporation was fashioned as an institution rather than a voluntary association, which meant that certain persons or office bearers were entrusted with rights for the benefit of others or the public.55 Partly as a result of the continuing influence of canon law and feudalism, the law of corporations remained a system of privilege such that whoever claimed a right had to derive it from a special royal grant; and then it could only be exercised for limited


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purposes connected with public interests.56 Eventually, in the late eighteenth century under the influence of capitalist interests, English law began to permit the termination of debt liability once a person’s shares had been transferred. Other changes included these: eliminating the requirement to use seals; dropping the treatment of shares as real property; and doing away with the limitation of corporate purposes to public tasks. Then, in the nineteenth century, limited liability was introduced for all business corporations, which were now put under general normative regulation.57 Thus, to a certain extent the legal situation of Roman antiquity dovetails with the economic structures that had been established. While on the one hand the legal system, through its ordering of contractual dispositions, prevented precisely the kind of ‘common hand’ ownership that was essential for industrial capitalism (especially in the form of the joint-stock company), on the other hand Roman constitutional law readily accommodated the state-contracting societas, which took the form of state-sponsored joint action, ostensibly for the benefit of the financial administration of the body public. The fact that a moneyed section of the aristocracy (especially the publicani) benefited individually from these contracts, often on a huge scale, does not contradict the notion of the dominance of the whole over the individual but simply shows that the state was plutocratic.

EXCURSUS ON FORMS OF RULE AND ADMINISTRATION IN ANTIQUITY It is clear from our consideration of the nature of market capitalism that a stable political situation and reliable public administration are essential prerequisites—again because of the inherent fragility of the market-oriented enterprise and the need to secure the numerous improbable performances and other inputs of various kinds.58 Now to the ancient situation. To a large degree Roman political developments are bound up with two major structures of political power which were frequently interlinked: (a) what Weber terms ‘patrimonial domination’ (which is a major sub-category of one of Weber’s three forms of legitimate rule, namely, ‘traditional domination’); and (b) the quasi-imperialistic hegemony of the city (polis), which commonly exercised a rulership that was, strictly speaking, ‘non-legitimate’ (i.e., unlike most forms of rule, little or no effort was made to facilitate the compliance of the governed by justifying the rulership of the dominant group). We shall first say something in general about patrimonial domination. Patrimonialism According to Weber, patrimonialism is commonly founded upon the economic basis of an oikos, and usually occurs where the original undifferentiated ‘patriarchal’ authority has been replaced by a more diversified distribution of power in which both the lord and his dependents have a share. Even though the patrimonial relationship is an unequal one requiring asymmetrical exchanges of property and services, the subalterns usually achieve some measure of wider social recognition of their claims—typically in the form


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of rights to the use of land (fiefs). In exchange for rent payments (usually in kind), compliance and loyalty, the lord reciprocates with military protection, emergency aid, and, in the better times, a humanely tempered level of economic exploitation (i.e., insofar as the lord seeks only to maintain his current standard of living and does not pursue monetary profits or military adventures).59 Now patrimonialism (usually in combination with other forms of rulership) was very common throughout Roman antiquity. Its typical features appear in the following examples: the Roman clients in the early Republic held a kind of fief, the precarium, from their patrons who were obliged to maintain fides; the coloni of later times were similarly placed, and during the Civil War were obliged to enroll as soldiers in the private armies of the contending magnates; during the Empire, the peasants who wanted land from the imperial domains stood in a kind of patrimonial relation to the emperor who issued them with ordinances (leges); in the late Empire the frontier troops (limitanei, laeti) increasingly received their ‘pay’ in the form of land (fiefs); and, finally, many services were provided to a city or lord liturgically, most notably in the late Roman and Byzantine Empires. The polis The other major institution of crucial relevance to ancient politics was the polis. (In the previous chapter we have discussed some general features of the polis so we shall not repeat ourselves here.) Typically, it began as a patrician settlement where the landowning nobility congregated and, subsequently, dwelled, in part to take advantage of market opportunities connected with coastal trade. Ideologically, if not in reality, the polis was formed as a result of the ‘settling together’ of the various clan oikoi around a communal leader—‘synoikismos’. But for the polis to reach the stage where the rural focus of the original feudal interests was completely overcome, the various sibs or kinship groups had to fraternize and form a cult community: that is, the prytaneia (hearth/cult shrine) of the individual families had to be replaced by the common city prytaneion.60 Also significant at this early stage of urban formation were the various tribal associations (tribus, phylae, phratriae), which not only served religious functions but were also the basis of military recruitment and training. While all tribal members who could equip themselves and acquire the training and discipline of the hoplite formation participated in the army and were thus part of the association of warriors, usually only the noble heads of the tribes held office by virtue of their ‘family-charismatic dignity’.61 (Entry to the military nobility was not completely closed off, however; whoever could equip himself with the necessary means (horse, armour, weapons, chariot) and maintain a knightly lifestyle could enter the city—as did the gens Claudia, for example.) Similarly, it was only patricians who were qualified to administer the city’s cult (by sacrifices, consulting oracles etc.). Unlike the common outcome elsewhere (in Asia, for example), a priestly monopoly did not develop from these practices, so antiquity was not subject to the effects of autonomous hierocracy. Rather, the city itself held power over the wealth of the gods. Thus the structure of the city and the patrimonialism of its ruling strata were blended to form a unique political culture, and in what follows we shall relate the history of this form, discussing in particular the economic consequences.


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The economic power of the nobility had been enhanced from early times by the gradual development of their interests in trade and shipping. From the profits thus generated they made loans to the poorer peasants who for various reasons became increasingly indebted. Being excluded from office holding, the latter were unable to change the legal system which was biased against them (especially the severity of the penalties against debtors).62 The initial form of patrician rule involved a council of the heads of noble families, the early Roman Senate; later, this body became a council of former magistrates. In either case only a small number of people were directly involved in office holding which was an honorific, non-specialized task. This is what Weber terms ‘rule by notables’, a typical feature of which is the absence of the bureaucratic separation of the ‘private’ from the ‘official’ sphere. Also noteworthy here was the purely military character of the power of the magistrates. This in part compensated for the lack of a rational administrative apparatus because the state was able to minimize the scope of the functions for which it was responsible.63 (Eventually, of course, the idea of established jurisdictions developed as competing powers, especially the plebeian assemblies, forced the recognition that rulership was more than a private right.) At this stage political rule tended to be particularly unstable because of the regular feuds which broke out between the noble families, each seeking to monopolize the magistracy for its own group. Weber points to the importance of charisma and the mechanisms of its transmission: high status (dignitas) was associated with descent from previous office holders, so family connection was always sought with past leaders. This did not exclude new incumbents altogether, however, and the so-called homo novus was not uncommon. From patrician to patricio-plebeian rule Against this system of noble rule—which corresponds to Weber’s ideal-type of the ‘patrician city’—there was an ever-growing plebeian resistance which eventually became strong enough to force a radical transformation of the state.64 Like the demos in Greece and the populo in mediaeval Italy, the plebs first sought to establish a separate political community organized as a status association of those rural landowners who were capable of serving in full armour. The plebs were not small-but rather middle-level peasants—a kind of yeoman-gentry—who increasingly resided in the city (like the patriciate) in order to exercise their political rights; Weber coins the expression ‘agrarian burghers’ to describe their social position.65 They had originally been constituted as a sworn brotherhood pledged to support its tribuni plebis whom they deemed sacrosanct. The tribunes at first did not possess any legitimate authority (auspicia, imperium), but rather exercised a kind of lynch law in defence of their actions.66 Eventually, however, this power was modified into the right to intercede on behalf of plebeians being proceeded against by magistrates: this became known as the veto power of provocatio which enabled tribunes legally to challenge criminal verdicts through the plebeian assembly. The plebs also achieved a reduction in the severity of the law of debtorship, and, ultimately, an equal share in state offices including those concerned with religion. Finally, through the institution of the plebiscita, the plebs gained the power to make law for the entire community.67 By this time the state was well on the way in


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transforming itself from the clan-based guild of warriors from which it originated into what Weber calls a ‘territorially-centred compulsory association’ (Anstalt). For the purpose of allocating public burdens of various kinds, the plebs were organized into urban territorial districts. Law became the law for all citizens within the city territory, with statute playing a larger and larger role in a purely secular system of justice. But unlike classical Greece which in very general terms moved in the direction of direct democracy (which alternated with tyranny when the coalitions of interests preferred more radical changes), Rome was only ever partially democratized. The latter became instead a system subject to the rule of the most wealthy senators and equestrians, a fully developed example of what Weber calls the ‘rule of honoratiores’. For, through economic differentiation within the middle strata, the old division between the plebs and patricians gradually lost significance. And, most importantly, the victory of the plebs did not culminate in a democratic constitutional outcome, as had been the case in the corresponding struggles in Greece. While power was in principle held by the tribus, in practice rule was left in the hands of the larger landowners who alone could remain permanently resident in the city and exercise their political rights fully, because only they could live entirely from rent income. These individuals, or rather their families, monopolized the Senate and formed the developing office nobility. Thus, ‘in Rome, incomparably much more than in any other ancient polis, the stratum of honoratiores of strongly feudal stamp remained and, with only temporary challenges, time and again reconstituted itself as the bearer of rulership’.68 The imperial system and its economic consequences By this time Rome had ceased to be a mere city-state and was developing into an Empire. From the point of view of commercial development, however, the Empire was a mixed blessing. On the positive side, it meant the pacification and political unification of an increasingly large geographic zone, a condition which, other things being equal, might be said to have favoured capitalism.69 However, as already noted, the interregional Roman roads primarily served a political and military function, and, as we have seen above, the final outcome of unification, i.e., the imperial system, is intricately bound up with processes which led to the stifling of commerce. It is true that initially the colonial system, in the form of a league of city-states and their cleruchies, had facilitated commercium between allies. But, like the early plutocratic trading communities, such as the Phoenicians and the Greeks, the politically powerful groups in Rome were driven primarily by the interest in ground rent; most of the commercial profits they earned were ploughed back into land and indebted bondsmen.70 The commercium following political subjection meant in effect the crushing of local patrician power and the opening up of foreign territory to acquisition and exploitation by Romans (i.e., the profits of political capitalism). As we have argued, there were huge profits to be gained from conquering territory and setting up plantations worked by the labour of the enslaved inhabitants. And added to this were the profit opportunities exploited by state creditors who were eager to finance an ‘imperialist capitalism’. Of course, as Weber points out,


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the capitalistic interest in land may come into conflict with the land interest of the peasantry. Such a conflict has played its part in the status struggles in the long epoch ending with the Gracchi. The big holders of money, cattle, and men naturally wished newly gained land to be dealt with as public land for lease (ager publicus)…the peasants demanded that the land be partitioned in order to provide for their progeny.71 As we have seen, the interests of the moneyed magnates won out over those of the peasantry, giving this phase of Roman history a distinctively capitalist flavour. This brings our survey of political structures to the high point of the classical era, the first and second centuries AD. As we argued above, the Roman economic situation during this period underwent further transformation of a momentous kind because the process of empire building also slowly but surely brought about the elimination of the very political capitalism which had been instrumental in the creation of Roman hegemony in the first place. Now given such developments, the hypothetical possibility nonetheless arises whether under the pacified, unified and relatively stable conditions of the High Empire it might not have been possible to replace or transform the earlier, irrational forms of capitalism discussed above with the more rational, market-oriented version with which we are so familiar today. This is not such a remote possibility as might be imagined because something like a sequence of this kind occurs in the history of modern England. Let us consider this scenario for a moment, again with Weber’s assistance. In discussing the relationship of mercantilism with patrimonialism, Weber notes that any pre-modern state must choose between two basic forms of public finance: there is the negatively privileging imposition of liturgies, the classic instance being ancient Egypt; or the positively privileging granting of concessions to private trade or craft monopolies in return for fees, profit or a fixed annuity. Stuart England is pertinent here because at that time the two modes of public finance were both important and directly struggled against each other. Weber explains how ‘the monarchy strove for financial independence from parliament and for a rational-bureaucratic organization of the whole state and of the economy according to the pattern of the caesaropapist “welfare state”’.72 To achieve this it enlisted the cooperation of an assemblage of court supporters, military men, officials and wealthy speculators to run a series of royal monopolies which it protected or founded partly under its own auspices. Insofar as this became an attempt to graft modern industry onto a basically patrimonial capitalism, however, it ultimately failed due to economic irrationalities of various kinds. So capitalism had to be founded anew on an entirely bourgeois footing without connection with the patrimonial state (though some of the economic progress achieved under the Stuarts was retained into the era of industrial capitalism). In antiquity in the period of the Principate we can see that analogous processes were at work in the emperor’s efforts to make himself independent of the wealth of the patriciate by transforming some of the newly conquered territories (notably Egypt and Africa) into patrimonial property where the estates were worked by imperial slaves or coloni. From the time of Caesar, the size of imperial domains had been progressively expanded, the emperor’s own personal property becoming virtually indistinguishable from state property. In the struggles in the early imperial era, the emperors succeeded in usurping


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huge amounts of landed property from the leading stratum of the senatorial nobility.73 Here we can see the typical effect of a patrimonial administration at loggerheads with the interests of an independent stratum of wealthy magnates. According to Weber, a state under these conditions seeks the preservation of traditional patterns of life, public peace and stability, and the satisfaction of its subjects, and therefore distrusts the revolutionizing effects of capitalist development.74 Thus, he remarks that it was no accident that ancient capitalism reached its zenith at a time when officialdom was still very minimal—this was also true of the early period of the rise of modern capitalism in England. Still, the noble houses of old Rome were not completely crushed, as was the case in Athens where the clans were incorporated into the traditionally-based ‘demes’ which formed the constituencies of democracy. Administrative and juristic responsibilities remained for a long time in the hands of the Senate which had the advantage over annually elected officials of being a permanent body. The Augustan settlement merely disarmed the great patrician houses, and restricted their administrative role to the already pacified provinces.75 The transition through military dictatorship to the Caesaropapist liturgical state of the late Empire The size of the treasury had to be constantly expanded during this era because of the huge outpourings of the emperors;76 for in seeking to maintain their position against rival factions, they found that the army’s loyalty could only be secured by continually increasing the level of military pay, a practice which was inherently inflationary and which worked only for as long as one payment was not outbid by offers from rival pretenders. Contrary to the popular myth, the imperial munificence of Rome’s Golden Age does not reflect a peaceful society progressing happily under the guidance of a benevolent state, but testifies to the very opposite—during much of this time a semianarchic state of civil war prevailed. Weber explains how at the beginning of this middle period of the Empire a military dictatorship was set up by the Severans which completed a process, begun as early as Claudius, to eliminate the senatorial nobility from the ruling stratum. To achieve this the rulers needed loyal administrators to take the place of senators in the army and imperial administration, so they resorted to appointing officials from the unprivileged strata, even foreigners and freedmen—that is those who ‘did not possess any social power and honour of their own but were entirely dependent for those on the lord’.77 Of course, this meant that the emperor’s authority now rested almost totally on military power, so if he died or circumstances were not ideal his soldiers struck for higher pay or deposed him and installed someone else—all of which was obviously not conducive to stability.78 It also meant, as explained in a previous chapter, that the selling of offices became a regular feature with all its irrational consequences. Despite some similarities, then, the contrast of all this with the modern situation is clear. The crucial difference is that the situation of ancient senators and equestrians is not strictly equivalent to that of the modern bourgeoisie. For the ancient patricians primarily sought to maintain their traditional patrimonial privileges discussed above (the knightly style, dignitas, libertas etc.),79 and the equestrian negotiatores and publicani were only ever interested in the mercantilistic revenue monopolies connected with tax collection or


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military supply. Neither was the bearer of a rationalism directed to economic pursuits in the market, however much they dabbled in speculative trading ventures and commercial deals of different kinds. Thus, the centralizing trend in antiquity led first in the direction of absolutism, and then Rome became a military dictatorship instead of developing towards a constitutional state. The modern state, through its rational-legal parliamentary structures, has established stable procedures to facilitate the (largely) peaceful transition from one ruler to the next, and the machine-like precision of its bureaucratic administration (where continuity, speed, unambiguousness, strict hierarchical subordination and low cost are to the fore) creates a functional, predictable environment from the point of view of the smooth running of business. The opposite consequences prevailed in Rome. In its last Byzantine phase the Empire became a Caesaropapist monarchy. The economic effects of this were to reinforce the tendency towards the elimination of private economic wealth in favour of liturgical provisioning and state-run enterprises. The late Roman monarchy of the eastern Empire did not reach the level of ‘state socialism’ achieved in the Egypt of the Pharaohs,80 but its liturgical system nonetheless culminated in the establishment of a network of stereotyped ties to guilds and landed estates, which meant that the state was moving in the direction of autarky in the fashion of an extended oikos. This, of course, made political capitalism, not to mention a hypothetical market capitalism, all but impossible.

Notes Introduction 1 It is worth remembering that Weber began his scholarly career basically as an ancient historian, and it was really only after his nervous breakdown—mid-career as it were—that he turned his attention to the study of contemporary matters out of which his more celebrated sociological works emerged. 2 On the relation of history to sociology in Weber’s work, there is no better statement in our view than that of F.H.Tenbruck in his recent essay on ‘Max Weber and Eduard Meyer’. There we read: It is regrettable that the meaning of Weber’s sociology has been defined by an immanent interpretation of his latter work…. However, quiet reflection would have indicated that Max Weber’s work could have originated only on the basis of highly developed scholarship. An empirically-based sociology with universal historical perspectives obviously presupposes that historical research has reached out beyond the collection and description of particular historical processes and has been able to order the mass of material according to comprehensive viewpoints…. The basic level of Economy and Society consists of themes that had already been posed by History. Max Weber did not need—and indeed could not collect—one by one the facts with which Economy and Society overwhelms us; he found them already available, admittedly subject to debate, structured by concepts and theories. (F.H.Tenbruck, ‘Max Weber and Eduard Meyer’, in W.Mommsen and J.Osterhammel (eds), Max Weber and his Contemporaries, London, Unwin Hyman, 1987, 235–6.) 3 According to a 1965 review by the leading historian Alfred Heuss, Weber’s contribution, though neglected at the time, was and remains a brilliant achievement. For he was the first to take the Roman agrarian writers (Cato, Varro, Columella) seriously, examining them in a matter-of-fact way… and uncovering the crass principles of Roman agrarian capitalism in its technical details. In this respect, the book, though generally neglected by the historians, became pathbreaking, and subsequent research had to continue along its line of inquiry…. Who else among the historians of the time was capable of handling the legal sources and the technical language of land surveyors, both of which Weber

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combined in virtuoso fashion? The book, hard to understand because of its dry and remote subject matter, is an ingenious work (quoted by G.Roth in Economy and Society, New York, Bedminster, 1968, vol. 1, xl).

1 Max Weber and the theory of ancient capitalism 1 The only significant exceptions to this are: M.I.Finley, ‘The ancient city: From Fustel de Coulanges to Max Weber and beyond’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 19, 1977; and A. Momigliano, ‘New paths of classicism in the nineteenth century’, History and Theory, 21, 1982. Excellent as these are, however, they are only partially concerned with Weber whose work is treated from points of view different to that adopted here. Three of the most recent book-length studies on the economy of antiquity, Finley’s The Ancient Economy, London, Chatto & Windus, 1973, G.E.M.de Ste Croix’s The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, London, Duckworth, 1981, and P.Garnsey and R.Saller’s The Roman Empire: Economy, Society and Culture, Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1987, while touching on Weber, do not discuss his work at any length. A useful introductory essay to the whole area we shall presently discuss is Paul Cartledge’s ‘“Trade and politics” revisited: Archaic Greece’ in P. Garnsey, K.Hopkins and C.R.Whittaker, Trade in the Ancient Economy, London, Chatto & Windus, 1983. 2 It is worth noting that today’s leading non-marxist historians of the ancient economy—A.H.M.Jones, P.Brunt, M.Frederiksen, M. Crawford, K.Hopkins—are generally reluctant to use the term capitalism. This is in marked contrast to the older tradition of ancient historiography in which capitalism was a key notion; these scholars readily accepted the term and its applicability to ancient society. I am thinking in particular of Theodor Mommsen and the whole tradition of ancient historiography that follows from his work, and includes great figures such as M.Rostovtzeff, E.Meyer, T.Frank, F.Oertel, A.J. Toynbee and F.Heichelheim. For a critique of the older generation’s approach with its anachronistic use of categories like ‘bourgeoisie’, ‘capitalist’, ‘industrial production’ etc., see the devastating critique of Rostovtzeff by M.Reinhold, ‘Historian of the classical world: a critique of Rostovtzeff’, in Science and Society, 10(4), 1946. 3 A good introductory account of the history of Roman land-tenure is H. Last’s discussion in the Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 7, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1928. There Last tells us that according to the theory that seems to have prevailed in classical times, Romulus divided the territory at his disposal into three parts, of which one was reserved for public purposes, such as the maintenance of the king and the public cults, one became common land, and the third was divided among the curiae. Without pressing the meanings of terms which came to acquire a

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precise and technical significance, it may be said that of these the first can be called ager publicus, the second compascua and the third ager privatus. Questions immediately arise. First it must be asked with what truth a phrase like ager privatus, which implies private property ownership, can be used in connection with the early history of Rome at all (Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 7, 468). 4 In 1895, Meitzen published a monumental study entitled The Settlement and Agrarian Structure of the Western and Eastern Germanic Tribes, Celts, Romans, Finns and Slavs, and it was on this that he was working while Weber was researching his own Die römische Agrargeschichte. According to G.Roth the influence of Meitzen’s method was considerable: For his analysis of the property forms and social structure Meitzen ingeniously used the ancient survey maps of the villages. Weber proceeded from Meitzen’s chapter on the Roman land surveys…. Weber believed that he had shown that Roman agriculture could be analyzed adequately with concepts derived from other Indo-Germanic agrarian structures (Economy and Society, New York, Bedminster, 1968, vol. 1, xxxvi). 5 M.Weber, Die römische Agrargeschichte in ihrer Bedeutung für das Staats- und Privatrecht, Stuttgart, Enke, 1981, p.6 (all translations of this work are my own). 6 Lewis and Reinhold explain the mancipatio as a method of acquiring ownership through a symbolical sale per aes et libram, ‘by copper and scales’. The conveyance took place in the presence of five Roman citizens. The seller grasped the property, or part of it, claimed ownership, and struck with a piece of bronze or copper a scales held by a libripens, ‘scales-balancer’. Finally he handed over to the purchaser the piece of metal as symbolical of the price (N.Lewis and M.Reinhold, Roman Civilization, Sourcebook 1: The Republic, New York, Harper & Row, 1966, p. 105, n.40). 7 ibid., p. 8. 8 ibid., p. 127. Lewis and Reinhold provide the following account of the significance of the lex agraria: the agrarian law of 111 BC…marked the end of another epoch in the long struggle over the distribution and possession of public land. Its aim was to reduce to order the chaotic legal status of public and private land in Italy, and to stabilize land tenure in the recently acquired African and Corinthian territory. Accepting as a faito accomplis the results of all agrarian legislation since 133 BC, the law declared all occupied public domain the private property of the existing holders and reserved to the state in perpetuity all public land as yet unoccupied. Thus this law was, in effect, the death knell of the Gracchian attempt to revive a class of peasant small holders and a major

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victory for the latifundists in Italy and the provinces, since it removed all obstacles to the expansion of large private holdings (ibid., p. 256). 9 While there is a possibility of a connection between ager publicus and the earlier common mark, Weber doubted whether the legal and economic situation of the latter could account for the fate of the former. The common pasture land (the mark) of the original peasant communities was organically connected with the ploughed land which was organized communally into various holdings. But with the enormous growth of public land after the conquests, any connection of this new ager publicus with the older communal land arrangements was soon made impossible. Besides, the characteristic legal arrangements were quite different in each case: whereas with the original common land only certain landowners (proximi) had grazing rights and these were protected under civil law (ius), by contrast ager publicus became completely separated from established landownership rights and was the object of state law (lex). 10 Weber, 1891, p. 129. 11 Apparently, Mommsen’s lengthy review of Weber’s book was most favourable, despite some minor criticisms: see L.Capogrossi Colognesi, ‘Le comunità rurali di Roma arcaica nella storiografia de tardo ‘800’, Università di Caligari publicazioni della facoltà di giurisprudenza, 20, 1978, 179. 12 On Mommsen’s life and work in general, see R.Marcus, ‘Theodor Mommsen: modern biographical and analytical work’, Mundus Antiquus, 1, 1976. 13 K.Marx, Capital, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1976, vol. 1, 271. Marx does not do justice to Mommsen’s view, however; for example, see his History of Rome, London, Macmillan, 1908, vol. 3, 89. 14 Weber raises the question of feudalism in connection with this earlier period of the ancient state in his Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations, London, New Left Books, 1976, pp. 260–92. 15 Weber’s lecture was delivered before the Akademische Gesellschaft of Freiburg in 1896 and the text was then published in the journal Die Wahrheit in the same year. An English translation is contained in The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations, pt4, pp. 387–411. 16 Weber, 1976, p. 393. 17 ibid., pp. 393–4. 18 ibid., p. 394. 19 ibid., p. 396. 20 ibid., pp. 402–3. 21 ibid., pp. 408–9. 22 ibid., p. 391. 23 ibid., p. 410. 24 It is worth noting that an almost identical argument to that of Weber’s in this early text has been put forward more recently by Perry Anderson in his Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, London, New Left Books, 1974: see especially pp. 93–5. Anderson, however, does not seem to recognize this fact. 25 W.Harris, ‘Towards a Study of the Roman slave trade’, Memoirs of the American

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Academy at Rome, 36, 1980, p. 120. 26 ibid., p. 121. 27 ibid., p. 120. 28 Weber’s Agrarverhältnisse im Altertum was originally published in the Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften in 1897. This was the basis for the later work of the same title published in 1909. It is not well known, however, that the 1909 work—which is the object of the recent English translation by R.I.Frank—is really a revised and augmented version of an earlier work. Indeed, as Momigliano has pointed out, the failure to see that Weber wrote not one but two very different essays on the agrarian conditions of antiquity, dated respectively 1897 and 1909, has prevented the translator—and other interpreters before him—from reconstructing what is not an unimportant chapter in the history of Weber’s development (‘The instruments of decline’, The Times Literary Supplement, 8 April 1977, p. 435). 29 Weber, 1976, p. 51. 30 ibid. 31 See in particular the discussion in Capital, Moscow, Progress, 1956, vol. 2, 493. 32 Weber, 1976, p. 48. 33 But Weber writes elsewhere: ‘Ancient society was either based directly on slavery or else was permeated by slavery to a degree never present in the European Middle Ages’ (ibid., p. 48). 34 ibid., p. 53. 35 ibid., p. 55. 36 See his discussion in Economy and Society, vol. 1, 90–107. 37 Weber, 1976, p. 48. 38 ibid., p. 66. This statement should be compared with those remarks discussed above from the essay of 1896 where it is almost suggested that the latifundia flourished precisely for economic reasons (because they were ‘economically progressive’). 39 ibid., p. 51. 40 Indeed, in a later section of his Introduction, Weber says explicitly that the large slave-worked enterprise must be explained in terms of the oikos theory of Rodbertus and Bücher, an apparent reversal of his initial statements (see p. 66). Perhaps Weber is referring here only to industrial establishments, and not to plantation agriculture where on his own evidence the matter is surely different. Nonetheless, some equivocation is detectable. 41 ibid., p. 66. 42 Incidentally, it is by no means certain that the labour contract was utterly unknown in antiquity. See on this A.Berger, ‘A labour contract of AD 164: CIL, III, P. 948, No.X’, Classical Philology, 43, 1948. On the broader implications of free labour in antiquity, see also W.H. Buckler, ‘Labour disputes in the Province of Asia’, in W.H.Buckler and W.M.Calder (eds), Anatolian Studies Presented to Sir William Mitchell Ramsay, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1923; P. Garnsey, ‘Non-slave labour in the Roman world’, in P.Garnsey (ed.), Non-Slave Labour in the Graeco-Roman World, Cambridge Philological Supplements, 6, 1980; and P.Brunt, ‘Free labour and public works at Rome’, Journal of Roman Studies, 70, 1980. We shall return to this issue again in our concluding chapters.

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43 On this issue and the particular relevance of Weber’s work on world religions (collected and published finally as Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie in 1920–21), see F.H.Tenbruck, ‘The problems of thematic unity in the works of Max Weber’, British Journal of Sociology, 31(3), 1980. 44 Weber,1976, p. 49. 45 ibid., p. 62. 46 General Economic History, New York, Collier, 1961, pp. 246–7. 47 Weber, 1968, vol. 1, 63. 48 ibid., p. 90. 49 ibid., pp. 164–5. 50 ibid., p. 165. 51 ibid. 52 This is a point upon which Marx always insists. Indeed, to a certain extent the overall argument in Capital can be explained as an attempt to explore the full ramifications of a system of capitalistic provisioning of the material needs for social development generally. Consider this passage: Only the capitalist production of commodities has become an epoch-making mode of exploitation, which, in the course of its historical development, revolutionizes, through the organization of the labour process and the enormous improvement of technique, the entire economic structure of society in a manner eclipsing all previous epochs (Marx, 1956, vol. 2, 37). 53 From this it must not be thought that Weber is under the illusion that those who depend on political capitalism—like the Roman equestrians—are not also dependent in turn, even parasitic, upon a system of material production based on the labour of others. Barry Hindess and Paul Hirst mistakenly charge Weber with this, naively claiming that he ‘merely reproduces the traditional and misleading doctrine that the Greeks and the Romans lived by sharing the proceeds of plunder amongst themselves: “war made the city rich, while a long period of peace meant ruin for the citizenship’”: Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975, p. 101. 54 Weber, 1968, vol. 1, 205–6. 55 ibid., p. 99. 56 See in particular his analysis of merchant’s capital in Capital, vol. 3, 323–37, and our discussion below in the Appendix. 57 Weber, 1968, vol. 1, 199. 58 ibid., p. 200. 59 ibid., p. 201. 60 ibid., vol. 2, 710. 61 ibid. 62 ibid., vol. 1, 200. 63 Weber, 1961, p. 247.

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2 On the economic character of the ancient agricultural estate: oikos or enterprise? 1 K.D.White, ‘Latifundia, a critical review of the evidence on large estates in Italy and Sicily up to the end of the first century AD’, Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, 14, 1967, p. 73. White’s Roman Farming, London, Thames & Hudson, 1970, is probably the best general survey of the empirical evidence now available. A more recent general discussion of the issues is N.Purcell’s, ‘Wine and wealth in ancient Italy’, Journal of Roman Studies, 75, 1985. For a detailed survey of the technical, agronomic aspects of ancient agriculture (horticulture and husbandry) as well as for the geographical background, see E.C.Semple, ‘Ancient Mediterranean agriculture’, Agricultural History, 2, 1929 (two parts). 2 M.I.Finley, The Ancient Economy, London, Chatto & Windus, 1973, p.108. I concede that Finley’s view is more complicated than is indicated by this quote: see my detailed discussion below. For the moment let us note the following statement of Finley which is a fuller expression of his view: ‘Investment in land, in short, was never in antiquity a matter of systematic, calculated policy, of what Weber called economic rationality. There was no clear conception of the distinction between capital costs and labour costs, no planned ploughing back of profits, no long term loans for productive purposes’ (ibid., p. 317). 3 K.Marx, Grundrisse, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1973, p. 487. 4 Karl Bücher, Industrial Evolution, New York, Franklin, 1901, p. 96. I agree with Moses Finley, however, that there is more to Bücher’s view than is suggested here. As the former points out, Bücher ‘knew perfectly well that the closed household was not the sole or universal economic formation in Graeco-Roman antiquity’ (The ancient city: from Fustel de Coulanges to Max Weber and beyond’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 19, 1977, p. 316). 5 Bücher, 1901, p. 107. 6 ibid., pp. 109–10. 7 C.A.Yeo, ‘The development of the Roman plantation and marketing of farm products’, Finanz-Archiv, 13, 1952, p. 321. See also his ‘The economics of Roman and American slavery’, Finanz-Archiv, 13, 1952, and The overgrazing of ranchlands in ancient Italy’, Transactions of the American Philological Association, 79, 1948. 8 M.Rostovtzeff, Rome, New York, Oxford University Press, 1960, p. 89. 9 ibid., p. 90. 10 K.Hopkins, Conquerors and Slaves, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1978, pp. 3–4. 11 ibid., pp. 15–16. 12 ibid., pp. 18. 13 It is of course true that a significant proportion of the produce from an estate was

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consumed directly by the villa rustica itself, and, where feasible, the villa urbana. In this connection there is an interesting boast of Trimalchio, Petronius’s fictitious and much exaggerated character, that everything consumed at his banquet was produced on his own estates. However, this needs to be taken with a grain of salt as an indication of the actual state of autarky that would have obtained in a typical household. Besides, Trimalchio’s intention is not so much to prove he was selfsufficient as to demonstrate the vastness of his holdings, which, being extensive, were obviously capable of a level of supply far beyond the needs of his own table no matter how lavish, and thus has nothing to do with a traditional peasant-like concern for self-sufficiency. 14 Hopkins, 1978, p. 107. 15 ibid., p. 18. 16 ibid. 17 Yeo, ‘The economics of Roman and American slavery’, p. 447. 18 J.Day, ‘Agriculture in the life of Pompeii’, Yale Classical Studies, 3, 1932, p. 181. 19 ibid., p. 185. 20 ibid., p. 198. 21 ibid., p. 196. Unfortunately, Day does not give any further indication of why he surmises that free labour was acquired in this way. 22 ibid., p. 191. Day tells us that a ‘study of the families represented by the names of the villa owners reveals the fact that the wine growers, and consequently the owners of the villas, were members of the most wealthy and most prominent families at Pompeii…the governing aristocracy of the city’ (ibid., pp. 177–8). 23 On Britain, see the excellent account by J.Percival, The Roman Villa, London, Batsford, 1976, pp. 145ff. 24 Frank informs us that ‘at Rome’s emporium on the Tiber the mound of potsherds called Monte Testaccio consists of fragments of over 40,000,000 amphorae (representing a capacity of over a half a billion gallons)’ (T.Frank (ed.), An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1933, vol. 5, 220). 25 ibid., p. 221. 26 Both these examples are cited in P.Brunt, Social Conflicts in the Roman Empire, London, Chatto & Windus, 1971, p. 34. Also of interest here is Trimalchio’s boast that he owned so many estates that he was not able to visit them all. Whilst again something of an exaggeration, the statement nonetheless suggests the idea of landed wealth on a vast scale as a definite social possibility: Petronius, The Satyricon and the Fragments, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1965, p. 48. 27 A recognition of the centrality of this issue is the starting point for the excellent study by M.Frederiksen, ‘Changes in agrarian structures in the late Republic: Campania’, a paper presented at Pisa in 1979 to the conference entitled ‘Forma di produzione schiavistica e tendenze della società’ Romana: II a.C—II d.C. un caso di sviluppo precapitalistico’. 28 For a general survey of Weber’s writings dealing with the history and sociology of agrarian institutions, see P.Honigsheim, ‘Max Weber as historian of agriculture and rural life’, Agricultural History, 23, 1949, esp. pp. 193–9.

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29 K.D.White distinguishes two technical types of latifundist agriculture, the ranch focusing on grazing and stock breeding, and the large-scale mixed farm: White, 1967, p. 76. 30 M.Weber, The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations, London, New Left Books, 1976, p. 318. 31 ibid., p. 322. 32 ibid., p. 323. 33 We shall not discuss these non-slave production processes in detail, though recent studies suggest that they were of more importance than was previously thought. See in particular J.M.Frayne, ‘Subsistence farming in Italy during the Roman period: a preliminary discussion of the evidence’, Greece and Rome, 21, 1974. Frayne concludes that ‘a large proportion of the population of ancient Italy throughout Roman times must have been engaged in small-scale or even subsistence farming, just as many still are today’ (ibid., p. 11). See also her book Subsistence Farming in Roman Italy, Fontwell, Centaur, 1979, especially ch. 5. R.MacMullen’s review of the somewhat unsatisfactory state of studies of the lower orders of rural antiquity in the essay ‘Peasants during the Principate’, in H.Temporini (ed.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, Berlin/New York, 1974, 2 (1), is worth consulting, as is P.Garnsey ‘Peasants in ancient Roman society’, Journal of Peasant Studies, 3, 1976. 34 Weber, 1976, p. 324. 35 On this concept see Weber’s discussion in Economy and Society, New York, Bedminster, 1968, vol. 1, 82–4. 36 See my discussion of these activities in the following chapter on industry. 37 Weber, 1976, pp. 328–9. 38 W.E.Heitland argues that the conduct of the bailiff tended to have the effect of minimizing profits. To reduce the chance of reprimand, an astute steward would avoid raising the expectations of the owner by keeping the average output as low as possible: in the event of a bad harvest, the adverse consequences to himself would then be minimal. See his Agricola, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1921, pp. 153–4. Any kind of entrepreneurial initiative on the part of the slave is specifically discouraged by Columella: De re rustica, Cambridge, Heinemann, 1946, 43:12–15 (vol. 1, 91). 39 Weber, 1976, pp. 317–18. 40 ibid., p. 320. 41 We shall return to these issues at length below. 42 There is probably no better introduction to the analysis of this literature than Mommsen’s History of Rome, London, Macmillan, 1908, vol. 3, ch. 12. On Cato and Varro also see the very comprehensive survey by K.D.White: ‘Roman agricultural writers I: Varro and his predecessors’, in H.Temporini (ed.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, Berlin/New York, 1974, 1, (4). 43 E.Brehaut (ed.), Cato the Censor on Farming, New York, 1933, p. xiii. 44 Marcus Porcius Cato, On Agriculture, London, Heinemann, 1934, p. 3. 45 A.J.Toynbee, Hannibal’s Legacy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1965, vol. 2, 296.

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46 White, 1974, 456. 47 Cato, op. cit., 1 (English trans., pp. 3–7). 48 Weber, 1968, vol. 2, 694. 49 G.Mickwitz, ‘Economic rationalism in Graeco-Roman agriculture’, English Historical Review, 52 (1937), p. 584. 50 Astin writes: ‘Cato’s…approach shows no consideration of investing additional capital as a means of increasing productivity; rather his aim seems to be to reduce purchases to the minimum in order to widen the margin between cash receipts and cash expenditure’ (Cato the Censor, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1978, p. 259). 51 The achievements and limitations of ancient accounting are discussed at length in R.H.Macve, ‘Some glosses on Greek and Roman accounting’, in P.A.Cartledge and F.D.Harvey (eds), Crux: Essays Presented to G.E.M.de Ste Croix on his 75th Birthday, London, Duckworth, 1985. 52 Mickwitz, 1973, pp. 584–5. 53 Marcus Terentius Varro, De re rustica, London, Heinemann, 1934. 1:2(8), p. 171. 54 ibid., 1.4 (1–2) (p. 185). 55 ibid., 3.2 (15–17) (pp. 437–9). 56 Elsewhere, however, Varro shows complete awareness of the general principle of minimizing costs, and in relation to labour as well. For example, he writes in one passage: When the harvest is over the gleaning should be let, or the loose stalks gathered with your own force, or if the ears left are few, and the costs of labour too high, it should be pastured. For one thing to be kept in view in this matter is that the expense shall not exceed the profit (ibid., I, 53, p. 287). 57 ibid., 1.16 (2–3), p. 221. 58 Readings which follow this line of interpretation all too readily are Rostovtzeff’s The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1957, vol. 1, 93, and F.M.Heichelheim’s An Ancient Economic History, Leyden, Sijthoff, 1970, vol. 3, 258 (and both passim). 59 The problem of Columella’s profit estimate is discussed in some detail in the following works: J.Day, 1932, pp. 179–80; T.Frank, 1933, vol. 5, 149ff. and K.D.White, 1970, pp. 143–6. But see now the excellent discussion by A.Carandini, ‘Columella’s vineyard and the rationality of the Roman economy’, Opus, 2, 1983. Carandini’s prespective is influenced directly by lines of thought developed by Weber, and agrees with much of the analysis we present here. 60 Finley, 1973, p. 117. 61 Mickwitz agrees with this explanation: ‘Since he [Columella] did not spend money on the maintenance of the vinitor or the fertilization of the plants these costs were not recorded in his books…and that is why he did not take them into account even when making his model calculation’ (Mickwitz, 1937, p. 586). Yeo, on the other hand, thinks it was not even an oversight, since the production of slaves was itself a part of an estate’s operation and, therefore, an amortization fund to cover the replacement costs of slaves was not necessary: The economics of Roman and

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American slavery’, pp. 475–477. But against this it must be said that there would still have been costs in maintaining slave numbers, and these are not allowed for. 62 Columella, 3.3(9) and R.Duncan-Jones, The Economy of the Roman Empire, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1974, p. 33. 63 Duncan-Jones, 1974, p. 41. 64 ibid., p. 44. 65 ibid., p. 57. 66 Of course, by strict modern standards which demand highly rational means of calculation, the following conclusion of Duncan-Jones may follow: ‘Columella’s calculation does not provide a sound example of typical wine-profits…[he] appears careless in his choice of figures with which to follow the potentialities of wine investment’ (ibid., p. 55). But we shall argue in what follows that Columella’s approach is more rational than this implies. 67 This attitude of the ancients to money clearly regarded as investment capital is completely underplayed by Finley, who would have us believe there were really only three places for money to be deposited: viz., in land (i.e., in basically selfsufficient estates), short-term interest-bearing loans (usury) and in a strong box (hoarding): see Finley, 1973, p. 116. 68 On the other hand, the fact that Columella felt the need to make his demonstration at all indicates that the general standard of business management was not good. It must be remembered that Columella sets out to re-establish the good reputation of viticulture, which he thinks has suffered due to ignorance of correct procedures; it needs only to be practised properly for it to be once again very profitable. But if the management of business was generally as systematic and acute as Columella’s own personal example implies, one would hardly expect such ignorance or neglect to have arisen in the first place. Columella’s recommendations thus may reflect that there had been a relative decline in viticulture or in the economy in general; but either way it is apparent that viticulture was still widely practised. We must also make allowance for bias towards what seems his own preferred pursuit; Columella seems to be attached to this type of agriculture for more than purely economic reasons. 69 Columella, 1946, 3.3(9). 70 This kind of accounting dates from the Renaissance as is pointed out by B.S.Yamey, ‘Notes on the origin of double-entry bookkeeping’, Accounting Review, 22. 71 Finley, 1973, pp. 116–17. 72 ibid., p. 109. 73 ibid. 74 ibid., p. 110. 75 ibid., p. 111. 76 Interestingly, it is not only by modern standards that Cato’s ranking has been judged inadequate. In Varro there is a direct reference to Cato’s ranking, and the latter’s ordering is rejected for precisely the reasons offered by Finley. Varro, through the medium of ‘Scrofa’, ranks grazing at the top of his list, and in justifying his opinion he says of viticulture: ‘there are those who claim that the cost of upkeep

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swallows up the profits. In my opinion, it depends on the kind of vineyard for there are several’ (Varro, 1934, 1.8 (1) (p. 199)). There follows an extensive discussion of the different techniques of growing vines where the differential costs of various ways of training vines are compared. Scrofa informs his listeners that ‘if the material [for trellising] grows on the place the vineyard does not mind the expense; and it is not burdensome if much of it can be obtained in the neighbourhood’ (ibid., 1.8(3) (p. 199)). Various forms of trellising are evaluated, and the conclusion is offered that the most ‘economical type of vineyard is that which furnishes wine to beaker without the aid of trellises’ (ibid., 1.8(5) (p. 201)). Then follows a description of two ways of growing vines without trellises, and typical geographic locations of these are mentioned. And, finally, an explanation is given as to why all these varieties exist: ‘This variation in culture is caused chiefly by the fact that the nature of the soil makes a great difference: where this is naturally humid the vine must be trained higher, because while the wine is forming and ripening it does not need water…but sun’ (ibid., 1.8(7) (p. 203)). This should be refutation enough of the inadequacy of much of Finley’s analysis which depends too much on a primitivist reading of Cato alone. 77 M.W.Frederiksen, ‘Theory, evidence and the ancient economy’, Journal of Roman Studies, 65, 1975, p. 169. However, I fail to see the point of Frederiksen’s remark in reply to Finley on this that the latter’s error is to think Cato was talking ‘economics’, whereas that was not his aim at all. This seems to contradict Frederiksen’s general view, largely in agreement with the account offered here, that ancient agriculture was indeed more rational than Finley thinks. If Cato was not talking economics, why does Frederiksen think it worth reflecting on why he was ‘read and imitated for the next fifteen centuries’? (ibid., p. 169). Why does he specifically defend the economic good sense of Cato’s work against Finley’s debunking? 78 ibid., p. 169. 79 An extreme modernizing assessment of the meaning of self-sufficiency is that of K.D.White, who writes that the ancient estates have one thing in common: the aim is to give the owner the highest possible return on his investment by selling all surplus produce… and by keeping production costs down to a minimum…. It is with the same end in view that nothing is to be bought outside which can be economically produced on the farm. Since the working force of slaves represents a heavy capital outlay, no effort must be spared to keep them fully employed (White, 1970, p. 390). This is in our view anachronistic. A more accurate account of the meaning of selfsufficiency is contained in Astin’s book on Cato. Astin writes that Cato’s constant preoccupation with small savings and self-sufficiency was not necessarily a manifestation of parsimony, of an obsession with squeezing every tiny drop of additional income, however trivial it might be beside the profits from the main cash crops. No doubt those profits were often large; yet they were perhaps more precarious than is sometimes allowed…. Carelessness and wastefulness in a number of small matters could have added

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up to a significant additional expense…. Thus the seeming parsimony may be a reflection of realities of agricultural life as much as a grasping nature obsessed with ‘maximizing profits’ (Astin, 1978, p. 261). In our opinion, however, this attributes too much to ‘the realities of agricultural life’. 80 Quoted ibid., p. 110. 81 Finley’s argument in this part of his book is very slippery. Ignoring his own disqualification of the Russian analogy as ‘evidence’ for ancient practices, he proceeds to use the Russian case first as evidence for the mentality that was likely to have accompanied Roman estate ownership, and second as a standard with which to measure the lower level of rationality of the ancients. But all this will not do for the reason Finley himself provides, for it is precisely the difference between the ‘leading Roman senators residing and politically active in the capital city’ and the ‘petty Russian nobility burrowed in their estates’ which cannot simply be ‘allowed for’, as Finley puts it. This proviso is merely a gloss which veils the failure on Finley’s part to come to terms with what is really distinctive about the Roman situation, as we hope to show in the course of the argument which follows. 82 To be fair to Finley, it is probably correct that for Cato self-sufficiency was something of an ideal, a value in its own right, presumably as a precaution against all kinds of natural and human calamities, and as the basis of certain qualities of character associated with the yeoman warrior. White also acknowledges this as an underlying value of Cato: the latter’s ‘model vineyard of 100 iugera was wholly based on the doctrine of self-sufficiency; indeed the whole hand book smacks of it’ (White, 1970, p. 51). But, according to White, with the growth of cattle ranching and large-scale sheep farming there was a fundamental change in the pattern of land use, even though with this development, which he claims is attested by the writings of Varro, the old ‘mixed farms’ did not disappear—what is more, the ideal of smallscale self-sufficient farms survived in the popular consciousness, as exemplified by the Georgics of Virgil (ibid., p. 52). 83 Finley, 1973, pp. 121–2. 84 ibid., p. 122. This view of the modern economic order and its moral dimensions is evidently an attempt to use perspectives derived from Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. If this is Finley’s intention, then his interpretation is too simplistic. The Protestant ethic, according to Weber, did not make acquisition or the pursuit of profit itself a moral value; on the contrary, Weber’s point is that the pursuit of profits, or rather its apparent moral sanctioning, was an unintended result of inner-worldly asceticism. There was no simple one-for-one equation between being wealthy and moral goodness. On these issues see the discussion which follows presently. 85 A better discussion of this relation is Jean-Pierre Vernant’s essay ‘Work and nature in Ancient Greece’, ch. 10 of his Myth and Thought among the Greeks, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul. 86 Finley, 1973, p. 122. An alternative assessment of the role of non-economic concerns can be found in Astin: Whilst

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the criteria which Cato applied to farm-management were not exclusively financial, nor were they exclusively ones which would have been equally applicable to any type of income-producing enterprise. At least in some small measure his attitude was influenced also by his preconceptions about integrity, personal prestige, and the social responsibility of agriculture (Astin, 1978, p. 261). On this issue, however, see my discussion of Weber which follows presently. 87 ibid., p. 122. It may not even be ‘good Aristotle’! Compare the remarks quoted by Finley with those of Aristotle himself on the subject of household management and ‘wealth-getting’ in his Politica. Aristotle’s analysis of husbandry etc. not only betrays a highly aristocratic and detached attitude—‘The discussion of these matters is not unworthy of philosophy, but to be engaged in them practically is illiberal and irksome’ (The Basic Works of Aristotle, Random House, New York, 1941, 1,258)— but it also expresses a purely instrumental rationale. Aristotle writes: ‘The useful parts of wealth-getting are first the knowledge of live-stock—which are most profitable, and where, and how,—as for example what sort of horses or sheep or oxen or any other animals are most likely to give a return’ (ibid.). Perhaps Finley’s case is better established as far as the Greeks are concerned by sections in Xenophon’s Oeconomicus where agriculture is praised for a variety of reasons mainly to do with military and religious advantages. According to Xenophon, the ideal warrior-citizen must integrate farming activities involving work and the tasks of overseeing with other non-agricultural pursuits: farm labour develops strength, and rural life hardens and sharpens the body; organizing slaves fosters commanding ability; and husbandry facilitates horsemanship and gives opportunities for cavalry training (see Oeconomicus, 4. 1–17 and 11. 12–19). But compare all this with the following extract: Farming…may result in profit or in loss; it makes a great difference to the result, even when many labourers are employed, whether the farmer takes care that the men are working during the working hours or is careless about it…evils [such as idleness] crush estates far more than sheer lack of knowledge. For the outgoing expenses of the estate are not a penny less; but the work done is insufficient to show a profit on the expenditure; after that there’s no need to wonder if the expected surplus is converted into a loss… otherwise no business gives quicker returns than farming (ibid., 20. 16–22). It is evident that the case of Xenophon is difficult and complicated, and so an exhaustive discussion is not possible here. 88 Astin, 1978, p. 261. 89 ibid., p. 256. 90 Anyone familiar with marxist writings will be familiar with the modern variants of this psychological disposition which is connected with ideological justification of material interests by resort to traditionally esteemed or sacred values. The classic statement of the problem is The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon Bonaparte of Karl Marx.

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91 M.Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, London, Unwin, 1930, p. 163. 92 ibid. 93 This is a fundamental issue. The most commonly held view emphasizes how slavery had the effect of devaluing work: see C.Mossé, The Ancient World at Work, London, Chatto & Windus, 1969; and Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1958. 94 Weber, 1930, p. 197. 95 ibid. 96 ibid., p. 196. 97 ibid., p. 197. 98 ibid., p. 196. 99 ibid., p. 195. On the interpretation of Alberti, see Benjamin Nelson, ‘Weber’s Protestant ethic: its origins, wanderings and foreseeable futures’, in C.Glock and P.Hammond (eds), Beyond the Classics? Essays in the Scientific Study of Religion, New York, Harper & Row, 1973, pp. 84–5. 100 Weber, 1930, p. 196. 101 In her study of Renaissance Man, Agnes Heller tells us that for Alberti the ideal behaviour combines participation and distance. The heroism lies in realizing that union. His means of doing so is masserizia, a method born of a combination of Aristotelian and stoic-epicurean concepts of measure. Masserizia means the wise conduct of one’s affairs. Nor does it refer only to ‘virtue’ as ethical behaviour, narrowly conceived. Masserizia may just as well mean the healthy governing of our bodies, or the harmonious and balanced direction of our family life, business affairs, time, interests and fate (A.Heller, Renaissance Man, New York, Schocken, 1981, p. 115). 102 Weber, 1968, vol. 3, 1,295–6. 103 ibid., p. 377. 104 ibid., p. 379. 105 See on this Weber’s excellent comparative study in The Agrarian Sociology, pp. 336–66, and its updated version in Economy and Society, pp. 1,266–96. We shall discuss these issues at length below. 106 Weber, 1968, vol. 3, 1,293. 107 M.Jaczynowska, ‘The economic differentiation of the Roman nobility at the end of the Republic’, Historia, 2, 1962, p. 494. 108 Weber, 1968, vol. 1, I, 378. 109 ibid., p. 381. 110 ibid., p. 382. 111 ibid., p. 381. 112 ibid., p. 382.

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3 ‘Industrial production’ and the economic use of slave labour 1 Cambridge Ancient History, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1934, vol. 10, 390–1. 2 ibid., p. 391. 3 ibid. 4 ibid. 5 ibid., p. 394. 6 T.Frank, An Economic History of Rome, London, Jonathan Cape, 1927, p. 220. 7 M.Rostovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1926, vol. 2, 617, n. 39. 8 See discussion at ibid., vol. 1, 175. 9 ibid. 10 See in particular the devastating critique by M.Reinhold, ‘Historian of the classical world: a critique of Rostovtzeff’, Science and Society, 10 (4), 1946. An excellent general introduction to Rostovtzeff’s work is A. Momigliano, ‘M.I.Rostovtzeff’, Cambridge Journal, 2(6), 1954. 11 M.I.Finley, ‘Technological innovation and economic progress in the ancient world’, Economic History Review, 18(1), 1955, p. 42. 12 ’The extensive proportions of some of the factories are proved beyond a doubt’: Frank, 1927, p. 222. 13 ibid., p. 223. We shall return to discuss pottery works and the economic arrangements involved below. 14 ibid., p. 224. 15 ibid., p. 225. 16 ibid., pp. 227–8. 17 R.J.Hopper, Trade and Industry in Classical Greece, London, Thames & Hudson, 1979, pp. 101–2. A good introduction to the economics of industry in ancient Greece is C.Starr, The Economic and Social Growth of Early Greece 800–500 BC, New York, Oxford University Press, 1977; esp. ch. 4. Also important is the analysis by S.C. Humphreys, in her Anthropology and the Greeks, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978, esp. p. 2. 18 J.Hasebroek, Trade and Politics in Ancient Greece, New York, Biblo & Tannen, 1965, pp. 73–4. An analysis of the issues raised here which is quite contrary to that of Hasebroek—though it occurs in the context of a more general discussion of the ancient Greek economy as a whole—is A.W.Gomme, ‘Traders and manufacturers in Greece’, in his Essays in Greek History and Literature, Oxford, Blackwell, 1937. 19 ibid., p. 75. 20 Max Weber also discusses this example and concludes (with Hasebroek) that ‘the specifically mercantile origin of the fortune is obvious’ (M. Weber, The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations, London, New Left Books, 1976, p. 207). We

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shall discuss Weber’s view of the ergasterion shortly. 21 Hasebroek, 1965, p. 75. 22 ibid., p. 77. 23 These buildings are described by Loane as follows: ‘solid brick construction, the facade of many stories, the ground floor shops with tiny living quarters above, the separate stairways leading from the street to the upper apartments, the overhanging balconies, and the fronting porticoes’ (H.J.Loane, Industry and Commerce of the City of Rome (50 BC–200 AD), Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1938, p. 60). In Rome, according to reconstructions based on analysis of the ruins, some of these structures apparently reached six storeys. 24 ibid. p. 65. 25 Loane cites other instances of what she at one point terms a ‘miniature “factory” system’, such as a cabinet-making concern which is depicted on a sarcophagus. She relates how the central figure carrying the roll is evidently the owner of the establishment; to his left one man works with a bow and drill, another with a saw, and still another with an ax. To the right a craftsman is splitting the wood with a chisel and hammer, while a second is carefully cutting out a carved leg and a third is finishing off a bit of metal decoration. Here is definite evidence of a rather elaborate division of labour (ibid., p. 98). But this cannot be regarded as proof of a rational division of labour, because the different workers may only have been depicted doing separate tasks for aesthetic purposes, to illustrate the range of duties a single worker performed. 26 Pliny (13, 75–6), quoted in ibid., p. 101. 27 A.H.M.Jones, The Roman Economy, Oxford, Blackwell, 1974, p. 352. 28 This view refutes Frank’s hasty conclusion that certain ‘places would hardly have gained a name throughout Italy for uniform and recognizable fabrics of fine quality unless the spinning and weaving was done under careful supervision with the use of the best implements and trained labour, that is, in factories’ (T.Frank, An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1933, vol. 5, 202). 29 A.H.M.Jones, The Later Roman Empire 284–602, Oxford, Blackwell, 1964, vol. 2, 836–7. 30 We discuss accounting practices in antiquity at length below in chapter 7. 31 Frank, 1933, vol. 5, 202. 32 ibid. 33 On the whole question of the putting-out system and its relation to the various forms of proto-industrialization, see the recent work by P.Kriedte, H.Medick and J.Schlumbohm, Industrialization before Industrialization, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1981. 34 Loane, 1938, p. 71. 35 W.Harris, ‘Roman terracotta lamps: the organization of an industry’, Journal of Roman Studies, 90, 1980, p. 128.

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36 Quoted in ibid., p. 133. 37 ibid., p. 140. 38 ibid., p. 141. 39 ‘Pottery and the African economy’, in P.Garnsey, K.Hopkins and C.R. Whittaker (eds), Trade in the Ancient Economy, London, Chatto & Windus, 1983, p. 147. 40 ibid. 41 ibid., p. 153. 42 Weber, 1976, p. 43. This generalization holds even though at one point Weber rather carelessly refers to ‘the period when capitalism took over industries’ (ibid., p. 208). 43 ibid., p. 43. However, later in his text Weber notes the existence of ‘permanent ergasteria, buildings made of stone’ (ibid., p. 206). 44 ibid., p. 44. 45 M.Weber, Economy and Society, New York, Bedminster, 1968, p. 127. 46 Weber, 1976, p. 45. 47 ibid., pp. 208–9. 48 At one point in The Agrarian Sociology Weber provides a fairly exhaustive list of the ways in which slave labour could be deployed, some of which entail the production of goods for the market: An owner could exploit his slaves in these ways: (a) by renting them out; (b) by employing them himself, at the same time feeding them and providing them with raw materials, tools and work area (in so far as they were used to produce articles for sale); (c) by employing them, but giving them a lump sum for sustenance; (d) by letting them find employment of their own, receiving in return a fixed payment (apophora) from their earnings; (e) by putting them to work producing goods for sale but letting them find their own work area, raw materials and tools, and receiving from them a payment from their earnings; (f) finally, by a mixture of (a) and (e), under which the owner received an apophora but also provided work area, raw material, and tools (1976, p. 206). 49 ibid., p. 127. 50 For example, Weber says at one point that dependent labour ‘may be used as a means of profit. In that case the dependent may be obliged to deliver goods or to work on raw materials provided by the owner. The owner will then sell the product. This is unfree domestic industry. He may…[also] use his labourer in an organized shop—a slave or a serf workshop’ (ibid., p. 126). 51 ibid., p. 155. In Economy and Society, Weber explicitly excludes the use of slaves as a source of rent from the category of capitalist enterprise: Human beings (serfs and slaves) and fixed installations of all types which are used by seigneurial owners as sources of rent are, in the nature of the case, only rent producing household property and not capital goods, similar to the securities which today yield interest of dividends for a private investor

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oriented to obtain wealth and perhaps some speculative gains (1968, vol. 1, 155). 52 ibid., p. 383. 53 ibid. 54 M.Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, London, Unwin, 1930, p. 21. In the same section, Weber comments that, contrary to the modern experience, the tendency in pre-modern economies was always ‘for acquisitive enterprises to arise as parts of a royal or manorial household (of the oikos), which is, as Rodbertus has perceived, with all its superficial similarity, a fundamentally different, even opposite, development’ (ibid., p. 22). 55 Weber, 1968, vol. 1, 134–5. 56 ibid., p. 135. 57 ibid. See also the ensuing discussion by Weber; ibid., pp. 135–6. 58 Whilst the existence of the apophora system has been generally recognized, its significance until recently has been insufficiently explored in the literature. Finley, for example, says that a substantial part of the urban commercial, financial and industrial activity in Rome, in Italy, and wherever else in the empire Romans were active, was being carried on in this way [that is, with the peculium] by slaves and freedmen from the third century BC on (The Ancient Economy, London, Chatto & Windus, 1973, p. 64) but his analysis goes no further. Likewise A.H.M.Jones acknowledges the importance of the system, but has only a brief account of the Greek situation. He gives the following example: Thus Thimarchus owned a little factory of nine or ten shoemakers, whose foreman paid him 3 obols a day and the other hands 2 obols each. Such industrial slaves, who ‘lived apart’, as the Athenians expressed it, seem to have formed a substantial part of the population (A.H.M.Jones, ‘Slavery in the ancient world’, Economic History Review, 9(2), 1956, p. 188). The best introductory account is probably that of Hopkins in Conquerors and Slaves, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1978, especially chs 2 and 3. The account offered below is largely consistent with Hopkins’s view. However, on the whole question of the economic functions of the peculium, the reader should consult an excellent recent study which generally confirms our own conclusions here: A. Kirschenbaum, Sons, Slaves and Freedmen in Roman Commerce, Jerusalem, Magnes Press, 1987. Marx does not seem to have known of the significance of the arrangements here under discussion, and this partly accounts for his insistence that slave labour never reached skilled levels: ‘Hence the economic principle, universally applied in this mode of production, of employing only the rudest and heaviest implements’ (Capital, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1976, vol. 1, 304, n. 18). A

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peculiar defence of Marx’s view is mounted by G.A.Cohen, however, who takes on the criticism that the existence of skilled slaves at Rome refutes Marx’s theory. He replies that ‘closer inspection suggests otherwise. The skilled slaves, despite their formal legal status, had, in practice, more autonomy than the concept of slavery allows’ (Karl Marx’s Theory of History, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1978, p. 191, n. 3). It is evident, however, that Cohen quite arbitrarily restricts the concept of slave to those forms common in agriculture or mining, at the same time denying that unfree unskilled craftsmen could really have been slaves as such. This is patent casuistry and completely fails to understand crucial features of the institution of slavery and ancient economic conditions generally. 59 Weber notes the appearance of forms like the apophora elsewhere in history in his discussion in Economy and Society, vol. 1, I, 383. 60 ibid. 61 W.W.Buckland: The Roman Law of Slavery, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1908, p. 187. 62 ibid. 63 Such apparent contradictions have misled a number of commentators: Hindess and Hirst, for example, argue that the nature of slavery as a mode of production entails that the labourer, who is the legal property of the non-labourer, has ‘no legal or social existence independent of [his] master and is dependent on him for [his] maintenance’ (B. Hindess and P.Hirst, Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975, p. 126). In some passages Marx also assumes this and thus overlooks important aspects of slavery in antiquity. 64 Buckland, 1908, p. 188. 65 ibid., pp. 188–9. 66 K.Hopkins, 1978, p. 126. 67 ibid., p. 128. 68 Buckland adds: ‘It is important to note that a slave is not for any purpose in his own peculium’ (Buckland, 1908, p. 197). 69 Kirschenbaum emphasizes this development of trust as follows: In addition to engendering a sense of security for third parties by providing them with an avenue of legal redress, the peculium itself was evidence of the trust the paterfamilias placed in his slave or son and it acted as a kind of endorsement of the subordinate’s moral character (Kirschenbaum, 1987, p. 39). Garnsey discusses the considerable measure of freedom of action commonly enjoyed by slaves in business in his ‘Independent freedmen and the economy of Roman Italy under the Principate’, Klio, 63, 1981, p. 365. 70 Buckland, 1908, p. 201. 71 ibid. 72 ibid. 73 ibid., p. 207. 74 On the actio de peculio see J.A.Crook’s analysis in his Law and Life of Rome,

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London, Thames & Hudson, 1967, p. 189, and Kirschenbaum, 1987, pp. 47–71. 75 Buckland, 1908, pp. 233–4. 76 The Institutes of Justinian, London, Oxford University Press, 1896, 4 (7), 5. 77 This is a presumption based on two facts. First, the development of a legal casuistry in Roman commercial law resulted in a comprehensive schema of legal propositions of considerable logical sophistication. Second, the systematization of Roman law had as its point of departure, not only an analysis of the meaning of legal propositions, but also the relevant social actions: that is, it sought to determine those aspects of social action which were legally relevant in order to establish legal relationships of various kinds. Though, as Weber points out, it is ‘possible for a very high degree of sublimation in [legal] analysis to be correlated with a very low degree of constructional conceptualization of the legally relevant social relations’ (1968, vol. 2, 656), this was not the case with Roman law. Hence, it is reasonable to assume a high correlation between the extensiveness of lawmaking at Rome and the empirical preponderance of the corresponding economic and social forms. 78 F.H.Lawson (ed.), The Roman Law Reader, New York, Oceana, 1969, p. 135. 79 ibid., p. 141. 80 H.F.Jolowicz, Historical Introduction to the Study of Roman Law, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1952, p. 80. 81 An illustration of the consequences of the absence of this limit to liability is given by Jones in a discussion of the apophora system in Greece: a slave could be sold as a going concern, with his assets and liabilities—and the latter might exceed the former, as Epicrates found to his cost. Being enamoured of a boy, he was bamboozled into buying his father Midras and his brother too and the perfumery which Midras ran, with its stock and outstanding debts. He paid 40 minae (two-thirds of a talent) and discovered too late that there were 5 talents owing to sundry creditors (Jones, 1956, p. 188). 82 Quoted in Lawson, op. cit., p. 134. Kirschenbaum is in essential agreement when he writes: ‘the peculium arrangement was far removed from any theoretic concept of pure agency as understood by lawyers. Nevertheless, the arrangement is found to have served on the practical, economic level in a manner similar to that associated with agency’ (Kirschenbaum, 1987, p. 201). 83 Plutarch, Lives, vol. 1, London, Dent, 1910, 536. 84 Loane claims that a very common arrangement was for the master to lend money to the slave, the commercial profits belonging to the slave, and the annual interest going to the master: Loane, 1938, p. 147, n. 123. 85 W.L.Westermann, The Slave Systems of Greek and Roman Antiquity, Philadelphia, American Philological Society, 1955, p. 92. 86 Westermann tells us that ‘the composition, the drawing of the human figures, and the finesse of the decorative bands show that the Arretine slave potters were highly skilled craft technicians’ (W.L.Westermann, ‘Industrial slavery in Roman Italy’,

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Journal of Economic History, 2, 1942, 157). 87 On this see H.S.Comfort, ‘Terra Sigillata’, in Frank, 1933, vol. 5, 190. Kirschenbaum argues that more than simply facilitating commercial activities, possession of a peculium by a slave or a son encouraged people to deal with these persons…. It was chiefly because of the peculium arrangement that people did not hesitate to do business with slaves and sons…. Thus, the peculium was a major financial arrangement through which masters and slaves acted as business agents of their respective masters and fathers; it was the source of stimulus and incentive for a slave to conduct such business to the best of his ability (Kirschenbaum, 1987, p. 39). 88 On the social conditions of imperial times, see the classic description of S.Dill in his Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius, London, Macmillan, 1904, esp. ch. 4. 89 Garnsey, 1981, p. 365. See also Garnsey, Hopkins and Whittaker, 1983, xvi. 90 Frank provides the following list (compiled from Plautus): aurifices (workers in gold), auricularii, (chestmakers), ampullarii (makers of leather bottles), calceolarii (shoemakers), fabri (carpenters), ferrarii (iron workers), figularii (potters), lanarii (wool dealers), lintiones (linen workers), infectores (dyers), fullones (fullers), materiarii (wood workers), pistores (millers and bakers), restiones (rope makers), scutiarii (shield makers), textores (weavers) (Frank, 1933, vol. 1, 177). Frank takes this list as evidence of ‘a vigorous industry rather highly specialized’, but the meaning of ‘specialized’ in this context surely needs qualification. 91 R.Dorfman, The Price System, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice-Hall, 1964, p. 2. 92 H.Comfort informs us how technical analysis has established that the Arretine sigillata were of ‘such remarkable and consistently high quality of fabric as to suggest that the raw clay was not prepared by a multitude of individual potters, but rather by a limited number of skilled processors who incidently controlled the claypits’ (Frank, 1933, vol. 5, 191, n. 21). Thus, an elementary specialization of labour may have operated. 93 Thus, we must reject utterly the view of Comfort concerning the meaning of certain ‘signatures’ commonly found on pottery fragments. Comfort thinks these signatures are ‘best explained as an aid to bookkeeping at the factory, fulfilling very much the same function as the identification marks of modern artisans, packers, inspectors, etc. which have no significance beyond the place of their origin…’ (ibid.). From Westermann’s description of these signatures (such as Pantagathus’s ‘unmistakable monogram’), the markings are more properly described as a craftsman’s individual seal. This is not to deny that the signatures possessed some significance along the lines suggested by Comfort when he says that ‘personal signature would be a great help to shop efficiency, and at the community furnace…would serve to separate the share of one master from that of another firing’ (ibid.). But the comparison with packers’ or inspectors’ marks in a modern factory is completely misleading. The latter are essentially a device to ensure ‘quality control’. Under modern conditions with the production of standardized commodities this is a necessity because the

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work performance of the proletarianized worker requires strict monitoring to ensure the effectiveness of a coordinated production effort operating in the highly competitive market situation where costs must always be kept to an absolute minimum—no such rationale is unambiguously applicable to the Arretine pottery markings. 94 G.Pucci, ‘Pottery and trade in the Roman period’, in Garnsey, Hopkins and Whittaker, 1983, p. 110. 95 ibid., p. 111. 96 P.Garnsey, ‘Non-slave labour in the Roman world’, in P.Garnsey (ed.), Non-Slave Labour in the Graeco-Roman World, Cambridge Philological Supplement 6, 1980, p. 152. 97 T.P.Wiseman, ‘The potteries of Vibienus and Rufrenus at Arretium’, Mnemosyne, 4th ser., 16, 1963, p. 282. 98 Garnsey, 1981, p. 369. 99 See in particular: M.I.Finley, ‘Technical innovation and economic progress in the ancient world’, Economic History Review, 18(1), 1955; H.W.Pleket, ‘Technology and society in the Graeco-Roman world’; Acta Historiae Neerlandica, 2, 1967; and J.-P.Vernant, ‘Some remarks on the forms and limitations of technological thought among the Greeks’, in his Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp. 279–301. 100 On these problems, see especially R.K.Merton, Science, Technology and Society in 17th Century England, New York, Harper & Row, 1970. 101 On this aspect see D.Noble, America by Design: Science, Technology and the Rise of Corporate Capitalism, New York, Knopf, 1979. 102 On the issue of the level of achievement of ancient technology and its relation to the science of the day see E.J.Dijksterhuis, The Mechanization of the World Picture: Pythagoras to Newton, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1961, esp. ch. 3, and G.Lloyd, Science, Folklore and Ideology: Studies in the Life Sciences in Ancient Greece, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983, esp. pp. 201–217. 103 H.Hodges, Technology in the Ancient World, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1970, p. 197. 104 G.Cozzo, The Colosseum, Rome, Fratelli Palombi, pp. 35–65. 105 F.Coarelli, ‘Public building in Rome between the Second Punic War and Sulla’, Papers of the British School of Rome, 45, 1977, pp. 16–18. 106 G.Lloyd, Greek Science after Aristotle, London, Chatto & Windus, 1973, p. 106. 107 ibid., pp. 106–110. 108 G.Gunderson, ‘Economic change and the demise of the Roman Empire’, Explorations in Economic History, 13, 1976, p. 50, n. 13. 109 On Pliny see Lloyd’s discussion ‘Pliny, learning and research’, in Lloyd, 1983, pp. 135–149 and W.Stahl, ‘Pliny’s theoretical science’, ch. 7 in his Roman Science, Madison, University of Wisconsin, 1962. 110 The economic importance of the device is discussed in K.D.White, ‘The economics of the Gallo-Roman harvesting machines’, Hommages à Marcel Renard, vol. 2, Brussels, 1969. 111 See Finley, 1955, p. 30.

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112 See ibid.

4 The economic significance of ancient trade 1 K.Hopkins, ‘Economic growth of towns in classical antiquity’, in P. Abrams and E.Wrigley (eds), Towns in Societies, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1978. 2 Mommsen says: It was thus an ancient usage, and was still permitted, that senators should possess sea-going vessels for the transport of the produce of their estates: on the other hand, transmarine mercantile speculation (quaestus, traffic, fittingout of vessels, etc.) on their part was prohibited (History of Rome, London, Macmillan, 1908, vol. 1, 261). 3 Livy’s account of the political struggle which evidently arose at this time because of the increasing economic predominance of the senatorial patriciate deserves scrutiny. He tells us that Flaminius exasperated the Senate by the introduction of a new measure by the tribune Claudius; this measure which Flaminius alone of the senatorial party supported, was designed to render illegal the possession by a senator, or the son of a senator, of any sea-going vessel of more than 300 amphores’ capacity, the size which was deemed sufficient for carrying the produce of an estate, any form of trade being considered beneath a senator’s dignity. The proposal met with violent opposition and made Flaminius, who supported it, highly unpopular with the senatorial party; on the masses, however, the effect was just the opposite, and procured for Flaminius a second consulship (Livy, The War with Hannibal: Books XXI–XXX of the History of Rome from its Foundation, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1965, p. 90(XXI, 63)). 4 As John D’Arms puts it: ‘if Roman senators were not deeply and directly involved in commercial shipping by 219, there would clearly have been neither need for restrictive legislation, nor senatorial opposition to its precise terms’ (J.H.D’Arms, Commerce and Social Standing in Ancient Rome, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1981, p. 33). 5 See H.F.Jolowicz, Historical Introduction to the Study of Roman Law, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1952 (2nd edn), p. 77. 6 The law against senatorial participation in sea trade evidently remained in force throughout Rome’s later history. According to D’Arms, ‘Cicero’s words prove it was technically still in force in 70 BC; and its terms were restated in Caesar’s Lex de Repentundis in 59 BC, and it was apparently formally binding still in the third century of the Empire’ (J.H. D’Arms, The status of traders in the Roman world’, in

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J.H.D’Arms and J.W.Eadie (eds), Ancient and Modern: Essays in Honour of Gerald F. Else, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1977, p. 162). 7 A.H.M.Jones, The Later Roman Empire: 284–602, Oxford, Blackwell, 1964, vol. 1, 868. 8 ibid., pp. 870–1. 9 P.Millet, ‘Maritime loans and the structure of credit in fourth-century Athens’, in P.Garnsey, K.Hopkins and C.R.Whittaker (eds), Trade in the Ancient Economy, London, Chatto & Windus, 1983, p. 47. 10 Quoted in D’Arms, 1977, p. 172. Even as regards Greece, however, this view seems in need of qualification. D.Whitehead’s thorough study of the Athenian metics makes some timely corrections here. Referring to Hasebroek and the primitivist interpretation of Greek industry and trade, Whitehead criticizes the reading that identifies metoikos and banausos in ancient Greece, thus making citizenship incompatible with commerce. According to this exaggerated view, the citizen is almost always in essence a peasant-farmer, and immigration and slavery exist so as to find outside workers to undertake those jobs the citizens decline to perform themselves. Against such a picture Whitehead replies: This dichotomy is demonstrably overdrawn. Valuable though it is to have the citizen/non-citizen cleavage so firmly underlined, the view of citizens living on rents, interest and public-handouts…is a caricature which distorts its opposite too. Above all, the choice which Hasebroek sets up—‘either trade was given over to foreigners or it was kept in the hands of citizens; it cannot have been both at once’—is a false one. It is simply not true to say that there were no citizen merchants and shipowners in the fourth century orators (D. Whitehead, The Ideology of the Athenian Metic, Cambridge, Cambridge Philological Society, 1977, p. 117). 11 D’Arms, 1981, p. 34. 12 ibid. 13 D’Arms,1977, p. 175. 14 Plutarch’s Lives, London, Dent, 1910, vol. 1, 526. 15 I agree with G.E.M.de Ste Croix, however, that interpretation of this passage is not a simple matter: see his discussion in ‘Ancient Greek and Roman maritime loans’, in H.Edey and B.S.Yamey (eds), Debits, Credits and Profits: Essays in Honour of W.T.Baxter, London, 1974, p. 53, n. 45. 16 W.W.Buckland, The Roman Law of Slavery, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1908, p. 174 and passim. 17 D’Arms, 1981, p. 27. 18 P.Garnsey, ‘Grain for Rome’, in Garnsey, Hopkins and Whittaker, 1983, p. 129. 19 H.Pleket, ‘Urban elites and business in the Greek part of the Roman Empire’, in Garnsey, Hopkins and Whittaker, 1983, p. 134. 20 Petronius, The Satyricon and the Fragments, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1965, 76 (pp. 86–7). 21 D’Arms, 1981, pp. 98–9.

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22 ibid., p. 116. 23 Petronius, 1965, 53(p. 65). This problem is well discussed by Erich Auerbach in his Mimesis. Whilst noting that the Banquet of Petronius is closer to our sense of realistic presentation than any other ancient works, especially because of its focus on the social domain, according to Auerbach the work essentially does not belong in a realist genre. It is crammed with magic, adventure, and mythology, so overburdened with erotic detail, that it cannot possibly be considered an imitation of everyday life as it existed at the time—quite apart from the unrealistic and rhetorical stylization of its language…. The Banquet is purely a comic work. The individual characters, as well as the connecting narrative, are consciously and consistently kept on the lowest level of style both in diction and treatment. And this necessarily implies that everything problematic, everything psychologically or sociologically suggestive of serious, let alone tragic, complications must be excluded, for its excessive weight would break the style (Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1953, pp. 30–1). 24 ibid., p. 28. 25 M.Weber, Economy and Society, New York, Bedminster, 1968, vol. 1, 156. 26 ibid. This type of conveyance of goods appears to correspond with the form of trade Karl Polanyi terms ‘marketless trade’. In his discussion of Babylonian trade, he speaks of ‘risk-free trading’ which he describes as follows: Non market trade—this is the crucial point—is in all its essentials different from market trade. This applies to personnel, goods, prices, but perhaps most emphatically to the nature of the trading activity itself. The traders of the karum of Kamish [an Assyrian trade settlement] were not merchants in the sense of persons making a living out of the profit derived from buying and selling, i.e., price differentials in regard to the transactions in hand. They were traders by a status…. Their revenue derived from the turnover of goods on which a commission was earned (K.Polanyi, C.Arensberg and H.Pearson (eds), Trade and Market in the Early Empires, Glencoe, Free Press, 1957, p. 19). 27 Weber, 1968, vol. 1, 156. 28 For an excellent discussion of the nature of the modern stock market, see Weber’s essay ‘The Stock Exchange’ in (W.Runciman (ed.), Max Weber: Selections in Translation, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1978. 29 Weber, 1968, vol. 1, 158. 30 The Latin expressions for the sea loan were pecunia traiecticia or fenus nauticum. But note that in what follows we use the mediaeval term commenda as the generic concept. 31 M.Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, London, Unwin, 1930, pp. 18–19.

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32 Translated by G.Calhoun in his ‘Risk in sea loans in ancient Athens’, Journal of Economic and Business History, 2(4), 1930, 570–1. A translation and commentary are also contained in de Ste Croix, 1974, pp. 5–6. 33 Calhoun, 1930, p. 572. 34 M.Weber, General Economic History, New York, Collier, 1961, p. 157. 35 The case is described in detail by Calhoun, 1930, pp. 565–8. 36 Quoted in J.Hasebroek, Trade and Politics in Ancient Greece, New York, Biblo & Tannen, 1965, pp. 83–4. 37 On these issues, see Hasebroek’s discussion, ibid. 38 Garnsey, 1983, p. 122. 39 G.Rickman, ‘The grain trade under the Roman Empire’, Memoirs of the American Academy at Rome, 36, 1980, p. 269. 40 L.Casson, ‘The role of the state in Rome’s grain trade’, Memoirs of the American Academy at Rome, 36, 1980, p. 24–6. Rickman writes that until the mid-first century AD the river mouth at Ostia and the harbours of Puteoli, were crowded with ships of all kinds. Their merchants may have formed collegia, or groups of various types, for their own convenience or social purposes. But the state had no single policy, even in relation to grain which necessitated the use or manipulation of such groups (Rickman, 1980, p. 270). 41 Rickman, 1980, p. 271. 42 R.Meiggs, Roman Ostia, Oxford, Clarendon, 1960, p. 277. 43 ibid., p. 278. 44 ibid., pp. 298–9.

5 The role of state contracting and the societates publicanorum 1 For a statement on the whole question from a modernizing point of view, see T.Frank, ‘The financial activities of the equestrian corporations: 200–150 BC’, Classical Philology, 28, 1933. 2 P.Brunt, ‘Sulla and the Asian publicans’, Latomus, 15, 1956, p. 24. 3 The discussion which immediately follows owes much to E.Badian’s excellent analysis Publicans and Sinners: Private Enterprise in the Service of the Roman Republic, Oxford, Blackwell, 1972. 4 ibid., p. 24. 5 ibid., pp. 29–30. 6 On the various taxes and the history of their development, see also H. Hill, The Roman Middle Class in the Republican Period, Oxford, Blackwell, 1952, pp. 52–4. 7 Quoted in S.A.Cook, F.E.Adcock and M.P.Charlesworth (eds), Cambridge Ancient History, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1934, vol. 9, 468.

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8 V.Scramuzza, ‘Roman Sicily’, in T.Frank (ed.), An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1933, vol. 3, 237–8. 9 Badian, 1972, pp. 33–4. Badian notes that these mines were very intensively exploited, the slaves being treated in the most inhuman manner imaginable: Slaves were literally worked to death as quickly as possible to produce the maximum profit in the shortest possible time. It was unskilled work, and it was economically more profitable to replace them than to feed and clothe them for any length of time, especially after their inevitable disablement by work. This, in fact, is one of the few examples known, of slavery at its theoretical extreme—a spectacle of human beings regarded as expendable objects, such as even rural slavery in the Italian countryside never provided (ibid., p. 33). On the Spanish mines, see also T.A.Richard, ‘The mining of the Romans in Spain’, Journal of Roman Studies, 23, 1928. 10 G.Jones, ‘The Roman mines at Riotinto’, Journal of Roman Studies, 71, 1980, p. 156. 11 The view that these mines were large-scale enterprises operated by societates publicanorum has been criticized recently by J.S.Richardson who emphasizes that no source actually refers to publicans in connection with the mines in Spain. He thinks it highly probable that small-scale leaseholders, either sub-contracting to larger companies or contracting directly to the state, operated mines. He notes that the recording of the mine profits in terms of a daily amount is contrary to what one would expect if contracts had been let by censoria locatio to publicans. And although archaeological research has shown an impressive extent of operations (some galleries were 1,800 metres in length), it was apparently not possible for more than one miner to work at the face at a time, and this suggests smaller-scale operations were the rule. See J.S.Richardson, ‘The Spanish mines and the development of provincial taxation in the second century BC’, Journal of Roman Studies, 66, 1976, pp. 139–52. 12 Badian, 1972, p. 34. 13 See Polybius, The Histories, London, Heinemann, 1927, vol. 10, 16, 4–6. 14 Richardson, 1976, p. 139. 15 Hill, 1952, pp. 57–8. 16 A.J.Toynbee, Hannibal’s Legacy, London, Oxford University Press,1965, vol. 2, 357. 17 P.Brunt, ‘The equites in the late Republic’, in R.Seager (ed.), The Crisis of the Roman Republic: Studies in Political and Social History, Cambridge, Heffer, 1969, p. 120. 18 Hill, 1952, p. 47. 19 E.Gabba, Republican Rome, The Army and the Allies, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1976, p. 129. 20 P.Brunt, Social Conflicts in the Roman Republic, London, Chatto & Windus, 1971, p. 70.

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21 Brunt, 1969, p. 124. 22 M.Weber, Economy and Society, New York, Bedminster, 1968, vol. 1, 380. 23 Badian, 1972, p. 68 and p. 136, n. 1. 24 ibid., p. 137. 25 Brunt, 1969, p. 124. 26 O.Gierke, Association and Law: The Classical and Early Christian Stages, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1977, pp. 98–9. 27 ibid., pp. 100–1. 28 Livy, XXIII, 48 (The War with Hannibal, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1965, p. 228). This passage is discussed by Badian, 1972, p. 17 and Toynbee, 1965, vol. 1, 351–4. 29 Badian, 1972, pp. 17–18. 30 ibid., p. 122. 31 P.Garnsey, ‘Grain for Rome’, in P.Garnsey, K.Hopkins and C.R. Whittaker (eds), Trade in the Ancient Economy, London, Chatto & Windus, 1983, p. 122. 32 G.Stephenson, ‘The provinces and their government’, Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 9, 470–1. 33 Cicero, Ad Atticum, V, 16 in W.K.Lacey and B.Wilson (eds), Res Publica: Roman Politics and Society according to Cicero, London, Oxford University Press, 1970, pp. 283–4. 34 There is abundant evidence of this in Cicero’s Verrine orations. Cicero himself was probably far less scrupulous than he leads us to believe, though what was legitimate and what was illegitimate income is not easily determined. Finley notes, for instance, that Cicero was an honest governor of Cilicia in 51 and 50 BC, so that at the end of his term he had earned only the legitimate profits of office. They amounted to 2,200,000 sesterces, more than treble the figure of 600,000 he himself once mentioned to illustrate an annual income that could permit a life of luxury’ (M.Finley, The Ancient Economy, London, Chatto & Windus, 1973, p. 55). On Cicero and the whole question of corruption, compare G.de Ste Croix’s discussion in The Class Struggle in the Ancient World, London, Duckworth, 1981, p. 346. 35 Garnsey, 1983, p. 121. On all this, see also Badian, 1972, p. 79. 36 Cicero, Pro lege Manilia, 6 and 4 (Lacey and Wilson, 1970, p. 73). 37 ibid., 15 and 16 (p. 75). 38 ibid., 11 (p. 74). 39 ibid., 17 (p. 76). 40 ibid., 19 (p. 76). 41 Badian, 1972, p. 99. 42 Ad Atticum, I, 17, 8–9 (Lacey and Wilson, 1970, p. 157). 43 Badian, 1972, p. 101. 44 ibid. 45 ibid., p. 103. 46 ibid., pp. 115–16. 47 A.H.M.Jones, ‘Ancient empires and the economy: Rome’, in his The Roman Economy, Oxford, 1974, p. 116. 48 ibid., p. 117.

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49 Plutarch, Lives, New York, Everyman, 1910, vol. 2, 542. 50 M.Gelzer, The Roman Nobility, Oxford, Blackwell, 1975, esp. pp. 70–135. 51 M.Frederiksen, ‘Caesar, Cicero and the problem of debt’, Journal of Roman Studies, 56, 1966, p. 131. 52 ibid. 53 Gelzer, 1975, p. 118. 54 ibid., p. 121. 55 R.MacMullen, Roman Social Relations: 50 BC to AD 284, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1974, pp. 36–7. 56 Cambridge Ancient History, vol. 10, 185–92. 57 A.H.M.Jones, Augustus, London, Chatto & Windus, 1977, p. 119. 58 A.H.M.Jones, ‘Taxation in antiquity’, in Jones, 1974, pp. 164–5. 59 A.H.M.Jones, Studies in Roman Government and Law, Oxford, Blackwell, 1968, p. 156. 60 R.MacMullen, Corruption and the Decline of Rome, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1988, p. 124. 61 ibid., p. 171. 62 On these developments, see S.Williams, Diocletian and the Roman Recovery, London, Batsford, 1985, pp. 132–4. 63 S.N.Eisenstadt and L.Roniger, Patrons, Clients and Friends: Interpersonal Relations and the Structure of Trust in Society, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984, p. 29. 64 Weber, 1986, vol. 3, 1356. 65 Eisenstadt and Roniger, 1984, pp. 48–9. 66 The following relies on ibid., pp. 52–3. 67 See Gelzer, 1975, pp. 101–22. 68 See ibid., pp. 67–9. 69 See ibid., pp. 70–86. 70 See ibid., pp. 86–101. 71 Weber, 1981, vol. 3, 1,366. 72 Eisenstadt and Roniger, 1984, p. 57. 73 See Badian, 1972, p. 60. 74 Weber, 1968, vol. 3, 1,366. 75 See Gelzer, 1975, p. 104. 76 ibid., p. 103. 77 ibid., p. 107. 78 C.Badian, Roman Imperialism in the Late Republic, Pretoria, University of South Africa Press, 1967, p. 19. 79 ibid., p. 21. 80 ibid., p. 20. 81 ibid. 82 ibid., p. 21. 83 See T.Frank, A History of Rome, New York, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1923, p. 162, n. 1. 84 ibid., pp. 161–2.

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85 M.Weber, The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations, London, New Left Books, 1976, p. 315. 86 W.Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome: 327–70 BC, Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1979, p. 56. 87 ibid. 88 ibid., p. 59. 89 ibid., p. 62. 90 ibid., p. 63. 91 ibid., p. 64. 92 ibid., p. 65. 93 ibid., pp. 71–2. 94 ibid., pp. 102–3. 95 ibid., p. 75. 96 ibid., p. 91. 97 ibid., p. 96.

6 The nature of the market and the significance of capitalism in Roman antiquity 1 A similar concern, though at a more general level, is registered by B. Hindess and P.Hirst in their self-critique of the idea of the ancient mode of production which they now believe they took over too uncritically from the ‘bourgeois notion of Antiquity’: ‘Why should we regard conceptions of the Mediterranean world from the era of the formation of the city-states to the fall of the Roman Empire as a coherent object of theorization..?’ (Mode of Production and Social Formation, London, Macmillan, 1977, p. 41). 2 Quoted in P.Garnsey, K.Hopkins and C.R.Whittaker, Trade in the Ancient Economy, London, Chatto & Windus, 1983, p. xii. 3 ibid., p. xiii. 4 ibid., p. xiv. 5 ibid., p. xv. 6 ibid., p. xvi. 7 ibid., p. xx. Hopkins develops this perspective further in his ‘Taxes and trade in the Roman Empire (200 BC—AD 400)’, Journal of Roman Studies, 70, 1980, p. 102. 8 N.Luhmann, The Differentiation of Society, New York, Columbia University Press, 1982, p. 195. 9 ibid., p. 196. 10 ibid., p. 198. 11 ibid. 12 ibid., p. 199. 13 M.Weber, Economy and Society, New York, Bedminster, 1968, vol. 2, 636.

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14 Luhmann, 1982, p. 199. 15 ibid., p. 200. 16 ibid., p. 201. 17 ibid., p. 200. 18 ibid., p. 194. 19 ibid., p. 207. 20 ibid., pp. 207–8. 21 See S.Williams, Diocletian and the Roman Recovery, London, Batsford, 1985, p. 117. 22 M.Weber, The Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations, London, New Left Books, 1976, p. 364. 23 Weber says at one point that ‘ancient capitalism was used to produce rents, and when this capitalism affected industry it did not act to create large enterprises specializing in the manufacture of a particular product’ (ibid., p. 356). 24 Weber notes how, even in the early period of the emergence of modern market capitalism, political and social struggles arose between two groups: one group whose interests were basically those of political capitalism; and a properly bourgeois stratum, whose interests were directed towards the free market. In speaking of the legal and administrative developments which led to the establishment of a guaranty of rights which was independent of the prince and his officials, Weber notes how at first such rights were opposed by powerful capitalist groups. This was because these were politically oriented in their acquisitive activities: The position not only of the great colonial and commercial monopolists but also of the monopolistic large-scale entrepreneurs of the mercantilist manufacturing period regularly rested upon princely privileges which often enough infringed upon the prevailing common law, i.e., in this instance guild law. This latter fact called forth the violent opposition of the bourgeois middle class and thus induced the capitalists to pay for their privileged business opportunities by the precariousness of their legal position vis à vis the prince. The politically and monopolistically oriented capitalism, and even the early mercantilistic capitalism, thus came to have an interest in the creation and maintenance of the patriarchal princely power as against the estates and against the bourgeois craftsmen… (Weber, 1968, vol. 2, 847–8). 25 Plutarch, Lives, London, Dent, 1910, vol. 2, 273. 26 ibid., 276. 27 ibid., 276–7. 28 Weber, 1976, p. 346. 29 ibid., p. 358. 30 ibid., p. 342. On the whole question of the economic and the political development of the Italian city-states, see especially D.Waley, The Italian City-Republics, London, Longman, 1969. On the Greek city-states see now L.H.Jeffery, Archaic Greece: The City-States c. 700–500 BC, London, Methuen, 1976. 31 See Weber, 1968, op. cit., III, 1,344.

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32 Weber, 1976, p. 342. 33 Weber, 1968, vol. 3, III, 1,346. 34 Weber, 1976, p. 339. 35 Weber, 1968, vol. 3, III, 1,220. 36 ibid., 1,350. 37 ibid., 1,350–1. 38 Weber, 1976, p. 352. 39 W.Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome: 327–70 BC., Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1979, p. 9. 40 ibid., p. 11. 41 ibid., p. 14. 42 ibid., p. 17. 43 For a general introduction to the debate on the decline of antiquity, see J.J.Saunders ‘The debate on the fall of Rome’, History, 48, 1963 and A.H.M.Jones, ‘The decline and fall of the Roman Empire’, History, 1955 (Oct.). On conditions prevailing in late antiquity, see C.E. Stevens, ‘Agriculture and rural life in the Later Roman Empire’ in M.M.Postan (ed.), The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1960, vol. 1, ch. 2. For the specifics of the crisis of the third century, the reader should now consult the excellent analysis of R.MacMullen, Roman Government’s Response to Crisis: AD 235–337, London, Yale University Press, 1976, and his Corruption and the Decline of Rome, London, Yale University Press, 1988. 44 A.H.M.Jones, The Roman Economy, Oxford,Blackwell, 1974, pp. 164–5. 45 Weber, 1968, vol. 3, III, 1,019. 46 In Economy and Society Weber writes: ‘Under the Roman Principate the bureaucratization of the provincial administration in the field of tax collection, for instance, went hand in hand with the elimination of the plutocracy of a capitalist class, which, under the Republic, had been all powerful; thus, ancient capitalism itself came to an end’ (1968, vol. 3, plutocracy of a capitalist class, which, under the Republic, had been all powerful; thus, ancient capitalism itself came to an end’ (1968, vol. 3,986). 47 Weber, 1976, p. 364. This analysis is repeated later in Economy and Society where Weber writes: ‘Ancient capitalism was suffocated because the Roman Empire resorted increasingly to status-liturgy and partly also to public want satisfaction’ (vol. 1, 351). 48 It must always be remembered that the decline of antiquity really means only the end of the classical ages in the west, a fact which is frequently overlooked and is the object of an excellent historiographical essay on the problems of periodization in antiquity by Bun-ei Tsunoda entitled ‘The problem of the ending of the ancient world’ (Palaelogia, 4, 1955). The problem with much conventional work on the decline of the ancient world, according to Tsunoda, lies in its uncritical identification of the Roman Empire with the so-called Western Roman Empire; this is especially true of Euro-American historians. Tsunoda replies that he ‘cannot by any means recognize such an agreement [that the Roman Empire equals that of the west], whatever reasons exist behind it, because the state called the Eastern Roman

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Empire or the Byzantine Empire for convenience sake, is the Roman Empire [Imperium Romanum] itself’ (p. 298). 49 Gibbon’s classic statement goes: ‘If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus’ (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, London, Everyman, 1910, vol. 1, 78). 50 On Rostovtzeff’s view of the causes and the historiography of the question of the decline in general, see S.Mazzarino’s critical comments in his The End of the Ancient World, Westport, Greenwood, 1966, passim. 51 C.Starr, Civilization and the Caesars: The Intellectual Revolution in the Roman Empire, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1954, p. 243. For a more complex analysis of the state of Roman culture and the nature of its ‘decline’, see G.Williams, Change and Decline, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1978. Williams points to the importance of the dominance of Greek culture in the Silver Age of Roman literature, which along with antiquarianism and panegyric testify to the escapism of the period (p. 3). 52 ibid., p. 248. 53 Weber, 1976, p. 365. 54 The following is a typical statement of Weber’s view: State bureaucracy would rule alone if private capitalism were eliminated. The private and public bureaucracies, which now work next to, and potentially against, each other and hence check one another to a degree, would be merged into a single hierarchy. This would be similar to the situation in ancient Egypt but it would occur in a much more rational—and hence unbreakable—form…. Together with the inanimate machine [the modern inanimate machine or bureaucratic organization] is busy fabricating the shell of bondage which men will perhaps be forced to inhabit some day, as powerless as the fellahs of ancient Egypt (Weber, 1968, vol. 3, 1,402). 55 On these matters, see D.Beetham, Max Weber and the Theory of Modern Politics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985, and J. Mayer, Max Weber and German Politics, London, Faber & Faber, 1956. 56 Weber, 1968, vol. 3, III, 970. 57 ibid. 58 Aurelio Bernardi, ‘The economic problems of the Roman Empire at the time of its decline’, in C.Cipolla (ed.), The Economic Decline of Empires, London, Methuen, 1970, p. 32. 59 ibid., p. 38. 60 ibid., p. 40. 61 This period and its problems are the subject of detailed treatment in MacMullen, 1976. 62 E.Luttwak, The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976, p. 188.

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63 Bernardi, 1970, p. 72. 64 Luttwak, 1976, p. 190. 65 M.Crawford has provided a full discussion of the financial aspects of this change in the imperial economy. He explains how, initially, ‘in the early Empire, money flowed from the treasury to the soldiers and the officials, from them to the peasants in payment for food, from the peasants back to the treasury in taxes.’ After the fiscal crisis of the third and fourth centuries (caused in large part by debasement), however, the money circle simply became increasingly meaningless. It was doubtless completely abolished in the end by Theodosius I [late fourth century], so that there was only tax in kind and payment in annonae [rations in grain]. But even by the mid-third century, taxes and payments will have been effectively in kind; the age of Diocletian seems to be witnessing the progressive disappearance of payment of soldiers for food (M.Crawford, ‘Finance, coinage and money from the Severans to Constantine’, in H.Temporini (ed.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, Berlin/New York, 1974, vol. 2 (1), 571). 66 Bernardi, 1970, p. 43. 67 S.Williams, 1985, p. 132. An interpretation of these developments that completely overstates the ‘socialistic’ character of state intervention is that of Oertel in S.Cook et al., The Cambridge Ancient History, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1956, ch. 7. 68 Jones, 1974, p. 396. Jones completely underestimates the economic and social significance of the developments described here, however, when he concludes his otherwise impressive work on the later Roman Empire with these remarks: It has been argued that the regimentation of the population into hereditary castes led to inertia and discontent…. In any society, however free, most people are content to carry on in their parents’ vocation, and it is only an enterprising few who strike out a new line and rise in the social scale [sic] (The Decline of the Ancient World, London, Longman, 1966, p. 369). 69 Weber, 1968, vol. 3, III, 990. 70 S.Williams, 1985, p. 132. 71 ibid., p. 135. 72 Jones, 1974, pp. 416–17. The question of the causes of the progressive abandonment of agricultural land (agri deserti) from the late third century down to the end of the sixth is a complex and controversial issue. Jones has a good general overview in 1966, pp. 304–9. A complete review of the conventional wisdom on the subject which highlights the inconclusive nature of the evidence both for and against the idea of a general agricultural decline is in C.R.Whittaker’s ‘Agri Deserti‘, in M.I.Finley (ed.), Studies in Roman Property, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1976. 73 A good description of these developments is contained in Paul Vinogradoff, ‘Social

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and economic conditions of the Roman Empire in the fourth century’, Cambridge Mediaeval History, vol.1, ch.19. See also C.E.Van Sickle, ‘Diocletian and the decline of the Roman municipalities’, Journal of Roman Studies, 1938–9; and P.Garnsey, ‘Aspects of the decline of the urban aristocracy in the Empire’, in H. Temporini (ed.), Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, Berlin/ New York, 1974, vol. 2(1). 74 Williams, 1985, p. 137. 75 Bernardi, 1970, p. 47. 76 ibid., p. 64. 77 C.R.Whittaker, ‘Inflation and the economy in the late fourth century AD’, in A.King (ed.), Imperial Revenue, Expenditure and Monetary Policy in the Fourth Century AD, Oxford, B.A.R.Suppl. 76, 1980, p. 11. 78 ibid., p. 14. 79 Bernardi, 1970, p. 56. 80 Quoted in Mazzarino, 1966, p. 50. 81 The classic work on the subject is S.Bolin, State and Currency. This is now much outdated, however, and should be read critically in the light of M.Crawford’s ‘Finance, coinage and money from the Severans to Constantine’. In the latter Crawford explains how the ultimate debacle of the system of imperial coinage occurred with the debasement of aurei, which for a long time had not suffered the fate of the silver and copper coins. Finally, the ‘policy’ was adopted that ‘the number of aurei needed on a given occasion was divided into the amount of bullion available and the result of the division determined the weight of that particular issue of aurei‘ (p. 570). 82 Whittaker, 1980, p. 9. 83 Bernardi, 1970, pp. 62–4. 84 ibid., p. 68. 85 ibid., p. 69. 86 On these developments see E.A.Thompson, Romans and Barbarians: The Decline of the Western Empire, Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1982, pp. 68–76. 87 Whittaker, 1980, p. 77. Tsunoda emphasizes the same point (with reference to Dopsch’s views on the same period) when he writes: Dopsch emphasizes that the Germanic peoples did not destroy the Roman culture as her enemy, but on the contrary, they accepted and developed it, and that ‘the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476’, therefore does not mean the downfall altogether…. For the Germanic peoples, whose cultures began to develop under Roman influences, the decline of Roman power…meant the arrival of a good opportunity for a further striking development. This is why the fall of the so-called ‘Western Roman Empire’ was not the downfall for them and why Dopsch’s view is right in certain respects (Tsunoda, 1955, pp. 304–5). 88 Bernardi, 1970, p. 78. The problem of the further transition of late antiquity into the society of the Middle Ages is beyond the scope of the present work and cannot be

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discussed here. We note, however, the following works which take up the problem from the point of view of understanding the extent to which elementş of feudalism were already present in Roman society: J.Percival, ‘Seigneurial aspects of Late Roman estate management’, English Historical Review, 332, 1969; M. Rostovtzeff, ‘The problem of the origin of serfdom in the Roman Empire’; M.Bloch, ‘How and why slavery came to an end’ in his Slavery and Serfdom in the Middle Ages, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1975; E.Barger, ‘The problem of Roman survivals in Germany’, English Historical Review, 50(200), 1935.

7 Why rational capitalism was not established in antiquity 1 See especially Section 13 (‘Substantive conditions of formal rationality in a money economy’) and Section 30 (The conditions of maximum formal rationality of capital accounting’): M.Weber, Economy and Society, New York, Bedminster, 1968, vol. 1, 107–9 and 161–4. 2 In Chapter Two. 3 The absence of position notation in ancient mathematics is a more involved issue than suggested here. O.Neugebauer, for example, has shown how highly developed Babylonian mathematical computation was, though its refinement was in large part a response to the needs of astronomy. A system of position notation based on the number 60 (the sexagesimal system) was apparently in wide use. See his The Exact Sciences in Antiquity, Providence, Brown University Press, 1957, Chapters One and Two. 4 The role of private property was given great emphasis by Fustel de Coulanges in The Origin of Private Property in Land, a work that argues for the very early origin of individualistic ownership. Of course, in opposition to this idea have been Marx and the marxist tradition generally; but see also the recent work of P.Anderson: Lineages of the Absolutist State, London, New Left Books, 1974, pp. 424–6. 5 Weber, 1968 vol. 2, 694. 6 R.MacMullen, ‘Market days in the Roman Empire’, Phoenix, 24(4), 1970, p. 334. MacMullen says that these markets were of considerable importance, and estimates they accounted for over ‘three quarters of the value of exchange throughout the economy as a whole’ (1970, p. 333). 7 A.H.M.Jones, The Decline of the Ancient World, London, Longman, 1966, p. 311. 8 Weber, 1968, vol. 3, 1,342. 9 ibid., vol. 2, 937. 10 L.Casson, ‘The role of the state in Rome’s grain trade’, Memoirs of the American Academy at Rome, 36, 1980, pp. 24–5. 11 R.MacMullen, The Roman Government’s Response to Crisis: AD 235–337, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1976, p. 122. 12 S.Williams, Diocletian and the Roman Recovery, London, Batsford, 1985, p. 131.

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13 A.H.M.Jones, 1966, p. 166. 14 Weber, 1968, vol. 3, 1,343. See also C.Mossé, The Ancient World at Work, London, Chatto & Windus, 1969, p. 27; and J.-P.Vernant, ‘Work and nature in ancient Greece’ and ‘Some psychological aspects of work in ancient Greece’, both in his Myth and Thought among the Greeks, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp. 248– 79. 15 M.Weber, General Economic History, New York, Collier, 1961, p. 209. 16 ibid. 17 Weber, 1968, vol. 3, p. 379. 18 ibid., vol. 1, 152. 19 ibid., vol. 2, 657. 20 ibid., 855. 21 ibid. 22 This is the subject of Luhmann’s major work A Sociological Theory of Law, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985. 23 See especially his essay ‘The autonomy of the legal system’ in The Differentiation of Society, New York, Columbia University Press, 1982, pp. 122–37. 24 Weber, 1968, vol. 2, 719. 25 Luhmann, 1985, p. 90. 26 Weber, 1961, p. 208. 27 Jones, 1966, p. 181. For an introduction to the historical side of Roman law, apart from Jones’s excellent chapter in The Later Roman Empire: 284–602, the reader should consult H.Jolowicz, Historical Introduction to the Study of Roman Law, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1952, and J.Crook, Law and Life of Rome, London, Thames & Hudson, 1967. On the technical and jurisprudential side the various works by A.Watson are the most authoritative in recent years. 28 G.E.M.de Ste Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, London, Duckworth, 1981, p. 328. 29 ibid., p. 329. 30 S.Cook et al., The Cambridge Ancient History, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1962, vol. 9, 853. 31 ibid., 864. 32 On these developments, see P.Vinogradoff, Roman Law in Mediaeval Europe, Oxford, 1929. 33 Weber, 1968, vol. 2, 854. 34 Anderson claims that Roman law was absolutely crucial for the emergence of capitalism: The superiority of Roman law for mercantile practice in the cities thus lay not only in its clear-cut notions of absolute property, but also in its traditions of equity, its rational canons of evidence, and its emphasis of professional judiciary…the reception of Roman law in Renaissance Europe was thus a sign of the spread of capitalist relations in towns and country; economically, it answered to vital interests of the commercial and manufacturing bourgeoisie (P. Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State, London, New Left

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Books, 1974, p. 26). Against this we shall not reply in detail but merely cite Weber’s devastating reflection: The idea that Roman law promoted capitalism is part of the nursery school lore of the amateurish literati: Every student must know that all characteristic legal institutes of modern capitalism were completely unknown to Roman law and are of mediaeval, in part of Germanic origin (Weber, 1968, vol. 3, 1,464). 35 Weber, 1968, vol. 2, 801. 36 R.Leage, Roman Private Law, London, Macmillan, 1909, p. 165. 37 Weber, 1968, vol. 3, 978. 38 ibid., vol. 2, 841. 39 Weber, 1961, p. 250. 40 On contract see the extensive treatment of Gy Diósdi, Contract in Roman Law, Budapest, Académiai Kiadó, 1981. 41 Weber, 1968, vol. 2, 842. 42 ibid., 688. 43 ibid., vol. 3, 978. 44 Weber, 1961, p. 250. 45 H.Maine, Ancient Law, Gloucester, Peter Smith, 1970, pp. 163–5. 46 Weber, 1968, vol. 2, 676. 47 ibid., 701. 48 But see Weber’s discussion ibid., 729. 49 ibid., 686. 50 ibid., 687. 51 O.Gierke, Associations and Law: The Classical and Early Christian Stages, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1977, p. 99. 52 Weber, 1968, vol. 2, 716. 53 On this aspect see C.Starr, ‘The perfect democracy of the Roman Empire’, American Historical Review, 58(1), 1952. 54 Gierke, 1977, p. 119. 55 Weber, 1968, vol. 2, 721. 56 ibid., 723. 57 ibid., 725. 58 ibid., vol. 1, 152. 59 ibid., vol. 3, 1,010. 60 ibid., 1,286. 61 ibid., 1,288. On the importance of the family and its early role in religion, Fustel de Coulanges, The Ancient City, esp. Books One and Two, is still worth reading even though somewhat dated. 62 On the question of whether the harshness of the law against debtors extended to their execution, see M.Radin, ‘Secare Partis: the early Roman law of execution against a debtor’, American Journal of Philology, 43, 1922. 63 Weber, 1968, op. cit., vol. 3, 971.

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64 The literature of this period is vast. Here we shall only mention E. Ferenczi, From Patrician to Patricio-Plebeian State at Rome. 65 Weber, 1968, vol. 3, 1,349. 66 ibid., 1,308. 67 ibid., 1,308–9. 68 ibid., 1,365. 69 ibid., vol. 2, 915 70 ibid., 916. 71 ibid., 916–17. 72 ibid., 1,098. 73 On the concept of libertas see Ch.Wirszubski, Libertas as a Political Idea at Rome during the Late Republic and Early Principate, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1950. 74 Ronald Syme describes this process with reference to Domitian as follows: ‘He robs, not for his own use, but to deprive others: and what he seizes he keeps. The goods and the estates of the victims were not given away or sold in order to raise money, but remained an imperial possession.’ (‘The imperial finances under Domitian, Nerva and Trajan’, Journal of Roman Studies, 20, 1930, p. 67.) 75 Weber, 1968, vol. 3, 1,109. 76 ibid., 1,366. 77 Syme describes the imperial largess under Trajan in the following terms: there is never a hint of any financial stringency but evidence on the contrary of a great outpouring of money…. Trajan, while bestowing donative and congiarium [wine and oil donatives], can at the same time renounce aurum coronarium [a tax on decurions] and remit taxes…. Perhaps the alimenta were also extended (Syme, 1930, p. 58). 78 Weber, 1968, vol. 3, 1,043. 79 ibid., 1,020. 80 ibid., 1,097.

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Index accounting: in antiquity 182–3; in Columella 65–7; significance of capital accounting 96, 182, 215 n70, 241 n1 ager compascua 14 ager privatus 14 ager publicus 11,14, 39,132, 201 n9 Agrarian Sociology of Ancient Civilizations, The (Weber) 7–9, 25–32, 36–7,49, 50, 52, 94, 209 n28 agri deserti 177–80 Alaric 181 Alberti, L. 74,74, n99, 74, n101 American slavery 23, 43, 45 Anderson, P. 194 n24, 241 n34 Antony 168 apophora system 87, 98,103, 105, 164, 188, 222 n48, 223 n58, 224 n59, 225 n81 Apuleius 175 Arendt, H. 81 n93 aristocracy: acquisitive ethos of 166–7; role in trade 115–7; status etiquette of 75 Aristotle 113, 218 n87 army 21,148, 176–7; see also military ethos Astin, A. 71,214 n50, 216 n79 Auerbach, E. 120, 230 n23 Augustus 50, 144,186 Aurelius, M. 163 Below, G.von 2 Bernardi, A. 176–7,180, 238 n58, 240 n88 Bloch, M. 172 Bourdieu, P. 151 Braudel, F. 7 Brehaut, E. 54 Brunt, P. 54, 132, 133, 206 n2, 209 n42, 212 n26, 231 n2, 232 n17, 232 n20 Brutus 149, 153, 168 Bücher, K. 2, 25,44–5,49, 86, 157, 209 n40, 211 n4 Buckland, W. 98–104,116, 224 n61, 224 n68, 229 n16 budgetary management 42, 74,189

Index

260

building construction 87,108–9 Burckhardt, J. 2 bureaucracy 144, 173,204, 236 n46, 238 n54 Bury, J. 172 Caesar, J. 137, 140, 141–3,148, 167, 202, 228 n6 Calhoun, G. 123, 231 n32 capitalism: adventure (booty) 42; agriculture and 49–53, 56–9–62; antiquity and 163–4,235 n23, 237 n46, 237 n47; distinction between wealth and capital 74–5; ideal types and definitions of 3, 27, 31,34–6; irrational 9, 32–6, 165; law and 189–90,242 n34; rational (or market) 3,12, 34–5,38–9,182,202 (see also factory production); technology and 108, 112; see also Roman law capitalism, political (or politically orientated) 3, 36–40; acquisitive ethos of 166–7,171; city and 167–71; decline of antiquity and 171–80; effects on market capitalism of 36–40,165–80,210 n53 Capogrossi-Colognesi, L. 210 n11 Caracalla 176 Carandini, A. 93–4,214 n59 Cartledge, P. 206 n1 Cassius 140 Casson, L. 126, 186, 231 n40, 241 n10 Cato 10, 34, 49, 53–8, 73, 105,111, 116, 164, 186, 205 n3, 213 n44, 214 n50, 215 n76, 216 n77, 216 n79, 216 n82; Finley on 68–71 Charlemagne 22 Cicero 49, 70, 133, 137–40,142, 145, 149, 153, 172, 228 n6, 233 n33, 233 n34, 233 n36 Cinna 167 ‘city, The’ (Weber) 7; see also polis classes 168–9 Claudius 187, 203 cleruchies 170 clothing production 89–91 Coarelli, F. 109, 227 n105 collegia 178, 186, 197; see also guilds colonate 10, 19–20,50, 177, 185, 202 Columella 10, 23, 59, 65–8, 73, 106,111, 205 n3, 213 n38, 214 n59, 215 n66, 215 n68 commenda see sea loan;

Index

261

trade Commodus 176 Constantine 176 Cozzo, G. 109, 227 n104 Crassus 140,191, 143, 166–90 Crawford, M. 239 n65, 239 n81 D’Arms, J. 115–6,118,121, 228 n4, 228 n6, 228 n10 Day, J. 48, 212 n21, 212 n22 decline of Roman civilization 171–80,237 n48, 237 n49, 237 n50 Demosthenes 86,97, 124 Diocletian 22, 24, 163, 177, 187; see also Edict of Diocletian domestic system 28, 82–3,91–2 Domitian 238 n49, 244 n74 Dopsch, A. 172, 240 n87 Dorfman, R. 106, 226 n91 Duncan-Jones, R. 66, 215 n62, 215 n66 Durkheim, E. 160 Economy and Society (Weber) 8, 34–6, 121, 182,205 n2, 205 n3, 206 n4 Edict of Diocletian 89, 187 Egypt 124,175, 176, 177, 202, 204, 238 n54 Eisenstadt, S. 146–8, 234 n63 equites (equestrians) 38–9,52–3,132–3,169 ergasterion (workshop) 28, 29, 81, 163; factory and 82–6,88, 95–7,223 n43 ergastulum (workhouse for slaves) 22 fabricae 90,178, 186 factory production 82–5,87, 94–5,221 n28 feudalism 16, 18, 20–1,197 Finley, M. 44, 49, 56, 58, 66, 82,114, 157–8,159, 206 n1, 211 n2, 215 n67, 215 n76, 216 n81, 216 n82, 216 n84, 217 n86, 217 n87, 220 n11, 223 n58, 206 n99; on Cato 68–71 Frank, T. 82, 83, 84–5,91, 206 n24, 214 n59, 220 n6, 220 n12, 221 n28, 226 n90, 231 n1, 234 n83 Frayne, J. 213 n83 Frederiksen, M. 43, 69, 142,151, 206 n2, 212 n27, 216 n77, 234 n51 freedmen 106,187–8 free labour 187 Gabba, E. 133, 232 n19 Garnsey, P. 106–7,117, 126,137, 138, 206 n1, 209 n42, 213 n33, 224 n60, 226 n88, 227 n96, 233 n31, 233 n35, 240 n75 Gelzer, M. 142,149, 234 n50, 234 n67 General Economic History (Weber) 7, 34 Gibbon, E. 172, 175, 238 n49 Gierke, O. 135,196, 233 n26, 243 n51

Index

262

Gracchus, C. 34, 132, 149 guilds 169 Gunderson, G. 111, 227 n108 Hadrian 176 Harris, W. 23, 92–3,150, 151–3,171,171, n25, 221 n35, 235 n86, 237 n39 Hasebroek, J. 49, 82, 85–7,125, 157, 220 n18, 231 n36 Heichelheim, F. 82, 206 n2,214 n58 Heitland, W. 213 n38 Hero of Alexandria 110 Hill, H. 126, 131, 132–3,231 n6 Hindess, B. 210 n53,235 n1 Hirst, P. 210 n53,235 n1 Hodges, H. 108, 227n103 Hopkins, K. 46–7,82, 106,155, 157–9,206 n1, 211 n10, 223 n58, 235 n7 ideal types 1, 9,42 imperialism 150–3; see also cleruchies Institutes of Gaius, The 193 Institutes of Justinian, The 102, 224 n76 ius civile 13 ius gentium 13 Jaczynowska, M. 78,140n107 Jolowicz, H. 102, 225n80,228 n5 Jones, G. 131, 232n10 Jones, J. 89–91,114, 125, 144, 145, 157, 174, 177, 186, 192, 206n2, 221n27,221 n29, 223 n58, 225 n81, 233 n47, 233 n57,233 n58, 233 n59, 237 n43, 239 n68, 241 n7, 241 n27 Julian 241, 180 Justinian 192, 195 Kirschenbaum, A. 223 n58, 224 n69, 225 n82, 225 n87 labour contract 31, 187, 209 n40; and peculium 100 lamp production 92–115 law see capitalism; private property; rationalism; Roman law Lawson, F. 103,225 n78, 225 n82 latifundia (large estates) 10, 19, 24, 27–9,43, 45–9,209 n1; and capitalism 49–53, 164, 172, 209 n38 Lewis, N. 207 n6, 207 n8 lex agraria 14, 207 n8 Lex Claudia 114

Index

263

Livy 136–7,228 n3 Lloyd, G. 110, 227 n102, 227 n106, 227 n109 Loane, H. 87–9,221 n23, 221 n25, 225 n84 Lucian 175 Luhmann, N. 160–3,190,235 n8, 242 n22, 242 n23 Luttwak, E. 177,238 n62 MacMullen, R. 143,145, 156, 185, 187, 213 n33, 234 n55, 234 n60, 237 n43, 238 n61, 241 n6 Macve, R. 214 n51 Mago 184 Maine, H. 195 mancipatio 12–3, 207 n6 market: in antiquity 156–9,161, 185–8; in modern capitalism 160–1 market capitalism see capitalism Marx, K. 2, 15–6,18, 22, 27, 31, 37, 44, 55, 82, 95, 113, 157, 184, 188 n13, 210 n52, 211 n3, 218 n90, 223 n58, 241 n4 marxism 2, 32 Meiggs, R. 127,231 n42 Meitzen, A. 2,14, 207 n4 Meyer, E. 2, 25,32,111, 95, 205 n2 Mickwitz, G. 56–8, 214 n49, 214 n61 military ethos 168, 169–71 Millet, P. 229 n9 Mithridates 138 Momigliano, A. 209 n28 Mommsen, T. 2, 8, 15,32, 49, 172, 205 n2, 205 n11, 205 n12, 213 n42, 228 n2 money: currency in antiquity 159; fiscal policy in antiquity 163,176, 179–80,245 n74, 245 n77; in a market economy 162–3 Mossé, C. 242 n14 Nero 174 Niebuhr, B. 2, 171 ‘“Objectivity” in social science and social policy’ (Weber) 9 Oertel, F. 82–3,206 n2, 239 n67 oikos 4, 20,24–5,42,107–8,165, 185, 198, 204, 209 n40; and enterprise 76–8,96, 164,185–,189, 223 n54 oikos economy 44–5,62–4,161, 170 Ostia 88, 127 Palladio 178 Parsons, T. 160 paterfamilias 16, 197, 224 n69 patrimonialism 198

Index

264

patronage 146–9 peculium 97–106,188, 223 n58, 224 n68, 224 n69, 224 n74, 225 n82, 225 n87 Percival, J. 212 n23, 241 n88 Pericles 70 Petronius see Satyricon Plautus 152–226 Pleket, H. 117, 227 n99, 229 n19 Pliny the Elder 45 Pliny the Younger 89, 111, 221 n26, 227 n109 Plutarch 105, 116, 142, 166, 167, 225 n83, 234 n49, 236 n25 Pohlmann, R. 2 Polanyi, K. 230 n26 polis 168–71,173, 198–201 political capitalism see capitalism, political Polybius 131, 132, 151, 152, 171, 232 n13 Pompeii 48,88, 91–2,106 Pompey 139,144, 167 pottery 83–4,93–4,105–7 private property 184–5; and law 193, 196–7 Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, The (Weber) 3, 9, 31, 32, 39, 97, 216 n84; Cato in 71–4 publicani 4, 33, 38, 128130–3,135–40,153, 173–,187, 198, 231 n11 Pucci, G. 107,227 n94 Purcell, N. 211 n1 rational capitalism see capitalism rationalism: in law 189–90,194–5,224 n77 rationality and rationalization 9, 33, 39 Reinhold, M. 206 n2, 206 n6, 206 n8 Richard, T. 232 n9 Richardson, J. 131, 232 n11 Rickman, G. 126, 231 n39, 231 n40 Rodbertus, K. 2, 9, 25, 49, 209 n40, 223 n54 Roman imperial state 201–4 Roman law 191–3,224 n77, 242 n40, 242 n62; capitalism and 193–8,242 n34; peculium and 98–100,101–2; societates publicanorum and 133–5 römische Agrargeschichte in ihrer Bedeutung für das Staats—und Privatrecht, Die (Weber) 7–8, 9–16, 25, 28, 30, 206 n5 Roniger, L. 146–8, 234 n63 Roscher, W. 2 Rostovtzeff, M. 45–6,58, 82, 83–4,88, 93, 144, 172, 175, 206 n2, 211 n8, 214 n58, 220 n7, 220 n10, 238 n50 Roth, G. 206 n3, 206 n4

Index

265

Satyricon, The (Petronius) 105, 117–21,164, 211 n13, 212 n26, 229 n20, 229 n23 Schmoller, G.von 2 Scipio 131 Scramuzza, V. 130, 232 n8 sea loan (or commenda) 4, 28, 42, 48–51, 163 selling of offices 143–6 Septimus Severus 176 Simmel, G. 16 slave labour: economic disadvantages of 28–9 ‘Social causes of the decay of ancient civilization, The’ (Weber) 7–8, 16–25 societates publicanorum 133–5,189 Sombart, W. 73 Ste Croix, G. 81, 158, 191–2,205 n1, 229 n15, 233 n34, 241 n28 Stephenson, G. 137, 233 n32 Stilicho 177 Strabo 131 Sulla 140, 166 Syme, R. 244 n74, 244 n77 tax farming 33, 37,42, 129–31,143–,173 technology: and capitalism 108; in antiquity 107–12 Tenbruck, F. 205 n2, 210 n43 Thomson, E. 239 n86 Tiberius 186 Tönnies, F. 16 Toynbee, A. 55, 58, 132, 144, 206 n2, 213 n45, 232 n16 trade: and capitalism 121–2; and the commenda 121–2; land 113; sea 113–8,124–7 traditio 13 Tribonian 193 Twelve Tables 13, 192 Valens 179, 180 Valentinian 180 Varro 10, 23, 58–64,70, 73, 111, 205 n2, 214 n53, 214 n56, 215 n76, 216 n82 Vernant, J. 242 n14 Verres 139 Veyne, P. 121 vilicus (estate bailiff) 52 villa rustica (rural estate) 45,47–8,59–62,212 n13 vindicatio 12 viticulture 64–8

Index

266

Vitruvius 89, 109, 110 Westerman, W. 105, 225 n85, 225 n86 White, K. 43, 55, 58, 211 n1, 213 n29, 213 n42, 214 n59, 216 n79, 216 n82, 227 n110 Whitehead, D. 229 n10 Whittaker, C. 178–9,239 n72, 239 n77 Williams, S. 177–8,187, 236 n21, 238 n51, 238 n67 Wiseman, T. 107, 227 n97 work ethic 71–4 Xenophon 125, 218 n87 Yeo, C. 45,48, 211 n7, 212 n17, 214 n61 Zulueta, F.de 192

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