fitzpatrick (2011) indian ocean trade network and roman imperialism

7/25/2019 FITZPATRICK (2011) Indian Ocean Trade Network and Roman Imperialism

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Journal of World History Vol 22 No 1

Provincializing Rome:The Indian Ocean Trade Networkand Roman Imperialism*

matthew p. fitzpatrickFlinders University

Whether it be the Latium-threatening Parthians that he leadsin deserved triumph, or whether it be conquered Chinese andIndians from eastern shores, hell justly rule the earth.

Horace, In Praise of Augustus, Odes 1.12

I

In 1984, an exasperated Moses Finley was driven to write:

The mere presence of trade over long distances is of course a neces-sary condition for interdependence but it is not a sufficient condition.After all, long-distance trade has existed ever since the Stone Age.That trade of itself does not warrant such jargon as a large unifiedeconomic space . . . A large unified economic space is no more thana fancy way of saying that goods were exchanged within that area, and

then I see no reason for not including China, Ceylon and Malaysia inthe same economic space as Rome because the latter received its silksand much of its spices from eastern Asia.1

* I would like to thank the editors of the Journal of World History, Peter Brennan,Robert Fitzsimons, Ralph Schlomowitz, and the Flinders History Seminar Group for theirvaluable comments on earlier drafts of this article.

1 M. I. Finley, The Ancient Economy, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press,1985), pp. 177178.


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His aim was to point to the absurdity of the idea of Rome, India, andChina all belonging to the same economic space and to pour scorn onthe notion of an ancient world market,2which he saw as being as

fanciful as the idea of ancient economics.3

Despite Finleys attempts to separate trade from economics and bothfrom Roman imperialism, it seems sensible to treat seriously not only thecommercial endeavors of antiquity as a form of economics, but also tovalue their own reflections on these, in order that the economic inter-action between Rome, India, Africa, Arabia, the Malay peninsula, andChina might properly be seen as a classical form of globalization that,in the Roman case, helped shape their economic and military trajec-tory. That this might be done without employing anachronistic modern

schematics is a result of not only the valuable guide to Roman trade thatis the Periplus Maris Erythraei,4but also other forms of archaeological andtextual evidence which attest to the economic and strategic importanceof the trading centers emanating from the Indian Ocean littoral. Giventhat the effects of this Eastern trade on imperial economics, politics,and warfare were well documented by ancient writers, the notion of anexpansive classical world economy is not one that should be dismissedsimply because it does not conform to historical meta-narratives thatposit epochal stages of economic development that privilege the recent

history of Europe over that of other eras and regions.5

Finleys portrait of a primitive classical economy has been a contro-versial one, sparking numerous studies into the nature of Roman com-merce.6It is fair to say that even scholars sympathetic to its argumenta-

2 Ibid., p. 34.3 Ibid., pp. 2223. For a more recent understanding of the intricacies of Roman eco-

nomics, see P. Temin, A Market Economy in the Early Roman Empire, Journal of RomanStudies91(2001): 160181. See also E. Lo Cascio, The Role of the State in the RomanEconomy: Making Use of the New Institutional Economics, in Ancient Economies, Mod-ern Methodologies: Archaeology, Comparative History, Models and Institutions, ed. P. F. Bang,M. Ikeguchi, and H. G. Ziche (Bari: Edipuglia, 2006), pp. 215234.

4 L. Casson, ed., The Periplus Maris Erythraei. Text with Introduction, Translation andCommentary (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989). Following RobertaTomber, Roman trade here refers to private sector trade emanating from the zone wherepolitical and military power stemmed from the apparatus of the Roman Empire, rather thantrade undertaken exclusively by people from the city of Rome. R. Tomber, Indo-RomanTrade: From Pots to Pepper(London: Duckworth, 2008), p. 152.

5 Early attempts at refuting Finley-esque or Wallersteinian chronologies of economicdevelopment include A. G. Frank and B. K. Gills, The World System: Five Hundred Years orFive Thousand?(London: Routledge, 1993); J. L. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony:The World System AD 1250 1350(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

6 It is beyond the scope of this article to enter into a detailed discussion of the mechan-i f h i i i i / d i d b b h R F hi h i


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Fitzpatrick: Provincializing Rome 29

tive trajectory, such as Peter Fibiger Bang, have had to modify Finleysargument substantially, coming to speak less guardedly of the role ofmarket mechanisms within the Roman Empire.7However, at bottom,

such recastings of the primitivist argument continue to underplay theextent to which we are justified in referring, as Michael Rostovtzeffdid, to theeconomic unityof the civilised world. Rostovtzeff correctlypresented Romes coming to the pre-existing trade-based Indian Oceanoikumeneas dating back to the Hellenistic period and charted its growthuntil the period when even those parts of the ancient world whichpolitically and culturally stood outside it China and India, parts ofGermany, the Iranians of the Northeasttook part in it.8AlthoughRostovtzeff s anachronistic determination to find classical capital-

ists operating as if they were Adam Smiths modern bourgeois homooeconomicus remains problematic,9 his geographically expansive andinclusive approach and emphasis on market mechanisms have beenvindicated by successive waves of scholarship on classical trade, whichhave filled in many blanks about the depth and intensity of Romestrade with the East and the extent of its commercial networks.10Theresearch is now at a point where it is difficult to contest Jean-Franois

duction to W. Scheidel, I. Morris, and I. P. Saller, eds., The Cambridge Economic History of theGreco-Roman World(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 112.

7 P. F. Bang, The Roman Bazaar(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008); P. F.Bang, Trade and Empire In Search of Organising Concepts for the Roman Economy,Past and Present195(2007): 354.

8 M. I. Rostovtzeff, The Hellenistic World and Its Economic Development,AmericanHistorical Review41, no. 2(1936): 248249. Emphasis in the original. See also M. I. Ros-tovtzeff, The Social and Economic History of the Roman Empire, 2nd ed. (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1963), 2:576577.

9 Rostovtzeff, Hellenistic World, p. 250.10 See in particular M. G. Raschke, New Studies in Roman Commerce with the East,

Aufstieg und Niedergang der Rmischen Welt II, 9.2, 1978; S. E. Sidebotham, Roman Eco-nomic Policy in the Erythra Thalassa, 30B.C.A.D.217(Leiden: Brill, 1986); J. Thorley, TheRoman Empire and the Kushans, Greece and Rome26, no. 2(1979); J. Thorley, The SilkTrade between China and the Roman Empire at Its Height, circa A.D. 90130, Greece andRome18, no. 1(1987); J. I. Miller, The Spice Trade of the Roman Empire,29B.C.A.D. 641(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969); F. de Romanis and A. Tchernia, Crossings: Early Mediter-ranean Contacts with India(New Delhi: Manohar, 1997); W. Scheidel, ed., Rome and China:Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009);G. K. Young, Romes Eastern Trade: International Commerce and Imperial Policy, 31BCAD305(London: Routledge, 2001); V. Begley and R. D. De Puma, Rome and India: The AncientSea Trade(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991); Tomber, Indo-Roman Trade; G.Woolf, World-Systems Analysis and the Roman Empire, Journal of Roman Archaeology3(1990): 53. On Roman literary approaches to the geography of this zone, see G. W. Bow-ersock, The East-West Orientation of Mediterranean Studies and the Meaning of Northand South in Antiquity, in Rethinking the Mediterranean, ed. W. V. Harris (Oxford: OxfordU i it P ) 6 8


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Salless assertion that the Rome-India trade of the Periplusperiod isa unique window on a long-established (from the fourth millenniumfor Oman), extremely dynamic and complex system of circulation and

exchanges in the Indian Ocean from East Africa to Sri Lanka throughArabia, southern Iran, and India.11In the light of this research, it istime to recast the picture of Roman economics in terms of both marketexchange and a form of archaic globalization that did not center onRome.

How Rome conducted itself as a part of this Indian Ocean oikumeneis another field of contention between the various accounts of RomesEastern trade, as historians have sought to discern the extent to whichthe dynamics of Roman imperialism were responsive to eastern eco-

nomic and trade imperatives. For example, Gary Youngs Romes East-ern Trade, which neatly foregrounds the role of markets in creating andsustaining transcontinental linkages between Rome, Africa, and Asia,has argued that there is not one major policy initiative of the Romangovernment in the period under consideration that can be attributedto the needs of this commerce.12Although Youngs sense of the impor-tance of eastern commerce to the Roman world accords with JeremyPatersons stress upon the role of commerce and traders in the RomanEmpire,13 it is poles apart from Patersons other central claim that

commerce deserves to be reinstated among the major factors involvedin imperialism.14

Given the enormous discrepancies between accounts of the inter-relationship between Roman imperialism and the post-Actium formsof Roman commercial expansion, the following attempts two things:first, to demonstrate that during the late Republican and early Empireperiods material considerations pertaining to Eastern trade influencedpolitical decisions regarding military expeditions, infrastructure proj-ects, and the trajectory of imperial expansion in a way that belied pro-

fessed concerns about eastern luxuria; second, to position the RomanMediterranean within an Indian Ocean trading network, thereby

11 J. F. Salles, paraphrasing David Whitehouse, Review: Rome and India, Journal ofInterdisciplinary History25, no. 1(1994): 106.

12 Young, Romes Eastern Trade, p. 219. Young here echoes Raschkes judgement thatcommercial motives were alien to the spirit of Roman government. Raschke, NewStudies in Roman Commerce with the East, pp. 646650.

13 J. Paterson, Trade and Traders in the Roman World: Scale, Structure, and Organi-sation, in Trade, Traders and the Ancient City, ed. H. Parkins and C. H. Smith (London:Routledge, 1998), pp. 157158.

14 Ibid


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integrating the familiar picture of Romes economic dominance overthe Mediterranean world into a less familiar picture of Rome as one ofseveral critical nodes in the first-century global economy. The result

will be a sense of how Rome fitted into its broader economic contextand to assess the extent to which Eastern trade affected the trajectoryof Romes imperial history.

II

With Rome having wrested control of the centuries-old eastern mari-time trade routes from Cleopatra, the last of Egypts Ptolemaic rulers,

Roman trade with the East via the Red Sea accelerated markedly.15

Itdoes not necessarily follow, however, that Roman elites always pro-fessed approval of this commercial boom, with the trade in Easterncommodities most often narrated in terms of fiscal ruin and moraldanger. According to Pliny, trade with India was conducted on termsextremely deleterious to the Roman economy during the first centuryc.e.At the risk of using Plinys indicative figures too literally, Romewas said to have been running a trade deficit to the East of 100millionsesterces per year, half of which went to India.16This should be seen

against the backdrop of a recent estimate of Roman GDP of 10billionsesterces in the first century C.E.17Many have assumed that Pliny mustbe mistaken in his figures;18however, it is worth pointing out that thisleakage from Romes Mediterranean economy is only in the region ofone percent of GDP and as such was a sustainable trade deficit. Yet the

15 Casson, Periplus Maris Erythraei, p. 11. This chronology antedates by some five hun-dred years John Hobsons argument that the West and East have been . . . interlinkedthrough globalisation ever since 500ce. J. M. Hobson, The Eastern Origins of Western Civili-sation(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

16 Pliny the Elder, Natural Histories, XII:84. Raschke has characterized Plinys figuresas the snare of the gullible and innocent; however, his scepticism is not what it seems.Raschke continues it is not my intention to deny that Rome had an adverse balance oftrade with India. See Raschke, New Studies in Roman Commerce with the East, pp.634637. Richard Duncan-Jones argues that Romes trade deficit was serviced with gold andother precious metals mined in Romes provinces. See R. Duncan-Jones, Money and Govern-ment in the Roman Empire(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 103105.

17 P. Temin, Estimating GDP in the Early Roman Republic, in Innovazione technica eprogresso economico nel mondo Romano, ed. E. Lo Cascio (Rome: Edipuglia, 2007), pp. 3154.

18 See, for example, N. K. Rauh, Merchants, Sailors and Pirates in the Roman World(Stroud: Tempus, 2003), p. 101. Young, Romes Eastern Trade, p. 25; P. Veyne, Romedevant la prtendue fuite de lor: mercantilisme ou politique disciplinaire?Annales34, no.

( )


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perception of the effect of Eastern trade was much more pronouncedthan this modest figure suggests, particularly given that the consump-tion (and therefore cost) of these commodities, as well as the lending

associated with their procurement, was clumped within the imperial(particularly senatorial) aristocracy rather than spread evenly acrossthe empire. When it is also considered that Pliny suggests that thedomestic markup from wholesale to retail was drastic (one hundredtimes the wholesale price), then Romes marginal propensity to importwas not the serious economic problem it appeared to be, particularly forthe importers of Eastern commodities and those elite Roman financiersthat loaned the requisite capital to Romes merchant fleet and thenreaped a sizeable return on their investment.

Even if the markup on Eastern commodities was nowhere near asdrastic as Pliny suggests, the sense of alarm pertaining to Eastern tradedoes not necessarily suggest that the imperial aristocracy misconstruedthese outflows from the empire as being dangerous for economic rea-sons. More plausibly, the periodic expressions of alarm reflect the ethi-cal connotations of particular Eastern commodities for adherents tothe luxury (but not wealth) adverse philosophy of Stoicism among thegilded aristocracy of Rome.19The problem was not necessarily the vol-ume of Eastern trade but the type of commodities that it garnered for

wealthy Romans. As the immensely wealthy Roman philosopher Sen-eca made clear in De Vita Beata, wealth and luxury were not the samething for a Stoic Roman, and immense wealth (even if gained fromEastern trade) was perfectly acceptable for a Roman who was neithercontrolled by this wealth nor used it to live in a debased fashion.20ForStoic Romans, ostentatious commodities such as silk and precious gem-stones, for example, were far more problematic than pepper, emblem-atic as they were of precisely the decadence that Stoicism sought todeflect.

Reflecting Stoic cultural attitudes rather than expounding an eco-nomic theory, Pliny presented his suspicion of decadent Eastern com-modities in overtly gendered terms. Romes fiscal weakness, manifestin the millions of sesterces he argued were had flowing eastward, was

19 For the classic statement of Stoicisms aversion to luxury, see Seneca, Epistles, 87. ForPlinys Stoicism, see Mary Beagons introduction to The Elder Pliny on the Human Animal:Natural History Book 7(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 15. On Strabos links toStoicism, see D. Dueck, Strabo of Amasia: A Greek Man of Letters in Augustan Rome(NewYork: Routledge, 2000), pp. 62ff.

20 Seneca, De Vita Beata, 20, 22. For a pithy discussion of this, see A. L. Motto, SenecaT i l Th C f h O l S i Cl i l J l 6 6 ( 66) 8


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linked for Pliny to the ostentatious consumption patterns of women.21Tacitus too, in his Annals, offered a gendered sense of the extent ofthe demand for Indian goods in the imperial capital. In 16 c.e., he

related, a decree was promulgated that men should not wear the dis-graceful silken clothes from the East that were currently in vogue.Unsurprisingly, this gendering of silk had little effect on Romes actualEastern trade, even if it might have bolstered the seemingly fragilemoral sensibilities revealed by the senators Quintus Haterius and Octa-vius Fronto in the face of Eastern luxuria.22It simply moved the moralopprobrium from men to women. Silk and precious gems from the Eastremained eagerly sought after commodities among Romes elites, bring-ing Tiberius to complain just six years later of that womanish pecu-

liaritythe export of our currency to foreign or enemy countries forprecious stones.23Perhaps not surprisingly, the emperor Caligula woresilk as a part of his repertoire of transgressionflaunting both legallyimposed gender conventions and the more usual ostentatious Stoicmodesty that characterized the behavior of earlier emperors.24

Although this anti-Eastern sentiment was indeed linked to themuch proclaimed but seldom practiced aristocratic aversion to luxu-ria,25 it is questionable whether any significant economic decisionswere made that were aimed at actually cutting off either the supply of

or demand for Eastern goods. On the contrary, the trajectory of Romanforeign policy and trade policy in the East suggests a desire to facilitateand control the terms of this Eastern trade, despite its putative effectson Romes moral fiber. At any rate, the types of commodities that trou-bled Stoic Romans were only a subset of Eastern imports. The bulk ofRomes trade with the East did not consist of silk and gemstones, butof more mundane if nonetheless quite expensive commodities, suchas pepper, spices, incense, and aromatics, items that, while expen-sive, hardly fit the rubric of luxury commodities in the way that silk,

21 Pliny the Elder,Natural Histories, VI:26, XII:41.22 Tacitus,Annals, II:31. It is clear here that the debate between Octavius Fronto and

G. Asinius Gallus was one on the morality, not the cost of luxuries obtained through theexpansion of the empire.

23 Tacitus,Annals, III:53.24 Suetonius,Life of Caligula, 52. The link between silk and luxuriawas an enduring

one, with the third-century emperor Aurelian also apparently rebuking his wife for heryearnings for a garment that cost its weight in gold. See Vopiscus, Life of Aurelian, 45.

25 G. Parker, Ex Oriente Luxuria: Indian Commodities and Roman Experience,Jour-nal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient45, no. 1(2002): 4095. Young, RomesE T d


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pearls, and diamonds obviously did.26That Eastern trade appears in thesources as a luxury trade in a few elite, feminine commodities has to dowith the preoccupations of sources situated within a Stoic philosophi-

cal tradition rather than the actual nature of foreign trade and its rolein Roman politics and economics.The Roman economy was uniquely well equipped to deal with some

externalizing of its revenues through trade, given that it continuallyappropriated the wealth of the Mediterranean basin in its own trea-sury and citizenry through the mechanism of empire.27Conquests wereobviously profitable, with the massive influx of gold and silver after thePunic Wars; the conquests of Spain and Greece; and the conquests ofEgypt, Jerusalem, Parthia, and Dacia producing astronomical inflows

of gold and silver that profoundly affected the Roman economy.28

Ithas been estimated that the treasure that Augustus brought back fromEgypt saw interest rates drop 60 percent, and Caesars plunder fromGaul resulted in a sharp slump in the price of gold.29Key assets suchas gold and silver mines throughout the empire were also crucial here,directly contributing to the income of the Roman state.30This was theincome that not only enabled Roman military and infrastructure expen-diture within the empire,31but also allowed Rome to service its exter-nal trade deficit in perpetuity. Well-bred Romans may have averted

their eyes from the vulgar topic of financial gain through empire, butit was impossible for the imperial aristocracy of Rome to have ignoredthe extent to which major wars and previous imperial conquest hadresulted in major inward flows of precious metals and commodities intothe Roman economy, as well as a stable source of taxation and trade

26 M. G. Raschke, Papyrological Evidence for Ptolemaic and Roman Trade withIndia, Proceedings of the XIV International Congress of Papyrologists(Oxford: British Acad-emy, 1974), p. 245.

27 As Keith Hopkins and Peter Temin have shown, this wealth did not simply lay idle,but became part of a complex financial web between Rome and the provinces. K. Hopkins,Taxes and Trade in the Roman Empire (200BCAD 400),Journal of Roman Studies70(1980): 101125; P. Temin, Financial Intermediaries in the Early Roman Empire,Journalof Economic History64(2004): 726 727.

28 C. Howgego, The Supply and Use of Money in the Roman World, 200BCAD300,Journal of Roman Studies82(1992): 45.

29 Duncan-Jones, Money and Government in the Roman Empire, p. 21. Walter Scheideloffers the best figures on the relative purity of Roman coinage during different periods. W.Scheidel, The Monetary Systems of the Han and Roman Empires, in Scheidel, Rome andChina, pp. 170ff.

30 Duncan-Jones, Money and Government in the Roman Empire, pp. 103105; Scheidel,Monetary Systems of the Han and Roman Empires, p. 179.

31 H ki T d T d i th R E i


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income. The time-honored nexus between wealth, politics, trade, andempire was certainly well understood by the Augustan period, althoughnot often articulated in giddy speeches and poems on glory and duty.

Senators were of course only eligible to be senators because of theirimmense wealth,32a situation exacerbated by Augustuss formalizing ofthe division between the senatorial and equestrian classes. Althoughmuch aristocratic Roman wealth might have had its origins in propertyrather than trade, it was through trade that this wealth was sustainedand increased.33

The notion that the Roman senatorial elite were above mercan-tile and economic considerations in their deliberations on politicsand empire also appears to be ascribing to them loftier motivations

than those hazarded by their own historians. Commerce and trade hadnever been absent from senatorial politics and decision making evenduring the Republican era, with the Lex Claudiaof 218b.c.e.aimedat curbing the proverbial avaritiaof senators by restricting senatorialmaritime trade, a measure greeted with much outrage by the senato-rial class.34Even Cato the Elder, that paragon of Roman virtue andausterity, the Roman least likely to be considered in thrall to luxuria,had relied upon a portfolio of shares in maritime loans as his source ofpersonal wealth.35Prior to Augustus, as all senators were well aware,

private debts incurred during expensive election campaigns were regu-larly financed through the mechanism of exploiting sources of wealthfrom the imperial periphery.36

With regard to foreign policy, a clear example of the interconnect-edness of imperial and economic interests just prior to the Augustanera is to be found in Ciceros Pro Lege Manilia, which warned that theeconomic effects of Mithridatess campaign in Asia in 66b.c.e.wouldbe devastating if Pompey was not placed in charge of the campaign.

32 Ryan Geraghty argues that even in the period immediately prior to Augustus, sen-ators generated 200 times more income than a peasants subsistence wages, which heexplicitly links to economic opportunities presented by imperial expansion. See R. M. Ger-aghty, The Impact of Globalization in the Roman Empire, 200BCAD 100, Journal ofEconomic History67, no. 4(2007): 10511052.

33 Raschke, New Studies in Roman Commerce with the East, pp. 646 647.34 Livy, Histories, XXI.63.35 Plutarch, Cato the Elder, XXI:5-6, W. V. Harris, On War and Greed in the Second

Century BC,American Historical Review76, no. 5(1971): 1379.36 M. W. Frederiksen, Caesar, Cicero and the Problem of Debt,Journal of Roman Stud-

ies56(1966): 128131. Frederiksen coyly suggested that financial indebtedness and thewhole complex of credit and loan which accompanied many a senatorial career, must have

ti i d liti l iti d t d id l i ti


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In attempting to urge special powers for Pompey, Cicero, the greatdefender of abstract imperial justice and universal law in De Re Publica,openly argued how crucial the business interests of Romans in Asia

were to the empire. Beyond the more usual appeals to glory and treatyobligations, Cicero warned of the effects that a defeat for Rome in Asiawould have on the credit market.37The empires military policy, Ciceroargued, needed to be formulated in accordance with the economicrealities of an empire in which the financial markets of Rome and Asiawere inextricably linked. A loss in Asia meant ruin in Rome. Herethe subterranean mercantile currents among Roman senators that JohnDArms stressed appear openly as a very public discussion of the com-mercial concerns that underwrote imperial military action.38

This however, is all prior to Augustus. What about thereafter?Augustuss battle for control of Egypt was partially framed by thesources in terms of control over the wealth of foreigners. Virgils depic-tion of the Battle of Actium on the shield of Aeneas is revealing inthis respect, depicting Antony as being allied against Rome withthe wealth of the barbarian world, further specified as being fromthe Red Sea, and the people of the dawn (the East).39Virgil alsoinvoked a time when Augustus would extend the Roman empire tobeyond India, as did the Augustan writers Propertius and Tibullus,

with Horace even hazarding that Rome would one day be victoriousover China.40Similarly, Cassius Dio and Plutarch both reported thatthe dispute between Antony and Octavian stemmed not merely frompersonal insult and Antonys embrace of Eastern luxuria, but Antonysholding and parceling out of the spoils of the eastern provinces.41Theysimilarly reported the enormous wealth and resources that Antonyand Cleopatra commanded prior to Actium, describing ships so richlydecorated as to be worthy of a triumphal procession.42For his part, Flo-

37 Cicero, Pro Lege Manilia, VII:19. See also S. E. Smethurst, Cicero and Roman Impe-rial Policy, Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association84(1953):216226.

38 J. DArms, Commerce and Social Standing in Ancient Rome(Cambridge, Mass.: Har-vard University Press, 1981).

39 Virgil,Aeneid, VIII:685ff. James Zetzel (in Saidian terms) describes this part of theshield as depicting the victory of the West over the East, of order over disorder, of civiliza-tion over barbarism; however, a far more straightforward material reading of this scene isequally plausible. See J. E. G. Zetzel, Natural Law and Poetic Justice: A Carneadean Debatein Cicero and Virgil, Classical Philology91, no. 4(1996): 309.

40 Virgil,Aeneid, VI:792. On the other Augustan writers and a desire for Eastern expan-sion, see Sidebotham, Roman Economic Policy, pp. 139ff.

41 Cassius Dio, Histories, L:1; Plutarch,Antony, 545542 C i Di Hi t i L 6 Pl t h A t 6


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rus specifically linked this naval wealth to the Sabaeans and Arabia.43Prior to Actium and his Parthian expedition, Antony was also said tohave used the flimsiest of pretexts to plunder Palmyra on account of the

citys enormous wealth garnered from Indian and Arabian trade.44

AfterActium, the arterial trade routes and centers of Arabia and Africa werethe target of renewed Roman attention, as the campaign for AxumiteAfrica by Cornelius Gallus, Sabaean Yemen by Aelius Gallus, and themovement into the Gulf of Aqaba by Gaius Caesar all demonstrate.45Itis worth pondering whether there might be a connection between theplans and attempts to subdue Parthia, Egypt, Africa, and Arabia, themajor gateways to Eastern trade, within a short period, or whether theywere simply victims of a Schumpeterian war machine that ostensibly

had no guiding principle beyond objectless expansionism.46

A major factor in this Eastern intervention was the interrelation-ship, not to say enormous overlap, between Romes political and eco-nomic elites.47By the time of Tiberius, Tacitus records, not only wasevery senator a usurious moneylender, but the pecuniary interests ofsenators were more important to them than the public good. Whenthe practice of senatorial moneylending was halted briefly by Tiberius,the Roman economy suffered a massive liquidity crisis and almost col-lapsedeven after the emperor had given the Senate an eighteen-

month amnesty to get their financial affairs in order.48

The liquidity

43 Florus,Abridgement of all the Wars over 1200Years, II:21:7, in Cleopatra: A Sourcebook,P. J. Jones (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006), pp. 163164.

44 Appian, Civil Wars, V:9.45 Pliny, Natural Histories, VI:141, VI:160. For Cornelius Gallus, see F. Hoffman, M.

Minas-Nerpal, and S. Pfeiffer, Die dreisprachige Stela des C. Cornelius Gallus(Berlin: Walterde Gruyter, 2009), pp. 5ff. On Aelius Gallus in Arabia, see G. W. Bowersocks judgmentthat it is quite clear that Augustus had some kind of expansionist interest at that stage incontrolling the rich trade in spices and perfumes. G. W. Bowersock, A Report on ArabiaProvincia,Journal of Roman Studies61(1971): 227.

46 J. Schumpeter, Imperialism and Social Classes, trans. H. Norden (New York: AugustM. Kelley, 1951), pp. 83ff. On the application of Schumpeter to Roman imperialism, see W.V. Harris, War and Imperialism in Republican Rome, 32770BC(Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1979).

47 Raschke, New Studies in Roman Commerce with the East, pp. 646650. Raschkecontended that although Roman aristocratic elites were heavily involved in trade, this didnot affect their political or military decision making. See esp. p. 648n. 927.

48 Tacitus,Annals, VI:1617. Maria Jaczynowska has attempted to quarantine this usuryto a subsection of the senatorial class (the piscinarii) that she says founded their riches onthe profits from the provinces and different sources of income like money-speculation. Atleast for the imperial period, Tacitus is unequivocal that the practice is far more widespread.M. Jacznowska, The Economic Differentiation of the Roman Nobility at the End of theR bli Hi i Z i h if f Al G hi h ( 6 )


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crisis in the Roman economy lasted until Emperor Tiberius engineereda stimulus package whereby he pumped 100million sesterces into thepublic banks of Rome and eased the restrictions on senatorial lend-

ing. Despite his hardline on senatorial avarice, Tacitus suggests thatTiberius was not above the economic motive in his own actions in theRoman periphery, when he had the richest man in Spain executed ona trumped up charge of incest and then confiscated his Spanish goldand copper mines.49

Other emperors too did not neglect the trade of the Indian Oceanlittoral and its hinterland. Consolidating earlier commercial ties,Claudius received high-ranking envoys from Taprobane (Sri Lanka),who informed him that Taprobane was far richer than Rome.50 For

his part, Nero considered possible avenues for expanding Roman con-trol over the important trading and strategic centers in Armenia andbetween the Upper Nile and the Red Sea, sending a reconnaissanceexpedition to Axumite Africa south of the old commercial capitalof Meroe, a region that had sought to challenge Roman control oversouthern Egypt at the time of Aelius Galluss Arabian campaign, possi-bly in response to Cornelius Galluss 29b.c.e.Nubian incursion. Nerodecided against a campaign in the region when his military intelligencemade it clear that the shift from trade along the Nile to trade along the

Red Sea coast had left Meroe a backwater.51

Vespasians eastern expansion of the empire, Tacitus reports, incor-porated the whole of Syria, including the territory of the client kingsSohaemus and Antiochus, whose primary attribute was that they wereenormously wealthy, with Antiochus singled out as the richest ofall the client kings.52In his account, Josephus further hints that theostensible reason for the overthrow of Antiochus, namely collusionwith Parthia, was a mere pretext used by the Roman governor of Syria

49 Tacitus,Annals, VI:19.50 Pliny,Natural Histories, VI:8491. For archaeological confirmation that the embassy

to Claudius and the trip of Annius Plocamuss freedman to Taprobane were separated bysome years, see D. Meredith, Annius Plocamus: Two Inscriptions from the Berenice Road,Journal of Roman Studies43(1953): 3840; Sidebotham, Roman Economic Policy, pp. 3233.The comments on the wealth of Taprobane come in the context of Pliny railing once againagainst luxuria, but also in the context of a discussion of the trade that the island carried outwith both the Roman world and China. See Pliny,Natural Histories, VI:8889.

51 Pliny,Natural Histories, VI:181. W. Schur, Die Orientpolitik des Kaisers Nero, Klio(Beiheft) 15(1923). For the movement of the trade network to the coast and its effects,see D. A. Welsby, The Kingdom of Kush: The Napatan and Meroitic Empires(Princeton, N.J.:Markus Wiener, 1998), p. 70; L. P. Kirwan, Rome beyond the Southern Egyptian Frontier,Geographical Journal123, no. 1(1957): 1319.

52 T i Hi i II 8


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to conquer this rich kingdom that straddled the Euphrates trade routeand bordered Romes military and commercial rival, Parthia.53 ThatAntiochus was not paraded through Rome in chains by Vespasian but

rather was allowed a quiet retirement in Sparta with his family height-ens the sense that the rumors of Antiochuss treachery covered motivesmore aligned with Tacituss material explanation of Vespasians con-solidation of the region. With regard to infrastructure projects, FergusMillars argument that it was Vespasian who authorized the canaliza-tion of the Orontes so that it was accessible from Antioch and Seleuciaalso suggests the type of infrastructure work necessary not merely formilitary control, but for the invigoration of trade.54

With Trajan, efforts to control the major trade networks of the East

reached something of a peak. With more of a whimper than a bang, theNabataean trading kingdom was acquired (rather than conquered) byTrajan after the death of the Nabataean client king Rabbel II in 106c.e.This saw not only the historical mercantile center of Petra fallunder complete Roman control, but, more importantly now that East-ern trade routes were beginning to run farther north, the increasinglyimportant commercial center of Bostra was also capturedat a timewhen it was threatening to reinvigorate the Nabataean economy.55This enabled Trajan to complete the important new Eastern trade

and military artery, the Via Nova Traiana, that linked Bostra and Petrawith the Gulf of Aqaba. This piece of trade and military infrastruc-ture served as a useful precursor to Trajans Parthian campaigns, whichpushed Roman control over the Eastern markets and trade routes of theParthians to an extent that would not be duplicated until the time ofEmperor Septimius Severus.56Having reached the Persian Gulf in hisconquest of Parthia and the trading networks of Mesopotamia, a wist-ful Trajan is said to have wished to follow merchant vessels from the

53 Josephus, The Jewish War, VII:7.54 F. Millar, The Roman Near East, 31BCAD 337(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-

versity Press, 1993), pp. 8688.55 Cassius Dio, Roman History, LXVIII:14. G. W. Bowersock, A Report on Arabia

Provincia, pp. 228ff. W. Ball, Rome in the East: The Transformation of an Empire(New York:Routledge, 2001), pp. 198200; L. A. Bedal, The Petra Pool-Complex: A Hellenistic Paradeisosin the Nabataean Capital(New York: Gorgias Press, 2004), pp. 1415. All cite numismaticevidence and the lack of the honorific Arabicus in Trajans title to argue for a lack of amajor campaign to incorporate the Nabataean territories.

56 On Trajans conquest and Eastern trade, see J. Ferguson, China and Rome,Aufstiegund Niedergang der Rmischen WeltII 9, no. 2(1978): 594. The period of Septimius Severussexpansion into the east lie outside of the purview of this article. See Cassius Dio, RomanHi t LXXVI


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Persian Gulf to wealthy India. According to Xiphilinuss epitomizedversion of Cassius Dio, Trajan only held back from further conquest ofeconomically important eastern territories south of Parthia because he

considered himself too old to do so successfully. Cassius Dio specificallymentions that Trajan had the conquest of India in mind.57The later(and admittedly problematic) Eutropius too confirms this, going so faras to announce that Trajan had actually prepared a Persian Gulf fleetto ravage India.58

Trajans Alexander-inspired dreams of Indian plunder aside, it istrue that at no time between 31b.c.e.and the mid second century didany member of the Roman aristocracy personally sail to India to enrichthemselves. They of course had no need to become sailors to become

personally involved in Eastern trade, with a significant proportion ofthe serious loans made available in the Roman economy stemmingfrom the private, interest-accumulating moneylending activities of theimperial aristocracy.59Voyages to India required a formidable amountof capital.60 The Muziris papyrus, for example, deals calmly with asingle business loan for almost 7million sesterces for overseas trade(seven times the amount of wealth required to qualify as a senator).61Christopher Howgego has suggested that the only banking mechanismavailable for the geographical transfer of truly large sums of money

without recourse to the physical transportation of coin throughout theempire lay with the Roman senatorial elite, who were able to mobilizeempire-wide networks of associates to cover business loans,62perhapsthrough the buying and selling of fully assignable loans that simplyspecified that they be repaid to whomever was holding the loan on theday it fell due.63It is worth remembering Peter Temins argument, how-ever, that loans from the households of Romes leading families andindeed the emperor were also funneled through financial intermediar-

57 Cassius Dio, Roman History, LXVIII:2829.58 Eutropius, Breviarum, VIII:3. In mari Rubro classem instuit, ut per eam Indiae fines

vastaret.59 That the aristocracy were involved in financing eastern trade does not alter the

fact that this is nonstate private sector enterprise. See Casson, Periplus Maris Erythraei, pp.3233, esp. n. 50.

60 L. Casson, Romes Trade with the East: The Sea Voyage to Africa and India, Trans-actions of the Philological Association110(1980): 35.

61 Temin, Financial Intermediaries in the Early Roman Empire, p. 720.62 Howgego, Supply and Use of Money in the Roman World, pp. 2829. See also W.

V. Harris, The Nature of Roman Money, in The Monetary Systems of the Greeks and theRomans, ed. W. V. Harris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 174207; S. Mrozec,Zum Kreditgeld in der frher rmischer Kaiserzeit, Historia34(1985): 310323.

63 T i Fi i l I t di i i th E l R E i


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ies, that is banks, such as that of the Sulpicii of Puteoli who profitedthrough the deposits of elite wealth left with them on a fixed term byloaning that wealth to Roman traders with interest, underwriting the

risk of the loan themselves.64

Similarly, numerous wealthy aristocraticRoman families are known to have been involved in financing tradeand transport in Egypts eastern desert and port regions.65

Irrespective of whether elite Roman wealth was loaned throughdirect business contacts, financial institutions, or even the shares insocietates publicanorum that Cato the Elder had preferred as a meansof spreading risk through diversified interests,66 the Roman senatorialelite consistently supported policy decisions that safeguarded their per-sonal investments in trade alongside the states taxation interestsboth

of which were sensitive to the volume and velocity of external trade.When Nero briefly considered abolishing the lucrative trade excisesearly in his reign, the 25 percent portoriumwas retained through theintervention of more business-savvy senators who instead arranged formerchant ships to be exempt from the assessment of property tax.67Inthis way, state revenues from customs were retained while the costs ofoverseas trade to merchants were reducedthereby facilitating the vol-ume and velocity of trade, and generating more customs revenue andmore personal wealth for those involved in trade and its financing. In

earlier instances too, by suppressing piracy under Pompey,68

upgradingtrading and military infrastructure in Egypt after Actium,69sending theright general to fight Mithridates in the East (Pompey again), or seekingimperial control over the entry points of Eastern goods (such as Palmyra,Petra, and Egypt), Rome consistently followed an Eastern policy that

64 Ibid., p. 723, contra Richard Duncan-Jones, who imputes an overwhelming preju-dice against trade and traders under the Principate. R. Duncan-Jones, Structure and Scale inthe Roman Economy(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 4647.

65 C. Adams, Land Transport in Roman Egypt: A Study of Economics and Administration ina Roman Province(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 232234.

66 Temin, Financial Intermediaries in the Early Roman Empire, p. 728. Temin suggeststhat their role in shipping outlasted their role in taxation in the post-Republican period.

67 Tacitus,Annals, XIII:50. See also Bang, Trade and Empire, p. 30. For the 25percentimport duty, see Periplus, 19. I follow Raschkes argument that this section of the Periplusrefers to a Roman garrison protecting its customs monopoly rather than Cassons argumentfor a Nabataean tax outpost at Lueke Kome. See Raschke, New Studies in Roman Com-merce with the East, pp. 663664; Casson, Periplus Maris Erythraei, p. 145.

68 Manuel Trster makes clear the importance of the grain route in the decision tosuppress piracy, and that the corn prices tumbled simply with the naming of Pompey as theleader of the expedition. M. Trster, Roman Hegemony and Non-State Violence: A FreshLook at Pompeys Campaign against the Pirates, Greece and Rome56, no. 1(2009): 22ff.

69 Ad L d T p t i R E pt


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made good economic sense from both an abstract imperial perspectiveand a private wealth perspective. For all of these commercially astutedecisions to have been a mere unintended consequence rather than a

central consideration in imperial decision making appears unlikely.Romes wars in the East (and indeed elsewhere) were not exclu-sively due to the empires thirst for silk, pepper, incense, pearls, spices,ivory, and tortoise shell, although the direct and indirect financingof Roman commerce through the personal wealth of Romes imperialaristocracy suggests that it was too important a factor to simply dis-regard. Similarly, the creation of an Eastern empire was not entirelya product of a determination to open up, control, or at the very leasttax all of the regions arterial trade routes and sources of raw materi-

als and precious commodities, with treaty obligations and the hardwir-ing of military expansionism into Roman political life also important.However, what the treatment of Eastern trade centers and routes dem-onstrates is that the desire for control over the lucrative trade in com-modities coming from the East was not disconnected from the mili-tary and political practices of Rome. The preoccupation of Pompeyand his supporters with ridding the Mediterranean of pirates and sup-porting Romes Eastern merchants, Antonys campaign against (thenParthian) Palmyra; Augustus campaign against independent Egypt,

Africa, and Arabia; Nero in Axumite Africa; Vespasian in Syria; andTrajans Eastern campaigns against the Nabataeans and the Parthiansall suggest that Roman expansion was far from objectless. Rather itwas consistent with a policy that sought to both facilitate trade andinvestment in these regions for Roman subjects and to incrementallytake possession of those trading centers that were within reach. Boththe accretion of wealth through interest on loans to Roman merchantsengaged in foreign trade and the immediate liquidity provided by plun-der were temptations that aristocratic Romans were unwilling to resist,

their Stoic aversion toward the decadence connoted by some Easterncommodities notwithstanding.

III

How extensive was this trade network that had so deeply affected thetrajectory of Roman imperialism after Actium, and what was Romesposition within it? Central to the most compelling recent narrations

of intercultural trade and exchange within a pre-Columbian exchangesystem is the notion of an Afro-Eurasian oikumenethat was the site formaterial and cultural exchanges along a system that stretched from the


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Mediterranean world in the West through to China in the East.70Indo-Roman trade very easily fits into this picture. Some commodities werearriving in the Roman Empire from the trans-Eurasian Silk Roads, via

Bactria and Parthia71

(a significant factor in the perpetual struggle overArmenia with the Parthians), with Chinese sources suggesting that thiswas one of the routes west for their commodities, although not the mostfavored one.72The largest amount of East-West exchange flowed notvia the difficult and often dangerous trans-Eurasian overland route, butrather via the comparatively fast and safe oceanic trade route, as FergusMillars detailed work has made clear.73Most Eastern goods arriving inPalmyra, that is, were making their way from the northwestern Indiancoastline to Parthia and Mesopotamia, via the Persian Gulf, rather

than from Bactria toward the Caspian Sea and thence south.74

According to Chinese sources, the east-west trade route betweenChina and Bactria dated back to the second century b.c.e., althoughthis dating relies upon the dubious Shi jitale of the Han imperial envoyZhang Qian coming across Chinese commodities in todays Afghani-stan,75a tale that has been credibly disputed.76That Zhang Qian sentinitial envoys to Bactria, India, the Indo-Scythians, and Parthia withthe co-operation of the Wusun, prior to courtly contact between theHan and these Western states in the late second century b.c.e., seems

more plausible,77

although this does not preclude the possibility of

70 See, for example, A. G. Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age(Berkeley:University of California Press, 1998); Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony; D. Chris-tian, Silk Roads or Steppe Roads? The Silk Roads in World History, Journal of WorldHistory11, no. 1(2000): 126. More recently, see Philippe Beaujard, From Three PossibleIron-Age World-Systems to a Single Afro-Eurasian World-System,Journal of World History21, no. 1 (2010): 143.

71 Christian, Silk Roads or Steppe Roads?72 Yu Huan, The Peoples of the West, from the Weilue, trans. J. E. Hill, http://depts

.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/weilue/weilue.html (last viewed 20December 2010).73 F. Millar, Looking East from the Classical World: Colonialism, Culture, and Trade

from Alexander the Great to Shapur I, International History Review20, no. 3(1998): 507531. F. Millar, Caravan Cities: The Roman Near East and Long Distance Trade by Land, inModus Operandi: Essays in Honour of Geoffrey Rickman, ed. M. Austin et al. (London, 1998).See also V. Begley, Introduction, in Begley and De Puma, Rome and India, p. 3.

74 Thorley, Silk Trade between China and the Roman Empire, pp. 7180; I. A. Rich-mond, Palmyra under the Aegis of Rome,Journal of Roman Studies53(1963): 43.

75 Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian: Han Dynasty II, trans. B. Watson (HongKong: Columbia University Press, 1993), pp. 235236. C. F. Schwitter and C. F. Cheng,Bactrian Nickel and Chinese Bamboo,American Journal of Archaeology66, no. 1(1962):8792.

76 S. Cammann, On the Attempts to Revive the Bactrian Nickel Theory,AmericanJournal of Archaeology66, no. 1(1962): 9294.

77 Si Qi R d f th G d Hi t i


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frontier trade prior to this. For the first century C.E., the sources men-tion two possible bridges between China and India, and consequentlyRome. The first was via the ports of Parthia (Chinese Anxivia the

Persian Gulf) and the pre- and early Kushan period port cities of theIndus Valley (Chinese Tianzhu),78which linked the southwestern Chi-nese overland trade routes with Indias rivers, thereby assisting with thetransportation of Chinese commodities to the series of Indian entreptsthat serviced Arab and Roman trading vessels. The Hou Han-shutesti-fies to Indian envoys and traders using this route in the first centuryc.e., with the commodity of silk mentioned in relation to the famousParthian desire to keep Han China and Rome apart so as to maintaintheir trade advantage. The third-century c.e.Chinese source, the Wei-

lueby Yu Huan also refers to not one but three first-century trade roadswest, with the first terminating in the territory of the Kushans, whilethe others hugged a more northerly trajectory to arrive in Xinjiang,and thence onward to the Pamir Mountains in present day Tajikistan,thence through Kapisa (Alexandria of the Caucasus, Bagram), beforejoining up with the route south to Parthia.79This east-west route hasbeen verified archaeologically with finds of Indian, Chinese, and Medi-terranean goods at Kapisa.80

A more bustling route, however, was the Indian Ocean trade route

that played the key role in sustaining the unified economic space thatstretched from the Roman world in the West through to Han China inthe East, enabling economic exchanges between the terminal metropo-les of the Mediterranean and the Pacific, as well as the significant trad-ing regions in between. Europe, Africa, Arabia, India, and East Asiawere linked by a network that saw the Indian subcontinent in the piv-otal role of the linchpin of the classical world economy, connecting theotherwise disparate economies of the Mediterranean and East Asia.81Romes main supply of Eastern commodities via the Red Sea route to

India (described in the Periplus) was connected to an equally extensive

78 J. E. Hill, trans., The Western Regions according to the Hou Hanshu, 2nd ed.,http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/hhshu/hou_han_shu.html (last viewed 20December 2010). For this dating, see Thorley, Roman Empire and the Kushans, p. 183.

79 Yu, The Peoples of the West.80 Rauh, Merchants, Sailors and Pirates, p. 96.81 This is consistent with Schaffers understanding of the later role of India in global

trade. See L. Schaffer, Southernization,Journal of World History5, no. 1(1994): 121.


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route traveling east from India, as Pliny suggests.82Crucially, the Chi-nese Hou Han-shualso confirms the existence of this maritime route forSino-Indian (and indirectly Sino-Roman) tradea route which was

oceanic and largely aimed at avoiding the increasing Parthian con-trol over the overland routes. According to Ying-shih Y, the mari-time trade of Han China included not only important Western portsin Burma and on the island of Sri Lanka, as well as southeastern andsouthwestern India, but also Sumatra, Korea, and Japan, all prior toRomes Principate period. The role of commodities from these regionswithin the commerce of the broader Indian Ocean oikumeneremainsunderexplored.83 The Sung Shu and Liang Shu also confirm that themajor means by which trade was conducted between China and India

was via the maritime routes to southern India, with Westerners whomight be identified as originating from the Roman Empire reputed tohave traveled to Cambodia and Annam during the Han period.84

The Periplus offers perhaps the most thorough insight into howthe Roman economy interlocked with antiquitys broader economicnetwork. The document itself was produced, it is generally accepted,between 40and 70c.e., as Romes trade in the Indian Ocean was near-ing its peak.85 Interestingly, this places it firmly within the windowsuggested by the world system theorists Andre Gunder Frank and Barry

Gills for an A phase in global economic cycles, when trade linkagesbetween various regions within the Indian Ocean oikumene were attheir peak.86 While their B phase, beginning in the third century

82 See Pliny,Natural History, VI:88. On the question of the balance of overland andsea trade, I. A. Richmond suggests that Palmyran silk came both overland from Bactria andvia the oceanic route. Richmond, Palmyra under the Aegis of Rome, pp. 5253. Anyother heavier commodity may have been difficult to transport across Eurasia in profitable

quantities.83 Y. S. Y, Trade and Expansion in Han China: A Study in the Structure of Sino-Barbarian

Economic Relations(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), pp. 173ff. One impor-tant study that has taken the commodities seriously is J. I. Miller, The Spice Trade of theRoman Empire, see esp. chap. 3.

84 Y, Trade and Expansion in Han China, p. 175.85 Casson, Periplus Maris Erythraei, pp. 6 7; C. Robin, The Date of the Periplus of

the Erythraean Sea in the Light of South Arabian Evidence, in de Romanis and Tchernia,Crossings: Early Mediterranean Contacts with India, pp. 4165.

86 B. K. Gills and A. G. Frank, World System Cycles, Crises, and Hegemonic Shifts,1700bcto 1700ad, in Frank and Gills, World System, pp. 164167. Greg Woolf, followingImmanuel Wallerstein, has declared it remains to be proven that world-economies were at

all significant in their effect before the 15th c. AD. Woolf, World-Systems Analysis andthe Roman Empire, p. 54. Given Wallersteins work is hardwired with Polanyis and Fin-


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c.e., coincides with the hitherto assumed date of the dwindling use ofthe Indian Ocean artery by Roman traders linked to the disruption toSino-Indian trade triggered by the warfare occasioning the end of the

Han Empire in the early third century, recent archaeological evidencehas suggested that Roman trade continued, albeit at a reduced level,into the sixth century.87

In a pithy but thorough fashion, the Periplus elucidates how theeast coast of Africa, the southern coast of the Arabian peninsular, thePersian Gulf, and the Indian subcontinent as far as Sri Lanka werenavigated by merchants setting out from Roman Egypt, as well asdescribing what commodities might be traded en route and the culturalhallmarks of the various peoples living in the region described. Along

the east coast of Africa, the works guidance reaches as far south as theivory and tortoise shell trading town of Rhapta (presently consideredto be on the coast of todays Tanzania88), a tribute-paying subject of theArabian merchant town of Muza.89Rhapta, it was reported, was not asimportant as a trade center as the port of Adulis, which was the clos-est port to the main East African ivory entrept of Axum, some eightdays travel inland. It was largely via the port of Adulis (rather thanacross the Sahara) that Roman trade with the interlinking economiesof Africa occurred.90This Egypt-African trade route was accessible for

leys understanding of antique economics, it is perhaps not surprising that Wallersteins andsubsequently Woolfs sense of a world system does not fit the Roman case. See Woolf, p. 47.

87 X. Liu, Ancient India and Ancient China: Trade and Religious Exchanges AD 1600(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 31. Although Gills and Frank read these Aand B phases as part of an overarching world system that continues over five thousandyears, it is more likely that Janet Abu-Lughod is correct in viewing the Red Sea trade of theera of the Periplusas constituting in and of itself a discrete world system, one that was notrenewed through successive cycles of A and B phases but replaced by later world systems.See Gills and Frank, World System Cycles, pp. 167174; Abu-Lughod, Before EuropeanHegemony, p. 43. On the persistence of Roman trade with India, see R. Tomber, Rome andMesopotamiaImporters into India in the First Millenium AD,Antiquity81(2007): 979.

88 F. Chami, Roman Beads from the Rufiji Delta, Tanzania: First IncontrovertibleArchaeological Link with the Periplus, Current Anthropology40, no. 2(1999): 237241.

89 Periplus, 16.90 For representative positions on the question of trans-Saharan trade, see the enthu-

siastic R. C. C. Law, The Garamantes and Trans-Saharan Enterprise in Classical Times,Journal of African History8, no. 2(1967): 181200; Pekka Masonens Trans-Saharan Tradeand the West African Discovery of the Mediterranean, in Ethnic Encounter and CultureChange, ed. M. Sabour and K. S. Vikr (London: Hurst, 1997), pp. 116142; and the moreskeptical J. T. Swanson, The Myth of Trans-Saharan Trade during the Roman Era, Inter-national Journal of African Historical Studies8, no. 4(1975): 582600; T. F. Garrard, Mythand Metrology: The Early Trans-Saharan Gold Trade, Journal of African History23, no. 4( 8 ) 6


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smaller scale merchants, unlike the more complex Egypt-India route,which demanded both stronger vessels able to negotiate monsoonalconditions and more significant capital investment to purchase the

costly spices, pearls, and silks on offer in ports such as Barigaza, Tyndis,Comara, and Sopatma.91 Although some Roman goods were tradedwith India in exchange for Eastern commodities,92the majority of East-ern trade was conducted in exchange for gold and silver coins, whichwas a significant source of silver and gold bullion for (now untraceable)Indian purposes.93At Barigaza, Roman merchants could import, amongother things, wine, copper, tin, lead, and topaz. However, in a sign ofthe existence of a simple foreign exchange market, the Periplusurgedthem to trade gold and silver Roman coins to capitalize on the favorable

exchange rate that would enable them greater purchasing power withinIndia.94In exchange, they received ivory, pepper, semiprecious stones,cotton, and other types of cloth, including silk.95Tyndis and the otherports of Limurika in southwestern India were important as sources ofspices, precious and semiprecious stones, pearls, ivory, and silk, again inexchange for Roman metals, wine, and coin,96while Comara, Poduka,and Sopatma on the east coast of India were trading hubs for virtuallyall of the goods produced both in the East and the West. Beyond theseports was the land of Thina (China), the origin of Romes silk.97

Using the Periplus, along with other archaeological and writtensources from India and China, it is possible to elucidate not only thedimensions of classical global trade, but also to confirm the central-ity of India to the global economy during the same period, enablingthe provincializing of Rome within the global classical economy.Although Rome was clearly the economic and military hegemon of theMediterranean basin, and, in a fictitious hermetically sealed Romanimperial system, would have played the role of core in any periphery-core transfers of surplus from its provinces, this was not the complete

91 Casson, Romes Trade with the East, pp. 2136.92 Rauh erroneously views this barter trade as constituting the predominant share of

Roman Indian Ocean trade. Rauh, Merchants, Sailors and Pirates, p. 102.93 Casson, Periplus Maris Erythraei, pp. 29 31. Thorley, Roman Empire and the

Kushans, p. 184. M. Vickers, Nabataea, India, Gaul, and Carthage: Reflections on Hel-lenistic and Roman Gold Vessels and Red-Gloss Pottery, American Journal of Archaeology98 (1994):242. See also E. Lo Cascio, State and Coinage in the Late Republic and EarlyEmpire,Journal of Roman Studies81(1981): 82.

94 Periplus, 49.95 Ibid., 48 49.96 Ibid., 56.97 Ibid 6 66


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nature of the Roman economy.98 Romes capacity to extract surplusfrom a periphery via taxation, through the control of valuable assetssuch as mines, and from the sporadic spoils of conquest was of course

limited to its empire. Wealth was transferred from its provinces in twodirectionsdirectly to trading partners external to Roman control,and to metropolitan Rome, and thence to zones external to Romancontrol through loans to merchants engaged in Eastern trade. As such,it is arguable that, if the core of a world system is defined by its capacityto extract surplus from a peripheral zone, the Roman Empire lacked thecapacity to act as the core of the global economy in its trade relationswith its external trading partnersincluding the various commercialhubs of India, Parthia, Sabaean Arabia, and Axumite Africa. Rome

was unable to dictate the terms of trade with the East and, as a result,Rome continued to leach a proportion of its imperial surplus to IndianOcean trading hubs. If the envoys to the emperor Claudius from Tapro-bane are to be believed, the upshot of this was that gaudy Rome wasnot as rich as industrious Sri Lanka.99

In terms of the direction of trade, it appears that, while Arabia andIndia represented important destinations for Roman traders, Roman(and before that Ptolemaic) Egypt was of less direct significance forIndian merchants. Notwithstanding the unidentified envoys from

India mentioned by Augustus in the Res Gestae, Claudiuss envoysfrom Taprobane, the sprinkling of Indians harangued by Dio Chrysos-tom, or the Indian merchant prince Psammis in Xenophons EphesianTales, the written evidence for a thriving Indian trade colony in theRoman world is modest.100The Periplussuggests that Indian traders hadtraditionally halted at Aden, but at the time of the Periplusdid con-tinue on to Egypt,101and archaeological evidence suggests that therewas a limited presence in the port towns;102however, as excavations atBerenike have illustrated, Romes Indian Ocean commerce during the

98 The best versions of this hermetically sealed Roman economy model include Hop-kins, Taxes and Trade in the Roman Empire, pp. 101125; and Geraghty, Impact ofGlobalization in the Roman Empire.

99 Pliny,Natural History, VI:89.100 Augustus, Res Gestae, 31; Dio Chrysostom, Discourses, 32.40; Xenophon Ephesus,

Ephesian Tales, III:11.101 Periplus, 26. J. Whitewright, Roman Rigging Material from the Red Sea Port of

Myos Hormos, International Journal of Nautical Archaeology36, no. 2(2007): 290.102 Raschke, Papyrological Evidence, pp. 241243, contra R. Salomon, Epigraphic

Remains of Indian Traders in Egypt, Journal of the American Oriental Society 111, no. 4(1991): 731736. R. Tomber, Indo-Roman Trade: The Ceramic Evidence from Egypt,A tiq it ( ) 6 Whit i ht R Ri i M t i l


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first century was more usually handled by a cosmopolitan assortmentof polyglot intermediaries from the southeast of the Roman Empirewho used Greek as a common lingua franca.103These were the West-

ern traders of various ethnicities that are present in first- and second-century c.e. Tamil literature as the Yavana.104 These Yavana weredepicted not in terms of commodity exchange but simply as bringersof gold, traders who purchased rather than bartered for Indian com-modities. The beautiful large ships of the Yavana bringing gold comesplashing the white foam on the waters of the Periyar and return ladenwith pepper is how Roman trade looked from the other end. Sacksof pepper are brought from the houses to the market; the gold receivedfrom the ships in exchange for articles sold is brought to shore in barges

at Muziris.105

This lucrative trade was valuable enough to be a sourceof conflict, the Tamil source Cankam Ilakkiyamsuggests, with militarycampaigns waged in India to monopolize the trade with the Yava-nar echoing Romes own attempts to control eastern trade in its ownregion.106

Archaeologically speaking, the evidence for widespread and regularRoman trade with India in the first century c.e.is becoming increas-ingly abundant. It is surprisingly strong on the east coast of India, withVimala Begley having argued that the material remains of Mediterra-

nean trade on the east coast of India mean that it is difficult to acceptthe proposition that direct trade to and from Arikamedu [ Pondicherry]did not exist before the third quarter of the first century c.e. Impor-tantly, Begley stresses that Arikamedu was a hub for two trade net-worksan Indian eastern seaboard trade network and another tradingwith the Mediterranean directly.107Finds of glass beads and gemstonesat Berenike also attest to strong trade links with Barbarikon (Pakistan),Taprobane (Sri Lanka), southern India, and even Vietnam and Java,

103 S. E. Sidebotham, M. Hense, and H. M. Nouwens, The Red Land: The IllustratedArchaeology of Egypts Eastern Desert(Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2008), pp.189192. Raschke, New Studies in Roman Commerce with the East, p. 645.

104 Thapar, The Image of the Barbarian in Early India, Comparative Studies in Societyand History13, no. 4(1971): 419420. K. V. Zvelebil, The Smile of Murugan(Leiden, 1973),p. 35; Rauh, Merchants, Sailors and Pirates, p. 101.

105 Kanakasabai, cited in Vickers, Nabataea, India, Gaul, and Carthage, pp. 242243.106 F. de Romanis, Rome and the Ntia of India: Relations between Rome and South-

ern India from 30BC to the Flavian Period, in de Romanis and Tchernia, Crossings: EarlyMediterranean Contacts with India, pp. 107108.

107 V. Begley, Arikamedu Reconsidered, American Journal of Archaeology 87, no. 4(1983): 479480, 481. See also L. Gorelick and A. J. Gwinnet, Diamonds from India toR d B d A i J l f A h l ( 88)


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while remnants of teak at Berenike also attest to trade (whether director indirect) with South Asia.108Amphora finds in Muziris (Pattanam)and elsewhere confirm that the Romans brought with them wine and

to a lesser extent olive oil,109

which served as ballast commodities forthe outward trip; however the absence of other materials suggests thatthe major commodities that the Romans offered were metal110par-ticularly the precious gold and silver coins and bullion that they wereexchanging in Muziris and Barigaza, but also quantities of tin, lead, andcopperall of which are difficult to trace archaeologically, given theirutility to Indian secondary industry.

As important as Indo-Roman trade was in terms of setting theouter parameters of trade regularly plied by Roman subjects, it is worth

remembering the significant role of trade with Arabia during thesame time. During the Roman era, southern Arabia was more than amere way station along the path to India. Often left unnoticed untilthe Islamic period, the commercial importance of classical-era Ara-bia and its African periphery requires urgent revision. As has alreadybeen mentioned, East African ports such as Rhapta were subject to thehegemony of Arab cities such as Muza by the time of the Periplus,111and a large section of the Periplusis dedicated to delineating the politi-cal and economic contours of commerce in Arabia. Muza itself, the

Periplusstates, was teeming with Arabs, shipowners and sailors . . . itis alive with commercial activity to which Rome was now directlylinked, courtesy of its conquest of Egypt.112Muza, like Adulis for Axu-

108 Sidebotham, Hense, and Nouwens, The Red Land, pp. 178 182. See also W. Z.Wendrich, R. S. Tomber, S. E. Sidebotham, J. A. Harrell, R. T. J. Cappers, and R. S. Bagnall,Berenike Crossroads: The Integration of Information, Journal of the Economic and SocialHistory of the Orient 46, no. 1 (2003): 5962. See also Sidebotham and Wendrichs six-volume edited series Berenike(Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Publications,2007; Leiden: CNWS Special Series, 1995, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2001).

109K. P. Shajan, P. J. Cherian, R. Tomber, and V. Selvakumar, The External Con-nections of Early Historic Pattanam, India: The Ceramic Evidence,Antiquity82, no. 315(2008), Project Gallery, http://antiquity.ac.uk/projgall/tomber/index.html (last viewed 20December 2010).See also P. J. Cherian, G. V. R. Prasad, K. Dutta, D. K. Ray, V. Selvaku-mar, and K. P. Shajan, Chronology of Pattanam: A Multicultural Port Site on the MalabarCoast, Current Science97, no. 2(2009): 236 240. A. S. Gaur, Sundaresh, and S. Triparti,Evidence for Indo-Roman Trade from Bet Dwarka Waters, West Coast of India, Interna-tional Journal of Nautical Archaeology35, no. 1(2006): 120.

110 Exceptions to this include yellow peridot and the mineral realgar used for paint pig-ment and medicine. See Wendrich et al., Berenike Crossroads, pp. 5356.

111 Periplus, 16. See also D. Whitehouse, Epilogue: Roman Trade in Perspective, inBegley and De Puma, Rome and India, p. 216.

112 P ipl


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mite Africa, and Barigaza and Limurika in India, operated as the oceanoutlet for an interior commercial center in Arabia, namely Saphar.

Underlining the importance of the Arabian peninsular in the first

century is the timing of Romes attempted military conquest of Ara-bia25/24b.c.e.in the post-Actium decade, after the Egyptian cam-paigns had created an opportunity for Rome to become directly com-mercially active in the Indian Ocean. Augustuss impulse, it appears,was to establish a firm hold on the Red Sea commercial bottleneckby conquering its African and Arabian shores. As Strabo relates, eco-nomic considerations were of utmost importance:

The expedition of the Romans against the Arabians, under the com-mand of Aelius Gallus, has given us much information about theregion. Augustus Caesar sent this general to investigate these placesand their inhabitants, as well as those of Ethiopia . . . . It was his [Gal-luss] intention either to make peace with or conquer the Arabians. Hewas also influenced by the very longstanding reputation that they werevery wealthy, and exchanged their aromatics and precious stones forsilver and gold, but never spent with foreigners any part of what theyreceived in exchange. He hoped to gain either opulent friends, or toovercome opulent enemies.113

Strabo is here pointing to a large Arabian trade surplus with Rome inthe lucrative and sizeable114incense market important for Roman reli-gious and funerary practices (which Pliny characteristically describedas the luxuriaof the dead enriching Arabia).115Far from destroying theSouth Arabian economy, Romes large-scale entry into the alreadylong-established Indian Ocean trade route led to an economic expan-sion in South Arabia.116 This is consistent with the picture Straboprovides of a massive expansion in Red Sea trade in the post-Actiumperiod.117Coupled with this commercial expansion was (albeit unsuc-

cessful) military action. Although Aden was probably not destroyed

113 Strabo, Geography, XVI:4:22. For details of the expedition see G. W. Bowersock,Roman Arabia(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 47ff.

114 Young, Romes Eastern Trade, p. 17.115 Pliny, Natural Histories, 12:41. See also Young, Romes Eastern Trade, pp. 1617.

Contra Pliny, Young correctly argues that incense should not be considered a luxury item,as it was not prohibitively expensive in small quantities to many Romans, who would haveconsidered it a necessity for religious observance.

116 G. F. Hourani, Did Roman Commercial Competition Ruin South Arabia?Journalof Near Eastern Studies11, no. 4(1952): 291295.

117 St b G ph II


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by the Romans, as the Peripluspuzzlingly asserts it was,118campaignsagainst Arabia Felix, the Nabataeans, and others further south after31b.c.e.have been accurately described as blatant Roman economic

imperialism.119

Indeed, Steven Sidebotham has gone as far as to saythat these expansionist tendencies were the subject of enthusiasticdiscussion among the Augustan literati(as evinced by Virgil, Horace,Propertius, and Tibullus), who saw imperial expansion over not onlythe lucrative Red Sea trade route but also over India as a logical nextstep. Their enthusiastic statements of Roman claims to India, Sidebo-tham suggests, were not mere flattery, but possibly reflections of mili-tary discussions within the governing circles of Rome.120

Nonetheless, these plans proved illusory. Rome could not forcibly

reposition itself as the preeminent Indian Ocean power as Horacedreamed, indeed it could not even secure neighboring Arabia in thehope (which in the event was frustrated) of capturing the incense tradeat its source.121Even the African ports closest to Romes new Egyptianterritories, such as Adulis, proved to be too difficult for Rome to controleasily. Adulis was linked to the African Axumite exchange network,122to the South Arabian trading zone, and (at least at the elite level) tothe Greek cultural world.123 Like Arabia, it remained outside of thedomain of Roman rule, despite several military attempts to consolidate

Roman control over the African Red Sea coast. As the port city of thelucrative African ivory trade that had coalesced around Axum, and acrucial Indian Ocean gateway to Lower Egypt, Adulis represented amajor prize, which was not won in the Nubian campaigns of CorneliusGallus in 29b.c.e., when Meroe was subdued and made a tributary toRome. It still lay outside of the Roman area when the borders of theempire were refixed at Hierosycaminos in 21b.c.e.124 Ivory, JackePhillips tells us, was an increasingly important commodity and Rome

118 Periplus, 26. On the controversy over this, see Casson, Periplus Maris Erythraei, p.160.

119 Sidebotham, Roman Economic Policy, p. 140.120 Ibid., p. 139.121 A. F. L. Beeston, Some Observations on Greek and Latin Data Relating to South

Arabia, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 42, no. 1(1979): 10.122 K. W. Butzer, Rise and Fall of Axum, Ethiopia: A Geo-Archaeological Interpreta-

tion,American Antiquity46, no. 3(1981): 472473; J. Phillips, Punt and Aksum: Egyptand the Horn of Africa,Journal of African History38, no. 3(1997): 449452.

123 Periplus, 5.124 J. Thorley, The Development of Trade between the Roman Empire and the East

under Augustus, Greece and Rome, 2nd ser., 16, no. 2 (1969): 211; Phillips, Punt andAk


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could not get enough of it.125Yet, as with Arabian incense, Indianspices, or Chinese silk, the trade in African ivory was one that Romecould only tax, not control through direct military or political means,

despite the efforts of Cornelius Gallus.

IV

While Rome was an important terminus for commodities along onearm of the world trade network that spanned across Africa, Arabia,India, and Asia, the story of the classical world economy does notreflect the contention that Rome came to monopolise the western

end of the East-West trade routes, if the term monopolise has anyreference to the ability to regulate the scope, direction, and conditionspertaining to the flow of commodities, or indeed if it refers to an abilityto financially benefit from the extraction of surplus from other regionsvia trade. Rome at no point controlled Indian Ocean trade, even ifits demand for Eastern commodities provided a massive stimulus toit.126 While encouraging the vigorous economic activity throughoutthe Indian Ocean oikumeneby its voracious appetite for Eastern com-modities and its seemingly endless capacity to export precious metals,

these resources were available to Rome only because they had beenwon through conquest or redistributed from its imperial peripher-ies.127Rome was able to continuously service its appetite for Easterncommodities by using the gold and silver spoils of empire that flowedthrough its economy.

Romes trade deficit and lack of control over Eastern trade condi-tions impacted most heavily on the imperial aristocracy, which bothconsumed a disproportionate share of these commodities and were thepredominant source of the capital required for the Eastern trade that

secured them. This trade pulled the imperial aristocracy in two seem-ingly mutually exclusive directions. On the one hand, there was theStoic aversion to Oriental luxuria and a moderate concern over the

125 Phillips, Punt and Aksum, p. 450.126 S. E. Sidebotham, Ports of the Red Sea and the Arabia-India Trade, in Begley and

De Puma, Rome and India, p. 15.127 Consider the salutary effects of Trajans Dacian campaigns on the Roman economy.

See Cassius Dio, Histories, 68:14. See also M. Griffin, Nerva to Hadrian, in The CambridgeAncient History Vol IX: The High Empire(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p.114. John Thorley explicitly links the proceeds of this war to an increase in trade with theK h i Th l R E i d th K h 8 8


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terms of trade. On the other hand, there were the heightened pecuni-ary possibilities that came from expanding investment in trade, as wellas the potential imperial benefits stemming from any future control of

the trade emporia of the Red Sea and beyond. This contradiction foundits resolution in the maintenance of a discursive animosity toward theOrient and the values ostensibly represented by eastern commodities,at the same time as the material processes of imperial expansion andprivate economic endeavor moved inexorably closer to the sources ofthis trade. This explains not only the gendering and regular disavowalsof Eastern commodities in the sources, but also Romes eastern striv-ings in the pre- and post-Actium era. It even explains some of the morebellicose suggestions of Horace and other Augustans that India was a

potential target for Romes future military attentions.This relocation of the Roman economy within the trading networkof the Indian Ocean oikumene problematizes previous modeling ofRoman economics that presume a hermetically sealed Roman econ-omy.128It is also a reminder of the need to abandon Polybiuss rhetori-cal positioning of Roman history as the focal point of the forces of auniversal history.129Polybius was half correct, insofar as he recognizedthat events in Italy and Africa are interwoven with those in Asiaand Greece; however, his attempt to see events converging towards

one end, namely universal Roman hegemony, simply overemphasizedRomes place in the classical world system.130Irrespective of its posi-tion as a Western political and military hegemon, a percentage of thesurplus that Rome had garnered from its Mediterranean empire wasconsistently transferred to Arabia, India, and to a lesser extent Africain the first and second centuries c.e.131This extraction of surplus fromthe Mediterranean world and the depositing of a proportion of it inthe economies of the extra-Roman world was only one strand in anIndian Ocean exchange network that provided Rome with not only

slightly tastier food and silky clothes, but also an impetus and object forimperial action, and a handsome return on the investments of Tacitussusurious senators.

128 See Hopkins, Taxes and Trade in the Roman Empire, and Geraghty, Impact ofGlobalization in the Roman Empire.

129 W. Schmitthenner, Rome and India: Aspects of Universal History during the Prin-cipate,Journal of Roman Studies69(1979).

130 Polybius I:3cited in Schmitthenner, Rome and India, p. 90.131 Salles acutely points out that examples such as the Phoenicians demonstrate that

geopolitical power and economic preponderance were not necessarily interrelated. SeeS ll R i R d I di


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