Recent studies of the physical development of the city of Rome in the period of ascendancy from regional center to Mediterranean capital have highlighted the delayed nature of the phenomenon. Cross-culturally, construction programs that stand out as disproportionate in terms of number, size, and architectural refinement in relation to other building forms represent one of the main manifestations of imperial status.Footnote ¹ In the case of Rome, however, full-fledged monumental architecture on the ground emerged when the trajectory of expansion was all but complete.Footnote ² The scale of investments and efforts and the pace of construction activities in the Republican period has mostly been regarded as slow and gradual, which suggests that the construction industry received greater impetus only in the Imperial age.Footnote ³ All that remains on the ground for the early phase is a series of small satellite temples paid for by manubial funds,Footnote ⁴ with little in terms of orchestrated urban infrastructure and amenities. To explain this pattern, scholars have emphasized factional rivalries among members of the ruling elite. Given the visibility that sponsorship of public architecture afforded to patrons, constraints on public monumental construction, such as short-term limits of magistracies and strict Senate oversight on expenditures, would have been imposed by the state so as to curb the ability of magistrates to execute large-scale projects and curtail unfair advantage in the competitions for public office. It was only when construction in concrete was introduced in the course of the 2nd c. BCE that massive building programs could finally be undertaken.Footnote ⁵ S. Bernard's work contributes significantly to this debate by rehabilitating the Mid-Republican period as a crucial one in which other socioeconomic transformations and technological innovations originated that enabled the city's growth.

The focus of his book is the particularities of Rome's urban history from the conquest of Veii (396 BCE) to the end of the Third Macedonian War (168 BCE), and the effects of the early exploitation of imperial wealth. Eschewing the traditional topographical approach, Bernard reassesses the economic implications of building projects attested either archaeologically or through annalistic notices and other literary records, which he sees as reliably reflecting the levels of state investment in infrastructure (21; the raw data are concisely summarized in catalog format in appendix 2). As spelled out in chapter 1, in analyzing the Roman economy Bernard gives space to both structure and performance by measuring rates of expansion and contraction in relation to changing modes of production and consumption. The core of his argument, then, deals with the development of the socioeconomic forces and institutions that governed building processes. He treats key monuments as the points of entry for exploring a range of issues such as income inequality, the role of slavery, the relationship between coinage and contracts, and the dynamics of urban labor supply. In particular, he acknowledges the emergence of an essential division between agricultural and non-agricultural labor (11–17).

By way of introduction, chapter 2 provides an account of the complex system of supply that developed in order to manage resources arriving from newly acquired territories and to direct the large-scale quarrying and long-distance transport of building materials (stone, clay and plant resources, metals) for monumental projects at Rome. The list includes more durable varieties of volcanic tuff, such as the tufo giallo from the Grotta Oscura quarries that were formerly controlled by Veii. Recent work on geochemical characterization has called into question the validity of old chronological schemes and the causal connection between quarrying and conquest, highlighting independent trade networks. Well-lithified varieties of tufo lionato (perhaps from the Anio deposits) began to be exploited from the late 4th c. BCE, while peperino stone was used centuries before Rome's incorporation of Latium.Footnote ⁶ In chapter 7, while detailing the technological innovations associated with the introduction of these materials, Bernard points out other instances where there was a considerable lag between the conquest of a territory and the use of that territory's materials in Rome's architecture (225, table 7.2). He rightly stresses the significance of private alongside public involvement (41–43), as suggested by changes in the institutional framework that granted access to productive land, particularly following the reforms to the sociopolitical hierarchy of 367 BCE.

The analytical chapters that follow trace in rough chronological order the formation of economic structures linked with building production and of the underlying social relations. In chapter 3, Bernard radically rewrites the traditional Livian narrative surrounding the Gallic sack and its purported effects on Rome's built environment and economy. Whereas Livy attributed the debt crisis that ultimately brought about the collapse of the patrician state to the site-wide rebuilding efforts following the fire, Bernard subscribes to a minimalist interpretation that is consistent with the patchy archaeological evidence from the early 4th c. BCE (57–62). According to his perspective, the destruction of Rome by the Gauls was much exaggerated in the sources, but it still marked an important event in the social memory of the Romans, encouraging them to undertake the massive fortification wall project (see also p. 117 on the psychological effects). The war with Veii also contributed. From the ensuing discussion, we learn that another critical development arising from its conquest, the unprecedented distribution of land to free adult males, may have triggered the contraction of Rome's economy, drawing labor from the households of Roman landowners and spreading it thinly over too large a territory (72). The extent to which the survey evidence from the ager Veientanus supports this picture is debatable, given that site density appears to have declined between 400 and 350 BCE.Footnote ⁷ As the author recognizes, problems of visibility of diagnostic materials may be responsible for the pattern (66 n. 79). However, recently published data from the district north of Fidenae (captured in 435 BCE) shows continuous and stable growth in the number of sites throughout the 5th and 4th c.Footnote ⁸ A broader synthesis on Rome's suburbium might help to clarify the issue.Footnote ⁹

In the absence of data on wages and prices, energetics may provide further insight on the economic impact of building projects in terms of labor flow from extraction to construction. Bernard successfully applies that method to the Republican walls – for which reliable volumetric reconstructions are possible thanks to the well-preserved state of extant stretches and the modularity of opus quadratum construction. The author intuits that the stress on labor supply resulting from the annexation and exploitation of Veii's territory, combined with the extraordinary expense of building the city walls in time, labor, and resources (a staggering 6.8 million person-days: see table 4.3 and also appendix 1), disrupted Rome's fragile economic equilibrium. The originality of the proposed reconstruction is that it also takes into account the amount of labor which Roman households could contribute to the project through compulsory work after accounting for warfare and agricultural activities (table 4.6; the model is based on the caloric requirements of three types of families and two classes of farms). Although the project's duration remains an unknown key variable, the quantification of the direct burden on eligible male citizens (estimated as in the range of 123–246 days of work) leads Bernard to argue that small farms would have suffered a significant shortage of labor. A construction period of four to five years would have meant economic failure for many small farms that did not generate a surplus, leaving large families to absorb the costs. Under this scenario, the important implication is that the undertaking would have exacerbated extant problems of social inequality, eventually undermining social cohesion (116–17).

By contrast, in chapter 5 Bernard notes the ability of the post-367 BCE state to sustain projects of even greater magnitude, such as the censorial works sponsored by Appius Claudius Caecus (the cumulative cost of paving the road to Capua alone, begun in 296 BCE, is estimated at 5 million person-days; that of tunneling for the aqueduct at 33,000 person-days for each Roman foot: 128–36). He takes this as a symptom of profound socioeconomic changes within the new political system, highlighting the growing role of metal wealth in market-based exchanges (148–53). As revealed by field survey in marginal areas such as the Pontine region, the expansion of rural settlement and intensification of agricultural production from 300 BCE onwards document the emergence of other forms of investment tied to both the local markets of the Roman colonies and the regional market of Rome and its environs.Footnote ¹⁰ In other areas, larger farming establishments engaged in cash-centered wine and oil production made their simultaneous appearance, as also indicated by amphora production and circulation.Footnote ¹¹ In light of the updated chronological framework pushing this development into the 3rd c. BCE, Bernard rejects any direct link between the introduction of Roman coinage and large state expenditures, crediting instead the desire of a sector of the nobilitas to establish a monetary economy (157–58). Not by chance, contracts of the locatio-conductio type, in which the cost of any given project normally appears as lump-sum payment, evolved almost contemporaneously in both private and public spheres (as documented on coins and inscriptions dating to the mid-3rd c.).

Chapter 6 follows logically by connecting the emergence of coinage and contracts with the mobility of free labor. Bernard's theory is that the demand for labor generated by urban growth during the 3rd c. attracted individually mobile workers of both Roman and non-Roman origins who could be hired in order to meet building needs. Annal notices record 16 public construction projects undertaken between 295 and 264 BCE, of which 14 are temples or shrines (see appendix 2, nos. 33–48). It is difficult to evaluate the extent to which these projects reflect a generalized trend. Physical evidence for settlement expansion is patchy: civic architecture is virtually unknown, while residential work relates mostly to repairs or reoccupation of existing features. The idea that there was a building boom thus mostly relies on indirect clues about demographic growth, such as the construction of the Anio vetus (272 BCE), the resurfacing of tombs in the Esquiline necropolis, and the diffusion in the suburbium of farms that would have been producing primarily for urban consumers (163–67). Evidence from standing remains presented in the following chapter points to significant advances in opus quadratum construction, notably in lifting technology (212–20), for which the impetus may have come from higher demand while also serving to lower overall labor requirements. The limited archaeological sample makes it impossible to apply cost-analysis, so the discussion concentrates primarily on the nature of the labor market that served the building industry. Bernard emphasizes especially what must have been an “unwillingness of slave owners to maintain workers full-time for the sporadic and uneven demand that unskilled building labor required”, recalling how unskilled servile workers are rarely mentioned in building accounts that are known for comparable public projects (170–71). He therefore suggests that the majority of slaves would have been employed in agricultural work.

Taking into consideration the signs of a decline in forced free labor after the late 4th c. BCE, Bernard concludes that free underemployed residents played a much greater role than previously assumed (161). The greater availability of food surplus discussed above would have in fact sustained an increase in the proportion of non-food-producing specialists.Footnote ¹² On a related note, Bernard sees the development of monetary instruments for smaller-value transactions (175–81, on Roman bronze cast coinage) and of retail spaces within the city as innovations that responded to the need on the part of free unskilled workers to convert into commodities their wages earned from the building trade.Footnote ¹³ The resulting picture, then, puts Rome far ahead of other central Italian towns, for which the growth of urban fabric and the concomitant formation and rise of the retail industry have been described as a phenomenon of the 2nd c. BCE.Footnote ¹⁴ Bernard recalls in this respect another aspect that does not seem to be frequently attested in the wider region, namely the Roman practice of incorporating geologically distinct stones into a single building phase in line with their physical properties and structural function, which he relates to the city's ability to command extensive supply chains and to source skilled masons and contractors capable of working those particular materials (200–12; notable sites include Temples C and A at Largo Argentina, and Sant'Omobono, where important archaeometric research is ongoing).

Read as a whole, Bernard's study offers a cogent argument for the reappraisal of the period prior to the Second Punic War, weaving disparate developments together into a coherent narrative to reopen the debate on the changing social makeup and economic mentalities operating in the Early and Mid-Republican city. He presents an original model for reconstructing the formative process of economic institutions commonly associated with Rome's later history, drawing on archaeological, numismatic, and epigraphic evidence, as well as literary sources that were previously studied in isolation. In so doing, he also gives voice to ordinary workers of diverse background who otherwise remain invisible in grand narratives about Roman monumental architecture. Bringing their agency and contribution to the fore, he provides glimpses into how Rome's growth affected labor and living conditions. His expert use of buildings and construction processes as historical sources in their own right opens the way for a more nuanced exploration of Republican urbanism in Italy and will prompt further quantitative research on the demographic and economic effects of urban development in higher-order settlements.Footnote ¹⁵ Already a classic, the book is its own building block for future work.