Baetica Felix: People and Prosperity in Southern Spain from Caesar to Septimius Severus

Introduction

 Introduction This book is a social and economic history of the Roman province of Baetica from Augustus to the Severan emperors. It represents also a contribution to the complex debate over the nature of the Roman economy. Those reflections on the Roman economy published in recent years that have helped to frame this study conceptually include the essays of Whittaker, Parkins, and others in Parkins’ Roman Urbanism, as well as works by Harris, Jongman , and Pleket.1 They touch on, among other things, the problems of the role of the (consumer?) city, the nature of exchange, the primitiveness versus modernity of the ancient economy, consumption , labor, and the conceptualization of the ancient economy . A summary of the historical debate on the nature of the Roman and ancient economy in general, extending from the primitivist-modernist opposition of Bücher and Meyer, the substantivist position of Polanyi and his school, the legacy of Moses Finley and genesis of the “New Orthodoxy,” and the tenets of the school of Gramsci represented by Carandini, Schiavone, and others, is neatly laid out by Molina Vidal in his study of trading contacts between Hispania Citerior and Italy in the late Republican and early imperial periods.2 Also worth careful study is Neville Morley’s Metropolis and Hinterland.3 That book summarizes exhaustively the history of investigation into, and theoretical approaches to, the ancient economy in general, and Roman 1 00a-T2419-INT 2/18/03 12:17 PM Page 1 economy in specific. Morley propounds the “New Orthodoxy” and argues that within the constraints of a preindustrial economy, Rome did witness some growth in the central period of its history. To what degree the needs of the central state in the form of taxes or the needs of the city of Rome and army in the shape of foodstuffs and supplies were responsible for this undoubted growth is a controversial matter. Noneconomic or only indirectly economic factors may have been, in part, at work in Hispania. A principal argument in this book is that Rome’s bestowal of municipal and colonial status—but particularly the former— in Further Spain and in the province of Baetica that emerged from it under Augustus also generated economic growth for a variety of reasons, not least of which were the extraordinary financial demands—social in origin as much as economic—that municipalization imposed on the elite members of new municipia, in addition to potential elite members of Baetican communities. Cui bono? Whom did the Roman economy benefit? Both critics and advocates of the “New Orthodoxy” hold that the mass of the population during the Principate lived at or just above subsistence.4 This notion is part of the widespread conception that the Roman economy during the Principate was underdeveloped. Proponents of this view argue with bravura: even classical economic analysis is brought in to argue that the imperial period saw little or no gain in labor productivity—certainly not enough to matter to the mass of the population. No evidence shows a rise in real per capita Gross Domestic Product during the Principate, and return on capital investment was stymied in part by a considerable number of slaves living at subsistence, and overall by lack of demand.5 The old minimalist versus maximalist debate is now eclipsed: the Roman economy was productive, on the whole, to a marvelous degree; was sophisticated in many respects; and generated complex patterns of commerce.6 A common assumption is that the wealth of the Roman world created splendid urban centers and urban-based elites, whose affluence rested on the “sufferings of the low-instatus .”7 City-dwelling landowners siphoned off the resources of the town’s territory and peasantry, chiefly in the form of rents, unequally imposed taxes, and grain requisitions.8 With limited resources and capacity for growth, Roman society came to a peculiar form of accommodation by which social inequalities and wealth disparity were largely immutable. Possibilities for social mobility existed but were restricted largely to freedmen Baetica Felix 2 00a-T2419-INT 2/18/03 12:17 PM Page 2 and their descendants. Even the apparitores, adjutants to senatorial magistrates , who were frequently freeborn but of sub-decurional status, owed their social mobility to their relationship with, and access to, the powerful.9 They were also a minute percentage of the total Roman population.10 A notable exception to the prevailing view is...