This publication by the Oxford Roman Economy Project, headed by Andrew Wilson and Alan Bowman, unites chapters on the topics of finance, commerce and the trade of goods within and beyond the realms of the Empire, and, more importantly, the impact of the Roman (and the Chinese) state and Roman law on these sectors. Most chapters were presented as papers at a conference in October 2009. Given the publication date of this volume in 2018, almost 10 years after the conference, the contributions by some authors have been superseded by the publication of their own excellent monographs—in the case of Ben Russell, The Economics of the Roman Stone Trade (Reference Russell2013) and of Philip Kay, Rome's Economic Revolution (Reference Kay2014). Other chapters would have profited either from more recent work, such as David Graf's great chapter on the ‘Silk Road’ from Jean-Baptiste Yon's Inscriptions Grecques et Latines de la Syrie (Reference Yon2012); or the chapters by Roberta Tomber or Barbara Davidde from papers by Michael A. Speidel (e.g. Reference Speidel2015, Reference Speidel2016a,Reference Speidel and Mathewb). Whatever the reasons for the delay in publication, the book offers a solid contribution to the field.

The mission statement of this volume is provided by the editors in the ‘Preface’ (p. v) and ‘Introduction’ (pp. 1–24); the focus is on data for the structure and performance of the Roman economy, especially the impact of the state on trade and commerce through legal institutions, through its demand for goods and through taxation. The structural questions raised therefore are: (1) to what degree was there room for a market economy; and (2) did the state impact on patterns of distribution in a positive and/or negative fashion? Given the varying responses to these key questions, a conclusive chapter pulling together and interpreting the results would seem more satisfying than the overview of the volume provided in the introduction.

The 18 contributions are arranged in three parts. Part I on ‘Institutions and the State’ commences with Alan Bowman's ‘The State and the Economy. Fiscality and Taxation’ (pp. 27–52). He revisits direct and indirect taxation by exploring the development and variety of imposts levied by the Roman state and civic communities on people, land and traded goods. He argues that the model of the Roman economy as a ‘low-tax’ economy is outdated, given that significant taxes collected on a local level are mostly excluded from the estimation of tax levels: the burden on the taxpayer in the Roman empire must have been around 20 per cent, rather than the figure of 10 per cent usually provided. In ‘Law, Commerce, and Finance in the Roman Empire’ (pp. 53–115), Boudewijn Sirks grapples with the absence of a bespoke commercial law from the Corpus Iuris and provides an comprehensive overview of various legal institutions which governed trade, such as regulations concerning commercial interactions between citizens and peregrines, obligations (sale, hire, mandate, contract), or investment into agricultural or commercial activities. More importantly, Sirks stresses the reciprocal stimulation between commercial expansion and evolving financial practices (credit, farming out taxes) and changing legal institutions. Elio Lo Cascio (‘Market Regulation and Transaction Costs in the Roman Empire’, pp. 117–32) takes the argument further by maintaining that the Roman state intervened in markets in order to ensure a fair price, i.e. the ‘market price’.Footnote ¹ The credit crunch of the 80s bc is the topic of Philipp Kay's chapter ‘Financial Institutions and Structures in the Last Century of the Roman Republic’ (pp. 133–74); the author offers a convincing interpretation of the literary evidence in support of his argument that the perfect storm of the Social War and the Mithridatic War led to the collapse of deposit banks in Rome (see now Kay Reference Kay2014, 235–65). Rather than looking at the empire as a whole, Colin Adams takes a closer look at the papyrological evidence for ‘Nile River Transport under the Romans’ (pp. 175–208), especially the texts on state and private transport of grain on the Nile, outlining clearly the structures underpinning such enterprises.

Part II convenes eight chapters under the heading ‘Trade within the Empire’ which look at different wares and their distribution. William Harris offers up his notes on the economy of wood (‘The Indispensable Commodity’, pp. 211–36), i.e. the demand for wood as fuel or long timber, and its trade. Ben Russell addresses the distribution patterns of marble and stone in the West and the impact of the Roman state in ‘Stone Use and the Economy’ (pp. 237–63). Danièle Foy (‘An Overview of the Circulation of Glass in Antiquity’, pp. 265–99) analyses the dissemination of raw glass (arriving from Syria or Egypt at secondary glass-blowing sites in the West), issues of recycling, the trade of finished glass objects, the use of stamped glass vessels for the long-distance trade of aromatics and medicines and of unguents produced by/for the state. The import of sigillata from La Graufesenque, Lezoux, Rheinzabern and Trier to sites in Roman Britain and the study of their stamps (by Brian Hartley) provides Michael Fulford with sufficient data to propose a significant involvement of the Roman state in their dissemination (‘Procurators’ Business? Gallo-Roman Sigillata in Britain in the Second and Third Centuries AD’, pp. 301–25). Michel Bonifay studies the production and transport of ‘African’ pottery, including amphorae and African red slip ware (‘The Distribution of African Pottery under the Roman Empire’, pp. 327–51); his interpretation of the emerging patterns follows the economic framework established by David Mattingly and others. Paul Reynolds also undertakes a close study of the ceramic sequences at Beirut, Athens and Butrint and manages to trace an increasing disintegration of the empire-wide economy since the Severan period as fewer amphorae from the West reach the Greek East (‘The Supply Networks of the Roman East and West’, pp. 353–95). The chapter by Ivan Radman-Livaja offers an interesting analysis of lead tags found at Siscia, which provide a novel insight into the prices of garments and the costs of textile treatment (pp. 397–426). Finally, Emanuele Papi demolishes the influential concept of the cercle du Détroit by Miguel Tarradell, who argued that Mauretania Tingitana was basically a backwater to southern Spain in terms of goods imported from the Mediterranean; the material evidence from Thamusida suggests otherwise (‘Exports and Imports in Mauretania Tingitana’, pp. 427–40).

Part III is devoted to the theme of ‘Trade beyond the Empire’ and the excellent chapter of David Graf (‘The Silk Road between Syria and China’, pp. 443-–529) provides a comprehensive treatise of the available literary and epigraphic evidence, not only from the Roman empire, but also offers an important overview of the Chinese literary sources and the epigraphic material from along the major east–west trade routes of silk. This extensive and significant chapter is complemented by Roberta Tomber's study of ‘Egypt and Eastern Commerce during the Second Century AD and Later’ (pp. 531–55) in which she discusses the trade network ranging from transport routes through the Eastern Desert to the harbours on the Red Sea and Indian coast. Dario Nappo takes a closer look at the flow of coinage to India, interpreting the Greek term marsíppion encountered in the ostraka from Berenike (on the Red Sea coast of Egypt) as sealed bags of coins provided to merchants to trade in India (‘Money and Flows of Coinage in the Red Sea Trade’, pp. 557–78). Barbara Davidde argues that the finds of Roman amphorae (Dressel 2–4) at the Yemenite port of Qana’/Gk. Kanē (mod. B'ir ‘Alī) are indicative for its role as an anchorage and exchange point in the trade between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean (pp. 579–97). Andrew Wilson concludes this third part with a chapter on ‘Trade across Rome's Southern Frontier’ (pp. 599–624); based on the data generated by archaeological surveys and excavation in southern Libya conducted in the late 1990s until 2011, he argues against the traditional notion of trans-Saharan trade commencing only after the Islamic conquest by making the case for the trade of slaves, carnelian and other goods (cotton, salt, natrum, grain, dates) being traded by the Garamantes. The heyday of trade to and across the Sahara appears to fall in the first and second centuries ad, with a decline due to a deterioration of security in the fourth and fifth centuries ad. An index of names and concepts is a welcome addition to this edition of collected papers.