Trade, Commerce, and the State in the Roman World by Andrew Wilson Alan Bowman

Abstract

BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 229 Davenport displays enviable competence with the range of ancient sources and is equally at home with epigraphy. Iconography and art come in third place but still play notable roles, and the book contains several dozen images. Inevitably, because of the temporal span, specialists will find gaps in the secondary literature, and scholarship seems most up to date for the late republic and empire, but the bibliography remains substantial. The book is written clearly, but its structure raises issues. At times, I found the combination of thematic and chronological arcs recursive with discussions introduced in one chapter and reintroduced several chapters later. The all-important transvectio equitum, for example, is truncated between republican and Augustan narratives and the chapter on ceremonies, and this impedes a complete view. Above all, in large format and at over 700 pages, the study is too long, and risks leaving the reader lost at times in dense thickets of imperial military commands. The more important concern is intended readership and the study’s overall coherency. In recourse to sociological theory, Davenport confirms a desire to converse with non-specialists interested in social institutions. This desire guides parts of this book but completely disappears in others, and it is hard to imagine non-specialists reading this cover to cover, while even individual chapters averaging fifty pages require a certain stamina. Romanists with particular interests in the subject should read this book, but note that it makes no claim to be a reference work, and its overall tack is narrative and discursive. If one is interested, for example, in reviewing the assembled evidence of 2,000 equites epigraphically attested in the imperial army, it remains necessary to consult previous scholarship. I return to the book’s stated aims: to trace the order’s development, to follow its membership, and to offer sociological interpretation. Considering the enormous timespan, each aim is ambitious on its own, while each also seems directed at different readerships. In sum, this is a book of good parts, whose combination yields mixed results. Undoubtedly, Davenport has demonstrated the analytical potential of the ordo equester across Roman history, but perhaps this proves a double-edged sword. The sheer enormity of evidence the ordo has left us may fascinate, but it also makes them unwieldy in the context of such a sweeping and layered analysis. University of Toronto Seth Bernard Trade, Commerce, and the State in the Roman World. Edited by Andrew Wilson and Alan Bowman. Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford Studies in the Roman Economy). 2018. Pp. xxii, 656. This edited volume, the fourth to emerge directly from an Oxford Roman Economy Project (OXREP) conference that took place in 2009, examines the evidence for trade in the Roman world, with special focus on state intervention, regulation, and taxation. Individual chapters, and especially the editors’ introduction, engage key debates in ancient economic history. Many of the contributions suggest both implicitly and explicitly that market activity was widespread both within and beyond the Roman world. The breadth of these markets and market-oriented institutions was not merely geographic; the impression from this book is that the production and distribution of many different kinds of goods and services, some in large quantities, was carried out primarily by means 230 PHOENIX of economic calculation, price systems, and benign state supervision. Archaeological evidence dominates many of the chapters—evidence which the editors argue sufficiently undermines “primitivist” views of Roman economic activity such as those espoused by Moses Finley and, more recently, Peter Bang.1 The editors believe that the Roman state was both actively and self-consciously involved in trade, and many of the chapters align with this claim. State actors did seek out rents, and their interventions disrupted markets (Philip Kay’s chapter, for example, shows this quite well), but several contributions imply a state apparatus that used its regulatory power and economies of scale to keep commerce flowing and markets functioning. The editors acknowledge the predatory nature of state activities, but many of the volume’s contributors give little attention to this aspect. There are exceptions, but the overall impression from the collection is that the state’s interventions and infrastructure improved both formal...