The Roman Economy

John SutherlandSanisera Session 6

August 2010

Structure

• Why study the Roman economy at all?• What type of economy was the “Roman

economy”? –Modernism vs. primitivism

• Structure is made up of the basic determinants of economic performance, such as political, economic and legal institutions, technology, demography, climate change, and ideology or mentality.• Slavery; urbanization• Demography

Performance– Performance – scale or level of production and the

distributions of costs and benefits within society. – Economic performance is one important indicator of

economic well-being or quality of life. – Extensive and intensive growth– GDP and income distribution

– 50 million tons of wheat or close to 20 billion sesterces per year; low taxes

– top 1.5 percent of households controlled around one-fifth of total income;

– ‘middling’ non-elite groups (around 10 percent) but perhaps another fifth of total income;

– the vast majority of the population lived close to subsistence but cumulatively generated more than half of overall output.

• rising inequality; comparative history

Evidence– Texts

• Random mentions of prices, wages• Papyri from Egypt• Diocletian’s Price Edict

– Inscriptions – evidence for employment, slavery, human capital

– Archaeological Evidence and quantification• Some proxies for growth: shipwrecks, lead pollution in the

ice caps; animal bones• Coinage/Monetization – distribution, totals, changes

overtime (like inflation); investment, exchange• Anthropometry and health; diet change• Settlement, house, and farmstead size; urbanization• Metal, stone and POTTERY

Pottery• Based on a solid foundation of discovering the type, date and provenance of Roman potsherds, such evidence gives us many clues to the scale and shape of production, distribution and consumption in the Roman empire, especially as it relates to trade.• Mass production catered to sub-elites. Supplied city of Rome and armies on frontiers

Mons testaccio

• 140-250 A.D., about 53 million vessels, broken olive oil

• Huge organized waste dump - 20,000 square metres (220,000 sq ft) at its base and with a volume of approximately 580,000 cubic metres (760,000 cu yd)

• 6 billions liters of oil!

Works Used

• Scheidel, Walter (2009) “Economy and quality of life in the Roman world,” PSWPC.

• Scheidel, Walter (2008) “In search of Roman economic growth,” PSWPC.

• Scheidel, Walter and Stephen Friesen (2009) “The size of the economy and the distribution of income in the Roman Empire,” PSWPC.

• http://www.potsherd.uklinux.net/atlas/Class/AMPH.php