The last two decades have witnessed an increasing volume of literature on ancient economic studies, focusing in particular on material culture. One issue concerns the long-standing debate about why no merchant class emerged in antiquity as it later did in the medieval period. Did the Romans avoid trading activities, by choosing instead to pursue a simpler and safer agricultural life and opting, so to speak, for a subsistence economy? As a consequence of this debate a new literature began to emerge that challenged established views on Roman economic behaviour. More studies, however, are needed to understand the human factor acting as decision maker shaping economic life. Therefore, a book of this kind was a desideratum, questioning not only one concept (frugality) in Roman history, but also the Roman mentality that determined economic behaviour reflected in production, consumption and distribution. Thus, the book makes a timely contribution to our understanding of ancient economic thought.
The book begins with a long introduction where Gildenhard and Viglietti present a comprehensive overview of the frugality concept with reference to the chapters included in the book. The book offers a historical and genealogical approach in M. Foucault's sense. The aim of the volume is, thus, to identify which factors played a role in the workings of Roman notions and practices of moderation. Handling the Roman frugality ethos is not an easy task. It has long been promoted especially in the literary records of late republican and early imperial Rome that the Romans lived in simple self-sufficiency throughout the first five or six centuries of their city's history. Hence, it is worth asking whether Roman frugality ever existed or whether it was a discursive construct. The book reconsiders the place and functions of ‘the morality of needs and wants’, including Latin terms and discourses from the archaic period to early imperial times and beyond (p. 7).
Beginning with the archaic period, Chapter 1 interrogates the extent to which the Roman frugality ethos was valid for the Roman elite. The results of a study of archaic burials show that there was a practice of conspicuous consumption, which casts doubt on the narrative of the ancient moralists who stated that the archaic Romans avoided the use of wealth for their self-promotion. Around 600 bc aristocratic conspicuous consumption shifted from funerary settings to housing, as Viglietti indicates, from the dead to the living. The introduction of the census played an important role in this shift. The census defined rank and standing in Roman society, and so assigned political influence and power to the richest citizens. In the last section, ‘Frugality of the Have-Nots: a Remedy Against Poverty’, Viglietti tries to detect frugal habits in the poorer sections of Roman society. Viglietti questions the subsistence level of the addictus, examining the productive capacity of the two/three-iugera system and its implications for the subsistence economy. Taking ancient and modern evidence, such as the Samburu livestock herders of Northern Kenya, into account, Viglietti suggests that calorie requirements were lower in archaic Rome (perhaps c. 1000/1200 kcal/day) than today (2000 kcal/day). One wonders whether there is any osteoarchaeological evidence that could provide the level of ancient dietary and calorie intake. Viglietti clarifies by his possible model of a two-iugera field in a system of crop rotation, which made it possible for a nuclear family to reach subsistence level. A two to three and a quarter iugera plot was assigned to the poorer citizens or colonists between the sixth and fourth centuries bc. Why does this difference in iugera occur (two iugera in Velitrae while two and a half iugera in Satricum)? This plot is less than one hectare. For example, the land assignment, çift, in the Ottoman Empire, as another pre-industrial state that ruled in the eastern Mediterranean, allocated to the villagers ranged between 6–15 hectares (Ö.L. Barkan, XV. ve XVI. Asırlarda Osmanlı İmparatorluğunda Zirai Ekonominin Hukuki ve Mali Esasları I, Kanunlar [1943], pp. 2, 8, 25, 66, 47, 131). The term çift was defined exactly the same as Pliny mentions: ‘an area of land that one yoke of oxen could plough in a day used to be called an acre’ (Nat. Hist. 18.3, trans. H. Rackham [1950]). The çift given to the villager changed from one place to another according to the fertility of the land. The six-hectare-land assignment indicated fertile soil while the fifteen-hectare-plot indicated barren soil. It is worth asking whether such considerations ever existed in archaic Rome or later periods. How did the Romans guarantee the fairness of the land allocation to the villagers? Finally, Viglietti highlights the fact that frugal modes in resource management appeared and disappeared in response to demographic and socio-political changes. Frugality, thus, was not a choice for the Roman rural and poorer communities, but a necessity.
Chapter 2 examines both the origins and the character of the Licinian and the Gracchan law and evaluates their implications for the Roman frugality ethos. After a meticulous examination with regard to the juridical, political and economic issues about the Gracchan agrarian law of 133 bc, J. Rich establishes that it was an older law that limited the amount of land a man might hold to 500 iugera. Rich proposes that the oligarchic elite's preventing individual members from gathering excessive material resources was one of the main reasons for the ‘ethos of frugality’ in mid-republican Rome.
Chapter 3 demonstrates how Cato the Elder employed individual and collective self-restraint as a strategic component in a new political language. Accumulation of wealth and land after the Punic Wars changed the political environment. Consequently, Rome's ruling elite started to build aspects of the frugal and disciplined farmer-soldier to gain the support of voters and collectively justify their leading position in the community. Therefore, they created new tools to make their ‘capital’ more competitive (p. 43). Cato the Elder, who hailed from an agrarian plebeian family and was thus a new man, homo nouus, in Rome, was not the first person to promote frugality, but he is the one who introduced novel modes of aristocratic self-promotion in accordance with the political circumstances of his time. Moreover, L. Passet's specific analysis of P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus shows how Aemilianus positions himself in some respects with Cato's persona. Particularly noteworthy is Passet's exploration of the tomb of the Scipios (pp. 206–10), which reveals how the frugal image became part of a family strategy for social and political recognition.
Chapter 4 discusses the transformation of landholding between 133–120 bc. In this chapter M. Balbo pays attention to the frugal ideals arising from the Gracchan reforms and the role of smallholdings, which were subjected to significant changes especially after the Second Punic War. Balbo evaluates the emergence of large market-oriented estates and its consequences, for example the increase in the price of land and the number of slaves. In Balbo's chapter one can observe economic rationality of the actions taken by the ruling elite, as distinct from the context of the struggle for wealth-power between them. It seems the reformers aimed to feed a larger population and sought to increase the number of assidui available for military recruitment. This is very similar to the economic attitude of ‘provisionalism’, coined by M. Genç for the Classical Ottoman economy (‘State and the Economy in the Age of Reforms: Continuity and Change’, in K.H. Karpat [ed.], Ottoman Past and Today's Turkey [2000], pp. 180–8). The Ottomans aimed to prevent the collapse of the timar system (a landholding system similar to the farmer-soldier model, also similar to the Byzantine pronoia system) through tax and measures (e.g. çift bozan tax). The provisionist attitude linked with economic rationality can also be seen in the case of Domitian's vine edict of ad 92.
Chapter 5 provides a detailed analysis of Roman frugality from the early Republican period (500 s bc) to the Imperial period (ad 100 s). Taking G.B. Conte's overview into consideration, Gildenhard clearly shows an alleged semantic evolution of frugalitas in four stages (pp. 240–2). Gildenhard finds that the noun frugalitas is not attested before the first century bc while the adjective frugi can be found from the third century bc onwards. There is no evidence, however, showing that the Roman elite promoted frugalitas as one of its virtues before the second half of the second century bc, until L. Calpurnius Piso Frugi. Gildenhard explains how Piso's use of frugi as agnomen and virtue inspired Cicero and others later. Gildenhard carefully defines when and how Cicero used this as a noun through his works in the context of changing socio-political and cultural milieu. Moving to the early Principate, Gildenhard looks at the works of Horace, Valerius Maximus, Seneca the Elder, Petronius, Seneca the Younger, Quintilian and Pliny the Younger and their use of *frug- terms. Gildenhard finds that they employed the terms to take position against the changing socio-political and economic sphere. Gildenhard's painstaking analysis shows how one concept (in this case frugality) could be shaped by a succession of ancient authors over time. Thus, it warns us again to be careful in regarding these texts as reliable accounts. Gildenhard's chapter can also be added to the recommended reading list of anyone studying the human past.
Chapter 6 explores the role of social mobility in attitudes of frugality. J.R. Patterson particularly consults material culture focusing on elite housing and silver plate for the table during the last two centuries of the Republic and the early Principate. Patterson concludes that frugality became ‘a moral ideal’ and ‘ideological battleground’ for newcomers and the traditional elite in Roman society of the second century bc. As a result of the rise of imperial freedmen and the increase in their wealth, they became a new target for the senatorial elite during the Principate.
Chapter 7, by C.J. Berry, inspects the integration of the ideal of frugalitas into Christian thought and its repercussions in post-Classical times, in the cases of David Hume and Adam Smith's recalibrations of frugality, which focus on the economic benefits of frugal resource management.
This book makes a distinctive contribution and is an original and engaging volume employing multidisciplinary evidence related to Roman frugality and modes of moderation. Thus, it is greatly welcomed and much recommended. It is not the aim and scope of this book to provide an account of frugal ideology from late antiquity onwards (p. 107). However, there is a future wish. The last decade has yielded immense material evidence (pottery, glass, coin finds) regarding the late antique economy. This forces us to re-think established concepts such as resilience, transformation of the empire and so on. One decline, however, was recorded in the epigraphic habit from the fourth century ad onwards, especially in funerary inscriptions. Could we simply relate this to the general economic change affecting the use of marble? What was the impact of Christian thought and ideology on funerary customs? Modesty, simplicity? More concern about the afterlife than about the mundane world? Thus, further study on Christianity and its impact (if there is one) on consumption culture and economic behaviour in general are suggested (for some preliminary indications, see pp. 101–7).
