The Roman Market Economy - Thomas Piketty

The Roman Market Economy

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The Princeton Economic History of the Western World Joel Mokyr, Series Editor

A list of titles in this series appears at the back of the book.

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The Roman Market Economy Peter Temin

Princeton University Press Princeton & Oxford

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Copyright ? 2013 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TW press.princeton.edu All Rights Reserved ISBN 978-0-691-14768-0 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Printed on acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America 10987654321

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1

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Contents

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Preface and Acknowledgments vii

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1. Economics and Ancient History 1

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Part I: Prices

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Introduction: Data and Hypothesis Tests 27

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2. Wheat Prices and Trade in the Early Roman Empire 29

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3. Price Behavior in Hellenistic Babylon 53

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Appendix to Chapter 3 66

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4. Price Behavior in the Roman Empire 70

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Part II: Markets in the Roman Empire

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Introduction: Roman Microeconomics 95

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5. The Grain Trade 97

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6. The Labor Market 114

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7. Land Ownership 139

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8. Financial Intermediation 157

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Part III: The Roman Economy

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Introduction: Roman Macroeconomics 193

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9. Growth Theory for Ancient Economies 195

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10. Economic Growth in a Malthusian Empire 220

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Appendix to Chapter 10 240

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11. Per Capita GDP in the Early Roman Empire 243

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References 263

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Index 287

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1

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Preface and Acknowledgments

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This book presents a progress report in the process of understanding the nature of ancient economies. I am an economic historian who spent most

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of his academic career writing about modern and early-modern economies

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and teaching modern economics. Sometime before the end of the twentieth

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century, I became interested in ancient economies. If the Romans wrote all

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those letters and speeches and built all those roads and buildings, how did they

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get the resources to do so? Writing takes time and an education that enables a

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writer to express thoughts in historical perspective. Construction uses materi-

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als and labor that have to be organized and gathered for this purpose. How

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were people able to organize these activities and--t o broaden our focus--build

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something as large and complex as the Roman Empire?

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I read Finley's book, The Ancient Economy, when it came out over a quarter-

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century ago (Finley 1973), and more recent books over the years. I found they

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did not provide convincing answers to the questions I had raised, and I resolved

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to investigate further the economics of the ancient world. I published and

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presented papers to ancient-h istory conferences over the past decade that re-

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sulted from my curiosity. I offer the insights I gained from writing these papers

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and rethinking them now in light of subsequent research as a progress report

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that provides a view of the Roman economy that has become more popular--

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although not without controversy--than when I started on this quest.

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I tried to learn a few of the languages needed by ancient historians, but I

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speedily realized that I would never be good enough to improve on the trans-

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lations of experts. My comparative advantage--a term I explain more fully

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in the first chapter of this volume--is in economic analysis, not archaeology

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or text analysis. All scholars stand on the shoulders of those who have gone

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before, and I freely acknowledge my debt to the generations of ancient histori-

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ans whose works I utilize. Even if I disagree with their analyses, I respect and

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envy their scholarship. I struggle also with modern languages, and my citations

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reflect my preference for English sources. If one has to choose one language

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for modern scholarship, it would be English, and I am fortunate to be a native

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viii Preface

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speaker. If I repeat analyses published in other languages, I hope that readers

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will inform me.

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I hope also that this book will be received better than my initial foray into

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ancient history. I wrote a research proposal for myself before I thought seriously

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about implementing it. I went to Oxford for a conference in 1999 and sent my

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proposal to a few Oxford people I knew or had arranged to meet. Economists

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laughed at my proposal at breakfast, and ancient historians laughed at it at

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lunch. They all assured me--for different reasons--that my proposal was un-

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workable. With that stimulus, I had to forge ahead! The proposal grew into

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my most well-known contribution to ancient economic history. It appeared as

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Temin (2001) in the Journal of Roman Studies, then under the editorship of an

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ancient historian who had laughed at me earlier. It set out a research agenda

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that was fulfilled in the chapters of the middle section of this book.

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It may be wishful thinking, but I detect a movement toward an acceptance

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of modern economic concepts in the study of the ancient world in the past

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few years. When I started in this field, theoretical discussions of ancient his-

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tory all started from Karl Polanyi and M. I. Finley. This is apparent in the

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extensive introduction to the reissue of Finley's book on its silver anniversary

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in 1999 (Morris 1999). Yet less than a decade later, The Cambridge Economic

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History of the Greco-Roman World was based more on Douglass North than

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Moses Finley. North, a Nobel laureate in economic history, emphasized the

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importance of economic institutions in determining economic performance.

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His work, together with other like-minded economists, has given rise to what

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is now called the New Institutional Economics (NIE). Almost all the essays in

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The Cambridge Economic History of the Greco-Roman World take their cue from

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the NIE, and the volume itself is organized by consideration of institutions.

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The essays on the regional development of the Roman Empire start from the

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premise that preexisting institutions affected how Roman expansion affected

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their economic activities (Scheidel, Morris, and Saller 2007).

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From everything we know, prosperity in Greece and Rome extended be-

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yond a royal family or clan into a larger group of people. I have tried to ex-

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plore how the Roman economy functioned. I chose to focus primarily on the

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early Roman Empire because the scale of the Roman Empire was vast and the

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economy seemed to run amazingly well for a long time. It is one thing to run

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a small economy drawing small amounts of resources from a broad hinterland;

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it is much harder to involve millions of people into an integrated economic

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system. As Wickham (2005, 10) described it, "The Roman Empire was a coher-

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ent political and economic system, operating on a scale that has seldom since

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been matched in Europe and the Mediterranean, and never for so long." In

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addition, we have a lot of information about the economy of the early Roman

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