You are on page 1of 10

Pragmateiai

27

ESTRATTO - OFF PRINT

Bari 2014

2014 Edipuglia srl

Lautore ha il diritto di stampare o diffondere copie di questo PDF


esclusivamente per uso scientifico o didattico. Edipuglia si riserva di mettere in
vendita il PDF, oltre alla versione cartacea. Lautore ha diritto di pubblicare in
internet il PDF originale allo scadere di 24 mesi.

The author has the right to print or distribute copies of this PDF exclusively for
scientific or educational purposes. Edipuglia reserves the right to sell the PDF, in
addition to the paper version. The author has the right to publish the original PDF
on the internet at the end of 24 months.

FRANOIS DE CALLATA
FOREWORD

That ancient Mediterranean history focusing on the Greco-Roman world is lacking anything which could resemble hard quantified data over the long term was
still taken as undeniable a couple of decades ago, at an age described now as dominated by Finleyan orthodoxy.
Time has elapsed. Cliometrics have invaded even these far remote societies due
to the formidable increase of factual evidence brought to light by archaeology and
the considerable improvement of lab-techniques to take advantage of it. Encouraged by Marcel Dtienne and his essay Comparer lincomparable (Paris, 2000), it
became tempting to challenge distinguished colleagues to quantify what is supposed not to be quantifiable. Hence an invitation to participate in a conference
whose title Long-term quantification in ancient Mediterranean history (Brussels, Oct. 2009) was loosely defined both geographically and historically and not
at all thematically as an encouragement for some methodological bravado.
Unsurprisingly, but not especially intended, the vast majority of papers deal
with economics, leaving aside literacy, democracy or violence, to take just a few
examples which could have been explored. This conference thus very much appears as another conference on ancient economy, prolonging the flurry which
originated in the mid 1990s. 1 Some agendas are explicit, as in Stanford in 1998
when the aim of the organizers was to increase the diversity of approaches in an1
Here is a list of sixteen conferences on Greco-Roman economics hold in between 1995 and
2009: 1995 St Andrews (see Parkins & Smith 1998); 1995-1997 Nottingham-Leicester (see Mattingly & Salmon 2001); 1997 Capri (see Lo Cascio 2000); 2000? Cambridge (see Cartledge, Cohen
& Foxhall 2002); 1998 Liverpool (see Archibald, Davies & Gabrielsen 2000); 1998 Stanford (see
Manning & Morris 2005); 1999 Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges (see Andreau, Briant & Descat 2000);
2000 Capri (see Lo Cascio 2003); 2001 Nottingham (see De Blois & Rich 2002); 2002 Cambridge
(see Bang, Ikeguchi & Ziche 2006); 2002 Liverpool (see Archibald, Davies & Gabrielsen 2005);
2003 Capri (see Lo Cascio 2006); 2004 Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges (see Descat 2006); 2006
Copenhagen (see Archibald, Davies & Gabrielsen 2011); 2006 Oxford (see Bowman & Wilson 2009);
2009 Rome (Harris & Iara 2011).

QUANTIFYING The Greco-romAN ecoNomY ANd beYoNd - ISbN978-88-7228-744-6 2014 e d i p u g l i a s . r. l . - w w w. e d i p u g l i a . i t

QUANTIFYING THE GRECO-ROMAN ECONOMY AND BEYOND

cient history by drawing more inspiration from the social sciences, and in particular from two schools of thought: the new economic sociology that has built on
Webers foundations, and the new institutional economics, that has wedded key
neoclassical principles to a concern for institutions, ideology and demography. 2
Others were less specific, choosing to concentrate on a period or a topic. It is probably not coincidence, although again not intentional, that one of the most significant conferences of that kind held in Oxford in 2006 has a very similar topic to
ours: Quantifying the Roman Economy. Methods and Problems. 3
In some respects, the Brussels conference develops the debates evoked in Oxford, all the more as several participants are identical. 4 On the one hand, this similarity of titles may be perceived as a sign that quantification is back. On another,
the original aim of this conference is more about quantification than about the
Roman economy. The Roman economy is not the only subject which will be set
in a larger context, with the expected benefits of promoting transfers of knowledge and behaviour between specialists of related disciplines, but each participant
has been encouraged to develop some reflective thinking on his use of numbers in
ancient history.

The first two papers function as a general introduction, complementing each


other. In Long-term quantification: a historical perspective (p. 13-26), I try to
frame the debate historically, dealing with intellectual movements or trends since
WWII in the humanities and social sciences and in particular with the return of
quantification observed for the last decade aside and on a very limited level compared with dominant cultural history. In Orders of magnitude, margins of error
(p. 27-37), Neville Morley is more philosophical. Why, he asks, are the great works
of Richard Duncan-Jones so poorly used in actual debates? Are they too primitivist for actual practitioners of quantification? Are they not conceptually sophisticated enough for cultural historians? There is no neutral knowledge and his paper
is much about epistemological strategies, defining a tentative morphology of quantified models along five key attributes: empirical basis, purpose, disposition (is it
conceived to measure minima or maxima?), ideology and rhetorical strategies.
Practical results of quantified studies may not be as interesting and as surely uncontroversial as to push us to refine our assumptions and models.
In The ancient world: a climatic challenge (p. 39-55), Alain Bresson argues
Manning & Morris 2005, 34.
See also, the same year (November 24th, 2006), the conference Histoire conomique et quantification, hold at the cole Normale Suprieure (Paris).
4
The number of recent conferences in the field is certainly impressive, especially when compared
with their absence in the past. Still, as a numismatist, I cannot refrain from thinking that the ancient
economy is studied by an astonishingly limited number of colleagues, not in proportion with the arguable importance of the topic for our knowledge of the past.
2
3

QUANTIFYING The Greco-romAN ecoNomY ANd beYoNd - ISbN978-88-7228-744-6 2014 e d i p u g l i a s . r. l . - w w w. e d i p u g l i a . i t

FOREWORD

for a multi-faceted model. Quoting Gibbon about the fall of the Roman Empire,
he first asks us not to dismiss too easily rare climatic quotations by ancient historians before engaging with modern investigations, providing a general overview of
four synthetic studies whose results converge for the last 800 years, but less so for
the centuries before (Moberg et al. 2005 about temperature over the last two millennia; Zhang et al. 2008 about monsoons from Wanxiang cave stalagmite; Bntgen et al. 2011 dendrochronology in Central Europe; Kobashi et al. 2011 snow
surface temperatures in Greenland for the past four millennia). Many of the regional differences between Southern and Northen Europe may be explained by the
North Atlantic Oscillation which also explains on the whole why Mediterranean
areas were cooler than today in Greco-Roman times. With these data in mind, he
observes that if the general rising of ca. 1.4 meter in two millennia of the Mediterranean sea-levels must be explained first by isostatic subsistence, climate change
brings also a non negligible contribution. Colder weather may be substantially responsible (especially during Greek Classical and Late Roman Imperial times) in a
climatic model where substantial rains in Mediterranean areas were balanced by a
dryer climate in Northern Europe.
Although applied to the Seleucid empire, the contribution of Gerassimos G.
Aperghis is definitely methodological: Creating a long-model for an ancient economy (see p. 57-72). It is a top-down matrix pressing the need to qualify every
statement better than by vague qualitative terminology (a large city or a wealthy
king). Refining the parameters he already developed elsewhere (as PopulationConsumption-Production-Coin Circulation) and extrapolating when requested, he
developed an interactive model processed by a computer system (ABACUS).
Every output parameter (like the size of the population) can be transferred as input
to several modules, clearly encouraging general consistency and possibly even
more desirably pointing to major inconsistencies whose parameters need to be revised. A test-case is provided for the reign of Antiochos III (223-187 BCE), with
no less than 60,000 data items, whether input or generated as a result of calculation.
The next contribution, by Robartus van der Spek and Bas van Leeuwen, is
about: Quantifying the integration of the Babylonian economy in the Mediterranean world using a new corpus of price data, 400-50 BCE (see p. 73-91). How
integrated was the Babylonian market in Seleucid and Parthian times? Using the
exceptionally rich but sometimes tricky data found in the Astronomical Diaries of
the city, they focus on the volatility of prices as an indicator of the feeble integration of the market and conclude that integration was much less developed (higher
volatility) in Babylon than around the Mediterranean Sea. Some commodities like
barley were more affected by this volatility than others (like dates) in a society
QUANTIFYING The Greco-romAN ecoNomY ANd beYoNd - ISbN978-88-7228-744-6 2014 e d i p u g l i a s . r. l . - w w w. e d i p u g l i a . i t

QUANTIFYING THE GRECO-ROMAN ECONOMY AND BEYOND

suffering from frequent famines. The duration of high prices is another indicator
of weak integration which is thoroughly explored by the authors.
The Greek Archaic and Classical world has been investigated by Josiah Ober
in a paper which illustrates both the potential benefits and the methodological difficulties of articulating quality and quantity. In Greek economic performance, 800300 BCE. A comparison case (see p. 93-110), Ober starts with a strong and
provocative statement: the Greek economy of ca. 800-300 BCE appears to have
outperformed the much larger Roman economy of ca. 100 BCE-200CE. For the
author, such a broad assertion is nurtured by different sets of data. The Greek Classical world would have been the place for: 1) high aggregate and per capita growth,
2) dense, urbanized population and 3) equitable distribution, each of them at a level
superior to what could be observed for the Roman Empire.
Focusing on housing and the level of wealth distribution, Geoffrey Kron compares the performance of the Greco-Roman world with 19th and 20th c. counterparts: Comparative evidence and the reconstruction of the ancient economy:
Greco-Roman housing and the level and distribution of wealth and income (see p.
111-131). Relying on anthropometrics (life expectancy, stature) and epigraphic evidence (distribution of wealth in Athens) as well as on archaeological data (change
in the size and distribution of housing), Kron argues that the Greco-Roman world
was superior to England during the mid 19th c. in terms of both average well-being
and equity.
The agenda of those who focus on the Roman economy is very much about
sustainable growth and GDP, with an arguably more mature debate where arguments and counter-arguments have already been presented and commented on. It
is now accepted that the Roman world experienced some economic growth but, as
expressed by Andrew Wilson, was it simply population growth without per capita
growth or not? In other words, was it a one-off, unrepeatable effect of the integration of the Mediterranean under Rome, or a process sustained over perhaps two
centuries until terminated by exogenous shocks such as the Antonine Plague?
(Wilson, infra, p. 133).
To answer these questions, we are all forced to work with proxies whose validity
is questioned by Andrew Wilson: Quantifying Roman economic performance by
means of proxies: pitfalls and potential (see p. 133-152). In a refreshing paper, he
seriously tests the robustness of what we believe we know about already developed proxies (shipwrecks, stature, lead and copper pollution, animal bone consumption), as well as others in development (fish-salting capacity, water-mills,
building inscriptions). While warning against nave use of quantification, he also
argues not too pessimistically for the great potential of such a way to proceed.
Going back to Moses Finley, Willem Jongman does his best to contradict the
past orthodoxy and to demonstrate that the Roman economy did experience some
QUANTIFYING The Greco-romAN ecoNomY ANd beYoNd - ISbN978-88-7228-744-6 2014 e d i p u g l i a s . r. l . - w w w. e d i p u g l i a . i t

FOREWORD

sustainable growth (as taken for granted now by most experts in the field). With the
ambitious title: The new economic history of the Roman Empire (see p. 153-168),
he gathers important sets of data whose general trend looks similar: population (in
Tuscany), wood consumption (in Western Germany), animal bones or fineware
and amphora sherds (in Tuscany). Why growth? Jongman pleads for an increase in
production, in which favourable climate conditions may have played a not minor
role. Why decline? Demography is likely to have played a major role and the Antonine Plague is here considered as a pivotal phenomenon. But lack of equity (oppression) is also at stake.
Peter Temins paper is about Price behavior in the Roman Empire (see p. 169184). With the Babylonian prices in mind, it states that prices were mostly market
prices (along with some administrated prices) and that in general differences are
more the effects of location rather than inflation. Focusing on inflation in the 2nd
and 3rd c., Temin wonders what is the better proxy for the real movement of prices
between Egyptian prices and army pay, both subject to tricky movements. Even in
Egypt, hyperinflation (50% inflation per month) was unknown, but high inflation
of 15% a year occurred. Instead of correlating prices with monetary debasement,
Temin proposes an index of political instability to compare with the index of inflation. Speculating about the role of exogenous shocks like the Antonine Pleague,
he advocates for the use of good economic theory to maintain consistency in our
speculations.
Trying to define if Roman rule sustained intensive economic growth and delivered higher incomes for workers, Walter Scheidel keeps away from GDP calculation (notoriously difficult to estimate) to concentrate on real value of Roman
wages (Roman real wages in context, see p. 185-192). Working with wheat equivalents, he attempts to frame Roman evidence (i.e. mostly from Egypt and the East)
in a much broader picture, going back to the third millennium BCE. Doing this, he
sees no sign of elevated real wages that were necessarily driven during the Roman
period by economic development rather than other factors like population loss (the
Antonine Plague again). He favours the idea that the Roman economy did not differ greatly from that of most other pre-modern economies and remained blocked
by the Malthusian trap in which population and returns on input move in opposite
directions).
Bagnalls paper is about the ignominious truth once denounced by A.H.M.
Jones: there are no ancient statistics, because evidence is lost and because GrecoRoman administration was not statistics-oriented (see Late Roman data collection,
p. 193-200). Looking closely at the papyri reporting the monthly declarations that
each guild had to submit to the logistes of Oxyrhynchos (4th-5th c. CE), he is less
pessimistic. Numbers were gathered and centralized. Professional late antique administration is characterized by a less passive behaviour than is often attributed to
QUANTIFYING The Greco-romAN ecoNomY ANd beYoNd - ISbN978-88-7228-744-6 2014 e d i p u g l i a s . r. l . - w w w. e d i p u g l i a . i t

10

QUANTIFYING THE GRECO-ROMAN ECONOMY AND BEYOND

the Roman government, but not to the point of a general regulation of the markets
as is sometimes suspected but hard to reconcile with the prices themselves.
Finally, Elio Lo Cascio and Paolo Malanima tackle the highly disputed question
of GDP with a simple question: Were the ancient Greeks and Romans richer or
poorer than medieval and early modern European inhabitants? (Ancient and premodern economies GDP in Roman Empire and early modern Europe, see p. 201219). Commenting on the several attempts made so far to estimate the GDP of the
Roman Empire, they note the divergence of results but the similarity of method (the
average wheat consumption per capita coupled to the assumption of 3 sesterces
per modius). The results of this demand-side approach do not seem too contradictory when checking them from a supply-side angle (salaries, monetary stock, annual budget). However, the authors denounce the way comparisons with
pre-modern economies are built, especially since the price of certain basic items
relative to the consumer price index was higher than it is today. Taking into account better original estimates for cereals, they conclude that GDP per capita during Roman times approximates those of the late Middle Ages and Early Modern
epoch (ca. $800-1,300 [in 1990 international dollars], and not the ca. $450 largely
assumed so far). This affects the general model of a long-term economic development before the industrial revolution: a long slow rise or stability with cycles as
supported by the authors.

As diverse as all these papers are, adopting different tones from pessimistic
to optimistic about quantification, they do more than to illustrate actual debates
about ancient economy. It is all too clear that their long-term approach is crucial
for a better understanding of the past. The general degree of courage is also remarkable with truly heroic efforts to frame in some cases 4 millennia of human realities. For a large audience, scientific research is certainly not associated with
ancient history. However people do not realize how fast is the increase in our current knowledge. Huge progress has been made. Literature in ancient demography
or economics no longer benefits from a much longer service life than in medical
sciences. Most topics discussed in this book would have been considered as truly
amazing or simply impossible two decades ago.
As the editor of this book whose publication has been long delayed for reasons
for which I feel responsible, I address my most grateful thanks to the authors for
their bravery and their patience. They are among the main protagonists of this astonishing intellectual expansion.
These papers were originally delivered to the conference Long-term quantification in ancient Mediterranean history held in Brussels on October 15th-16th,
2009. This conference was entirely funded by the Francqui Foundation to which
goes my deepest gratitude. Other thanks are for the Royal Library of Belgium
QUANTIFYING The Greco-romAN ecoNomY ANd beYoNd - ISbN978-88-7228-744-6 2014 e d i p u g l i a s . r. l . - w w w. e d i p u g l i a . i t

FOREWORD

11

which hosted this event, and especially to Patrick Lefvre, its General Director, as
well as to Ccile Arnould who, again, was so instrumental in the success of the
conference.
Last but not least, I address my best thanks to Elio Lo Cascio, who consented
to take these proceedings in his series Pragmateiai, as he already did for the other
Francqui conference: Quantifying monetary supplies in Greco-Roman times,
(Pragmateiai 19, Bari, 2011) and to Edipuglia.

QUANTIFYING The Greco-romAN ecoNomY ANd beYoNd - ISbN978-88-7228-744-6 2014 e d i p u g l i a s . r. l . - w w w. e d i p u g l i a . i t

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword by Franois de Callata

Franois de Callata
Long-term quantification in ancient history: a historical perspective

Neville Morley
Orders of magnitude, margins of errors

Alain Bresson
The Ancient World: a climatic challenge

Gerassimos G. Aperghis
Creating a long-term model for an ancient economy

Robartus J. van der Spek and Bas van Leeuwen


Quantifying the integration of the Babylonian economy in the Mediterranean world using
a new corpus of price data, 400-50 BCE
Josiah Ober
Greek economic performance, 800-300 BCE. A comparison case

Geoffrey Kron
Comparative evidence and the reconstruction of the ancient economy: Greco-Roman
housing and the level and distribution of wealth and income

Andrew Wilson
Quantifying Roman economic performance by means of proxies: pitfalls and potential
Willem Jongman
The new economic history of the Roman Empire
Peter Temin
Price behaviour in the Roman Empire

Walter Scheidel
Roman real wages in context

Roger S. Bagnall
Late Roman data collection

Elio Lo Cascio and Paolo Malanima


Ancient and pre-modern economies GDP in Roman Empire and early modern Europe

Edipuglia srl, via Dalmazia 22/b - 70127 Bari-S. Spirito


tel. 0805333056-5333057 (fax) - http://www.edipuglia.it - e-mail: info@edipuglia.it

You might also like