THE CONCEPT OF <em>COMMERCIUM</em> IN THE ROMAN REPUBLIC

Abstract

During their conquest of Italy the Romans devised various legal instruments to regulate their relations with people who did not possess Roman citizenship. One of the issues which needed regulation was trade: to protect the interests of merchants, laws had to be formulated which enabled trade between people from different political entities. Roman laws dealing with international trade developed over time as Rome’s empire expanded, and with it international trade between her citizens and those of other states. It is often assumed that the main instrument devised by the Romans to regulate trade with peregrini—a term which included Latin and Italian allies, as well as other non-citizens (see below, 403–406)—was the ius commercii, which might be translated literally as “right to trade.” It should be noted that the phrase ius commercii actually appears only rarely; commercium is used much more often. It is usually assumed that commercium was a right which could be granted to non-citizens, and which permitted them the use of certain legal instruments related to trade, otherwise only available to citizens. However, the origin of this right as a legal concept, the legal status it conferred onto its recipients, and the extent to which it was granted to peregrini are all issues which remain unclear. The sources for commercium mostly date from the late republican and imperial period, from Cicero and Livy to Gaius and the Digest. However, many theories on commercium are based on sources purporting to describe very early Roman history. This causes the argument to become circular: scholars attempt to combine later, mostly imperial, sources with the limited information available for the early republic, which is also mostly found in later sources, such as Livy and Dionysius of Halicarnassus. The current theories on commercium therefore give a false picture of continuity and rigidity, and ignore the development of trade relations under the republic and the flexibility of Roman law. In this article I will investigate one commonly held belief among modern scholars, namely that commercium was essential for trade between Romans and peregrini. Commercium is often defined as the right to conclude contracts with Romans which could be upheld in Roman courts of law. Sherwin-White, for