Walker - 1967 - A geography of Italy

ROMAN GEOGRAPHY
it is generally true to say that Italy possessed few outstanding advantages in raw
materials, labom: or technique which could support a large manufacturing export,
or agricultural surpluses or speciahties which could not be produced elsewhere
in the Mediterranean.
There was another reason for the paucity o f Italian exports : the Romans were
emphatically not a nation o f shopkeepers.^ The absence o f metalhc ores in the
Campagna, the lack o f harbours and navigable rivers, the inland position o f
Rome, and the preoccupation o f all classes with territorial expansion had all
helped to prevent the rise o f a trading interest. Even the powerful knight class
was more interested in contracting, tax farming and land speculation than in
ordinary trade, and one o f the dangerous aspects o f this attitude was the dependence
o f Rome on foreign shipping. Rome itself was a poor port, and rehed on
Puteoli imtil the improvement o f Ostia by Claudius; in fact the busiest Roman
ports were those o f Campania because o f the agricultural and manufacturing
prosperity o f their hinterland. W ith the complete control o f such a vast trading
area a mercantile policy favouring Italian industry and agriculture by the setting
up o f monopohes in certain products would have seemed natural enough, but in
the event there were no such safeguards against provincial competition, and in
consequence Italian trade suffered. Low tariffs between the provinces made
possible the existence o f an almost free trade area, and Rome’s attitude to trade
under the Empire seems to have been as lacking in enthusiasm as when in 348
BC she made a very disadvantageous treaty with Carthage, whose mercantile
pohcy we may guess would have been very different from Rome’s had she had the
latter’s opportunities.
Roman Italy seems to have deprived itself o f nothing which could be imported ;
hides, skins, wool and slaves from Germany through the Alpine passes; fleeces,
pork, timber and tin from Gaul through Massilia; tin from Britain via Gades;
glass, paper, linen, silks, spices and wild animals through Egypt and Syria; and
o f course grain from Sicily, Sardinia, Africa and Egypt.
The crisis o f the fourth century was o f complex origin but revealed itself
particularly in its miUtary, fiscal and economic aspects. Prices were rising rapidly
as a result o f the interruption and shrinkage o f trade and insufflcient production.
The reforming Emperors attacked the problems with legal weapons. Diocletian
fixed commodity prices by edict (with the questionable results one would expect
in the absence o f complete supervision), and in an attempt to force each group in
the community to shoulder its Imperial burdens, froze the occupational pattern.
In future the craftsman was to remain at his bench and the sailor on his ship; the
city patrician could no longer avoid the duties o f honorary magistrate, taxgatherer
and recruiting agent; above all the countryman was to remain on the
land, whatever his rank, to ensure the production o f adequate food. The large
landowner too became an agent o f the Imperial government, and as conditions
deteriorated assumed the rôle o f rural aristocrat to whom the countrymen looked
^Tarentum had a silver coinage about three centuries before Rome.
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