Classical World

The renowned historian Eric J. Hobsbawm welcomed the 2008 global financial crisis as a harbinger, at long last, of the Marxist moment. Writing in The Guardian of April 9, 2009, he presaged the utter bankruptcy of the present "pure, stateless, market capitalism, a sort of international bourgeois anarchism," and its replacement with "public decisions aimed at collective social improvement." While Hobsbawm did not live to see this anticipated—and still far-off?—"shift away from the free market" (he died in 2012), the degree to which state action can, or should, intervene in an economy is also of interest to classicists.

In this volume, the fourth in a series of Oxford monographs devoted to the study of the Roman economy, Wilson and Bowman aim to demonstrate "that the state was very actively and self-consciously involved" in "trading links and activities within and beyond the boundaries of the Empire" (2). Drawing on 18 more or less specialized studies of particular industries or trade networks, the editors skillfully sketch the image of a "state-supported infrastructure," fashioned from both direct and indirect extractions of revenue. This infrastructure made a high level of trade possible—and beneficial—even if, they argue, an explicit and doggedly pursued "economic policy" cannot be discerned from sifting the available evidence. [End Page 102]

The individual papers address the brisk trade in commodities like wood (W. V. Harris), stone (B. Russell), and manufactured glassware containing unguents and other items (D. Foy). There is even a fascinating study of a set of 1200 inscribed lead tags found at Siscia that seemingly indicate prices for services including textile production and cleaning (I. Radman-Livaja). Nevertheless, the most thought-provoking of the chapters are those that hew most closely to the stated themes of market-state interaction—though, even here, perhaps more could be done on one particular element of what constituted a "fair price."

Echoing his famous and detailed studies of local market conditions and behavior, Elio Lo Cascio maintains that imperial interventions were designed not merely to counter "speculative behavior," but also "to avoid an artificial lowering of prices" (127). Eschewing the "Finleyan orthodoxy" of previous generations and drawing on "the theoretical framework of the New Industrial Economics" (129), Lo Cascio notes how often—and how effectively—magistrates would intervene to ensure that an item's "market price" was also a "fair price."

Similarly, Colin Adams points to "the interaction of public and private, state and individual," in the transport of various products along the Nile in the Roman period. Once the minimal demands of the state, in the forms of shipping tax grain and military supplies, had been met, individual or corporate agents would have been free to fulfill other contracts in order to turn a profit. Adams sensibly concludes that the state saw "reciprocal benefits" in such an arrangement: it was able to "devolve the mechanics" of transport onto its subjects without incurring the cost of maintaining a state-owned fleet (204).

While each study is impressive and convincing, one might hope for a holistic reading of them all, through the singular prism of economic decision-making. What one might really desire is a glimpse into the mind of a Roman entrepreneur, as s/he weighs the financial costs and benefits of expanding a business, creating a new manufacturing center, or, most interestingly of all, paying for the transport of a finished item. In our era of ostensibly "free shipping," it is easy to forget that shipping is never actually free. A transportation cost is assessed against some-one—and sometimes a vast number, if one takes into account the army of workers in a "distribution center"—and the people who pay that cost may not be visible to the consumer, or even to the manufacturer of the goods for sale. Several of these questions were addressed in...