How Garnsey And Saller Highlights The Shortcomings Of The Roman Economy

Within this passage, Garnsey and Saller’s work highlights the shortcomings of the economy of the Roman Empire. Based on the combined factors of a largely impoverished population, a low demand for manufactured items, difficulty in trade, a dominating aristocracy and lack of a wealthy merchant class, the economy of the Roman Empire can be seen as being largely underdeveloped and backwards. With such a large majority of its citizens forced to work in the field of agriculture, their resources and wealth taken away to fuel the greater population and wealth of the empire itself, investment was difficult and the demand for crafted goods was low. Trade was often done locally, due to the risk, cost, and time required for more long distance trade. For

Upon examining the economy of the Roman Empire, it becomes clear that it served to support both the wealthy and the urban dwellers, meanwhile, the impoverished and the farmers suffer by extreme levels. Galen, a notable physician within the empire who lived primarily during the second century and into the third century, wrote that those who lived in the more urbanized towns and cities took “from the countryside all the wheat along with the barley and the beans and lentils…and are forced to…eat twigs and shoots of the trees and bushes, and bulbs and roots of plants with bad juices and consume the so called wild greens” (Wilkins, 2015, p. 63). The various grain programs that the Roman government created to dole out food to the many urban citizens, while being vital for its poorer inhabitants, failed to additionally ensure that its rural citizens would be fed. These farmers served as a sort of servant to the larger empire, growing a surplus of crops with most or all of this being stripped away from them as a sort of taxation, where it was then funneled into the cities. In times of drought, even more was taken from them to fuel the cities. Faced with starvation as a direct result, as well as additional taxes, these farmers were left with little food or money, and Galen’s excerpt highlights Garnsey and Saller’s belief that the majority of Roman citizens were existing around the

Land ownership was often restricted to the wealthy, and this was seen as one of the highest privileges one could achieve. These patricians viewed most occupations, especially those consisting of manual labor, as being vulgar. Trade, too, was not at all an optimal career path, with the exception of when it was “wholesale and on a large scale, importing large quantities from all parts of the world and distributing to many without misrepresentation” (Cicero De Officiis 1.151). Cicero, a Roman senator and living in the first century BC, makes it known that farmers themselves were not at all respected for their vitality in feeding the empire, but those who lended their land to the farmers and who had slaves and servants at their expense to perform this work for them were. Beliefs such as that of wealthy Romans like Cicero directly supports Garnsey and Saller’s argument that the aristocracy valued land ownership and property investment above most other means of wealth and