ELIO LO CASCIO

THE ROLE OF THE STATE

IN THE ROMAN ECONOMY: MAKING USE
OF THE NEW INSTITUTIONAL ECONOMICS

The followers of Finleyan orthodoxy, but also historians and archaeologists

on the whole unsympathetic to it, have analysed the role of the state in the
Roman economy by making use, in essence, of the conceptualizations of
Polanyi and substantivist anthropology and in particular by adopting the notion
of redistribution and administered trade, with reference to the annonae
civica and militaris. On the other hand, Rostovtzeffs modernising approach
itself, that postulated for the early Roman empire a conscious policy of laissez-
faire in the context of free market, saw developments from the Severan age
onwards in terms of a state policy of conscious dirigisme, which would have
curbed private initiative.
Both the conceptualizations of substantivist anthropology and the modernising
model of Rostovtzeff seem to be heuristically ineffective, since they are un-
able to capture the specificity of the system of markets in the Roman imperial
economy and of the role of the state within it: the image they propose is not
consistent with the complex picture that emerges from the sources.

The modernizing approach of Rostovtzeff was the result of a lack of

theoretical insight into the economic organization of the Roman world, the
ways in which it worked as a complex system and the motivations of the
individual actors, including the state, notwithstanding Rostovtzeffs
tremendous command of a wide variety of documentary evidence. Moreover,
the idea of a perceptible shift in the economic policy of the state towards greater
interventionism was based not only on a debatable interpretation of some of the
evidence, but also on a discernible ideological stance 1.

1 See now E. Lo Cascio, A blend of Oriental tatisme and city-state socialism: appunti

sulla visione rostovtzeffiana delleconomia romana tra III secolo e tarda antichit, forthcoming.

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216 ELIO LO CASCIO

On the other hand, the conceptualizations of Polanyi do not seem to offer

the key to an understanding of the complex mechanisms at work in the Roman
economy: his other transactional modes apart from the market that is,
reciprocity and redistribution seem, at best, to account for a tiny minority of
transactions within the Roman economy and in any case cannot be considered
as powerful tools for understanding its specificity and the role of the state
within it in comparison with other premodern economies. Let me explain in
more detail.
Redistribution and administered trade loom large in standard presenta-
tions of the Roman economy, specifically with reference to the annona.
Treating the way in which the supply of Rome was organised, Peter Garnsey
and Richard Saller say, in their book on the Roman Empire, that not all
commodity movement in antiquity is properly described as trade in the sense
of market exchange. In particular, the transport of goods by order of or under
the control of the state, redistribution, or administered trade, was of
singular importance under the Roman Empire 2. A broadly similar characteri-
sation of the long distance movement of goods in amphorae is that given, for
example, by Peacock and Williams 3. According to Dick Whittaker some
passages in literary and juridical sources referring to the annona of Rome
would prove not only that prices were not formed in the market, but also that
resources were distributed, to a certain extent, by means other than by a market
system. He says that there was a substantial and perhaps growing sector of
the economy where commodities were transferred to Rome and Italy by extra-
market mechanisms and institutions, supported by subsidies and privileges,
which have to be explained in social and political terms that do not satisfy the
criteria of a classical market economy 4. Now, this second statement is
obviously true (even if I cannot understand what Whittaker means exactly
when he says that the social and political terms do not satisfy the criteria of
a classical market economy), and does not need demonstration: the problem
is just to establish to what extent resources were distributed in this way. This
statement by itself does not prove the decisiveness, in the Roman world, of
redistribution in a Polanyian sense. Above all redistribution is a feature that is
not specific to the Roman economy or, for that matter, pre-industrial
economies as a whole. Even the western economies of the nineteenth century,

2 P. Garnsey & R. Saller, The Roman Empire. Economy, Society and Culture, London 1987,
48.
3 D.P.S. Peacock & D.F. Williams, Amphorae and the Roman economy, an introductory

guide, London & New York 1986, 54-66 on long-distance movement of goods in amphorae.
4 C.R. Whittaker, Trade and the aristocracy in the Roman Empire, Opus 4 (1988), 49-75, at

p. 53 (repr. in Id., Land, City and Trade in the Roman Empire, Great Yarmouth 1993, XII).

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 THE ROLE OF THE STATE IN THE ROMAN ECONOMY 217

even the post-industrial economies based undoubtedly on the price-making

market have elements of redistribution in this specific sense, as many have
pointed out (and among them the most important follower of Polanyi, George
Dalton) 5. The same critique can be addressed to the following statement of
Peacock and Williams: Redistribution systems are admirably exemplified by
the government services, which reallocate the revenues of taxes to those in
special need, or for the common good; according to Peacock and Williams, on
the other hand, in present Western society reciprocity is practised at festivals
such as Christmas or birthdays 6. But if one takes the concepts of redistribution
and reciprocity in this sense, can they really be considered useful tools for
understanding the alleged peculiarities of exchange in the Roman world?
Peacock and Williams themselves notice that reciprocity may seem
insignificant until one considers the very stimulus that this gives to the
production and marketing of gifts specifically geared to the Christmas market,
and point to the fact that government services assure redistribution by
supporting projects designed to increase the flow of trade and hence facilitate
the generation of wealth 7. That is, they themselves notice that these
mechanisms in fact enhance a market economy. Similarly to point out, with
John Davies, the importance of what he defines public economy (in the sense
of the Staatshaushaltung of Boeck) 8 is very different from assuming the
importance of administered trade and redistribution. It means simply that
an ancient polity has its specific fiscal system and that tax-revenues can be
expended in favour of people different from those that have paid the taxes. That
the mechanism of collecting and expending tax has effects on the level and the
structure of prices is quite obvious. But certainly one cannot conclude from that
that any economic system in which the so-called public economy is an
important sector is not based on a price-making market as the main mode of
transactions.
In other words, administered trade and redistribution, in their narrower,
Polanyian sense, do not seem adequate conceptual tools, since the scenario in
which measures, lines of action and attitudes of the public authorities operate is
a market scenario. And it is a market scenario, even when the state (that is, in
imperial Rome, the Emperor) takes control of a substantial proportion of

5 Introduction to K. Polanyi, Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economies, essays of K.

Polanyi edited by G. Dalton, Garden City NY 1968 (ital. transl. Economie primitive, arcaiche e
moderne, a c. di G. Dalton, Torino 1980, XXXI f.).
6 Peacock and Williams, Amphorae and the Roman economy, 56.

7 Ibid.

8 J. Davies, Ancient economies: models and muddles, in H. Parkins & C. Smith, Trade,

traders and the ancient city, London & New York 1998, 225-56, at p. 242.

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218 ELIO LO CASCIO

production and distribution. This scenario, as there is no need to point out, is

totally different from that of eighteenth century Dahomey, and totally
incomparable to it 9, but incomparable also to other scenarios of the ancient
world. There are two elements of similarity, but, indeed, it is just an apparent
similarity: the redistributive mechanisms of frumentationes and congiaria; and
the size of the imperial property, which is quite remarkable by the end of the
second century and the beginning of the third. What is lacking, however, is the
palace economy; even the role played by the princeps never suppressed the
market. There is no complete control of resources, and therefore there is no total
redistribution. On the one hand, the princeps is an euergetes (Veyne could
speak, referring to the changes which led to the emergence of the principate, of
a state mecenatism) 10. On the other hand, as an owner, he is simply the
richest owner in the Roman world, who as an owner can influence the market
and in fact does influence it, but without eliminating it.
To characterize the Roman economy as a market economy does not involve,
however, the unreserved acceptance of the neoclassical paradigm, with its
behavioural assumption of wealth maximisation, as the most useful theoretical
tool for understanding its structure and change over time, that is for
appreciating its performance in comparison with other premodern economies
and more specifically for evaluating the role of the state in it. It seems to me that
a much more promising and rewarding approach is to make use of the tools that
the New Institutionalism has provided not only by changing some of the
neoclassical assumptions about economic rationality, but mainly by stressing
the importance of transaction costs and therefore of the role of institutions and
of institutional change in determining the economic performance of a society,
since when it is costly to transact then institutions matter. And it is costly to
transact, as Douglass North put it in the paper he presented as the Prize
Lecture in memory of Alfred Nobel 11. His analytical framework, as he himself
has observed, is a modification of neoclassical theory. What it retains is the
fundamental assumption of scarcity and hence competition and the analytical
tools of microeconomic theory. What it modifies is the rationality assumption.
What it adds is the dimension of time 12.
Transaction costs are the costs associated with defining, protecting and

9 Polanyi, Primitive, Archaic and Modern Economies, ch. IX (= Economie primitive, arcaiche

e moderne, 201 ff).

10 P. Veyne, Le pain et le cirque. Sociologie historique dun pluralisme politique, Paris 1976,

469 ff.
11 D.C. North, Epilogue: economic performance through time, in L.J. Alston, T. Eggertsson,

D.C. North (eds.), Empirical Studies in Institutional Economics, Cambridge 1996, 344.
12 Ivi, 343

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 THE ROLE OF THE STATE IN THE ROMAN ECONOMY 219

exchanging property rights 13. The costliness of information is the key to the
costs of transacting, which consist of the costs of measuring the valuable
attributes of what is being exchanged and the cost of protecting rights and
policing and enforcing agreements. These measurement and enforcement costs
are the sources of social, political, and economic institutions The costliness
of economic exchange distinguishes the transaction costs approach from the
traditional theory economists have inherited from Adam Smith 14. The
markets of the neo-classical paradigm are an abstraction, since they do not take
into account the costliness of the exchange. The individual cannot make a
perfectly rational choice in the sense of wealth maximization, since the
information he has is imperfect and cannot give him the ability to decipher the
reality around him and since his models for understanding this reality are
imperfect as well. Thence the central role of institutions, in so far as they can
diminish the uncertainty of the exchange and can therefore reduce the costs of
transacting. I will quote the definition that North himself has given of them:
Institutions are the humanly devised constraints that structure political,
economic and social interaction. They consist of both informal constraints
(sanctions, taboos, customs, traditions, and codes of conduct), and formal rules
(constitutions, laws, property rights). Throughout history, institutions have
been devised by human beings to create order and reduce uncertainty in
exchange. Together with the standard constraints of economics they define the
choice set and therefore determine transaction and production costs and hence
the profitability and feasibility of engaging in economic activity. They evolve
incrementally, connecting the past with the present and the future
Institutions provide the incentive structure of an economy; as that structure
evolves, it shapes the direction of economic change towards growth,
stagnation, or decline 15.
An analysis of the state, therefore, becomes central, in so far as it is the state
that, through what North calls its comparative advantage in violence, can
define and enforce the rules of the game, in particular exclusive property
rights. North has devoted a paper to the presentation of A framework for
Analysing the State in Economic History, by looking specifically at pre-modern

13 Ch. N. Steele, Discovery, transaction costs, and growth: Essay on Douglass C. Norths

Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance, in Advances in Austrian

Economics, Vol. 2B (1995), 447-59, at p. 449.
14 D.C. North, Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance, Cambridge

1990, 27.
15 D.C. North, Institutions, Journal of Economic Perspectives 5 (Winter 1991), 97-112, at p.

97; see, on this definition, W. M. Dugger, Douglass C. Norths New Institutionalism, Journal of
Economic Issues, 29.2 (June 1995), 453-458.

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220 ELIO LO CASCIO

states with a single ruler 16. He distinguishes two general types of explanation
for the state to exist: a contract theory and a predatory or exploitation theory.
According to the first theory the state plays the role of wealth maximizer for
society. In the absence of the state, economic growth of any kind would be
impossible, whereas a contract which limits each mans activity relative to
others is an essential condition for economic growth. According to the second
theory, the state is the agency of a group or class and its function is to
extract income from the rest of the constituents in the interest of that group or
class. The predatory state would specify a set of property rights that maximized
the revenue of the group in power, regardless of its impact on the wealth of the
society as a whole. Both the theories provide a partial explanation. The first
theory may explain the gains of initial contracting (in comparison to
anarchy), but does not explain the subsequent maximizing behaviour of
constituents with diverse interests. The second theory ignores the initial gains
of contracting and focuses on the extraction of rents from constituents by those
who gain control of the state 17. One can say therefore that the creation of the
state is an essential precondition for economic growth, but equally that the
state may be the source of man-made economic decline 18. In fact, there
would have been a widespread tendency of states to produce inefficient
property rights and hence fail to achieve sustained growth 19.
The state sets the rules of the game and these are the set of services it
provides, chiefly protection and justice, trading them for revenues. These
services have a twofold objective: to specify the fundamental rules of
competition and cooperation which will provide a structure of property rights
for maximizing the rents accruing to the ruler; and to reduce transaction costs
in order to foster maximum output of the society and, therefore, increase tax
revenues accruing to the state, by providing a set of public (or semipublic)
goods and services designed to lower the cost of specifying, negotiating, and
enforcing contracts which underlie economic exchange 20. But the two
objectives might conflict, since only the second one implies a completely
efficient set of property rights to maximize societal output, whereas the first
one is to maximize the income of the ruler 21. Moreover, in order to specify and

16 D.C. North, A Framework for Analysing the State in Economic History, Explorations in

Economic History, 16 (1979), 249-59; see p. 250 for the definition of the state as an
organization with a comparative advantage in violence.
17 Ivi, 250-51.

18 Ivi, 249.

19 Ivi, 251.

20 Ivi, 252.

21 Ivi, 253.

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 THE ROLE OF THE STATE IN THE ROMAN ECONOMY 221

enforce a body of property rights the creation of an infrastructure will be

necessary, and power will be delegated to agents, to a bureaucracy. This will
lead to a diffusion of some of the monopoly rents of the ruler, since in every
possible organizational structure (a federal structure of local governors; a
centralized bureaucracy, a bailiff system; tax farming) the agents of the ruler are
imperfectly constrained, and their interests never completely coincide with the
rulers 22.
In order to overcome the possible danger presented by powerful
constituents, who could sustain alternative rulers, the ruler will agree to a
property rights structure favourable to them, even if they are not efficient. A
lower efficiency could also be the result of the choice of a more inefficient set
of property rights, but with a lower cost of monitoring, metering and collecting
taxes. In conclusion there is no certainty that economic growth will characterize
every state in which the ruler provides the services which constitute the rules of
the game, and growth itself can be considered in a sense destabilizing, since
technological change, the spread of more efficient markets, etc., would alter
relative prices and the opportunity costs of constituents and lead eventually to
conflicts with the fundamental ownership structure of property rights 23. But
also the absence of growth can be destabilizing. When a political-economic
unit exists in a world of competing political-economic units, the survival of the
state is in danger. Stagnant states can survive as long as there is no change in
the opportunity costs of the constituents at home or in the relative strength of
competitor states. This last condition usually implies that the state approaches
the status of a monopoly and is surrounded by weak states (and there are no net
gains to a ruler in acquiring these states) 24.

It seems to me that the theoretical framework proposed by North can allow a

better insight into the performance of the Roman Empire as a unified political
organization over time and more specifically into the factors that determine
institutional change and into the effects of such change. They can suggest a
deeper understanding of the reasons behind its success and its final demise. The
end of the civil wars, the subsequent emergence of a stable political regime and
the unification of the Mediterranean empire allowed the creation of an institu-
tional scenario that could make exchanges easier and smoother, bringing about a
huge reduction of transaction costs 25. The establishment of more peaceful and

22 Ivi, 255.
23 Ivi, 256-57.
24 Ivi, 257.

25 E. Lo Cascio, The Roman Principate: the impact of the organization of the empire on pro-

duction, in Production and public powers in antiquity, ed. by E. Lo Cascio and D. Rathbone,

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222 ELIO LO CASCIO

safer conditions at sea (already as the result of the suppression of piracy in the
last decades of the Republic), the diffusion of a technology of measurement
and of common metrological systems, and above all the creation of a unitary
monetary area and of common legal rules are all quite remarkable contributing
factors in this reduction of transaction costs, in so far as they reduced
uncertainty and determined the availability of more information to the
transacting parties: and that is true even if one is not ready to admit, with Peter
Temin, that ancient Rome had an economic system that was an enormous
conglomeration of interdependent markets 26 and stresses the imperfection or
the lack of coordination of local markets.
It is legitimate to say that the political unification of the Mediterranean
world brought about, on the one hand, the geographical and social extension of
the price-making market as a transactional mode, on the other hand, a measure
of growth. There are reasons to believe that not only production would have
increased as a consequence of the increase in population, but also per capita
output or per capita income, as a result on the one hand of the spread of new
technology 27, and on the other hand as a consequence of a strong reduction of
transaction costs.
The fiscal needs of the imperial state, the ways in which they were satisfied,
the existence of tax-producing and tax-consuming regions would explain the
measure of economic integration that was achieved after the political
unification of the Mediterranean world 28. Hopkins model remodelled 29 can
be further refined: it is possible, in my view, to offer further readjustments,
which can increase its heuristic effectiveness, apart from the new points of the
model (the emphasis on the role of Rome as an accelerator, which determines
also the transformation of the economic role of the other towns that
developed and benefited from their involvement in production for, and trade

Eleventh International Economic History Congress (Milano 12-17 Sept. 1994), 93-106 (rev. ed.
in E. Lo Cascio and D. Rathbone [eds.], Production and public powers in classical antiquity,
Cambridge Philological Society, Suppl. Vol. 26, Cambridge 2000, 77-85).
26 P. Temin, A Market Economy in the Early Roman Empire, JRS, 91 (2001), 169-81, at p.

181.
27 K. Greene, How was technology transferred in the western provinces?, in M. Wood & F.

Queiroga (eds.), Current research on Romanization of the Western Provinces, Oxford 1992,
101-105; Id., Technological innovation and economic progress in the ancient world: M.I. Fin-
ley re-considered, Econ. Hist. Rev., 53 (2000), 29-59; and the Introduction and some of the pa-
pers included in E. Lo Cascio (a c. di), Innovazione tecnica e progresso economico nel mondo
romano, Bari 2006.
28 K. Hopkins, Taxes and Trade in the Roman Empire, JRS, 70 (1980), 101-25; see also E.

Lo Cascio, Forme delleconomia imperiale, in A. Schiavone (a c. di), Storia di Roma, II, 2,

Torino 1991, 313-65, at pp. 351 ff.
29 K. Hopkins, Rome, Taxes, Rents and Trade, Kodai, 6/7 (1995/6), 41-75 (repr. in W.

Scheidel & S. Von Reden (eds.), The Ancient Economy, Edinburgh 2002, 190-230).

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 THE ROLE OF THE STATE IN THE ROMAN ECONOMY 223

with Rome; the different level of prices, which brings about an easier influx
of goods to Rome; the importance of the trade in luxuries, whereas in the
original model the emphasis was on the movement of staple-foods). I would
point here just to one possible further readjustment, that relates to the
economic development of the empire from the first to the third century, to be
seen in terms of institutional change. Even in its new form the taxes and trade
model remains static. It seems to me that it is necessary to introduce a dynamic
element: as I argued elsewhere 30, the concentration of demand and money in
Rome and within certain limits in Italy as a whole (for instance, because of the
effects of rulings, like the one that obliged senators to invest a substantial part
of their assets in land in Italy) 31 brought about a structural imbalance which in
the long run was to lead to stagnation in Italy and the economic growth of the
provinces, especially the western ones 32.

It seems to me as well that there is still ample room for studying in more
detail, and through an analysis specifically oriented by the conceptualizations of
the New Institutionalism, both the emergence and the diffusion of what we may
call Roman commercial law: the sheer richness of the documentary basis
provided by the jurists but also by such epigraphic evidence as the Murecine
tablets or more generally the Campanian archives can allow the drawing of a
fairly detailed and concrete picture of the working of the Roman economy in a
crucial sector of it 33. There is still ample room for studying the effects of the
rules which govern the relationship between principal and agent 34. There is still
ample room for studying, in other fields, from this specific point of view, the
labour contracts, for example the Transylvanian tablets 35, or the diffusion of
uniform procedures of land surveying and measurement, prompted by fiscal
needs. The analysis of what I am still ready to call the decline would gain as
well from the explicit adoption of the tools of New Institutionalism: the

30 E. Lo Cascio, Forme delleconomia imperiale cit., 356 ff.

31 Plin. Ep. 6. 19; H.A. Marc. 11. 8.
32 E. Lo Cascio, The Roman Principate (n. 25), 103 (= 84).

33 G. Camodeca, Larchivio puteolano dei Sulpicii. I, Napoli 1992; Id., Tabulae Pompeianae

Sulpiciorum, voll. 1 e 2, Roma 1999; see also Id., Il credito negli archivi campani: il caso di
Puteoli e di Herculaneum, in E. Lo Cascio (a c. di), Credito e moneta nel mondo romano, Bari
2003, 69-98.
34 See, in particular, J.-J. Aubert, Business Managers in Ancient Rome: A Social and Eco-

nomic Study of Institores, 200 BC-AD 250, Leiden-New York-Kln 1994.

35 CIL III pp. 948 ff., IX-XI; cfr. FIRA III 150 f.; see J. Macqueron, Le travail des hommes

libres dans lantiquit romaine, Aix-en-Provence 19582, 187 ff.; M. Corbier, Salaires et salariat
sous le Haut-Empire, in Les dvaluations Rome. poque rpublicaine et impriale, Roma
1980, 61-101, at pp. 79 ff.; H.C. Noeske, Studien zur Verwaltung und Bevlkerung der
dakischen Goldbergwerke in rmischer Zeit, BJ 177, 1977, 271-416, at pp. 396 ff.

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224 ELIO LO CASCIO

complex interplay between the elite with their interests and the emperors
administration with its financial needs and the various devices adopted to meet
them, especially in consequence of the demographic crisis and the crisis in
production from Marcus Aurelius onwards 36.

But I should like to dwell in the last part of this paper on what seems to me
one of the most remarkable and original features of the Roman Empire as a
political and economic organization, which explains also how and why the
Roman state could provide services different from justice and defense, like
the annona civica for Rome and more generally could look after the orderly
supply of foodstuffs in the urban centres of the empire. If the emperor (that is, in
imperial Rome, the state) defined the rules of the game, he was also, in a sense,
a player, since his huge patrimonium was managed in many ways as a private
asset 37, even if his fiscus enjoyed specific privilegia in its relationships with
private people 38 (and again it would be interesting to study in more detail how
these privilegia in fact changed the contractual position of the imperial
administration in its relationship with private people). This state of affairs
depended on the way in which the Augustan revolution was achieved, and on
the very ambivalence of the figure of the princeps. It depended, more
particularly, on the fact that the relationship of the princeps with the provinces
which were financially dependent on him and his relationship with the fiscus
could be subsumed and were subsumed by the Roman jurists, to some extent,
under the relationship that linked a private person to his patrimony 39. Nobody,
of course, would have doubted that the fiscus, with its revenues, was in fact
something very different from the patrimony of a private person. Nobody would
have denied that the revenues of the fiscus were used for purposes that in
modern terms we would call public. But the fact that these revenues might

36 See e.g. E. Lo Cascio, Fra equilibrio e crisi, in A. Schiavone (a c. di), Storia di Roma , II,

2, Torino 1991, 701-31.

37 I insisted on this feature in some recent contributions: E. Lo Cascio, Mercato libero e

commercio amministrato in et tardoantica, in C. Zaccagnini (ed.), Mercanti e politica nel

mondo antico, Roma 2003, 307-325; Id., Appaltatori delle imposte e amministrazione
finanziaria imperiale, in Tches publiques et entreprise prive dans le monde romain, sous la
direction de J.-J. Aubert (Recueil des travaux publis par la Facult des Lettres et Sciences
Humaines de lUniversit de Neuchtel, Neuchtel/Genve 2003), 249-66; Id., La
concentrazione delle figlinae nella propriet dellimperatore (II-IV sec. d.C.), in Chr. Bruun (a
c. di), Interpretare i bolli laterizi di Roma e della Valle del Tevere: produzione, storia economica
e topografia, Roma 2005, 95-102.
38 H.M. Lenz, Privilegia fisci, Pfaffenweiler 1994 (diss. Trier 1993), with the review of F.

Mercogliano, in ZRG, 114 (1997), 504-506.

39 E. Lo Cascio, Il princeps e il suo impero. Studi di storia amministrativa e finanziaria ro-

mana, Bari 2000.

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 THE ROLE OF THE STATE IN THE ROMAN ECONOMY 225

not be called public, since they were not strictly of the populus Romanus, the
fact that they were always of the princeps in a sense as a private person, is not a
mere juridical fiction, without any practical meaning. The fact that the fiscus is
fiscus Caesaris means that the princeps actually intervened, in the economy, as
a private person among other private persons and therefore that he entered the
market and influenced it in a radical way and to a decisive extent; he did not
suppress it.

It is in the context of this twofold role played by the princeps and his ad-
ministration that one can explain both the ways in which, under the ideologi-
cal umbrella of his liberalitas and indulgentia, that is as an euergetes or the
richest euergetes, the Emperor solved the problem of supplying Rome, by
leaving unchanged the market mechanisms at work; and his interventions in
regulating the market, in establishing and enforcing the rules of the game.
That a remarkable part and in the end the bigger part of the basic food
consumption of the city of Rome was covered by the revenues of tax and rents
from the imperial properties does not mean, by itself, that the mechanisms at
work were the mechanisms of redistribution, as an alternative to market
exchange. There has been a lively debate on what proportion of Roman grain
consumption was covered by tax or rent from the Imperial estates and what
proportion was satisfied by the free market. This debate is linked, obviously, to
the problem of estimating the size of the tax and rent grain, on the one hand,
and of the population of Rome, on the other hand 40. Suffice it to say that two
conflicting views have been expressed. According to people like, for example,
Durliat, by far the greater part of Romes consumption would have been
covered by the grain of the state 41; according to other scholars, chiefly Sirks,
state grain would have formed a small portion of the grain coming to Rome 42.
The debate is important, but by itself not significant for our issue. To decide in

40 See e.g. G.E. Rickman, The Corn Supply of Ancient Rome, Oxford 1980; P. Garnsey, Grain

for Rome, in P. Garnsey, K. Hopkins and C.R. Whittaker, Trade in the ancient economy, London
1983, 118-30; E. Lo Cascio, Lorganizzazione annonaria, in S. Settis (a c. di), Civilt dei Romani,
I, La citt, il territorio, limpero, Milano 1990, 229-48; Id., Le procedure di recensus dalla tarda
Repubblica al tardoantico e il calcolo della popolazione di Roma, in La Rome impriale: dmo-
graphie et logistique, Roma 1997, 3-76, and more recently A. Tchernia, Subsistances Rome:
problmes de quantification, in Mgapoles mditerranennes. Gographie urbaine rtrospective,
sous la direction de C. Nicolet, R. Ilbert, J.-Ch. Depaule, Paris 2000, 751-60, and the contribu-
tions of A. Tchernia, C. Virlouvet, G. Geraci and F. De Romanis in Nourrir les cits de Mditer-
rane. Antiquit-Temps modernes, sous la direction de B. Marin et C. Virlouvet, Paris 2003.
41 J. Durliat, De la ville antique la ville byzantine. Le problme des subsistances, Roma

1990.
42 B. Sirks, Food for Rome. The legal structure of the transportation and processing of supplies

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226 ELIO LO CASCIO

one way or the other, does not answer the question whether we are justified in
talking of redistribution as suppressing market mechanisms.
The point I want to make is made clearer by what appears to me two curious
assumptions made by the scholar, Boudewijn Sirks, who has particularly insisted
on the importance of private supply through the market 43. The first one is that the
whole organisation of the annona and specifically the involvement of the corpo-
ra, above all of the navicularii and the pistores, were directed to ensure not the
whole supply of Rome, but uniquely the grain for the free distributions. Annona,
in the expressions we find in the jurists of navicularii qui annonae urbis serviunt
or of negotiatores qui annonam urbis adiuvant or iuvant 44, would refer to just the
supply, transport and storage of the foodstuffs reserved for the free distributions to
the plebs frumentaria of Rome. And the plebs frumentaria made up only a very
small proportion of the whole population of Rome, according to Sirks. The sec-
ond assumption, which derives in a sense from the first, is that the grain for the free
distributions would have been equal to the sum of the tax and rent grain.
It seems to me that it is easy to refute both these assumptions. It must be
observed that in none of our sources referring to navicularii, pistores and the other
corpora involved in transport and storage, does such a limitation appear; more-
over, many pieces of evidence become incomprehensible, if one assumes this
limitation. Furthermore, the very existence of an autonomous bureaucratic
ressort for the distributions and the fact that the praefectus annonae had
nothing to do with the frumentationes, would make quite incomprehensible a
limitation of his competence just to the collection of the grain and later of the oil
for the distributions. But above all the fallacy of the first assertion is shown by a
common sense consideration. It is absolutely unthinkable that such imperial
structural interventions, like the construction of the two harbours, or the acqui-
sition of storage facilities, were planned just in order to serve the free distribu-
tions. They were, of course, intended in answer to a more general preoccupation
to ensure a regular flow of supplies to an urban centre of abnormal proportions. It
would be odd, then, that the interest of the state in its contractual relationships
with the corpora would have been limited just to the negotiatores or navicularii
involved in the transport of the grain for the distributions.

for the imperial distributions in Rome and Constantinople, Amsterdam 1991; see also Id., The size
of the grain distributions in imperial Rome and Constantinople, Athen., 79 (1991), 215-37
43 For what follows see in more detail E. Lo Cascio, Ancora sugli Ostias services to Rome:

collegi e corporazioni annonarie a Ostia, MFRA, 114 (2002), 87-109; I must admit that I am
not convinced by the way in which B. Sirks has now reacted to my objections: see B. Sirks, The
food distributions in Rome and Constantinople: Imperial power and continuity, in A. Kolb
(Hg.), Herrschaftsstrukturen und Herrschaftspraxis. Konzepte, Prinzipien und Strategien der
Administration im rmischen Keiserreich, Berlin 2006, 35-44.
44 Dig. L 6, 6 (Call.); F.V. 236 (Ulp.); F.V. 237 (Paul.).

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 THE ROLE OF THE STATE IN THE ROMAN ECONOMY 227

As to the second assumption made by Sirks, that the grain for the free
distributions and the tax and rent grain were of equal volume, it seems to me
that it is contradicted by the fact that the number of beneficiaries did not
increase after Augustus, whereas the amount of grain coming from the imperial
properties, especially in Africa, must have increased substantially 45. There was
never a correspondence between tax and rent grain and grain for the free
distributions. There was no such correspondence in the Late Republic, when the
tax grain was sometimes more, sometimes less than the grain freely distributed.
There was no such correspondence in the imperial period, when state grain was
more and in the end much more than the grain for the free distributions.
Moreover, there are cases in which it is possible to identify the nature and
the limits of state interventions in the annona of Rome. These cases show that
the scenario in which the Emperors administration intervened was not
inherently altered and that these interventions did not produce irreversible
effects; they show that the way in which the Emperor acted reveals his frank
acceptance that a free price-making market operated in normal conditions. I do
not dwell on these cases which I have dealt with elsewhere in detail 46. I will just
refer to the rulings, in the Theodosian Code, about the collection of the canon
suarius and its delivery to the beneficiaries of the distribution of caro porcina
and more generally to the urban consumers, in a period for which the
overwhelming importance of foodstuffs coming to Rome as proceeds of tax and
rent from the imperial properties cannot be denied 47. But even this prevalence
of foodstuffs which come as taxes and rents does not mean the disappearance of
a market scenario, as is shown by the continuous reference, in the laws of the
Theodosian Code, to the forum rerum venalium and to the price which prevails
in it. I will dwell on some of these laws in which the forum rerum venalium is
mentioned: the laws on the caro porcina 48. The sale of caro porcina and the
activities in the forum suarium were already, in the Severan age, under the

45 Lo Cascio, Lorganizzazione annonaria (n. 40), 236.

46 Mercato libero e commercio amministrato in et tardoantica (n. 37); Canon frumenta-
rius, suarius, vinarius: stato e privati nellapprovvigionamento dellVrbs, in W.V. Harris (ed.),
The transformations of Vrbs Roma in Late Antiquity, Portsmouth, R.I. 1999, 163-82.
47 I still think that by far the greater part of of the consumption of foodstuffs in Late Rome

was covered by tax and rent; for a different opinion see D. Vera, Fra Egitto e Africa, fra Ro-
ma e Costantinopoli, fra annona e commercio: la Sicilia nel Mediterraneo antico, in Atti del IX
congresso internazionale di studi sulla Sicilia antica, Kokalos, XLIII-XLIV (1997-1998), 33-
72; Id., Panis Ostiensis adque fiscalis: vecchie e nuove questioni di storia annonaria romana,
in Humana sapit. tudes dantiquit tardive offertes Lelia Cracco Ruggini, dit par J.-M.
Carri et R. Lizzi Testa, Bibliothque de lAntiquit tardive, 3, 2002, 341-56.
48 Collected in the title XIV 4 of the Theodosian Code; see also Nov. Val. 36; and CIL VI

1771 (reproducing the edict of the urban praefect Turcius Apronianus, issued when Julian was
Augustus).

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228 ELIO LO CASCIO

control of the praefectus urbi, who had to see to it that the meat was sold iusto
pretio, as we know from a passage of Ulpian in the Digest 49: that is, without
speculation (iustum pretium is not what we call a political price). The
distribution becomes free during the third century 50. By the end of that century
things change, since some regiones of Italy are obliged to give pigs for the
annona of Rome, as a fiscal contribution. From the laws of title XIV 4 of the
Theodosian Code (De suariis, pecuariis et susceptoribus vini ceterisque
corporatis) and from Nov. Val. 36, we deduce that a large proportion of the
canon suarius was used for the distributions in the form of individual monthly
rations for a limited period of the year, five months. We deduce also that a part
of the canon was put up for sale 51. The contribution could be commuted into a
money contribution, and the emperors intervene to establish the ways in which
the commutation and then the purchase of the pigs must be effected and to
avoid speculative actions by the suarii themselves or by the officiales.
Thus, a Constantinian law 52 gives the taxpayers the possibility of choosing
whether to give pigs or money; and, in the meantime, it establishes that it is
not the suarius that gives the evaluation of the weight of the swine that are
contributed. The law establishes as well that the commutation price, the price
of adaeratio, must be the same as the purchase price, but that it must be dif-
ferent according to the various places and times; for this reason, the iudices
regionum, the provincial governors, must give annually the indication of what
the price is in the various areas, evidently the market price. In this way, the
Emperor says, queri...suarii non poterunt, quia nihil interest, carius an vilius
comparent, cum, quantum pretium daturi sunt, a possessore accipiant; et pos-
sessores erunt moderati in specie distrahenda, cum se sciant, quanto maiora
pretia pro carne poposcerint, tanto plus suariis soluturos (The swine collec-
tors cannot complain, since it makes no difference whether they buy dearer or
cheaper, for they shall give the same price as they receive from the land-
holders, and the landholders shall be restrained in their sale of supplies in
kind, since they shall know that they will pay as much to the swine col-
lectors as they demand for their meat transl. Pharr, slightly adapted).
The following constitution of the same title, of the years of Julian 53, gives fur-
ther dispositions aimed at preventing abuses by the suarii, with particular refer-
ence to Campania. The Emperor establishes also that the suarii of Rome must be

49 D. 1. 12. 1. 11: see A. Chastagnol, La prfecture urbaine Rome sous le bas-empire, Pa-

ris 1960, 56 f.
50 Ivi, 58.

51 Lo Cascio, Le procedure di recensus (n. 40), 63 ff.; Canon frumentarius (n. 46), 172.

52 C. Th. XIV 4. 2.

53 C. Th. XIV 4. 3.

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 THE ROLE OF THE STATE IN THE ROMAN ECONOMY 229

paid at the prices which are found (repperiuntur: note the verb) year by year in
Campania, and not at the prices prevailing at Rome, which were evidently higher,
so that an adequate praebitio is ensured through the suarii themselves (that means,
so that the suarii buy the pigs in the same area where they exacted money).
Both these constitutions attest that the entire mechanism of adaeratio and
coemptio is structurally based on the presence of a forum rerum venalium, on
a free market, and on the price which prevails in it, a price that differs ac-
cording to place and time. If the imperial administration can base the whole
mechanism on this price, it means that it has the capability of ascertaining it
periodically (and the laws give some hint of that). The same picture is offered,
for a different area of the Empire, Egypt, by a dossier of papyrological docu-
ments, recently considerably expanded: I refer to the declarations which were
given monthly by the heads of the koin, the guilds of craftsmen and mer-
chants of the Egyptian poleis, and relating to the current price of the com-
modities treated by the guilds themselves 54.
Such a periodical registration of prices is what we have to assume also in
other cases, not relating to the annona of Rome, and where there is also an im-
perial intervention. I will take just one example: the famous piece of legislation
that Hadrian, as nomothetes, gave Athens, concerning the production and the
export of oil 55. This piece of legislation imposes on the oil producers and oil
traders of Attica the sale to the elaionai of a third of the oil (or for some lands
an eighth), leaving the rest available for export. A detailed list of penalties is
laid down, that are to be inflicted on the producers, the traders and the shippers
who will not make the required declaration under oath, on the quantity of oil
that will be sold outside Athens and on the identity of the foreign buyers, or on
those who make false declarations. The aim of the law is obviously to prevent
the export of all the oil: it is necessary to ensure a sufficient supply for internal
consumption. The producers and the dealers who bought the oil from the pro-
ducers were inclined to export the oil if the price outside Athens was higher.
What seems to me particularly interesting for our subject is that it is stated that
the price at which the elaionai must buy the oil has to be the current market
price at Athens: In order that the penalties against transgressors be strictly im-
posed, the oil shall be delivered to the public treasury at the local market price

54 Lo Cascio, Mercato libero e commercio amministrato (n. 37), 321 ff. See the list of these

documents given by R.A. Coles, The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, vol. LIV, ed. R.A. Coles, H. Maehler,
P. J. Parsons, London 1987, 92 (intr. to P. Oxy. 3731).
55 F.F. Abbott & A.C. Johnson, Municipal Administration in the Roman Empire, Princeton

1926, n 90 = J.H. Oliver, Greek Constitutions of Early Roman Emperors from Inscriptions and
Papyri, Philadelphia 1989, n 77; see E. Lo Cascio, La dimensione finanziaria, in L. Capo-
grossi Colognesi e E. Gabba (a c. di), Gli statuti municipali, Pavia 2006, 673-699, at p. 698.

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230 ELIO LO CASCIO

(ll. 57-60). That is, the mechanism that must ensure the effectiveness of the
measure does not provide the fixing of a price, but the observance of the local
market price, conceived evidently as a fair price.
This idea that a fair price is fair precisely because it is the market one, and
that only speculative behaviour can alter it, is found in a series of fragments of
the Digest, that refer to the role that the decurions must play in order to ensure
the regular supply of foodstuffs to their city. The first of these fragments, of Pa-
pirius Iustus 56, refers to a rescript by Marcus and Verus, in which it is affirmed
that minime aequum est decuriones civibus suis frumentum vilius quam annona
exigit vendere (it is grossly unjust for the decurions to sell grain to their citizens
more cheaply than the corn supply requires, transl. Watson); the jurist adds that
the same Augusti wrote that ius non esse ordini cuiusque civitatis pretium grani
quod invenitur statuere (it is not lawful for the ordo [of decurions] of any
civitas to lay down the price of any grain which is found). The second of
these fragments, of Marcianus 57, refers also to a rescript of the divi fratres,
whose content would have been present in other imperial dispositions, and on
whose basis Non debere cogi decuriones vilius praestare frumentum civibus
suis, quam annona exigit (decurions were not to be forced to provide corn to
their fellow citizens at less than the market price). In the third, a fragment of
Paul 58, it is said that decuriones pretio viliori frumentum, quod annona tempo-
ralis est patriae suae, praestare non sunt cogendi (Decurions may not be
forced to provide corn at a price cheaper than the price of corn at the time in
their patria). Another fragment, of Ulpian 59, can be compared with these pas-
sages. In this fragment, Ulpian says quite explicitly, in the context of a discus-
sion on the onera of the fructuarii, that nam solent possessores certam partem
fructuum municipio viliori pretio addicere (As a matter of fact, occupiers of
land generally sell a fixed portion of the fruits of their land to the municipal au-
thorities at a low price) (but it is not said in comparison with what price, this
price is vilius). Various interpretations have been offered recently of these pas-
sages, now examined in detail in the book by Evelyn Hbenreich on the an-
nona 60. Carri sees in the first fragment la dfense dune sorte de libralisme
conomique dliber, exprimant un choix social et impliquant une rflexion
lmentaire sur la formation du prix et sur son rle conomique: il est un

56 D. 48. 12. 3.
57 D. 50. 1. 8.
58 D. 50, 8, 7 [5].
59 D. 7, 1, 27, 3.
60 E. Hbenreich, Annona. Juristische Aspekte der stadtrmischen Lebensmittelversorgung

im Prinzipat, Graz 1997, 178 ff.; see also P. Erdkamp, The Grain Market in the Roman Empi-
re. A social, political and economic study, Cambridge 2005, 288-90.

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 THE ROLE OF THE STATE IN THE ROMAN ECONOMY 231

niveau minimum au dessous duquel les prix doivent se tenir pour stimuler la
production agricole and Dardaine and Pavis dEscurac arrive at similar con-
clusions 61. Referring as well to the fragment by Papirius Iustus, Peter Herz
interprets it as showing that the decurions would have attempted to resort to
dumping in order to rid themselves of their competitors and the forbidden ac-
tion would be to fix a price of the grain lower than the market price and to sell
it at this lower price 62. Obviously, this interpretation must be rejected, if the
passages of Marcianus and Paul are brought into play: what the Emperors want
to avoid is that the decurions are or feel obliged to sell at a price lower than the
market price. Durliat, who proposes a small correction of the text of Pauls
fragment that does not, however, change its general meaning, thinks that the
constitution of the divi fratres aims at defending the interests of the decurions,
who could be obliged by popular pressure to sell below the market price 63. This
interpretation is, in essence, also the one advocated by Hbenreich. In a period
of crisis the emperors would aim to defend the local senates from intolerable
pressures. I would add that the ruling of Marcus and Verus would be perfectly
understandable in a phase of probable general disruption of the urban supplies,
following the spread of epidemic disease.
However these fragments are interpreted, and whatever the nature of the re-
lationship of these imperial rulings with the regulation of the annona of Rome,
which is debated, a conclusion seems to emerge: that imperial intervention was
certainly aimed at regulating the market, in order to avoid speculative beha-
viour, but that an additional preoccupation, and one which was suggested by a
feeling of equity, was to avoid an artificial lowering of prices 64.
I would suggest that such a feeling of equity on the part of the imperial
government had an important impact on the overall performance of the econ-
omy: North has noticed that no theory of institutions can be complete that
does not include ideology as a constraint on maximizing at certain margins, be-
cause measurement and enforcement are costly and the actions of individuals
can be affected by their perception of the fairness or justness of contracts.
Ideology can be measured by the premium individuals are willing to incur
rather than to free-ride; in its absence in a world of universal maximizing by

61 J.-M. Carri, Les distributions alimentaires dans les cits de lEmpire romain tardif,

MFRA, 87 (1975) 1096 f.; S. Dardaine - H. Pavis dEscurac, Ravitaillement des cits et vrge-
tisme annonaire dans les provinces occidentales sous le Haut-Empire, Ktema, 11 (1986) 297 f.
62 P. Herz, Studien zur rmischen Wirtschaftsgesetzgebung. Die Lebensmittelversorgung,

Stuttgart 1988, 148 f.

63 Durliat, De la ville antique la ville byzantine (n. 41), 295 ff.

64 See now the discussion of these texts in the PhD dissertation of M.L. Ceparano, Lap-

provvigionamento granario delle citt dellAsia Minore Occidentale tra et ellenistica ed et

romana, Univ. Federico II di Napoli (Dottorato di ricerca in storia antica, XIV ciclo), 249 ff.

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232 ELIO LO CASCIO

individuals the cost of contracting would be so great that economic activity

would be limited and institutional stability impossible. It is ideological con-
viction that underlies the stability of institutions, and ideological alienation
that both raises the costs of contracting and induces individuals to engage in
large-group action to change institutions 65. The provincial loyalty, to use
Andos expression 66, that the Roman Emperors were able to gain and to main-
tain for centuries was an important key not only to the political success of the
Empire, but also to its economic performance.

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