10 - Trade, industry and the urban economy

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Most of the inhabitants of the Roman empire were farmers who consumed food that they had themselves grown. Production, harvest performance and storage were of primary significance; distribution was correspondingly less crucial.

Distribution was important none the less, and also problematic. Most inhabitants of cities lacked direct control over the products of the land and depended for their survival on food grown by others. In the early Roman empire perhaps 15–20 per cent of the population were city dwellers – in Italy around 30 per cent, because of the huge size of the city of Rome. In the fourth and early fifth centuries, the balance is normally supposed to have swung further in favour of the countryside. Yet there continued to exist in the late empire an urban plebs that was significant in numbers and dependent for its survival on other individuals and agencies, including, crucially, traders and transporters. Further, non-producing consumers had an importance disproportionate to their numbers by virtue of the fact that they were concentrated in the city, the power centre of the ancient world. This was a group which, if its own essential requirements were not met, was capable of showing restlessness and resentment which sometimes spilled over into violence:

I was sitting at home working [wrote Libanius of Antioch] when a roar went up from a mob apparently out of control. I raised my hands to my eyes to see what was happening. Just then my nephew ran in gasping for breath with the news that the archon was dead, his corpse torn apart and mocked by his killers. Euboulos and his son meanwhile had escaped a stoning, fled and sought refuge in the mountain tops. The rioters, having missed out on their bodies, were now releasing their anger on their house.

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