Public support for Roman trade

[Kosmo]

The thread about the destruction of Corint brought to discussion the ideea that this city was destroyed to help roman trade and roman merchants. This was dismissed as unfounded, but still the question arose - what was the policy of the romans towards trade and merchants?

I believe that romans never carried a trade policy, that merchants never had political weight enough to shape roman policy and that romans did not favoured roman traders at the expense of foreigners.

 

Romans had made roads and ports, but this were made for the transport of army and esential supplies not for helping trade. They never launched large trade companies or infrastructure projects to expand their external trade routes. In the Late Republic when Rome was the main power of the Mediterranean they did little to stop the piracy that plagued the trade routes and only the threat to the strategically and politically important grain supply route prompted their action. During the empire they regulated the eastern trade, but this was more to reduce the trade deficit and to influence the strategic position in regard to Parthia then to help the trade.

 

Profits from trade were viewed as against morality and senators were prohibited from trading. They had a landed class view and trade, as well as crafts, were seen as inferior occupations. The equites that made fortunes usually made them from other lines of bussineses: real estate, money lending, gathering of taxes, annona, selling of loot or taxes in kind etc. This often had to do with political power, but I know no case of the use of public power for helping traders.

 

Traders were often foreigners and provincials. From Ostia market mosaics we know about the provincial trade associations that supplied Rome during the principate. In Dacia most traders and craftsman that we know of were of Eastern origins.

 

By building roads and ports, by sending armies and colonies in far away places, by creating great cities and a common market, by spreading the use of latin and by developing mines and agriculture the romans helped the development of trade, but they never had this as a goal.