Rome and the rest of the World

We've got a pretty good idea of Rome's place in the world...from Syria and Morocco to Germany and Wales, everyone within this enormous conglomeration of cultures was considering themselves Roman by the 1st-century AD...well, nearly everyone. North Africa, the Middle East, Asia Minor and Europe - this was the Roman World. But what about the rest? What about the rest of Asia? What about the rest of Africa? What about...even the America's? How did Rome fit into their worlds?

Well, today we'll start off with the part of the world most influenced by Rome, yet never occupied as a Roman territory. Any ideas? It was a vast land, known to be around the same size as Gaul, populated by countless millions and irrigated by rivers measured miles across. Roman-era Jews and Christians lived there and it's southern tip was the trading hub that joined the shipping routes of the east with those of the west. And even today Roman coins are still found throughout the country. Bet India wasn't the first name you thought of.

 

Roman Trade routes to the East - India was the number one destination

Since the earliest beginnings of civilisation in the Middle East, trade between Mesopotamia, the Arabian
Peninsular and India has been recorded, so it should be no surprise that India was still a big part of the ancient global economy when Rome came along. Trade between the two regions exploded soon after Augustus annexed Egypt from Cleopatra and Antony - in fact the lovers had been planning an escape to India until Pro-Roman Egyptian rebels burnt their Red Sea fleet. With an independent Egypt removed as a middleman, direct trade between Rome and India was possible for the first time, and within a decade 120 ships were crossing the Indian Ocean between several Indian ports and Myos Hormos - Rome's principle
Red Sea port - each year. Not bad for a shipping season restricted to just seven months by the summer monsoon.

Roman traders settled along the sub-continent's east coast and southern Tamil states at places such as Barbaricum (now Karachi), Barygaza, Muziris, Korkai, and Arikamedu - the latter three all being Tamil. Pliny writes in 78AD that the Tamil economy was built almost entirely on international trade, where Tamil or Sri Lankan ships from Southeast Asia and China met Roman shippers arriving from Egypt. Commodities traded included frankincense, ceramics, gold and silver, coral, linen clothing, glass and wine coming from Europe. The Roman ships returned west loaded with silk yarn, cotton cloth, rice, wheat, sesame oil, spices and Chinese made steel (goes to show nothing much has changed). Pliny conservatively estimated Rome's annual trade deficit with Asia was some 100-million sesterces ($2.5-billion). And this was no small deal. Two thousand years later India is still littered with the millions of coins shipped into the country during the reign of the Roman Emperors.

It is also likely India had the world's largest population of Roman expats at the time. The Apostle Thomas (the doubting one) travelled to the sub-continent in 52AD to convert a large Jewish population already established in the north and in the Tamil States. It has been suggested he even converted one of the northern kings, Gundaphorus, and established seven and a half churches in the south (yes, I know, I can't explain the half either), some of which continue as places of worship to this day.

So the next time you think of ancient India, think of it as a modern day Hong Kong or Singapore rather than some outpost Alexander the Great eventually got to. This was a place that really mattered to the Romans, and it goes to show the ancient world had just as big a picture as ours does today.    

Find out if Calvus ever ate any curry

Sending a postcard from the edge

So we know Claudia Severa was able to post her postcards, but just how did she do it? The Romans probably didn't have formalised post offices as we do today, but they almost certainly had some form of mail delivery available to the wider populace. To post a letter or a parcel, a Roman probably did one of three things. As Claudia proves, private letters to a military address were moved with the daily/weekly/monthly dispatches. Hers was probably fairly simple - she lived in the Ninth Legion's headquarters at Isurium Brigantum, from where regular dispatches probably went straight to outlying forts like Vindolanda. We know from the Vindolanda letters that these dispatches also included 'care parcels' for soldiers from their families so the term 'army dispatches' probably covered almost anything addressed to a soldier. Presumably if you lived in or near one fort you could send mail to your Legionary headquarters, which then sent the mail to the addressee's Legionary headquarters and ultimately to their fort.

In less militarised parts of the Roman world, a similar government system almost certainly existed too. Most large towns had a Basilica - not the churches as we know them today - but what the Romans called their government buildings. Here there was a civilian version of dispatches moving between outer provincial towns to the provincial capital, and then on to other provincial capitals for eventual delivery. It may have functioned separately to the army system or the two may have blended into each other in the outer provinces.

And then lastly, there would have been private couriers. Like the modern day FedEx, DHL or TNT there was almost certainly someone in your town or city you could pay to move your mail. Just like today's modern couriers, they probably hubbed and spoked their deliveries around the major cities and shipping routes. And they were fairly fast too - ships sailing from Rome to Alexandria could do so in less than two days, to Massilia in less than a week and to Spain or the Middle East in a fortnight...depending on the prevailing winds. 

But once the mail arrived in your town, how was it delivered? Perhaps it was quite similar to how ours is. Most Roman streets were named and there's ample evidence that most houses had the resident's name written beside the front door - some towns may also have used street numbers. Whether the resident paid for the delivery is pure speculation, but you could imagine the public slave or privateer who arrived at your door probably wanted a coin or two for their trouble.

However there is one thing I can say with some certainty on this speculative topic...there weren't too many stamp collectors in ancient Rome.

Find out what Calvus lost in the mail    

Another Postcard from the edge

A she-wolf mosaic from Isurium Brigantum, the town
Claudia Severa may have posted her letter from

Here's another postcard Claudia Severa sent to her friend Sulpicia Lepidina living in the Northumberland fort of Vindolanda around 100AD. Like Lepidina, Claudia is living in a northern fort, possibly at the location she calls Briga (shortened version of Isurium Brigantum), which is now Aldborough west of York - and was the headquarters for the Ninth Legion at the time. This is 92 miles south of Vindolanda - near modern day Bardon Mill west of Newcastle. In the letter she says she is travelling north, perhaps with her young son, to see her friend - no mean feat in 100AD, because these northern lands were barely Romanised and a journey of this distance in a carriage would have taken two very long days, or perhaps three. As I made the comparison yesterday, this would have been like crossing South Dakota in the 1860s, yet clearly her husband, Aelius Brocchus, the fort commander at Briga, thought the travel safe enough. Unfortunately this two page card is partly incomplete, but the gist of the letter is still in there...

Claudia Severa's two page postcard to Lepidina

" ... greetings. Just as I had spoken with you, sister, and promised that I would ask Brocchus of me visiting you, I asked him and he gave me the following reply "that it was always readily permitted to me, together with (missing - possibly my son) to come to you in whatever way I can." There are certain essential things which (missing) you will receive in my letters by which you will know what I am going to do (missing) I was (missing) and will remain at Briga. Greet your Cerialis from me. Farewell my sister, my dearest and most longed-for soul."

Address...

"To Sulpicia Lepidina, wife of Cerialis, from Severa, wife of Brocchus."

Another day in an army wife's life, who at the time was literally living on the edge of the known world.

Find out if Calvus ever visited Yorkshire

Postcards from the edge

Roman mail, the grain supplies are a problem again

In 1973 archaeologists excavating the pre-Hadrians Wall fort known as Vindolandia discovered a horde of partially burnt but well preserved wooden postcards in the 1900-year old fort's rubbish. These postcards were the standard for sending or receiving dispatches across the Roman Empire, hardy and relatively water resistant this was the postal standard of the era...address on one side and the message on the other. Being a military fort, most of the 500 surviving cards deal with the day to day issues confronting the fort commanders - sick leave, grain supply and incidentals. However some are far more personal, and given the fort's location, paint a picture of life on the edge of the world.

This is northern England between 92 and 102AD, there is no Hadrians Wall yet, and the wilds of Pictish Scotland are mere miles away. This is South Dakota in the 1860s or Siberia in the 1900s. The fort is garrisoned with a cohort of German speaking Batavians (about 480) from the modern day Netherlands - commanded by Latin and Gallic officers. And yet life goes on. The senior officers have brought their wives with them, and in this man's world, the girls reach out to each other, just as army wives do today...and we know this because we have their letters.

From the 9th Legion's headquarters further south, Claudia Severa sends a postcard to her friend, Sulpicia Lepidina, wife of Vindolanda's commander, Flavius Cerialis in 100AD...just 1912-years ago...



Currently the world's oldest known Latin document
written by a woman - Claudia Severa 

"Claudia Severa to her Lepidina, greetings. On September 11th, sister, for the day of my birthday, I give you a warm invitation to make sure that you come to us, to make the day more enjoyable for me by your arrival and your presence. Give my greetings to your Cerialis. My Aelius (her husband) and my little son send Cerialis their greetings too. I shall expect you, sister. Farewell, sister, my dearest soul, as I hope to prosper, and hail."

Address...

"To Sulpicia Lepidina, wife of Cerialis, from Severa."

Find out if Calvus got his final notices in the mail

Building Walls - Rewind

You might remember a previous blog about how the Roman finance world used military expansionism to feed its liquidity and manage currency values. Similar imperial expansions seen since the 1600s - and into the 1940s - were not too distant from this model either. But what happened when the Roman legions stopped marching towards the horizon? Did the Roman economy collapse as it ate out the resources trapped within its borders? The short answer is - yes - eventually, but it took two hundred years, and the initial end to expansionism was better planned than a knee jerk populist decision of wanting to bring the legions home.

For a long time we've looked at Hadrian as the wall builder - and perhaps a little defeatist in attitude when compared to the conquests of Dacia and Arabia by his predecessor and second cousin, Trajan. What we've got to remember is that both of them were businessmen at heart - from the same Spanish olive oil family. Now in those days, olive oil was an industrial product, and it would be best to compare these two Spaniards to today's Texan oil families - olive oil plantations weren't about salad condiments, they kept the lights on at night. The fact, is Trajan and Hadrian both understood money, and they both understood the need to make it. Trajan followed the well-trodden path of keeping the state in cash by acquiring more resources. But the more conservative Hadrian decided to try something different. He built walls.

Now, we really have the wrong perspective of these walls. We take the medieval view that a wall is to protect you and to keep ideologically-opposed armies out of your town. But this wasn't really the case in Hadrian's time. By the second century AD, most Roman cities had no walls, or had extended far beyond those built in the early Republic four or five hundred years prior. Romans didn't have such a defensive attitude, simply because they understood no one beyond the border lands had the capacity to threaten more than banditry on the empire's edges. Hadrian's most famous wall, his namesake in Northern England, was ostensibly to keep the woad-painted Picts out of the towns and farms of Roman Britain, but lets take a more realistic view...what was the actual threat the northern tribes posed? At this time Roman Britain had a population of six million. The Picts, with far less arable land, and living in isolated pockets could not have numbered more than a few hundred thousand. There's no doubt they had the capacity for border raids, but the Roman legions also had the capacity to make sure there wasn't a Pictish community within a week's ride of the Roman territories. So why build an 80-mile wall (at enormous cost) to stop a few northern bandits?

Money. Remember, Hadrian was an oil man, he wasn't sitting in his Tivoli Gardens sucking his thumb worried the world was about to end. What that British wall meant, just like a similar structure across southern Germany between the headwaters of the Rhine and the Danube, was that he could make money by just sitting in his garden. With those walls in place, all those commodities (including Roman coinage) that had previously been able to cross the Roman borders freely, could now be taxed and monitored. Free trade, per se, was at an end. Hadrian could now impose tariffs and restrictions on imports and exports that land traders had been able to avoid. Suddenly the mule caravans were put on the same taxation footing as seaborne traders who had been taxed since time and immemorial. There was no more smuggling through Scottish ports from Ireland or Scandinavia. Just as there could be none through central Europe. In one fell swoop, Hadrian was able to control international trade and know about every last coin or commodity leaving or entering the Roman economy.

So I guess the next question is, which worked better, Trajan's free trade expansionism or Hadrian's tariffs? That sounds like another post.

Find out if Calvus ever had a tax audit       

Making paper

The Romans were a pretty literate bunch, the sheer amount of signs and graffiti around Roman towns suggests the bulk of the population could read - and the Roman military machine ensured every soldier knew his Ps and Qs. But those 80-million Romans spread across the Empire needed something to read, and that meant the ancient paper industry was at least as large as anything the world saw pre-industrialisation. Helpfully Pliny gives us a good run-down of paper making in 78AD, which at the time mostly used papyrus as feedstock.

The best paper was derived from the centre of the papyrus plant - this 'first quality' paper was known as 'Augustus' by the time of Pliny, although it had earlier been known as 'hieratic'. Working a little further out from the plant's centre, 'second quality' paper was named 'Livia' after Augustus' wife, while 'third quality' paper retained the term 'hieratic'. Roman paper was priced by quality, hence the need for these distinctions. Pliny notes that the paper maker Fannius had developed a technique for dressing lower quality paper to achieve the same finish as 'first quality', no doubt making more money in the process. He doesn't say how, but its possible the paper was smoothed with chalk in the same manner toga's were treated. From 'third quality' Pliny describes progressively cheaper paper such as 'Taeneotic' which was sold by weight rather than quality. And lastly he comes to the brown paper of the age - 'emporitica' or packing paper. Too course for writing, this was used for wrapping parcels and merchandise. So if you want to imagine Romans going shopping or getting a parcel in the mail...think of them holding something that would have looked a lot like the brown-wrapped parcels of the 19th and 20th centuries - before postpaks.

Find out if Calvus knew his Ps and Qs  

The cost of living

The cost of living isn't a new thing, the moment someone figured out what a shekel was, was the moment someone figured out there was no such thing as a free ride. In the 1st-century BC, Rome was the already the world's super city, with inflated living costs just like those we see in Manhattan or down-town London. At a time when the Roman soldier's annual salary was 900-sesterces ($22,500)...

Living in Rome an average rent could set you back 38-sesterces/wk ($961)

A family sized loaf of bread cost half-a-sesterce (2-as or $12)

Entry into a bathhouse was 1-quadranus (one-sixteenth of a sesterce or $1.56)

A wet-nurse cost 40-sesterces per month ($1000).

A woollen tunic (the Roman equivalent to a pair of Levis and a T-shirt) was worth 30-sesterces ($750)

A pair of army boots was 50-sesterces ($1250)

Half-litre of high-grade fresh olive oil cost 20-sesterces ($500)

Half-litre of beer was 2-sesterces ($24)

Half-litre of aged wine was 12-sesterces ($300)

Half-litre of wine with wormwood (Roman Vermouth) - 10-sesterces ($250)

Half-litre of ordinary wine  was 4-sesterces ($100) - this seems pretty steep, but a jug of wine was usually diluted with three or four parts water once served - a cup of diluted wine would actually cost about 2-as or $12

Some of these dollar values seem pretty high, but remember this was an era before mass manufacturing of cloth, with most wine and oil imported at considerable expense from the furthermost parts of the Roman world.  What we see here is the reflection of how much it could cost to be an Empire.

Find out if Calvus was fiscally conservative