Walker - 1967 - A geography of Italy

ROMAN GEOGRAPHY
not unlike serfdom was established in the Italian countryside. ‘T o displace the
free peasant by the slave, then the slave by the small tenant, only to end by
converting the small tenant into a serf, was part of the Roman fate’ (W. E.
Heitland). Successive Emperors had tinkered with the problem. Vespasian ceased
recruiting in Italy; Domitian tried to check the unhealthy concentration on
viticulture; Trajan prohibited Italian emigration to the provinces; Hadrian tried
to breathe new life into the old Roman policy o f founding colonies in Italy and
encouraged squatter tenants on Imperial waste lands; Marcus Aurelius and
Aurelian plaimed to settle barbarians on the waste lands under a military tenure.
All these efforts were unavailing against the mounting economic crisis.
The Italy o f Augustus was heavily urbanized,^ and it was a heavy importer not
only o f wheat, but also o f raw materials and manufactures o f all kinds. It might
be assumed, therefore, that in order to maintain some sort o f balance o f trade,
Italy was herself a correspondingly great exporter and an exploiter o f the trading
position which geography and politics presented now that the whole Mediterranean
Basin and beyond was the Roman sphere. That does not seem to have been
the case. We must conclude, therefore, that the necessary invisible exports took
the form o f tribute, booty, the proceeds from the sale o f slaves, provincial lands
and mines and revenues from the provinces.
In ancient times the risks and cost o f transport were great. Consequently the
everyday needs (pottery, textiles, utensils, implements, etc.) were produced by
local craftsmen on a small scale or in the home itself, and i f an article was to
control a large market, it had to be very cheap or vastly superior to the local
product. Italy produced comparatively few things which fell into the latter
category. The metal industries based on the iron, copper and tin o f Etruria, and
on local charcoal, remained largely where Etruscan and Greek enterprise had
located them; iron smelting at Populonium, Cales, Puteoli, Minturnae (all well
placed for the shipment o f Elba ore), and Bononia in the north; bronze at
Praeneste, Capua and Nola. T o judge from its plentiful use in Roman plumbing,
lead was cheap and it frequently yielded silver as a by-product o f the smelting.
One o f the main markets for metals was o f course the army, but as the legions
were stationed more and more on the frontier the manufacture o f weapons was
imdertaken gradually by the provinces. In Italy itself one o f the main centres was
Arretium, which was also famous for its Arretine ware, one o f the few Italian
products with a wide overseas market. This pottery, which was also made at
Puteoli and in the Po Valley, finally declined in the face o f provincial competition.
Brick-making and tile-making were carried on universally, but especially at
Rome, and the main glass centres were in northern Campania. Except in the case
of bricks and tiles the units o f production were very small and the workmen,
either slaves or freedmen, often o f Greek, Asiatic or African origin. It was
’ Rome itself had nearly 2 million inhabitants, and there were a dozen cities, e.g. Patavium,
Verona, Aquileia, Mediolanum and the Campanian ports, which must have approached or
passed the 100,000 mark.
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