Reger, 'Money and Government in the Roman Empire', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9508
URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9508-reger-money
@@@@95.9.7, Duncan-Jones, Money and Government in the RE
Richard Duncan-Jones, Money and Government in the Roman
Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. xx +
300. $79.95. ISBN 0-521-44192-7.
Reviewed by Gary Reger -- Trinity College (Hartford)
gary.reger@mail.trincoll.edu
M.I. Finley on the ancient economy can be quoted to support a
variety of views. On the value of quantification in the study of
the ancient economy, Finley warned against "number fetishism"
that might lead historians "to claim quantitative proof where the
evidence does not warrant it, or to misjudge the implications
that may legitimately be drawn from their figures." But he also
called for "a shift in the still predominant concentration of
research from individual, usually isolated documents to those
that can be subjected to analysis collectively, and where
possible over time."[[1]] The former of Finley's two
pronouncements on the value of quantitative studies has found by
far the more supporters.[[2]] Among those who have challenged it,
implicitly or explicitly, none has been more ambitious than
Richard Duncan-Jones. His first book, originally published in
1974 and reissued in paperback in 1982 with corrections and
additions, bears, uniquely to my knowledge among books on the
ancient economy, the word "quantitative" in the subtitle.[[3]] As
quantification goes in the study of more recent history, The
Economy o[ the Roman Empire is not terribly quantitative;
that is to say, its "quantification" resides mainly in the
attempt to compile meaningful numbers about economic activity in
the Roman empire, and also, in its most challenging and
controversial chapter, to try to test numerically the validity of
the profitability claims for various types of cash crop farming
put forward in Columella's Res rustica.[[4]] Duncan-Jones
sought his numbers not in amphora or pottery distributions, which
have long attracted numerically literate ancient historians, but
in (for example) building costs and other prices in North Africa
and Italy. While he may not always have given full due to the
difficulties of his sources and the incommensurabilities of some
of his data, his results were nonetheless profoundly interesting,
and still, it seems to me, not fully absorbed by the scholarship.
Duncan-Jones' second book, which appeared in 1990,[[5]] ranged
widely in issues in the imperial economy in a series of more or
less independent studies on the speed and frequency of travel,
the impact of government on patterns of trade, problems in
demography, landed wealth and commodity prices, aspects of the
urban economy, and the Roman tax structure. Some of these issues
were explored using explicit statistical techniques, but in every
case Duncan-Jones' preference for asking questions that could be
answered only with large bodies of data shone through.
Now, having turned his attention to the production and use of
coins, Duncan-Jones has produced his most uncompromisingly
quantitative book to date. In 59 figures, 110 tables, and 268
pages of dense and sometimes difficult text and appendices, he
aims "to use coin evidence to study Roman minting policy,
monetary organization, and the monetary economy" (xv). As a
summary, this statement is slightly misleading. Duncan-Jones is
interested only in coins produced by the Roman imperial
government, and of those mostly the ones struck at the central
Roman mint. Excluded from consideration are the very numerous and
locally important issues in the west and particularly the
so-called Greek imperials of the east. His studies--for in many
respects the book is a collection of more or less independent
examinations of particular issues that can be profitably explored
through the coins--thus do not yield an understanding of "the"
monetary economy, but only a part of it. But that part is a very
important part indeed.
Duncan-Jones begins with the "budget" of the empire: expenses
and incomes. He argues for cycles of surplus and deficit over the
reigns of several emperors as attested by claims in the sources
about the amount of money in the imperial treasury at the start
of each reign, but these cycles tend sometimes to correlate
rather uncomfortably with the historical tradition about each
emperor: the bad ones leave the treasury exhausted, the good ones
die with a surplus. (It is ironic to consider how little changes
in the vocabulary of political rhetoric.) Duncan-Jones is on
better ground with his study of imperial expenses: he shows,
quite concretely, that army pay absorbed the vast majority of
imperial funds, and how that cost grew over time (see especially
table 3.7). So far the book has not really said anything very
new, although conventional knowledge is put on a much better
quantified basis than before. It is when he turns to the coins,
which constitute his main body of evidence, that Duncan-Jones
offers his first real discovery, on which the rest of the book
depends.
Millions of coins survive from the empire, but Duncan-Jones is
only interested in those found in hoards. Typically, coin hoards
have been seen as representative of "coin in ordinary private
ownership, either drawn from current circulation ('circulation'
hoards) or accumulated over an extended period ('savings'
hoards)" (67). Studying a sample of 230 hoards with a minimum
value of HS 400 (cited in Appendix 10, 261-266), Duncan-Jones has
noticed that these hoards tend (1) to cluster around a few sizes,
(2) to contain only one denomination, (3) to cluster
chronologically, and (4) to cluster in heavily garrisoned
frontier provinces. From these characteristics, Duncan-Jones
argues (convincingly, to my mind) that "the special
characteristics already seen in the hoard-sample do not seem
compatible with the casual private accumulation of money.
Instead, they argue a pattern of amounts and a pattern of events
imposed on the empire as a whole, not merely on single regions.
Finds of coin in a single denomination ... almost inevitably look
like army payments" (78). He can then connect hoards dated by
their last issues to specific payments, whether regular pay
(stipendium), retirement pay (praemia), or
donatives (donativa). This connection provides the
link to key the abundant information that can be extracted from
the hoards by statistical investigation into the economic and
political history of the empire. The rest of the book is devoted
to extracting, elucidating, and evaluating that information.
The results are rich and impressive, if not all equally
convincing. Duncan-Jones estimates mint production as roughly HS
170-200 million per year, about a quarter of the total budget (c.
HS 800 million/year). He shows that variations in content of
hoards reflect variations in production at the mint; in this
context, however, we find that stray finds of gold coins actually
better represent mint output than the contents of hoards, a
troubling result not fully explained (115-120). Study of the
output of individual reigns reveals interesting patterns; not
surprisingly, output is high at the start of a new reign, when
demand for cash is high. When different members of the imperial
family coin simultaneously but separately (as in the "Empress"
issues struck under Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, and
Commodus) silver output tends to fall into integer ratios like
2:1 or 4:1 (140-142); this very interesting result is
demonstrated but not accounted for. The chapters on "The Size of
Die-Populations," which estimates the total numbers of dies used
for various issues (2000 a year for silver and 25-50 for gold
under Hadrian, for example), and "The Size of Coin-Populations;'
which treats the productivity of dies, contain much of great
interest to numismatists, including new techniques for making
these estimates. Historians who see the economy of the empire as
unified by the circulation of specie will want to read carefully
Duncan-Jones' results on the mobility of the coins and
circulation speed which argue an economy both regionalized and
far more sluggish than other pre-modern European economies
(172-192). Low rates of wastage confirm these results. Reminting
of older silver, which may have been in circulation for a very
long time--Republican silver was reminted under Trajan--was
undertaken, predictably, for profit. It is however very curious
in this context that Britain shows a different pattern,
Republican silver continuing to circulate into Hadrian's reign;
once again, this interesting anomaly is described but not
explained (192-212). Finally, Duncan-Jones demonstrates clearly
the process of debasement of the metal content of the coins, a
process that went on in a virtually uniform trajectory from the
later years of Nero's reign to the third century (see especially
230-231 tables 15.7 and 15.80. At the same time, due weight is
given to variations in weight and quality that resulted entirely
from technical limitations of ancient mensuration and quality
control (238-247).
On the way are dozens of striking observations and
bouleversements of conventional opinion too numerous to
recount here; as an example, consider the flow of coined money in
the empire. Duncan-Jones' remarks on this issue effectively
undercut Keith Hopkins' view of the imperial budget as a cycle
that brought wealth into Rome from the core provinces as taxes to
be redistributed as army pay to the frontiers.[[6]] Duncan-Jones
shows that instead most coin tended to stay close to where it was
first disbursed, that is to say, monies paid out in Gaul tended
to stay in Gaul rather than wander back to Rome as tax payments.
The slow speed of circulation of coins reinforces this view,
which favors seeing the empire as divided up into many more or
less self-contained regional economies, rather than a single,
unified system. Duncan-Jones' tightly argued and strongly
supported views pose a real challenge to those who see the
economy of the empire as such a unified system. Typically,
Duncan-Jones does not mention these views, nor the evidence--
mainly the distribution of pottery--on which they rest.[[7]]
There are real problems to be settled here, although I have my
doubts whether they will receive the attention they deserve,
partly because folks who work with the material remains and
historians like Duncan-Jones still do not talk to each other as
much as they should,[[8]] and partly because of the character of
Duncan-Jones' book, which will surely put off many readers (see
below). It is worth noting in this context that, sauf
erreur, the words "primitivist" and "modernist" do not
appear in the book.
It is refreshing to see ancient economic history treated with
statistical rigor. Duncan-Jones' grasp of statistical method is
sure, his figures and tables appropriate and readable, though not
always provided with full explanation. I for one wish he had
regularly provided the r2 for his fitted lines, which would have
helped the reader distinguish convincing fits from the few that
are surely meaningless (figure 14.6, whose very poor r2 of 0.380
is buried at 201 n. 36). At Appendix 8 he even prints two
programs written in BASIC for determining binominal k and
estimating die populations. (I must confess I did not try them,
but there seems to be a misprint in Program 1, line 50 1p. 2591,
where "IF C > 0.8" should surely read "IF C < 0.8.")
This is an uncompromising and sometimes unnecessarily
difficult book. Duncan-Jones offers only the barest summary of
his intentions (xv, quoted above) and nothing like an overview of
his argument. The reader must plunge in without preliminary
orientation, and it is not always easy to see where the argument
is headed, especially in the first few chapters. A few pages
devoted to laying out the argument to follow would have been a
tremendous service, especially as the discussion can sometimes
become highly technical. Duncan-Jones' terse prose rarely leaves
space for digressive explanation, and it is my guess that the
reader to whom r2 and negative binominal k
distribution are, well, not Greek will often feel completely at
sea. A few words of explanation in non-technical language might
have provided these readers the encouragement they need to press
on; as it is, the demands Duncan-Jones makes on his reader will
surely lose him many among the book's natural readership: the
professional historian of the Roman empire. Its emphasis on coins
as evidence rather than as objects (Duncan-Jones solves no
outstanding numismatic problems) will make it of marginal
interest to professional numismatists (with the exception of
those interested in the estimation of die numbers and life, to
which matters Duncan-Jones makes important contributions); the
virtual absence of any discussion of archaeological evidence may
put off economic archaeologists.
I also wish that Duncan-Jones had engaged explicitly some of
the views of the imperial economy, very different from his own
and challenged by his book, that command widespread adherence.
Subtle allusions here and there make it clear that he is
perfectly aware of these other opinions, and of course he has
already addressed these questions in part in Structure and
Scale in the Roman Economy, which includes an extremely
important essay on the distribution of lamps. His work in the new
book pushes these issues much further, and it would be very
interesting to see how--and whether--he would reconcile these
views with his own and how he would evaluate the archaeological
and ceramic evidence. These matters will have to be worked out,
but we will have to proceed without Duncan-Jones' guidance.
Quibbles aside, Duncan-Jones has written an important and
challenging book that deserves to be widely read. The economy of
the Roman empire remains endlessly fascinating, not least because
of the broad range of evidence that can be summoned to testify.
We are still very far from the day when someone will be able to
write the book to replace Michael Rostovtzeff's classic but long
outdated The Economic and Social History of the Roman
Empire, but whoever does will owe a great debt to the
work of Richard Duncan-Jones, to which Money and
Government is a fitting new contribution.
NOTES
[[1]] M.I. Finley, The Ancient Economy2 (Berkeley 1985)
25; Ancient History: Evidence and Models (New York 1985)
44.
[[2]] For a recent example, see the comments of Edward Cohen,
Athenian Economy and Society: A Banking Perspective
(Princeton 1992) 27.
[[3]] The Economy of the Roman Empire. Quantitative
Studies, 1st ed., Cambridge 1974, 2nd ed. 1982.
[[4]] For another view, see Andrea Carandini, "Columella's
Vineyard and the Rationality of the Roman Economy," Opus 2
(1983) 177-203.
[[5]] Structure and Scale in the Roman Economy, Cambridge
1990.
[[6]] Keith Hopkins, "Taxes and Trade in the Roman Empire 200 BC
- AD 400," JRS 70 (1980) 101-125.
[[7]] For some bibliography, see D.P.S. Peacock, Amphorae and
the Roman Economy: An Introductory Guide (London 1986); Kevin
Greene, The Archaeology of the Roman Economy (Berkeley
1986); Andre Tchernia, Le vin de l'Italie romaine.
Essai d'histoire economique d'apres les amphores (Rome 1986);
more recently, among a growing literature, see Evan W. Haley,
"The Lamp Manufacturer Gaius Iunius Draco," MBAH 9.2
(1990) 1-13; St. Markoulaki, J.-Y. Empereur, and A. Marangou,
"Recherches sur les centres de fabrication d'amphores de Crete
occidentale," BCH (1989) 551-580.
[[8]] For an admirable exception and good start, see Susan
Alcock, Graecia Capta. The Landscape of Roman Greece,