Sacred transactions

Abstract

A persistent feature of Roman urbanism is the close relation between religion and commerce: temples could be closely associated with commerce, and commerce was intimately tied to religion. Porticoed streets, a key feature of urbanism in the cities of the Roman East and Roman North Africa, were often designed to facilitate the movement of processions towards temples, but also developed into leading commercial hotspots. Fairs were traditionally held in front of temples, and this spatial arrangement was increasingly echoed in the architecture of markets in Roman North Africa. These often included shrines for gods like Mercury or Liber: the commercial spaces of towns were permeated with religion, and the urban archaeology from the imperial period makes this explicitly visible. As the evidence suggests, this mix of worship and business continued into late antiquity.