Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T20:05:12.323Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Did the Romans Have a Future?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2019

Brent D. Shaw
Brent D. Shaw*
Affiliation:
Department of Classics, Princeton University
*
bshaw@princeton.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In analysing matters as diverse as state financing, strategic planning, public benefactions and long-term credit in private business transactions, the historian is faced with an underlying problem about the perceptions of time. One aspect of this problem is the manner in which pictures of a complex future are reflected in the behaviour of agents engaged in these activities. The manner in which actions were (or were not) taken by them suggests a peculiar configuration of future time in the Roman world. It is speculatively argued that perspectives on the future had analogies with the different ways in which a sense of depth was created by artists working on a two-dimensional space and with the contextual ways in which spatial perspective was employed.

Keywords

future timestate financingborrowingamortisationpublic debtstrategic planningalimentausufructsspatial perspective
Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 109 , November 2019 , pp. 1 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2019. Published by The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

An early version of this essay was presented as the Hyde Lecture at the University of Pennsylvania in March 2016; a revised version was read as the tenth Rostovzteff Lecture at Yale University in November 2017. For critical observations made on those occasions and in response to later queries, I offer thanks to Emma Dench, Yaacob Dweck, Dennis Kehoe, James Ker, Michael Koortbojian, Paul Kosmin, Susan Mattern, Andrew Riggsby, Peter Stinson, Deborah Vischak and to Carolyn Yerkes, to whom I have incurred a special debt. Above all, I owe thanks to Peter Brown for his discussion of the problem and for his constant encouragement. Finally, I express my deep gratitude to the Journal’s readers who understood the argument, offered criticism where it was due and suggested beneficial alterations. If I have not been able to meet their expectations, the fault is mine alone.

Zum Raum wird hier die Zeit1 Wagner

1

Wagner, Parsifal, Act 1, 965–6; Gurnemanz in reply to Parsifal: ‘Du siehst, mein Sohn, zum Raum wird hier die Zeit.’

References

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Algra, K. 1995: Concepts of Space in Greek Thought, Leiden.Google Scholar
Andreau, J. 1974: Les affaires de Monsieur Jucundus, Rome.Google Scholar
Andreau, J. 1997: ‘Absence de la dette publique dans le monde gréco-romain’, Atti delle Accademia Peloritana dei Pericolanti. Classe di lettere, filosofia et belle arti 73, 49–59.Google Scholar
Andreau, J. 1999: Banking and Business in the Roman World (trans. Lloyd, J.), Cambridge.Google Scholar
Andreau, J. 2006: ‘Existait-il une dette publique?’, in Andreau et al. 2006, 101–14.Google Scholar
Andreau, J., Béaur, G. and Grenier, J.-Y. (eds) 2006: La dette publique dans l'histoire, Paris.10.4000/books.igpde.1180Google Scholar
Aymard, M. 2006: ‘En guise de conclusion’, in Andreau et al. 2006, 473–88.Google Scholar
Baines, J. 1985: ‘Theories and universals of representation: Heinrich Schäfer and Egyptian art’, Art History 8, 1–25.Google Scholar
Bakhtin, M. M. 1981: The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays (ed. Holquist, M.; trans. Emerson, C. and Holquist, M.), Austin.Google Scholar
Bange, M. 2014: Kreditgeld in der römischen Antike. Ursprünge, Entstehung, Übertragung und Verbreitung, Rahden.Google Scholar
Bartosek, M. 1949: ‘La spes en droit romain’, Revue Internationale des Droits de l'Antiquité 2 (1949) = Mélanges Fernand De Visscher, Vol. 1, Brussels, 19–64.Google Scholar
Bawden, T., Bonatz, D., Dietrich, N., Fabricius, J., Gludovatz, K., Muth, S., Poiss, T. and Werning, D. A. 2016: ‘Early visual cultures and Panofsky's Perspektive als “symbolische Form”’, e-Topoi 6 (= G. Graßhoff and M. Meyer (eds), Space and Knowledge), 525–70.Google Scholar
Bettini, M. 1991: Anthropology and Roman Culture: Kinship, Time, Images of the Soul (trans. van Sickle, J.), Baltimore, 1991.Google Scholar
Bickerman, E. J. 1980: Chronology of the Ancient World (rev. edn), London.Google Scholar
Billeter, G. 1898: Geschichte des Zinsfusses im griechisch-römischen Altertum bis auf Justinian, Leipzig.Google Scholar
Birley, A. R. 2005: The Roman Government of Britain, Oxford.Google Scholar
Birley, A. R. 2016: Marcus Aurelius: A Biography (rev. edn), London.Google Scholar
Bodde, D. 1991: Chinese Thought, Society and Science: The Intellectual and Social Background of Science and Technology in Pre-Modern China, Honolulu.Google Scholar
Boroditsky, L. 2000: ‘Metaphoric structuring: understanding time through spatial metaphors’, Cognition 75, 1–28.10.1016/S0010-0277(99)00073-6Google Scholar
Boroditsky, L. 2001: ‘Does language shape thought? Mandarin and English speakers’ conceptions of time’, Cognitive Psychology 43, 1–22.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. 1963a: ‘La société traditionnelle. Attitude à l’égard du temps et conduite économique’, Sociologie du travail 5, 24–44.10.3406/sotra.1963.1127Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. 1963b: ‘The attitude of the Algerian peasant toward time’, in Pitt-Rivers, J. (ed.), Mediterranean Countrymen: Essays in the Social Anthropology of the Mediterranean, Paris and The Hague, 55–72.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. 1963c: ‘Étude sociologique’, in P. Bourdieu, Travail et travailleurs en Algérie, Paris and The Hague, 253–562.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. 1979: ‘The disenchantment of the world’, in Bourdieu, P. (ed.), Algeria 1960 (trans. Nice, R.), Cambridge, 1–94.Google Scholar
Bransbourg, G. 2015: ‘The later Roman Empire’, in Monson, A. and Scheidel, W. (eds), Fiscal Regimes and the Political Economy of Premodern States, Cambridge, 258–81.10.1017/CBO9781316105436.008Google Scholar
Brettler, M. 2004: ‘Cyclical and teleological time in the Hebrew Bible’, in Rosen, R. M. (ed.), Time and Temporality in the Ancient World, Philadelphia, 114–28.Google Scholar
Brewer, J. 1989: The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783, London.Google Scholar
Brunt, P. A. 1990: Roman Imperial Themes, Oxford and New York.Google Scholar
Burton, G. P. 2004: ‘The Roman imperial state, provincial governors and the public finances of provincial cities, 27 B.C.–A.D. 235’, Historia 53, 311–42.Google Scholar
Cameron, Alan 1979: ‘The date of the Anonymus’, in Hassall, M. W. C. (ed.), De Rebus Bellicis, Part I: Aspects of the De Rebus Bellicis. Papers Presented to E. P. Thompson, BAR International Series 63, Oxford, 1–10 (= Alan Cameron, Literature and Society in the Early Byzantine World, Aldershot, 1985, no. 9).Google Scholar
Campbell, B. 1987: ‘Teach yourself how to be a general’, Journal of Roman Studies 77, 13–29.10.2307/300572Google Scholar
Cao, I. 2010: Alimenta. Il racconto delle fonti, Padua.Google Scholar
Carradice, I. 1983: Coinage and Finances in the Age of Domitian, A.D. 81–96, BAR International Series 178, Oxford.Google Scholar
Carrié, J.-M. 1995: ‘L’état à la recherche de nouveaux modes de financement des armées (Rome et Byzance, Ive–VIIIe siècles)’, in Cameron, Averil (ed.), The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, Vol. 3: States, Resources and Armies, Princeton, 27–60.Google Scholar
Casson, L. 1986: ‘New light on maritime loans: P. Vindob. G 19792 (= SB VI 9571)’, in Bagnall, R. S. and Harris, W. V. (eds), Studies in Roman Law in Memory of A. Arthur Schiller, Leiden, 11–17.Google Scholar
Christensen, J. 1999: ‘Vindicating Vitruvius on the subject of perspective’, Journal of Hellenic Studies 119, 161–6.10.2307/632316Google Scholar
Cohen, E. E. 1992: Athenian Economy and Society: A Banking Perspective, Princeton.Google Scholar
Crawford, M. H. 1985: Coinage and Money under the Roman Republic: Italy and the Mediterranean Economy, London and Berkeley.Google Scholar
Damisch, H. 1994: The Origin of Perspective (trans. Goodman, J.), Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Delmaire, R. 1989: Largesses sacrées et res privata. L'aerarium impérial et son administration du IVe au VIe siècle, Rome.Google Scholar
Dennis, G. T. 1985: Three Byzantine Military Treatises, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Dorigo, W. 1971: Late Roman Painting: A Study of Pictorial Records, 30 BC–AD 500 (trans. Cough, J. and Warrington, J.), London.Google Scholar
D'Ors, A. 1961: ‘Miscelánea epigráfica. Los bronces de Mulva’, Emerita 29, 203–18.Google Scholar
Duncan-Jones, R. P. 1964: ‘The purpose and organization of the alimenta’, Papers of the British School at Rome 32, 123–46.10.1017/S0068246200007261Google Scholar
Duncan-Jones, R. P. 1982: The Economy of the Roman Empire: Quantitative Studies (2nd edn), Cambridge.Google Scholar
Feeney, D. 2007: Caesar's Calendar: Ancient Time and the Beginnings of History, Berkeley and Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Ferguson, N. 2001: The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World, 1700–2000, New York.Google Scholar
Finley, M. I. 1999: The Ancient Economy (rev. edn, ed. Morris, I.), Berkeley.Google Scholar
Frank, T. 1933: An Economic Survey of Ancient Rome, Vol. 1: Rome and Italy of the Republic, Baltimore.Google Scholar
Frier, B. 1982: ‘Roman life expectancy: Ulpian's evidence’, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 86, 213–51.Google Scholar
Fulda, D. 2016: ‘Sattelzeit. Karriere und Problematik eines kulturwissenschaftlichen Zentralbegriffs’, in Décultot, E. and Fulda, D. (eds), Sattelzeit. Historiographiegeschichtliche Revisionen, Berlin and Boston, 1–16.Google Scholar
Gell, A. 1992: The Anthropology of Time: Cultural Constructions of Temporal Maps and Images, Oxford and Providence, RI.Google Scholar
Goetzmann, W. N. 2016: Money Changes Everything: How Finance Made Civilization Possible, Princeton.Google Scholar
Goldthwaite, R. A. 2011: The Economy of Renaissance Florence, Baltimore.Google Scholar
González, J. and Crawford, M. H. 1986: ‘The Lex Irnitana: a new copy of the Flavian municipal law’, Journal of Roman Studies 76, 147–243.Google Scholar
Graeber, D. 2011: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (rev. edn), New York.Google Scholar
Greene, W. C. 1944: Moira: Fate, Good and Evil in Greek Thought, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
Groenewegen-Frankfort, H. A. 1987: Arrest and Movement: An Essay on Space and Time in the Representational Art of the Ancient Near East, Cambridge, MA (first published, 1951).Google Scholar
Haldon, J. 2014: A Critical Commentary on the Taktika of Leo VI, Washington, DC.Google Scholar
Hamilton, E. J. 1949: ‘Origin and growth of the national debt in Western Europe’, American Economic Review 37, 118–30.Google Scholar
Harris, W. V. 2006: ‘A revisionist view of Roman money’, Journal of Roman Studies 96, 1–24 (= W. V. Harris, Rome's Imperial Economy, Oxford, 2011, 223–55).Google Scholar
Hendy, M. 1988: ‘From public to private: the western barbarian coinages as a mirror of the disintegration of late Roman state structures’, Viator 19, 29–78.10.1484/J.VIATOR.2.301364Google Scholar
Hinard, F. 1985: Les proscriptions de la Rome républicaine, Rome.Google Scholar
Jammer, M. 2012: Concepts of Space: The History of Theories of Space in Physics (3rd edn), New York.Google Scholar
Janni, P. 1984: La mappa e il periplo. Cartografia antica e spazio hodologico, Rome.Google Scholar
Johnston, D. 1985: ‘Munificence and municipia: bequests to towns in classical Roman law’, Journal of Roman Studies 75, 105–25.Google Scholar
Jones, D. 2006: The Bankers of Puteoli: Finance, Trade and Industry in the Roman World, Stroud.Google Scholar
Kehne, P. 2004: ‘Zur Logistik des römischen Heeres von der mittleren Republik bis zum Ende der hohen Kaiserzeit (241 v. Chr.–235 n. Chr.). Forschungen und Tendenzen’, Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift 63, 115–52.Google Scholar
Kehne, P. 2007: ‘War and peacetime logistics: supplying imperial armies in East and West’, in Erdkamp, P. (ed.), A Companion to the Roman Army, Oxford, 323–38.10.1002/9780470996577.ch19Google Scholar
Kehoe, D. P. 2007: Law and the Rural Economy in the Roman Empire, Ann Arbor.10.3998/mpub.210845Google Scholar
Kissel, T. K. 1995: Untersuchungen zur Logistik des römischen Heeres in den Provinzen des griechischen Ostens (27 v. Chr.–235 n. Chr.), St Katharinen.Google Scholar
Kosmin, P. J. 2018: Time and its Adversaries in the Seleucid Empire, Cambridge, MA.10.4159/9780674989634Google Scholar
Kövecses, Z. 2005: Metaphor in Culture: Universality and Variation, Cambridge.Google Scholar
La Rocca, E. 2008: Lo spazio negato. La pittura di paesaggio nella cultura artistica greca e romana, Milan.Google Scholar
Lenski, N. 2016: Constantine and the Cities: Imperial Authority and Civic Politics, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Lepelley, C. 1999: ‘Témoignages épigraphiques sur le contrôle des finances municipales par les gouverneurs à partir du règne de Dioclétien’, in Il capitolo delle entrate nelle finanze municipali in occidente ed in oriente. Actes de la Xe rencontre franco-italienne sur l’épigraphie du monde romain, Rome, 27–29 mai 1996, Rome, 235–47.Google Scholar
Lerouxel, F. 2012: ‘Le marché du crédit privé, la bibliothèque des acquêts et les tâches publiques en Égypte romaine’, Annales (Histoires, Sciences sociales) 67, 943–76.Google Scholar
Lerouxel, F. 2015: ‘The βιβλιοθήκη ἐγκτήσεων and transaction costs in the credit market of Roman Egypt (30 B.C.E.–ca. 170 C.E.)’, in Kehoe, D., Ratzan, D. M. and Yiftach, U. (eds), Law and Transaction Costs in the Ancient Economy, Ann Arbor, 162–84.Google Scholar
Lerouxel, F. 2016: Le marché du crédit dans le monde romain (Egypte et Campanie), Rome.Google Scholar
Letta, L. 2014: ‘Settimio Severo e il senato’, in Caldelli, M. L. and Gregori, G. L. (eds), Epigrafia e ordine senatorio, 30 anni dopo, Rome, 127–41.Google Scholar
Lorenz, K. 2013: ‘Neronian wall-painting: a matter of perspective’, in Buckley, E. and Dinter, M. T. (eds), A Companion to the Neronian Age, Chichester, 363–81.Google Scholar
Malina, B. J. 1989: ‘Christ and time: Swiss or Mediterranean?’, Catholic Biblical Quarterly 51, 1–31 (= B. J. Malina, The Social World of Jesus and the Gospels, London, 1996, 179–214).Google Scholar
Malina, B. J. 2016: ‘Time orientation’, in Pilch, J. J. and Malina, B. J. (eds), Handbook of Biblical Social Values (3rd edn), Eugene, OR, 163–7.Google Scholar
Mann, M. 2012: Sources of Social Power, Vol. 1: A History of Power from the Beginning to AD 1760 (2nd edn), Cambridge and New York.Google Scholar
Mattingly, D. 2006: An Imperial Possession: Britain in the Roman Empire, 54 BC–AD 409, London.Google Scholar
Migeotte, L. 1984: L'emprunt public dans les cités grecques. Recueil des documents et analyse critique, Paris and Quebec.Google Scholar
Migeotte, L. 1992: ‘Le operazioni di credito fra il santuario e la città’, in Costabile, F. (ed.), Polis ed Olympieion a Locri Epizefiri. Costituzione economia e finanze di una città della Magna Grecia (editio altera e traduzione delle tabella locresi), Soveria Mannelli (Catanzaro), 151–60.Google Scholar
Migeotte, L. 2006: ‘L'endettement des cités grecques dans l'antiquité’, in Andreau et al. 2006, 115–28.Google Scholar
Millett, P. 1991: Lending and Borrowing in Ancient Athens, Cambridge.10.1017/CBO9780511518577Google Scholar
Minaud, G. 2005: La comptabilité à Rome. Essai d'histoire économique sur la pensée comptable commerciale et privée dans le monde antique romain, LausanneGoogle Scholar
Momigliano, A. 1966: ‘Time in ancient historiography’, History and Theory 6, 1–23 (= A. Momigliano, Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography, Oxford, 1977, 179–204).10.2307/2504249Google Scholar
Morgan, T. 2015: Roman Faith and Christian Faith: Pistis and Fides in the Early Roman Empire and Early Churches, Oxford.Google Scholar
Mrozek, S. 2000: ‘Le fonctionnement des fondations dans les provinces occidentales et l’économie de crédit à l’époque du Haut-Empire romain’, Latomus 59, 327–45.Google Scholar
Mrozek, S. 2001: Faenus. Studien zu Zinsproblemen zur Zeit des Prinzipats, Stuttgart.Google Scholar
Needham, J. 1981: ‘Time and knowledge in China and the West’, in Fraser, J. T. (ed.), The Voices of Time: A Cooperative Survey of Man's View of Time as Expressed by the Sciences and by the Humanities (2nd edn), Amherst, MA, 92–135.Google Scholar
Nicolet, C. 1963: ‘À Rome pendant la seconde guerre punique. Techniques financières et manipulations monétaires’, Annales (économies, sociétés, civilisations) 18, 417–36.Google Scholar
O'Donnell, J. J. 1992: Augustine, Confessions (3 vols), Oxford.Google Scholar
Panofsky, E. 1997: Perspective as Symbolic Form (trans. Wood, C. S.), New York (first published in 1927 as, ‘Der Perspektive als “symbolische Form”’, in Aufsätze zu Grundfragen der Kunstwissenschaft = Vorträge der Bibliothek Warburg 5, 258–330).Google Scholar
Papaconstantinou, A. 2016: ‘Credit, debt and dependence in early Islamic Egypt and Southern Palestine,’ in Fournet, J.-L. and Papaconstantinou, A. (eds), Mélanges Jean Gascou. Textes et études papyrologiques, Paris, 613–42.Google Scholar
Pirson, F. 1996: ‘Style and message on the Column of Marcus Aurelius’, Papers of the British School at Rome 64, 139–79.10.1017/S0068246200010370Google Scholar
Riggsby, A. M. 2003: ‘Pliny in space (and time)’, Arethusa 36, 167–86.Google Scholar
Riggsby, A. M. 2019: Mosaics of Knowledge: Representing Information in the Roman World, Oxford.Google Scholar
Rihll, T. E. 2013: ‘Depreciation in Vitruvius’, Classical Quarterly 63, 893–7.Google Scholar
Roth, J. P. 1999: The Logistics of the Roman Army at War (264 B.C.–A.D. 235), Leiden.Google Scholar
Samuel, A. E. 1972: Greek and Roman Chronology: Calendars and Years in Classical Antiquity, Munich.Google Scholar
Schäfer, H. 1974: Principles of Egyptian Art (trans. Baines, J.), Oxford (trans. of Von ägyptischer Kunst. Eine Grundlage (3rd edn), Leipzig, 1930).Google Scholar
Scheidel, W. and Friesen, S. J. 2009: ‘The size of the economy and the distribution of income in the Roman Empire’, Journal of Roman Studies 99, 61–91.Google Scholar
Shaw, B. D. 2013: Bringing in the Sheaves: Economy and Metaphor in the Roman World, Toronto.Google Scholar
Shaw, B. D. 2019: ‘Grape expectations’, in Maiuro, M., Merola, G. D., de Nardis, M. and Soricelli, G. (eds), Uomini, istituzioni, mercati. Studi di storia antica per Elio Lo Cascio, Bari, 533–51.Google Scholar
Sinisgalli, R. 2012: Perspective in the Visual Culture of Classical Antiquity, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Smith, C. J. 1998: ‘Onasander on how to be a general’, in Austin, M. M., Harries, J. and Smith, C. J. (eds), Modus Operandi: Essays in Honour of G. Rickman, London, 151–66.Google Scholar
Stasavage, D. 2003: Public Debt and the Birth of the Democratic State: France and Great Britain, 1688–1789, Cambridge.Google Scholar
Stasavage, D. 2011: States of Credit: Size, Power and the Development of European Polities, Princeton.Google Scholar
Stasavage, D. 2015: ‘Why did public debt originate in Europe?’, in Monson, A. and Scheidel, W. (eds), Fiscal Regimes and the Political Economy of Premodern States, Cambridge, 523–33.10.1017/CBO9781316105436.017Google Scholar
Stein, P. 1962: ‘Generations, life-spans and usufructs’, Revue internationale des droits de l'Antiquité (3e sér.) 9, 335–55.Google Scholar
Stinson, P. 2011: ‘Perspective systems in Roman second style wall painting’, American Journal of Archaeology 115, 403–26.Google Scholar
Stone, L. 1990: ‘England's financial revolution’, New York Review of Books 37.4 (15 March 1990), 50–1.Google Scholar
Tchernia, A. 2016: The Romans and Trade (trans. Grieve, J.), Oxford.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198723714.001.0001Google Scholar
Trenerry, C. F. 1926: The Origin and Early History of Insurance, Including the Contract of Bottomry, London.Google Scholar
Verboven, K. 2003: ‘The Sulpicii from Puteoli and usury in the early Roman Empire’, Tidjschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis 71, 7–28.10.1163/157181903100362490Google Scholar
Veyne, P. 1957–58: ‘La table des Ligures Baebiani et l'institution alimentaire de Trajan’, Mélanges de l’École française de Rome 69, 81–135; 70, 177–241.Google Scholar
Veyne, P. 1976: Le pain et le cirque. Sociologie historique d'une pluralisme politique, Paris.Google Scholar
Whately, C. 2015: ‘The genre and purpose of military manuels in Late Antiquity’, in Greatrex, G., Elton, H. and McMahon, L. (eds), Shifting Genres in Late Antiquity, Farnham, 249–61.Google Scholar
Whitehead, D. 2008: ‘Fact and fantasy in Greek military writers’, Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientarum Hugaricae 48, 139–55.Google Scholar