Parallel developments in Roman law and maritime trade during the Late Republic and Early Principate ...

• Main Author: Candy, Peter
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 2020
• Subjects: 4301 Archaeology; 4303 Historical Studies; 43 History, Heritage and Archaeology; Arctic
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/cam.45291; https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/298238

Between the Second Punic War and the Early Principate several sources of evidence indicate that the Roman economy experienced some measure of (limited) growth. The case for intensive growth is founded on two complementary approaches. The first has been to construct an “argument from convergence”, which observes that several archaeological data-sets, such as Mediterranean shipwrecks, deposits of domestic animal bones at Italian sites and samples of lead and copper pollution from Arctic ice cores and lake sediments, show an increase in chronological distribution during the Late Republic and Early Empire. 1 If taken as proxies for the volume and intensity of exchange, consumption and production, respectively, then, as W. Scheidel has argued, “we may reasonably assume that [these data-sets] indicate at least the general direction of economic development”. 2 A second approach has attempted to quantify the GDP of the Roman economy. Although highly conjectural, where such estimates are possible they provide an ...