Every transaction between a merchant and his customer is the result of a bundle of different deliberations on the part of the latter. Besides the most obvious consideration, the price and quality of the goods, less palpable issues and institutions play a significant role, most importantly trust in the merchant and his actions (cf. P. Reinard & C. Rollinger (eds), Cum magna fide? Vertrauen und die antike Wirtschaft, Gutenberg 2023). Trust is the result of the reputation of the merchant, since nobody would acquire goods from an ill-famed trader if not coerced by adverse circumstances. Thus, Jane Sancinito’s monograph deals with a key issue of the Roman economy.
In her introduction (1–31), S. emphasises the importance of reputation for Roman merchants, which is why it is considered by her to be an institution in the sense of the New Institutional Economics. She highlights the significance of non-state institutions for the building of trust between different actors and, as a result, how communities of different economic actors controlled their peers. Her point of departure is the observation that merchants were despised by the higher strata in Roman society, a conclusion drawn from the study of literary sources and hence mirroring the views of the Roman elite. Accordingly, S. underlines that merchants had to deal with a hostile social environment, and one way to do so was to create and preserve one’s own reputation. The latter is understood ‘as the opinion, or collection of opinions, that are held about an individual’s character or behavior based on available data, derived from a variety of potential sources’ (15).
The book is organised into five chapters. The first is dedicated to Roman law and its role as an institution for guaranteeing the functioning of commercial exchange (32–70). S. emphasises that Roman law mainly deals with what Horden and Purcell call ‘high commerce’ (i.e. military equipment and the annona), while ‘low commerce’ remained largely invisible to Roman law makers (40). Moreover, the role of corruption in legal enforcement is considered — when justice was unavailable, corruption was one way of solving the problem for economic actors. Still, although the Roman state sought to control merchants and their actions and although merchants accepted state control because it reduced transaction costs, the enforcement powers of the state remained relatively limited, which is why merchants controlled and policed themselves in order to keep their reputations high (63). What made reputation essential for them was that it made their actions more predictable (70). In the second chapter, S. discusses the nature of reputation (71–104). Here she mainly relies on epigraphic evidence. In their inscriptions, merchants on the one hand represented themselves to the public or an audience; on the other hand they competed with their peers and had to evaluate how they measured up to them. As S. shows, regularity, consistency and predictability were the foundation of a merchant’s reputation. Nevertheless, this reputation and thus the willingness to trust a merchant or to give him the benefit of the doubt was in the hands of the audience, which is why it also relied on networks of friendship, kinship and neighbourliness.
In the third chapter, S. focuses on the question of how reputation was built and managed over a lifetime (105–42). Newcomers had to build their own reputation and relied in doing so on their peers. Generally, merchants had to show prosocial behaviour and constantly send positive messages to their audience. They thereby accumulated social capital which was transformed into economic capital. As S. observes, there was a difference between young and elderly merchants: due to their lower reputation, the young took more risks than their elders. Ch. 4 deals with the question of how merchants used their reputation to defy social stereotypes (143–70). Firstly, S. discusses these stereotypes, which in terms of NIE raised transaction costs, especially because trade by its very nature involved dealing with opaque markets, imperfect foresight and hence high risks. As S. emphasises, caveat emptor was the common principle which governed all economic relationships. Building trust through developing a good reputation was an important escape route for Roman merchants. But its gains were not limited to business relations. A good reputation could mobilise the help of fellow citizens in the case of emergency, or could help in disputes with local authorities as well as provide easier access to credit (164–8). Ch. 5 is dedicated to the institutionalisation of reputation (171–208). Thus, reputation was a basis for the self-management of communities and was based on information about the different actors. S. firstly addresses the means of spreading information (letters, talk, gossip, oral communication) and then discusses how malefactors were avoided by and excluded from the community. She thus aptly shows that reputation was a powerful and structuring institution, especially in markets that lacked strong imperial or governmental structures.
In her concluding remarks (209–17), S. emphasises that the use of reputational language created its own social awareness and adjusted to the values of society. Moreover, she regards reputation as the key to economic success. She concludes that social and economic considerations were significantly shaped by social relations which were formed by reputation. S.’s monograph is a valuable contribution to the economic history of the Roman Empire from which every reader will gain valuable insights into the power of social relations in the economy.
