Part 183

"Rome, placed like a mightier Mexico in the centre of her mighty lake, was furnished with every luxury and with many of her chief necessaries from beyond the waters; and cities on every coast, nearly similar in latitude and climate, vied in intense rivalry with each other in ministering to her appetite. First in the ranks of commerce was the traffic in corn, which was conducted by large fleets of galleys, sailing from certain havens once a year at stated periods, and pouring their stores into her granaries in their appointed order. Gaul and Spain, Sardinia and Sicily, Africa and Egypt were all wheat-growing countries, and all contributed of their produce, partly as a tax, partly also as an article of commerce, to the sustentation of Rome and Italy. The convoy from Alexandria was looked for with the greatest anxiety, both as the heaviest laden, and as from the length of the voyage the most liable to disaster or detention. The vessels which bore the corn of Egypt were required to hoist their topsails on sighting the promontory of Surrentum, both to distinguish them from others, and to expedite their arrival. These vessels moreover, according to the institution of Augustus, were of more than ordinary size, and they were attended by an escort of war galleys. The importance attached to this convoy was marked by the phrases, 'auspicious' and 'sacred,' applied to it. … A deputation of senators from Rome was directed to await its arrival at the port where it was about to cast anchor, which, from the bad condition of the haven at Ostia, was generally at this period Puteoli in Campania. {3701} As soon as the well-known topsails were seen above the horizon a general holiday was proclaimed, and the population of the country, far and near, streamed with joyous acclamations to the pier, and gazed upon the rich flotilla expanding gaily before them. The vessels engaged in this trade, however numerous, were after all of small burden. The corn-fleets did not indeed form the chief maritime venture of the Alexandrians. The products of India, which had formerly reached Egypt from Arabia, and were supposed indeed in Europe to have come only from the shores of the Erythræan Sea, were now conveyed direct to Cleopatris or Berenice from the mouths of the Indus and the coast of Malabar, and employed an increasing number of vessels, which took advantage of the periodical trade winds both in going and returning. The articles of which they went in quest were for the most part objects of luxury; such as ivory and tortoise shell, fabrics of cotton and silk, both then rare and costly, pearls and diamonds, and more especially gums and spices. The consumption of these latter substances in dress, in cookery, in the service of the temples, and above all at funerals, advanced with the progress of wealth and refinement. The consignments which reached Alexandria from the East were directed to every port on the Mediterranean; but there was no corresponding demand for the produce of the West in India, and these precious freights were for the most part exchanged for gold and silver, of which the drain from Europe to Asia was uninterrupted. The amount of the precious metals thus abstracted from the currency or bullion of the empire, was estimated at 100,000,000 sesterces, or about £800,000 yearly. The reed called papyrus, the growth of which seems to have been almost confined to the banks of the Nile, was in general use as the cheapest and most convenient writing material, and the consumption of it throughout the world, though it never entirely superseded the use of parchment and waxen tablets, must have been immense. It was converted into paper in Egypt, and thence exported in its manufactured state; but this practice was not universal, for we read of a house at Rome which improved on the native process, and produced what Pliny calls an imperial or noble out of a mere plebeian texture. With respect to other articles of general use, it may be remarked that the most important, such as corn, wine, oil, and wool, were the common produce of all the coasts of the Mediterranean, and there was accordingly much less interchange of these staple commodities among the nations of antiquity than with ourselves, whose relations extend through so many zones of temperature. Hence, probably, we hear of none of their great cities becoming the workshops or emporiums of the world for any special article of commerce. The woollens indeed of Miletus and Laodicea, together with other places of Asia Minor, were renowned for their excellence, and may have been transported as articles of luxury to distant parts; but Africa and Spain, Italy and parts of Greece, were also breeders of sheep, and none of these countries depended for this prime necessary on the industry or cupidity of foreigners. The finest qualities of Greek and Asiatic wines were bespoken at Rome, and at every other great seat of luxury. The Chian and Lesbian vintages were among the most celebrated. … Again, while the clothing of the mass of the population was made perhaps mainly from the skins of animals, leather of course could be obtained abundantly in almost every locality. When we remember that the ancients had neither tea, coffee, tobacco, sugar, nor for the most part spirits; that they made little use of glass, and at this period had hardly acquired a taste for fabrics of silk, cotton, or even flax, we shall perceive at a glance how large a portion of the chief articles of our commerce was entirely wanting to theirs. Against this deficiency, however, many objects of great importance are to be set. Though the ruder classes were content with wooden cups and platters fashioned at their own doors, the transport of earthenware of the finer and more precious kinds, and from certain localities, was very considerable. Though the Greeks and Romans generally were without some of our commonest implements of gold and silver, such for instance as watches and forks, it is probable that they indulged even more than we do in personal decoration with rings, seals, and trinkets of a thousand descriptions. … The conveyance of wild animals, chiefly from Africa, for the sports of the amphitheatres of some hundreds of cities throughout the empire, must alone have given occupation to a large fleet of ships and many thousand mariners. Nor were the convoys smaller which were employed to transport marble from the choicest quarries of Greece and Asia to many flourishing cities besides the metropolis. … After due deduction for the more contracted sphere of ancient commerce, and the lesser number of articles, for the extent also to which the necessaries and conveniences of life were manufactured at home in the establishments of wealthy slave owners, we shall still readily believe that the inter-communication of the cities of the Mediterranean, such as Corinth, Rhodes, Ephesus, Cyzicus, Antioch, Tyrus, Alexandria, Cyrene, Athens, Carthage, Tarraco, Narbo and Massilia, Neapolis and Tarentum, Syracuse and Agrigentum, and of all with Rome, must have been a potent instrument in fusing into one family the manifold nations of the empire. … In the eyes of the Orientals and the Greeks, the mistress of lands and continents, the leader of armies, and the builder of roads was regarded as the greatest of all maritime emporiums, and represented in their figurative style as a woman sitting enthroned upon the waves of the Mediterranean. The maritime aspect thus assumed by Rome in the eyes of her subjects beyond the sea, is the more remarkable when we consider how directly her ancient policy and habits were opposed to commercial development. … The landowners of Rome, in the highday of her insolent adolescence, had denounced both commerce and the arts as the business of slaves or freedmen. So late as the year 535 a law had been passed which forbade a senator to possess a vessel of burden, and the traffic which was prohibited to the higher class was degraded in the eyes of the lower. … It was … by following the natural train of circumstances, and by no settled policy of her own, that Rome secured her march across the sea, and joined coast to coast with the indissoluble chain of her dominion. On land, on the contrary, she constructed her military causeways with a fixed and definite purpose. … The population of Gaul crept, we know, slowly up the channel of the rivers, and the native tracks which conveyed their traffic from station to station were guided by these main arteries of their vital system. {3702} But the conquerors struck out at once a complete system of communication for their own purposes, by means of roads cut or built as occasion required, with a settled policy rigidly pursued. These high roads, as we may well call them, for they were raised above the level of the plains and the banks of the rivers, and climbed the loftiest hills, were driven in direct lines from point to point, and were stopped by neither forest nor marsh nor mountain."

_C. Merivale, History of the Romans, chapter 39._

COMMERCE: Gaul under the Romans and after the fall of the Empire.

"In the second century of our era, in the time of Trajan and the Antonines, Gaul with its fertile fields, its beautiful meadows, its magnificent forests, was one of the best cultivated countries of the Roman world. It exported into Italy grain from Aquitaine, Celtique and from the country of the Allobroges (Dauphiné), flax from Cadurques (Quercy) and Bituriges (Berry), hemp from Auvergne and the valley of the Rhône, spikenard from Provence (valeriana celtica according to M. Littré) renowned in the Roman pharmacopœia, oak and pine from the immense forests which still covered the Pyrenees, the Cevennes, the Alps, the Jura, the Vosges and nearly all the north of Gaul (forest of Ardennes), horses from Belgium, wool from the Narbonnaise, cheese from the Alps and from Nîmes, hams and salt provisions from Séquanaise (Franche-Comté), and the Pyrenees. The wines of the Narbonnaise and the valley of the Rhône, often adulterated and little relished by the Italians, were notwithstanding one of the principal objects of commerce in the interior of Gaul, in Great Britain and Germany. The oysters of the Mediterranean and even those of the Atlantic and the Channel which the ancients had perhaps found means of keeping in fresh water, figured upon the tables of the gourmets of Rome. We know that long before the conquest, the Gauls took gold from the sands of their rivers and that in certain regions (Upper Pyrenees), territory of the Tarbelles, and Val d'Aoste, territory of the Salasses, they extracted gold from the auriferous rocks by processes quite analogous to those which are now employed by the great Californian companies. These mines which were yet in existence under Augustus were not long in being exhausted, but the iron of Berry, Sénonais, Perigord, Rouergue, the valley of the Rhône and of the Saône, the copper of the Pyrenees (Saint-Etienne-de-Baïgorry), of the Alps (country of the Centrons, now Upper Savoy), of the Cevennes (Cabrieres in Hérault and Chessy in Rhône), the tin of Limousin, the argentiferous lead of the territory of the Rutènes (Rouergue), of the Gabales (Gévaudan), of the Centrons, etc., were mined and wrought with a skill which placed the metallurgy of Gaul in the first rank of the industries of the empire. These mining operations, superintended by the State, although they belonged to the proprietors of the soil, were often directed by companies which combined the working of the metal with its extraction from the ore. One which had its seat at Lyons is known to us by many inscriptions. Textile industries were not less flourishing than metallurgy, the manufacture of sail-cloth was carried on all over Gaul; the bleached linens of Cahors, the carpets of the Narbonnaise, the sagums of mingled bright colors were renowned even in Italy. The progress of commerce had followed that of agriculture and manufacture. The network of Roman roads planned by Agrippa was completed and four roads accessible to carriages or beasts of burden, crossed the Alps by the passes of the Little (Graius Mons) and of the Great Saint-Bernard (Summus Penninus), of Mount Genèvre (Mons Matrona) and of the Argentière: the Corniche road stretched along the Mediterranean from Genoa to Marseilles: those of the pass of Pertus (Summa Pyrenoeco), of the valley of Aran, of the Somport, of Roncevaux, and from Lapurdum (Bayonne) to Pampeluna connected Gaul to Spain. … Notwithstanding the competition of new roads, river navigation had retained all its activity. … We know from inscriptions of a certain number of associations for water transportation which appear to have played a great rôle in the interior commerce of Gaul from the first century of our era. The boatmen of the Rhône, the Saône, the Durance, the Seine, the Loire, the Aar, an affluent of the Rhine, formed corporations recognized by the State, organized on the model of cities, having their regulations, property, elective chiefs, and patronized by great personages who charged themselves with defending their interests against the Roman authorities. The most celebrated, If not the most important of these associations, is that of the Nautæ Parisiaci, the memory of which has been preserved to us by the remains of an altar raised, under Tiberius, at the point of the Isle of the City (the ancient Lutetia) and found in 1711 under the choir of Notre-Dame. … The two great commercial ports of the Mediterranean were Narbonne and Arles, after Marseilles had lost her maritime preponderance and was only a city of science, luxury and pleasure. … Immense labor upon embankments and canalization which had thrown within Narbonne the mass of the river and deepened the maritime channel made of the metropolis of the Narbonnaise one of the safest ports upon the coast of Gaul. It communicated with the Rhône by the navigation of the lakes (étangs) which at that time extended without interruption to the western mouth of the river, with the ocean by the course of the Garonne, navigable from Toulouse (Tolosa). The port of the Garonne was then as now Bordeaux (Burdigala) which already had intercourse with Great Britain and Spain. Aries, connected with the sea by the canal of Marius and perhaps also by the small arm of the Rhône and the navigation of the lakes (étangs), was a maritime port and at the same time the outlet for the navigation of the Rhône which was prolonged by the Saône as far as Chalon (Cabillonum). Upon the banks of the river rose the wealthy cities of Tarascon, Avignon (Avenio), Orange (Arausio), Vienne. Lyons is the commercial and also the political metropolis of Gaul, the seat of the most powerful manufacturing and commercial companies; the boatmen of the Saône and the Rhône, the wine merchants, the mining and smelting company of the valley of the Rhône. Above Chalon, four great commercial routes start from the valley of the Saône. The first ascends the Doubs as far as Besançon (Vesuntio) and terminates at the Rhine near Augst (Augusta Rauracorum), where the river is already navigable. {3703} The second follows the valley of the Saône and descends by the Moselle, navigable above Trèves (Augusta Trevirorum), and by the Meuse, toward the middle and lower valley of the Rhine. … The third route, that from the Saône to the Loire, set out from Chalon, crossed Autun (Augustodunum), and reached the Loire above Orleans (Genabum, later Aurelianum). Goods embarked upon the river arrived, after a voyage of 870 kilometers (2,000 stades), at Nantes (Portus Namnetum) which appears to have been substituted, about the beginning of the first century, for the ancient port of Corbilo and which was also in intercourse with Great Britain. The fourth route, that from the Saône to the Seine, crossed Autun, was there divided into two branches which went by way of Avallon and Alise to meet at Sens (Agedincum) on the Yonne, and descended the Seine to its mouth by Melun (Melodunum), Paris (Lutetia) and Rouen (Rotomagus). This was the shortest route between the new province of Britani and the Mediterranean; but the ancients, notwithstanding the progress in navigation, always distrusted long passages by sea; so the principal emporium of commerce with Britani was not Caracotinum (Harfleur), the port of the Seine, but Gesoriacum, later Bononia (Boulogne), which is distant only 50 kilometers from the English coast. It was there that Caligula erected that gigantic pharos known to the middle-ages under the name of the tower of Odre and which existed until 1645. … When one thinks of Gaul in the second half of the 5th century, after those great streams of invasion which swept it for fifty years, one easily fancies that the flood has carried everything away, that the Roman institutions have disappeared, that private fortunes are swallowed up in a frightful catastrophe, that the barbarians have enslaved the Gallo-Romans, that social life is suspended, manufactures ruined, commerce interrupted. This picture which responds to the idea we form of a barbarian conquest, is necessarily exaggerated, because the Germanic invasion was not a conquest. The Germans who established themselves upon the Roman territory, those even who had employed force to make a place for themselves within it, did not consider themselves conquerors, but subjects and soldiers of the Empire: they dreamed so little of destroying it that they aspired to serve it whether it would or no. Notwithstanding the decadence of manufactures and the inevitable disorders which weakness of the central power brings in its train, commerce appears to have preserved a certain amount of activity. In the 6th century, post stages still existed. Upon the Roman roads, maintained and repaired by the Merovingians, heavy wagons which served for the transportation of goods and travelers circulated with their teams of oxen or horses. Royal decrees commanded the preservation of towing-paths along navigable rivers; the rivers had remained the high-ways of interior commerce, and the boatmen's companies of Roman Gaul had perhaps survived the fall of the imperial domination. The ports of the Atlantic, Bordeaux and Nantes, those of the Channel, Alet (between Saint-Malo and Saint-Servan), Rouen, Quantovic (Etaples or Saint-Josse-sur-Mer?) on the bay of the Canche, Boulogne, were in relations with the Visigoths and the Suevi of Spain, the Irish, the Frisians, and received in exchange for the wines, honey, madder, grains and linens of Gaul, oils and lead from Spain, metals and slaves from Great Britain, coarse cloths from Ireland and finer fabrics which they were beginning to make in Frisia. Marseilles, Arles, Narbonne, the great ports of the Mediterranean, were always the depots for the trade of the Orient, where their vessels went for spices, silks, papyrus from Alexandria, cloths and carpets from Antioch and Laodicea, which their merchants exchanged in part for money, in part for metals, honey, saffron, almonds and linens from southern Gaul, coral brought from Italy, and amber brought overland from the borders of the Baltic. The conquests of the Franks, masters of central and southern Germany, had opened to commerce two new roads: one, by the Danube, stretched away to the frontiers of the Eastern Empire and to Constantinople through the countries occupied by the fierce tribes of the Avars and the Bulgarians; the other arrived by Thuringia in the regions where the Slav tribes, Sorbs (Mecklenburg, Brandenburg, Pomerania) and Wends (Bohemia, Moravia, Austria, Carinthia) dominated. In these uncultivated countries, covered with forests and marshes, in the midst of these warlike peoples, the merchants could risk themselves only in large caravans, sword at the side and lance in hand. These distant and perilous expeditions were attractive to the adventurous spirit of the Frank race. … Faith, as well as ambition, found its account in these journeys to the countries of the pagan. On the way, they distributed religious images to the heathen, they tried to convert them while profiting by them. … This mingling of commerce and religion is one of the characteristic traits of the middle ages, as it is of antiquity. The most ancient fairs of Gaul, that of Troyes which was in existence as early as the 5th century, that of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, that of Saint-Denis, which goes back to the time of Dagobert (629), were at the same time pilgrimages. This latter the most celebrated of all, under the Merovingians, was held outside the walls of Paris, between the churches of Saint-Martin and Saint-Laurent, upon the lands watered by the brook Ménilmontant; it was opened on the festival of Saint-Denis and continued four weeks, in order to permit, says its charter, merchants from Spain, Provence and Lombardy and even those from beyond the sea, to take part in it. … The fair of Saint-Denis was the rendezvous of merchants from all parts of Gaul and Europe. Beside the wines and oils of the South might be seen the honey and wax of Armorica, the linens and madder of Neustria, the metals of Spain and England, the furs of the North, the products of the royal manufactories; but the choicest goods were the spices, pepper, tissues of silk and of cotton, jewels, enamels, goldsmiths' work, which came from the Orient by the Mediterranean ports, more rarely by way of the Danube, and whose guardians were the Syrians or Jews destined to hold so great a place in the commerce of the middle ages. The Syrians,—and under this name the Franks comprehended, without doubt, all merchants native to Egypt or Roman Asia,—formed powerful communities at Marseilles, Narbonne, Bordeaux; at Paris they had sufficient influence to enable one of them, Eusebius, to succeed in purchasing the episcopate, in 591. … As to the Jews, a great number were already established in Gaul before the fall of the Roman Empire, but their prosperity dates only from the epoch of disorganization which followed the barbarian invasion."

_H. Pigeonneau, Histoire du Commerce de la France (translated from the French), tome 1, livre 1._

{3704}

COMMERCE: Mediæval. Early trade with China.