This collection of papers represents the first of several publications emanating from the late Simon Keay and Pascual Arnaud's Roman Mediterranean Ports Project. The project's stated purpose is to apply suites of existing techniques in archaeology, ancient history, and geoarchaeological studies to a range of selected ports to override deficiencies in datasets and to reveal similarities and differences between sites. To do this, the project pursues the study of a selection of early Imperial ports intended to be as representative as possible of the full range of known sites. The project addresses four issues that relate to the character and interconnectedness of Roman ports. The first focuses on the layout of Roman ports, how far they represented a technological advance over those that had existed previously, and the extent to which their topographies and planning enhanced their ability to handle increased commercial traffic and industrial activity. The second explores the organization of port-based commercial activity and the extent to which it was the result of state, city, or private initiatives, or some combination of the three. The third examines hierarchical relationships between Rome, the entrepôts, and the lesser ports and anchorages. The fourth looks at pan-Mediterranean inter-port commercial connections and the degree to which they can be understood in terms of networks between individuals, ports, and cities. This book attempts to address these questions from the perspective of Latin and Greek epigraphy.

In the interest of space, I draw from the summary of contributions (19–22). In Chapter 2, “Inscriptions and port societies,” Arnaud and Keay introduce some of the interpretative issues that arise when dealing with the epigraphic evidence from Mediterranean ports. This is followed by a series of chapters that address aspects of the ways in which port societies were organized. In Chapter 3, “Stationes and associations of merchants at Puteoli and Delos,” Dirk Steuernagel focuses on similarities and differences between associations of traders from Berytus and Tyre at Republican Delos and the statio of the association of Tyrian merchants at early Imperial Puteoli. In Chapter 4, “Boatmen and their corpora in the great ports of the Roman west (second to third centuries AD),” Nicolas Tran addresses the sociology and scope of Roman collegia of boatmen at harbors such as Ostia/Portus, Hispalis, and Arles. In Chapter 5, “Roman port societies and their collegia,” Dorothea Rohde uses a comparison with Ephesus to show that our vision of the overwhelming role and presence of the collegia has been biased by the case of Ostia, with its exceptionally large number of inscriptions. In Chapter 6, “Port occupations and social hierarchies,” Hélène Rougier places port occupations in their epigraphic contexts and uses the imbalance between occupations recorded at six different port cities as evidence for the variability of social hierarchies as well as port hierarchies. In Chapter 7, “Warehouse societies,” Catherine Virlouvet analyzes the epigraphic evidence for the people who worked in warehouses from the perspective of their professional, social, and hierarchical relationships and the interdependence between them. In Chapter 8, “The Imperial cult and the sacred bonds of Roman overseas commerce,” Taco Terpstra stresses the importance of the Imperial cult as a common feature of trade and its procedures within the limits of the Empire and beyond. In Chapter 9, “Law and life in Roman harbours,” Jean-Jacques Aubert starts by exploring the juristic implications of the well-known inscription invoking the Lex Rhodia on jettison, before moving on to consider some of the epigraphic evidence for individuals involved in shipping and harbor-related activities.

The remaining chapters focus on ports with distinct epigraphic signatures. In Chapter 10, “Living like a cosmopolitan?” Sabine Panzram studies the relationship between port societies and municipal elites at a number of ports with contrasting origins along the coasts of Hispania Tarraconensis and Baetica. In Chapter 11, “Ports, trade and supply routes in western Europe,” Michel Christol sheds light on the development of Narbonne as a major center of trade in the Roman West. In Chapter 12, “The port society of Narona,” Marc Meyer outlines the importance of Narona as a port city along the Dalmatian coast. In Chapter 13, “Municipal authority, central authority and euergetists at work at the port,” Arnaud illustrates through the case study of Ephesus the complex interplay between civic administration, Imperial administration, euergetists, and private investors in harbor management and maintenance.

The book concludes by focusing on social connections between ports and the roles of some of the principal actors involved. In Chapter 14, “The structure of mercantile communities in the Roman world,” Koenraad Verboven challenges the view, mostly based on evidence from Ostia and Portus, that mercantile associations played an essential role in shaping open trade markets. In Chapter 15, “Polysemy, epigraphic habit and social legibility of maritime shippers,” Arnaud reviews the epigraphic evidence for shippers from throughout the Roman Mediterranean. The issues that arise from all these studies are drawn together in the concluding Chapter 16 by Nicholas Purcell, “Reading Roman port societies.” He looks at the characteristics of port societies in the broader social context of the Roman Empire, including the public nature of surviving inscriptions from port sites, efforts by merchants to display conformity to the broader social and administrative systems, and the importance of state involvement in commercial activities.

As these summaries indicate, the contributions are wide-ranging and profound. The editors tried to contain the range of discussion by imposing ground rules. For example, the contributors were tasked with defining and delineating port society exclusively through the lens of epigraphic documents. Despite this prohibition, several of the contributions rely heavily on literary information. Contributors were also discouraged from focusing on non-monumental inscriptions, such as amphora stamps, stopper seals, tituli picti, or other scripta commercii. Here again, the contributors resort repeatedly to materials such as bankers’ tablets, tituli picti from Monte Testaccio, and amphora distribution patterns. In addition, the editors proposed restricting discussion exclusively to ports in the western Mediterranean, except apparently for those ports in the eastern Mediterranean, such as Ephesus and Delos, where the wealth of epigraphic material was simply too rich to ignore. So again, while much of the discussion focuses on less well-known ports in the western basin, the evidence from Ostia and Ephesus is over-represented. A further limitation, which both the editors and Purcell acknowledge, is that the epigraphic record at ports fails to capture the true scale of port activities performed by a much broader collective of workers, mostly slaves and freedmen, who toiled but could hardly afford or bother to record themselves in this manner. We end up with a very fragmented, imperfect reconstruction of port society, a slice of society set somewhere in the middle, but a slice that was at least consistent throughout the length and breadth of the Roman Mediterranean. The book's purposeful restriction of focus to ports that generated epigraphical records does hold the advantage of evaluating a uniform, if muted, pan-Mediterranean cross section of port societies, largely due to the consistency and redundancy with which this particular form of documentation was employed. As Purcell notes, all Roman epigraphy was public epigraphy, and as such it services as a formalized gradient of cultural attributes, the value of which was iterated by those professionals who were sufficiently successful to record their publicized acts on stone and bronze. Having acknowledged these limitations, the contributions are highly instructive, if cautionary, and generate a number of conclusions worthy of comment. Main themes include the hierarchy of port society, the social status of merchants and shippers, the manner(s) in which port professionals organized themselves, and the mechanisms they employed to create the logistical infrastructure and the bona fides necessary to go about their business. This last topic focuses particularly on the issue of “truth-signaling,” which I also treated in my 1993 study.Footnote ¹

From the perspective of port hierarchy, the main take away is that much like forests and mines, the waterways of the Mediterranean belonged to the emperor. Local communities were expected to maintain and to improve their harbors, but the guiding hand of the Imperial administration was always within reach. Not only did Imperial authorities dominate the Portus at Ostia, but governors also intervened to police the docks at Ephesus, while a procurator ad ripens Baetis prohibited landowners from constructing berms or structures that might interfere with ferrying and river hauling on the Baetis River in Hispania. As Tran notes (Ch. 4), good navigational conditions on flumina publica presupposed commercial access to river banks. Arnaud (Ch. 15) demonstrates that private harbors and roadsteads maintained by landed proprietors in the vicinity of Ephesus were likewise recorded by the census as taxable sources of income and, as such, monitored by the state. The classic example of Imperial oversight is displayed by the edict of the Roman governor, L. Antonius Albus of Asia during the reign of Antoninus Pius (IEph 23), prohibiting the sawing of stone and storage of timber on the piles of the harbor at Ephesus. Although the governor's language was quite considerate of the efforts made by the Ephesian grammateus tou demou, to whom he had originally entrusted the task, when that local magistrate failed to control the situation, the governor intervened to enforce the order with the authority he wielded as “the repressive power of the state” (298). The hierarchical relationship between a city and its port remained, nonetheless, implicit. Arnaud discusses the function of various local magistrates, such as limenarchai, and concludes that these offices were more or less compulsory and furnished minimal luster to the local cursus honorum. In addition, records of municipal maintenance and improvement of port facilities at Ephesus reveal a carefully observed protocol of euergetism with respect to the manner and the amounts of funding that could be raised. The evidence indicates that harbor works were funded through a mixture of public funding, individual contributions, and compulsory offices, as with other public works. The emperors naturally assumed the lead in philanthropic gestures, thus demonstrating their eunoia toward individual communities by funding the costs of harbor dredging and construction. Roman governors were free to make lesser contributions, but they were wise not to exceed what was deemed appropriate to their rank. In one instance, Arnaud suggests (310) that the governor, Barea Soranus, was indicted and ultimately forced to commit suicide by Nero for usurping the Imperial prerogative of harbor dredging at Ephesus. In the same vein, local dignitaries could be sued by their peers for engaging in excessively lavish contributions; in essence, for attempting to outshine their contemporaries. At a lower level, ordinary citizens engaged in public subscriptions to improve harbor facilities. For example, albums of citizen subscribers, such as the fishmongers at Ephesus (IEph 20), pooled together resources (including cash amounts as little as five denarii and contributions in kind) to build the custom house for fishery tolls. Scaled ranges of contributions enabled donors to support public works approved by the municipality in amounts that were appropriate to their social status, short of violating the moral order of euergetism. With respect to the uniqueness of harbors as legal entities, Aubert (Ch. 9) scoured the discussion in legal sources to conclude that despite their obvious importance, harbors were attributed no distinct legal status. Rather, they were considered sensitive areas for security and fiscal reasons and served as signposts in commercial contracts. For example, harbors constituted the turning point at which the allowance of risk in a maritime loan passed from creditor to debtor, as well as the point at which the high rate of interest started and stopped running.

With respect to the social status of professionals in port societies, this was something of a mixed bag and depended very much on where one looks. In general, merchants appear in the epigraphical records as a middling element, wealthy perhaps, but typically of slave origin and, therefore, treated as outsiders. At cities such as Nemausus (Nîmes) and Lugdunum (Lyon) in Gaul, they were kept at a distance by local elites. Although permitted to perform services as seviri Augustales and quinquennales perpetui, they never made their way into the decurial order (Rougier, Ch. 6). Negotiatores stood on somewhat higher ground, particularly those engaged, not surprisingly, in the burgeoning Gallic wine trade. Some successful merchants rose to prominence as patrons of the various professional corpora, but even here their role was surpassed by local dignitaries, government officials, and Roman senators. At the Imperial port of Ostia, members of the various professional associations (the corpus lenunculariorum tabulariorum auxiliariorum, the corpus codicariorum naviculariorum Ostiensium, and the collegia of the navicularii, the dendrophori, and the fabri tignuarii, to name those discussed) appear to have dominated the place, but they did so as active agents of the praefectus annonae, which is how they came to enjoy such exaggerated status. Comparing three port cities in Hispania, Panzram (Ch. 10) demonstrates that Tarraco was a highly international community with important connections to Rome. The community boasted thirteen knights and seven senators, and was relatively open to resident foreign traders, allowing them to hold municipal offices and to rise to ranks of duumviri, flamines provinciae, and seviri Augustales. Nova Carthago, on the other hand, was dominated by descendants of Italian colonials and influential Italian negotiatores closely connected to the Imperial family. As Panzram observes (233), “this dominance was not propitious for the emergence of an urban society, the members of which are almost undetectable within the ‘epigraphic habit’.” Meanwhile, situated at the entrance to the Baetis River, Gades controlled the flow of olive oil that was integral to the annona as well as the metals trade. Yet, despite the city's role as the capital of the conventus, no Gaditanian is known to have held the office of flamen provinciae. In fact, known municipal and provincial magistrates are recorded in such low numbers at Gades that it is impossible to gain even a rudimentary insight into local port society. Similar patterns emerge at Narbo (Ch. 11) and Narona (Ch. 12), where examples dominated by Italian émigrés who patronized the commercial associations but stood above and apart, stand out. In most instances, recognition as seviri Augustales represented a glass ceiling for merchants and shippers in western Mediterranean ports. Arnaud's exhaustive study (Ch. 15) of the record of the variant forms of the term naukleros indicates (as far as the epigraphical record is concerned) that only four naukleroi served as members of the boule or as munerarii, and that none is known to have held a magistracy. He suggests further that naukleroi possibly enjoyed greater status at medium-sized ports, where they stood at the heart of the shipping establishment, but far less visibility in large ports, where their role was submerged beneath those of more illustrious, well-heeled investors.

This brings us to the role of professional organizations, the collegia, corpora, and oikoi, at Roman ports from which most of the epigraphical data arises. From Republican times to the fourth century AD, dedications by associations, such as the Herakliastai of Tyre, the Poseidoniastai of Berytus, the magistri mercuriales at Narona, the corpus naviculariorum at Ephesus, and various others, dominated the epigraphical landscape of Roman ports. For the most part, these associations exude the aura of religious associations, with merchants and shippers joining together momentarily (or perhaps seasonally) to venerate their deities, to hold festivals, and to honor patrons, local dignitaries, and/or Roman magistrates. Their omnipresence at Roman ports hints at an underlying commercial impetus, yet the religious character of their dedications seemingly belies such a function. Virlouvet (Ch. 7) demonstrates that while the importance of these associations was immense at a pivotal entrepôt like Ostia, they were all but invisible at Ephesus. Arnaud (Ch. 15) and Verboven (Ch. 14) observe that the recorded magistri that presumably directed these groups were more likely co-opted than elected. Otherwise, as Verboven notes, the recorded rosters of the magistri of the Italian religious associations of the Hermaistai, Apolloniastai, and Poseidoniastai at Delos would have been dominated by ingenui rather than by liberti. Several contributors, meanwhile, discuss the presumed professional significance of the celebrated Piazzale delle Corporazioni at Ostia, with an eye toward assigning it a concomitant commercial function. However, as Purcell (Ch. 16) cautions, the Piazzale was first and foremost a place of amoenitas. At best, the unidentified temple at its center possibly functioned as an Augusteum and, hence, as the cult center of the Ostian seviri Augustales. Otherwise (441), “we have… absolutely no idea of what happened there.” In short, the likely commercial function and purpose of Roman port associations remains frustratingly enigmatic.

Several contributors try to penetrate this fog by fastening onto subtle, if revealing, attributes. At Ostia, for example, Tran (Ch. 4) demonstrates that the dedications made by the five Ostian corpora hint at some remarkable privileges. The corpus codicariorum naviculariorum Ostiensium, for example, obtained from Roman officials not only the privilege of ius coeundi, but also that of ius navigandi on the Tiber. This implies that the conduct of the burgeoning barge traffic between Portus and the city of Rome was reserved exclusively for members of these groups. If true, then membership in such a corpus determined access to a significant professional activity. By regulating the job market in this manner, these professional organizations at least in one respect exhibited a rudimentary criterion of a professional guild. Tran (Ch. 4) and Verboven (Ch. 14) both rely on New Institutional Economics to delve deeper into the role and structure of these groups. Drawing on recent studies of medieval and early modern guilds, Verboven evaluates the likely authority of Roman merchant associations over their members according to five degrees of “control delegation”: individual agency, informal constraints, political representation, internal discipline, and the power of exclusion. Looking at the record of merchant associations at Delos, Puteoli, and Ganuenta, he assesses their patterns of behavior according to two opposing models of cooperation: one based on collectivist values enforced through informal private-order institutions; the other on individualist values enforced through formal public-order institutions. Rather than fitting one model exclusively, he suggests (333) that Roman-era commercial associations operated on a sliding scale between these two extremes. For example, he characterizes the Herakliastai of Tyre and the Poseidoniastai of Berytus at 2nd-c.-BCE Delos as closed institutions. Membership was costly but prestigious, it offered access to valuable club goods in the form of storage and hotel facilities and to meeting places, and it also provided external representation as a collective, protection of common interests, and private dispute settlements and enforcement. Members of these associations likely enrolled their youth in the local gymnasium and abided by the legal decisions of the Athenian magistrates who presided over the island. While Verboven concedes that the Early Imperial Tyrian stationes at Rome and Puteoli were similarly organized, he argues that they exhibited attributes of open-access institutions. Tyrian merchants at these places engaged in commercial contracts with outside parties and in times of dispute relied on the mediating authority of Roman law. This suggests that while Phoenician cities actively encouraged their merchants to establish stations abroad and retained some measure of moral authority over them, the Tyrian stations of the Imperial era were far more inclined to support individual business strategies based on voluntary social networks that transcended geographical and cultural barriers. The merchant associations that frequented the cult center for the goddess Nehalennia at Ganuenta, meanwhile, were very much open access and attracted merchants from highly diverse geographical backgrounds, precluding the existence of a dominant merchant guild. Verboven concludes that Roman long-distance trade overall relied on relatively efficient open-access institutions and open markets, due to the effectiveness of Roman law. Rather than rely on closed, internally organized forms of control, Roman trading associations rigorously followed the formalities otherwise evident in legal textbooks, thus demonstrating that Roman law provided the dominant institutional framework with which to govern business transactions. In a similar manner, Tran (Ch. 4) employs the evidence furnished by two surviving albums of corporati at Ostia (AE 1955, 184 and CIL XIV, 250), one dated to 152 CE and the other to 192, to show how seemingly closed, internally organized associations remained highly accessible to outsiders. With their surviving records of dozens of names, these two lists demonstrate the disappearance of some families and their replacement by others. Despite the apparently exclusive rights of association members to harbor and river navigation at Ostia, the growth of port activity seems to have enabled outsiders to join these organizations and to replenish and expand their ranks. Had they been closed institutions, the number of family names should not have increased so significantly.

One commercial venue where the complexity of harbor work is most fully illuminated is the Roman horreum (warehouse). In addition to Imperial horrea, Virlouvet (Ch. 7) demonstrates that several originally private warehouses, such as the horrae Lolliana, Sulpiciana, Agrippiana, Barbatiana, and Bassiana, were established in Rome and Puteoli by families closely aligned to the Imperial household. Virlouvet furnishes a detailed analysis of the epigraphical data for these complexes to demonstrate the engagement of a stratified community of professionals. The numerous terms for warehouse operators, such as horrearii, conductores, subcontracting conductores, and vilici, demonstrate the complexity of the hierarchy. Recorded laborers include measurers, porters, cleaners, administrative staff, guards, and others. Responsibility in a warehouse was sometimes distributed among several horrearii or vilici. Even in the Imperial horrea, the evidence indicates there were subcontractors and sublessees, professionals, and laborers who operated independently of the Imperial family. The various supervisors managed rental agreements for the storage units within the building, making sure they were renewed and the rent was collected. They were likewise responsible for the accuracy of the registers that recorded goods entering and leaving the establishment. They had to ensure that stored goods were kept safe and, thus, directed the activities of custodia (guards). In addition, they regularly provided sideline services on request. For example, at the horrea Barbatiana in Puteoli, a client asked one horrearius to measure the quantity of grain deposited by a third party in his storeroom as security for a loan. In other words, the client needed to make sure that the borrower had deposited the agreed-upon amount. This demonstrates not only that a subcontractor could rent space in a giant warehouse for his own purposes, but also that he could utilize the services of its staff as warranted. Even more enlightening is the inference that the reckoning of warehouse professionals was presumed to be definitive and hence legally binding in a court of law. Such obligations assume the existence of numerous mensores (measurers or accountants), bookkeepers, scribes, and archivists, permanently on hand to measure and record foodstuffs. Not only would this have required an accurate accounting of all goods entering and exiting a warehouse, but occasionally measurement and inspection could be demanded while goods rested in situ. This was particularly true of long-term storage of delicate foodstuffs, since these required periodic removal from storerooms and inspection for spoilage while the storerooms themselves were cleaned and swept. Warehouse staff accordingly assumed significant responsibilities while performing multifaceted tasks. Their record-keeping was as crucial to Roman authorities responsible for the frumentaria publica as it was to private customers, all of whom needed to know the state of available foodstuffs at any given time. To underline the importance of mensores, Virlouvet points to the existence of the corpus mensorum frumentariorum Ostiensium at Ostia, whose work was illustrated in the famous mosaic from its schola. To indicate the deleterious effects of working conditions on the dozens of saccarii (porters) and operarii (laborers) who furnished the necessary muscle to move these masses of stored goods about, Virlouvet points to the poor state of skeletal remains recovered at the necropolis at Portus. Yet despite the likely drudgery, the horreum was central to the religious activities and social relationships of its laboring professionals, as demonstrated by the many small shrines found in warehouse remains. Virlouvet successfully reconstructs the workforce of a given port facility from top to bottom and, in the process, a veritable microcosm of port society as a whole.

Another topic where this book breaks fresh ground concerns Terpstra's discussion (Ch. 8) of “truth-signaling,” particularly the reliance by merchants on ritual centers of the Roman Imperial cult to ensure transactions and improve their standing with host communities, both within and beyond the boundaries of the Empire. Terpstra demonstrates that merchants relied on the Imperial cult, and more specifically the locus of the Augusteum, to bind their contracts with oaths, thereby incorporating the Imperial cult into their business dealings to signal honesty. Drawing on recent studies of merchant colonies as diaspora groups, he argues that Roman merchants utilized emperor worship as an elective cult to transcend their local and personal affiliations and engage with other, more loosely connected networks. As foreign visitors typically living in separate enclaves, merchants within the Empire appear to have utilized the Imperial ruler cult not only to demonstrate loyalty to the regime or connect to host communities, but also to bind their commercial agreements. Terpstra elicits testimony from 1st-c.-CE bankers’ tablets at Puteoli to demonstrate that contracting parties at that trading community swore oaths to bind their agreements on the divine power of the deified Augustus. The same evidence demonstrates that the altars of Augustus in the forum of Puteoli functioned as places to initiate litigation and that the litigation itself would occur at the Forum of Augustus in Rome. With respect to diaspora merchant communities beyond the boundaries of the Empire, Terpstra argues that by displaying allegiance to Rome, traders identified themselves as members of a powerful state rather than unaffiliated middlemen, which helped them attain a stronger position relative to their hosts. In non-Roman environments, the Imperial cult served not only as an inter-community connector but as a communal marker of political identity, providing trading groups with a way to emphasize their social autonomy. As his best example, Terpstra cites the erection of a monument dedicated to the Roman emperors at the Parthian city of Vologesias (near Mosul). The monument was donated by a Palmyrene merchant who was himself a longtime resident of the city in the 2nd c. CE. Terpstra argues that the economic utility of the Palmyrene community to the local rulers was the determining factor here, not the shifting diplomatic ties between Parthia and Rome. Similar evidence survives at Coptos, Persepolis, and Muziris. At Coptos, where the remains of a complex suggestive of a Palmyrene statio have been uncovered, someone from Aden made two dedications to the emperor and the domus Augusta in the name of the “Hadrian Palmyrenes sailing the Red Sea.” The group thus represented itself as citizens of a city within the orbit of Imperial power, acting collectively to honor one of their own while also asserting their political and social identities as Palmyrenes. As is evident from the mention of the Red Sea, they conducted business well beyond southern Egypt and were involved in maritime trade with non-Roman lands, such as Arabia and India. At Muziris on the Malabar coast of India, not only does the Peutinger map indicate the existence of a Temple to Augustus, but a papyrus mentions a loan agreement between two Roman traders, one of whom likely resided there. Based on the Palmyrene analogy, Terpstra suggests that the construction of the Imperial cult temple at Muziris was at the initiative of Roman traders, who would have been the building's primary users. Terpstra draws similar attention to the discovery of a bust of Hadrian at Persepolis, where the Peutinger map records the emended label, Persepolis Commercium Persarum. According to this logic, merchant diaspora communities beyond the Empire employed the Imperial cult as a marker of political identity within their host community. These merchants could have built temples to their native deities and thus maintained their distinctiveness. For some reason, however, they preferred professing loyal adherence to the Roman Imperial cult even in these distant places. The best explanation appears to be that emperor worship and its association with formal state power established most forcefully their social autonomy vis-à-vis their hosts.

These are but a few of the topics that are treated in this book. Equally useful are the various contributions that detail the results of recent archaeological investigations at several less well-known ports, such as Hispalis, Gades, Arles, Lugdunum, Narbo Martius, Aquileia, and Narona. The book provides a substantial amount of theory, recent literature, and probing discussion. Despite the sad loss of Simon Keay, we may hope that Pascal Arnaud and his collaborators continue the important work of this highly significant project.