During the height of the Early Empire the city of Rome required enormous quantities of food to feed its roughly one million inhabitants. Whilst the grain dole has attracted the most attention, recent years have seen a burgeoning interest in other aspects fuelled by sophisticated studies of amphorae, environmental analyses and the generation of theoretical models of the processes involved. Two staples are the focus of these monographs: wine (Komar) and grain (James). The perennial debate between ‘primitivist’ and ‘modernist’ interpretations of the ancient economy underpin both volumes. Komar focuses explicitly on four indicators of scale: the role of trade in the ancient economy; the social position of traders; the existence of economic growth; and the impact of market forces (Komar, pp. 2–8), whilst James explores the complexity of the grain supply for the city of Rome (James, pp. 1–6).
Komar takes a qualitative approach to the study of ancient wine examining the colour, age, taste, strength and consistency of ancient wine (Komar, pp. 77–87). The variety of ancient wines – red, white, yellow and black, sweet and dry, high and low alcohol content – shows that the Greeks and Romans had advanced oenological knowledge capable of catering to a range of palates.
The link between the emergence of elites in Central Italy at the end of the Bronze Age and the origins of viticulture is unresolved. According to Komar (pp. 35–7) viticulture was not introduced to Italy by the Greeks or Phoenicians but first appeared in the Late Bronze Age. Although wild vines have been present in Italy since the Middle Pleistocene and cultivated varieties of Vitis vinifera existed as early as the Neolithic, the systematic cultivation of grapes only started in the ninth century bc. Initially wine was produced on a small scale perhaps for ritual use, but growing contact with the Eastern Mediterranean led to the consumption of wine becoming more widespread. Wine amphorae imitating Phoenician forms began to be produced in Etruria as early as the eighth century bc (p. 53), and in Southern Italy the arrival of Greek colonists seems to have provided an impetus for the trading of wine with the first Graeco-Italic amphorae appearing in Lucania and Bruttium at the end of the fifth century (p. 58). Excavations of a monumental aristocratic domus – the ‘Casa delle Anfore’ on the Poggio Alto at Marsiliana in the Albegna Valley – dating to the second half of the sixth century to the second half of the fifth century bc may be connected with the local production of Py 3C and Py 4 amphorae (A. Zifferero [2019]).
The consumption of Eastern wines became more widespread at the end of the first century bc. Cretan wine began to appear in the reign of Augustus, and during the Imperial period wines were imported from Asia Minor (Mt Tmolus and Clazomenae), Cyprus, Cilicia, Egypt and the Levant (pp. 64–75). Analysis of amphora assemblages from Rome (pp. 134–45), Campania (pp. 146–55), Portus (pp. 155–62) and the Northern Adriatic (pp. 163–75) show that Eastern Mediterranean wines were the most numerous imports even exceeding Italian wines in Campania (p. 149) and Rome in the second and third centuries ad (p. 143). Until the first century ad Rhodian wine was the most popular, and Cretan in the second century ad: the largest assemblage of wine amphorae comes from the Nuovo Mercato di Testaccio, where 88.4% of the wine amphorae come from the East, and of these 94.7% come from Crete (p. 180). As F. Zevi (1989) and S. De Caro (1992–93) pointed out, this may have come from the payment of the vectigal in kind from land in the vicinity of Knossos that had been granted by Octavian to the colony at Capua (Vell. Pat. 2.81.2). The relative percentages of Eastern Mediterranean amphorae are far higher in Campania than in Ostia, highlighting the importance of Puteoli as a port for goods coming from the East, whereas goods from the West came through Ostia (p. 183). The high percentage of Aegean amphorae in the small towns of the Northern Adriatic suggests that the popularity of Eastern wines was not limited to the elite.
Analysis of the percentage of imported amphorae shows that the economy was driven by market forces and that transport costs were an important factor in determining which wines were imported to Italy during the Early Empire (pp. 176–8). Wine was imported from regions with low transport costs – the Aegean, Africa, Gaul, Baetica and Tarraconensis –, whereas Aegean amphorae predominate in Aquileia, with Gallic and Baetican vessels largely absent. Imports from areas with high transport costs like Lusitania, Egypt, the Levant, Cyprus, Cilicia and the Black Sea were rare. During the Late Empire, while Eastern wines continued to reach Italy in significant quantities, Aegean imports disappeared in favour of wines from Cyprus, Cilicia and Palestine. As these areas would have entailed high transport costs to reach Rome, it seems that market forces were no longer the decisive factor as the economy came under greater state control during the Late Empire (pp. 270–1).
Integral to primitivist-modernist debates is the extent to which trade was embedded in the social fabric of the Roman world. Komar examines 68 traders recorded in tituli picti on Eastern Mediterranean wine amphorae from Pompeii in order to determine their social status and links to the elite. Nineteen of the names are Greek – either Greek slaves in Italy or freeborn Greeks in the East. Most are wholesalers (pp. 232–8). The remaining names are Latin and include several connected to the municipal elite (pp. 216–21). Most were freedmen, several of whom were of Eastern origin. Several were able to become wealthy and hold positions of prominence. The appearance of prominent families like the Iulii, Clodii, Coelii, Fabii, Cornelii, Pompeii and Vesonii amongst the names of the merchants supports the contention that landowners were using their freedmen to engage in trade (p. 231); however, there is little direct evidence to suggest that freedmen were acting on behalf of their former masters (p. 251).
James explores the issue of waste and inefficiency in the supply of raw materials – grain, oil, wine, fish-sauce as well as legumes, animal feed, timber, metal, marble, building materials and perishable goods – to the city of Rome. The fragility of this supply chain is reflected in the 60 incidences of food shortages that occurred between 201 bc and ad 193 (James, p. 4). Whereas Komar eschews models, James applies the concept of Supply Chain Management to explain all the activities associated with the flow and transformation of materials from source to point of consumption. James expands upon earlier attempts to calculate the supply needs of the city of Rome by J. Brandt (2005), G. Aldrete and D. Mattingly (1999) by including losses incurred during the Supply Chain and thus the gross volume of goods that needed to be produced to supply the city of Rome as well as perishable goods and building materials from the hinterland. James maps the source and volume of products, the net demand and the delivery of the products to the consumers, which in turn allows us to chart losses and the efficiency of the supply mechanism for the city. This enables James to calculate the amount of labour required for the Supply Chain to function.
James's book is essentially a tale of two halves: the first half provides the data necessary to generate figures for gross demand as laid out in Chapter 7 (pp. 131–8), and the second half looks at these figures in practice for the supply system of the city of Rome. Supply was largely dependent upon the provision of three staples – grain, olive oil and wine, which had a longer shelf life than more perishable foods such as meat, fish and vegetables. Two critical determinants were the amount of lead time required to supply the goods and the amount of safety stock to be kept on hand. By prioritising political stability over the ratio of price to service, the government set out to maintain a safety supply of two years or more (p. 16).
Crucial to understanding the role of the long-distance trade was the size of the market offered by the city of Rome. The key variable in determining net demand is the size of the population: James uses a range from 600,000 to 1.2 million for the number of inhabitants. Grain is the only ancient foodstuff for which we have statistics for the amount required. Taking as his basis a calorific intake of 2,600–3,000 calories per day (p. 44), James estimates a grain distribution of somewhere in the region of 300 million modii or 217,000 tonnes for the one million inhabitants of the city if the dietary intake was 70% (p. 64).
Whereas previous scholarship has been concerned with the net demand for goods, the crux of James's argument is to calculate the gross demand for goods by taking the net amount and adding the amount lost through inefficiency and wastage through post-harvest loss (PHL) (pp. 94–122). The omnipresent threat of loss and the need to be seen to have it under control can be observed in Tacitus’ story of the Emperor Nero throwing spoilt grain into the Tiber to reassure the Roman populace of the impending arrival of the Grain Fleet from Egypt (Ann. 15.18). Not only was storage a component of risk-management but the act of storage itself was a symbol – it is not just ‘gastro-politics’ but ‘thing-politics’ (A. Van Oyen [2020], p. 11). Losses could occur at any stage in the production process, the loading and off-loading of cargoes and during storage. Although impossible to quantify, the incidence of fires, flooding, political unrest caused by shortages and the measures taken to prevent theft and fraud suggest that the risk of loss was commonplace. Losses from supply port to end-user may have reached as high as 55.75% for grain and 32.5% for amphora-borne produce (pp. 118, 121).
By combining the net volume of goods with the losses incurred during the Supply Chain it is possible to determine the gross volume produced that can then be applied to subsequent stages in the process: the transport of goods from the province of production to the harbour at Portus (pp. 140–57) and their transport upriver to the city of Rome (pp. 160–92). In order to supply the population of Rome, Portus, Ostia and their hinterland, 704,000–1.42 million tonnes were required p.a. or 11.9–22.3 million sacks and 3.6–8.3 million amphorae a year – a figure that would increase by 16% to replenish stocks following shortfalls. Improvements in the infrastructure went some way to ensure a stable supply through the development of the harbour at Portus by Claudius and Trajan (pp. 150–4) as well as developments at other ports along the Tyrrhenian coast at Antium, Puteoli, Terracina and Centumcellae as well as in Rome itself. In order to maintain a stable supply, the Roman government had to overcome several crucial bottlenecks: the volume of ships being unloaded during the sailing season could cause considerable delays with unloading times exceeding 12 days – a figure that increased the more ships were onloading return cargoes (pp. 142–4). More serious was the bottleneck caused by the available space for riverboats along the Tiber, and the consequent need to store goods at Portus and Ostia until space became available. This could be alleviated in several ways: through the use of other sources of supply, such as the harbours at Antium, Terracina and Centumcellae, and the continued use of Puteoli; by a broader use of the road network above the 10% capacity envisaged by cost and physical constraints; or the use of larger riverboats of 125 or 200 tonnes capacity (pp. 190–2).
By focusing on a single commodity, however justified that choice may be, both James and Komar run the risk of losing sight of the interrelationship between different areas of agricultural production and trade: brickmakers in the Tiber Valley were able to take advantage of cheaper return rates to export their products to North Africa (James, p. 161), whilst winemakers from Rhodes and Crete used their proximity to the route of the grain ships from Alexandria to market their wines in Italy (Komar, pp. 181–2). Just as the annona was reorganised in the third century ad to provide bread instead of grain, it was expanded under Septimius Severus to include olive oil, and wine and pork were added by Aurelian, it would be interesting to explore the impact of these changes upon their respective supply chains.
Both books, although very different, provide plenty of grist for future research. Whilst some will no doubt disagree with James's statistics, by quantifying the losses incurred and the net demand for goods James has gone far beyond previous scholarship and highlighted a crucial and hitherto overlooked aspect of the Supply Chain Mechanism of the city of Rome. Although less immediately revolutionary, Komar offers an exemplary analysis of the Eastern Mediterranean wine trade and its role in the wider economy. Debates over the scale and organisation of the Roman economy are bedevilled by the disjunction between archaeology and history. By an exhaustive study of a wide range of archaeological, epigraphic, literary, comparative and oenological evidence for a single commodity, Komar provides an authoritative analysis and an exemplar of the potential that this has for our understanding of the social and economic functioning of the Roman world.
