Andre Tchernia - The Romans and Trade (Oxford University Press, 2016) 21-23
Let us now go back to the book by the staunchest defender of the thesis that there was a large amount of covert activity, John D’Arms. Ever since he devoted his opening pages to Jean-Samuel Depont, the Intendant at Metz in the early 1770s, and to the man’s bitterness at having had a grandfather who engaged in maritime trade, the spectre of loss of nobility has hovered over discussion of the possible participation of senators, or even decurions, in commercial activities. 57 D’Arms’s idea that ‘Jean-Samuel Depont, Cicero, Tacitus, and Pliny have this in common, that they exhibit an attitude which might be described as one of moral disdain for traders and men of commerce’ justifies a stance of suspicion that, since D’Arms, has often been taken to be a conclusive demonstration. Let us now take a closer look at the validity of this analogy with France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Until a royal statute of 1629, reinforced by an edict in 1669, any nobleman who engaged in trade lost his nobility. Unless he entered the army, the magistrature, or the clergy, he could do nothing but look after his lands; and, so, much of his life was spent in idleness. The basic principle was that the origin and justification of nobility lay in bearing arms. Those who were opposed to the mercantilism of the seventeenth-century monarchy and its efforts to establish an aristocracy of commerce pointed out several times that engaging in trade, a practice that grew in times of peace, was at total variance with the mettle of a soldier. 58
Ideas prevalent in Antiquity were very different, since the elite exercised a role in governance. As says Plutarch at the end of his lives of Aristides and Cato, the man who has chosen political life, meaning someone who has devoted himself to the service of the body politic and civil society, must have no other preoccupation, οὐδεμίαν ἀσχολίαν, no other negotium than what is entailed in his political activities. 59 This was why he could not work. A senator’s wealth came from a supposedly regular flow of income into his purse: the product of his country estates and all their ongoing activities, interest from money lent, and in some cases rent from buildings. The attention he gave to such things would be only occasional. As sources of income, trade and long-distance transport provided neither the same facility nor the same security. They demanded constant attention and action, rapid reactions (the ταχυεργία mentioned in the speech by Censorinus quoted in my Introduction, 60 all very different from the type of activity that sufficed for the exploitation of the land, with its predictable and seasonal bearing of fruits, by the expectation of rents coming in, or the equally regular production of goods by one’s slaves.
This provides the key with which to read the oft-quoted text of De officiis, where Cicero develops an argument about the respectability of professions, artificia et quaestus, which in any case no senator would practise. As Cicero says in passing, his text has nothing whatever to do with any greater or lesser latitude afforded to senators’ engaging in trade. It does not deal with them. 61 Several criteria inform Cicero’s division of activities into either base or worthy of a free man (sordidae or liberales). First and foremost is unpopularity, which taints usurers and tax-gatherers. Then there is dependency, which is all the greater when the work requires less competence. Those who have nothing to sell but the strength of their arms (operae) stand below those who at least have a skill (artes); and, to be admitted to the liberal arts, intellectual ability is required, as in architects and doctors. The problem of trade comes up twice: its first mention defines what constitutes petty commerce and why it is beyond the pale; its second, by contrast, brings large-scale trade within the pale.
In the learned portrait of the trader given by Andrea Giardina (with such talent that it must chasten anyone who would attempt to do likewise), several pages stress the radical difference between the emporos, the great trader who sails the seas, and the kapelos, the retailer or shopkeeper, which he translates into Latin as tabernarius. On this matter, the most striking text is to be found in the passage from the Life of Apollonius of Tyana mentioned in my Introduction, 62 to the effect that one of the drawbacks of maritime trade is that, in seaports, one is constrained to rub shoulders with kapeloi. 63
The latter evince none of the qualities that are estimable in traders: courage, energy, and perseverance. In Cicero’s text, the contrast is based first on social utility: those who go in for large-scale trade supply products from far away; they play a role in bringing peoples together, which, as stated above, is one of the positive effects of commerce. They tend cities, as doctors tend patients. 64 However, those ‘who buy from traders to resell immediately’ do not suffer from delays and do not effect a significant transfer of goods from one place to another. They are considered to endow goods with no added value and to render no service to anyone. Hence, the only way they can make a profit is by lying.
On the other hand, the activity of those who engage in large-scale trade (and, if they are contrasted with those who buy from traders, it must no doubt be deduced that they buy from the producers) is not reprehensible. It becomes in fact praiseworthy on the day when they tire of their efforts, deeming themselves to be rich enough, leave the port, buy land, and set about cultivating it.
For our present purposes, let us note that large-scale trade dishonours no one; it is a quaestus as defensible as the artes liberales of the doctor or architect, one that is potentially highly respectable if one proves, by abandoning it, that one is free of the defects of traders and is capable of preferring the noblest source of riches, agriculture. As Giardina says, Cicero’s idea ‘rests on the premise that any outright condemnation of large-scale trade is impossible’. 65 Whatever the case may be, though, it is not seemly for senators to engage in it.
Notas
57 D’Arms (1981: 1–2, 7). For the importance of the analogy to D’Arms’s argument, and the way he used it, see Pleket (1983: 140; 1984: 4–6). Pleket’s general position is, however, quite close to that of D’Arms. D’Arms drew on a then recent book by the American biographer Robert Forster (1981). Schleich (1984: 39–42), has discussed the relevance of the analogy and its limitations.
58 Richard (1997: 37).
59 Plutarch, Cato ma. XXXI. 2 (354f ); cf. Nicolet (1988: 176). The principle derived from Greek discussions of the city state; see Aristotle, Pol. II. 11, 8 and 10 (1273a).
60 See p. 3.
61 Off. I. 150–1. The problem raised by the activities enumerated concerns iis quorum ordini conveniunt (151).
62 See p. 4.
63 Giardina (2002a: 327–35 (Giardina and Gurevič (1994: 20–9)). Philostratus, VA IV. 32. However, Rougé (1966: 270–1) has pointed out three texts in which the kapelos sails the sea.
64 Seneca, Ben. IV. 13, 3: Mercator urbibus prodest, medicus aegris.
65 Giardina (2002a: 333–4 (Giardina and Gurevič, 1994: 29)) also draws attention to the eulogy of traders in the preface to Cato’s De agricultura. Also Gabba (1988: 94–6 (1980)); Narducci (1989: 234–5, 257–65). Two and a half centuries after Cicero, Philostratus has Apollonius of Tyana admit that, in his bout of eloquence aimed at making the young Spartan aristocrat abandon his trade, he exaggerated his account of the drawbacks of maritime trade. Ultimately, the only argument of substance remaining is its incompatibility with the elevated status of his ancestors. See also D’Arms (1981: 23–4).
Bibliografia
D’Arms, J. H. (1981). Commerce and Social Standing in Ancient Rome. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Pleket, H. W. (1983). ‘Urban Elites and Business in the Greek Cities of the Roman Empire’, in Garnsey, Hopkins, and Whittaker (1983), 131–41.
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