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The View from the Customs House 205
ence can similarly be carried on by aristocracies, such as the
Bacchiads, by imperial powers, or even by individuals. 10
The theme of this paper, then, is levies made on the movement
of people and things. This is a subject in which the more
minute pursuit of definitions and terminologies has tended to
obscure the larger questions, and in what follows, a number of
underlying distinctions are elided in the pursuit of the bigger
picture. These matters may be studied from an administrative,
institutional, fiscal perspective, or from the economic and social
angle. Some scholars have chosen one route, usually the former.
11 There is much to be gained from attempting to combine
the two, difficult though the exercise may be. In the space of
this essay it is not possible to do more than outline the possibilities
with reference to one or two items from the rather large
dossier of relevant material. Many important instances are referred
to only in passing or not at all. A synthesis of what we
know from the point of view of Mediterranean history is badly
needed.
It should be said at the outset that the English term ‘customs’
is very ill-suited to the analysis of the complex of practices that
make up this tax morphology. While the payment of duty in
relation to a particular movement of materials or people does
form an important part of what we are considering, it is not easy
or useful in most cases to detach it from charges for services
connected with the movement (harbourage, escort, provisioning,
assistance in the actual movement). The realities of communication
in mountainous regions offer an interesting point of
comparison. Accompanying travellers and transporting their
goods over very difficult terrain generate the possibility of a
series of different charges. Against the background of these, the
imposition of a more ‘abstract’ system of tolls may be seen to
have developed slowly, with increasing institutional sophistication.
12 In relation to maritime movement too, we shall find
10 Piso’s private teloneion at Dyrrachium: Cicero, Prov.Cons. 5.
11 Thus, for instance, J. France, Quadragesima Galliarum: L’organisation
douanière des provinces alpestres, gauloises et germaniques de l’Empire romain
(1er siècle avant J.-C.—3er siècle après J.-C.) (Rome, 2001), 9.
12 D. van Berchem, ‘Du portage au péage: Le rôle des cols transalpins dans
l’histoire du Valais celtique’, Museum Helveticum 13 (1956), 67–78. France,
Quadragesima, 345–6, proposes three types of customs system—lines, circles,