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104 Ecology and Beyond
The key to this progressive integration is that the forced
connectivity rightly adduced by Horden and Purcell as a way
of coping with the risks inherent in the Mediterranean zone also
in fact allowed a quick accumulation of profit. Far from being a
factor of stability, this added to ‘ecological’ instability and to the
unpredictability of the local ecology. It should also be stressed
that accumulation of profit also made possible new and longer
travels throughout the Mediterranean Sea. Financing trade
across the Mediterranean presupposed significant capital,
which previous accumulation made possible, thus making sea
transport more frequent. It was sea connectivity that made all
this possible. An aspect of the role of capital in maritime trade is
the size of the bigger ships, much more important under the
Empire than in the classical and even the Hellenistic period. 25
2. forms of connectivity
The first question concerns the link that could exist between
small-scale transport, by land or by sea, and overseas transport.
The problem has been well addressed by Horden and Purcell.
The myth of complete self-sufficiency should now be
rejected: 26 autarky was an ideal, not a reality. In view of the
risks inherent in an unpredictable environment, the trend was
of course to make sure that a maximum of commodities was at
hand. This was true not only of individuals, but also of states,
and it was not by chance that in the classical period large cities
like Athens managed to secure themselves a regular supply of
grain by means of political control, either via the occupation of
other territories or via the creation of checkpoints on the main
sea routes. It should also be stressed that in Plato or Aristotle an
autarkic city was not conceived of as a completely closed zone
but rather as a state that managed to organize regular trade with
a small number of cities with which it could mutually supplement
basic needs, for example by the exchange of wine against
grain. 27
25 L. Casson, The Ancient Mariners, 2nd edn. (Princeton, 1991), 113–14,
191, and Ships and Seafaring in Ancient Times (London, 1994), 122–24.
26 CS 369.
27 A. Bresson, La Cité marchande (Bordeaux, 2000), 109–30.